THE MIGHTY GABBY’s 30-year-old calypso Jack has recently been taking on fresh resonance as developers eye Barbados’ eastern coastline until now spared the embrace of concrete and steel.
But if “dah beach is mine” and if “it belongs to we”, we must take better care of it. We must pay more than lip service to its value – not only to us and our offspring – but to those we invite to visit and enjoy it while we try to extract every bit of foreign exchange from their pockets.
For the past 16 months, since a hurricane called Tomas passed our way, a wrecked pleasure boat had been lying on the beach at Bay Street. These days the entire stretch from Holiday Inn to the old dry dock is known as Browne’s Beach.
It presented a clear danger to all users of that spectacular part of Barbados.
It became my personal cause célèbre. I wrote several letters accompanied by pictures to the news media drawing attention to this wanton disregard for our environment. Finally, one morning, 11 days ago, a backhoe appeared and dug the rotting hulk out of the sand.
It took no fewer than four Government departments to do the job: the Environmental Protection Department; the National Conservation Commission; the Bridgetown Port Inc., which got to learn about the boat only three weeks previously; and the Coastal Zone Management Unit (CZMU), which for 16 months had known of its presence a pebble’s throw away from its offices.
Indeed, last July, the CZMU not only publicly admitted knowledge of the presence of the boat since October 30 of 2010, but also of the owner of the boat. The department even informed the taxpayers that the CZMU would eventually have to pay for its removal.
Finally, the Bridgetown Port Inc. got cracking and cleaned up that unsightly spot on the beach while wondering about the ownership of the boat and who would pay for its disposal.
An alert talk radio moderator termed it a case of the left hand not knowing what the right hand was doing. All the Harbour Master needed to do was to call the CZMU and acquire the information about the boat owner.
The same beach has even more environmentally dangerous situations to which I have already drawn attention in an essay Bring Back Bims last June. When the sand allows, six canals empty putrid effluent directly into the water where bathers swim, exercise and sometimes hold impromptu evangelical worship and baptisms – a most inappropriate engineering solution.
The situation described is symptomatic of the laissez-faire attitude of many Barbadian public officials and, by obsequious acceptance, the community.
There are many who elevate this ennui to the level of a virtue, especially when it is demonstrated by leadership at the top of the decision-making process.
We accept decay and decline so readily. One morning on the beach a walker said to me, cynically: “I see your boat is still here!” My boat! . . . while his diabetic feet walked dangerously close to metal jutting out of the sand.
That’s the way we are. Noise pollution?
Dah is Carl Moore problem, man!
A guard wall must fall and injure someone before we take action to repair it; workers must down tools and stand around outside their sick building before the air conditioning system can be cleaned – for the first time in ten years; Royalty must visit for the overhanging branches on Pine Road to be trimmed and for the Prince Cave Hall to be fitted with new drapes. I regret that bumpy Well Gap was not on their itinerary.
What do you guess caused the patriot Errol Barrow to observe that “one day Barbadians will wake up and find that this country is no longer theirs” – or words to that telling effect?
I took that to mean that we simply don’t notice things. By the time we do, the BlackBelly sheep has long bolted.
• Carl Moore was the first Editor of THE NATION and is a social commentator. Email carlmoore@caribsurf.com