ONCE A country loses its culture, it loses its identity, and Barbados is a place where it seems like the preservation of culture isn’t important.
Very few children play hop-scotch, pitch, skip or play tape ball cricket in the streets. Many young people can’t ride a bicycle or have any experience climbing a tree. It is a common sight to drive through neighbourhoods during the vacation and seeing completely empty streets; not a single child outside running around or building something.
Last weekend was the Easter holiday and though it was a time to celebrate the Crucifixion and Resurrection of Jesus Christ, Barbadians normally looked forward to this weekend to fly their kites. Good Friday morning I stepped outside, looked in the sky and saw zero kites. All day up until about 7 p.m., I continued to search the skies and all I saw were three single kites. On Saturday, I couldn’t find a single kite in the sky and on Easter Sunday, the same thing. My family and I fly kites together at the Garrison on Easter Monday and it was only then that I saw people flying kites. In comparison to last year, the numbers had dwindled. How I see it, another Bajan custom is on its way out, and this is sad.
I posted my concerns about this on Facebook and one person replied: “Is there an app for that?” Although the response made some laugh, the reality is, technology is reshaping our culture. Actually, parents are reshaping our culture.
Kite-flying should not be underestimated as it teaches creativity, resourcefulness, patience, negotiation and social skills, determination, conflict resolution, and the list goes on. You learn how to read the wind and also some physics based on how much tail you have on and the type of loops you have. It also supports cognitive and fine motor skills development, and being in the sun is a good source of vitamin D. Since I was a teenager, I have only seen one clammy cherry tree, so children don’t even know about using the slime of the seeds for glue.
There is no doubt that society has changed and while I was allowed to roam the neighbourhood freely for hours as a child, many wouldn’t let their children do such for various reasons. Though that may be a contributor, it can’t be an excuse because parents can take their children outside and spend time flying or making kites with them.
Between the ages of eight and 18, we in the neighbourhood would be outside from 7 a.m. to 6 p.m. flying kites and most likely the kites would either pop, get hooked in a tree or on a power line, or crash and “brek up”. If it was a kite bought for you, it meant you had to now make a plastic bag kite with coconut branches or wait till some foreign kite landed in the neighborhood and ‘huff’ it – cut off the tail and replace it and you were good to go. When your cord was gone, you couldn’t ask your parents for more, so you went on a cord-hunting mission with a piece of stick and collected cord as you walked. The experience taught us how to be wise and resourceful and you learnt a lot from the boys who were better at kite-flying than you.
Ask a random child what ‘whirllying, snaking, haul in, doctor pill, belly, bones, bull head, loops, bull, singing angel, boxing diamond, capella or star diamond’ mean and they would be lost.
In my younger days, mango, dunk, golden apple, breadfruit, plum, pomegranate, coconut and ackee trees hated vacation time because they knew we youngsters were home and we would be raiding them all day. We ate fruits from morning to night, and looking back, we never got sick. These days, you drive through communities and see trees bursting with fruits – unheard of in my younger days.
What about card games – “tonk, suck me well, hearts, spit, go to de pack”? Are we teaching our children these? My children are under the age of six and I am hoping very soon to teach them how to catch green lizards with grass. The problem I have is that the Guyanese lizards (as they are called) are eating out all of our green lizards. Even the lizards are disappearing from our culture. What will Barbados have to call its own in ten to 20 years?
