MORE THAN 325 YEARS AGO, the captain of the English supply ship Olive Blossom found a small island, shaped somewhat like a pork chop, lying east of the curving archipelago that guards the Caribbean. He erected a cross and claimed the land for his king by scratching on a nearby tree “James K. of E. and This Island”.
That’s the first paragraph of a feature article on Barbados that appeared in National Geographic magazine sometime in 1952. The writer was Charles Allmon.
One morning in 1993, a small car drove up to my home and out jumped Dr Colin Hudson, the British-born environmentalist and innovative scientist, acknowledged internationally as a key developer of the modern sugar cane harvester.
Long before coming to Barbados, falling in love with the island and making it his home, he had photocopied all 30 pages and insisted, at my front door, that he should share this article with me.
Hudson wanted me to take note of a paragraph that read: “So intensively is land cultivated in Barbados that it has been called “the island without weeds”. Almost literally every square foot of arable land is used to support the large population.”
The Tuscaloosa News, a newspaper in Alabama, United States, commenting on the National Geographic article soon after it appeared in 1952, wrote: “Any American weed-puller with an aching back would envy the pullers on Barbados. The place is a paradise for weed-pullers. There are no weeds to speak of. Barbados is a tiny sugar-producing British possession, easternmost of the Caribbean islands. It took about 300 years to do it but during that time the cultivation of nearly every arable square foot of Barbados has eliminated weeds.
“There has been intensive cultivation. Even so, the thin soil of the island has not been depleted. The people have used fertilizer, crop rotation, and have taken advantage of the lack of erosion. Rain, in that area, falls mostly on the heavy side from June to November. It doesn’t run off. It sneaks into the bedrock and percolates slowly.”
National Geographic had sent Allmon to Barbados for a few weeks to write a cover story and take some photographs. His first stop was at Locust Hall estate where he watched “sweating cane-cutters, armed with formidable razor-sharp cane bills sever stalks from the ground with swift, sure strokes. A second lash decapitating the green leaves used to feed animals. A rake of the cane bill down the length of the stalk cleaning it off.”
On his way to Bulkeley sugar factor, he passed heavily laden trucks and mule (dray) carts lumbering through St George to the factory, then the largest of – note this – 36 sugar factories. As I write, we have only two: Andrews and Portvale.
Superintendent W. B. Carrington invited the American journalist into the factory where he observed the manufacture of fancy molasses. In 1951, Barbados produced more than 164 000 long tons of raw sugar and over 23 000 tons of molasses. More than 900 000 gallons of rum was shipped to Britain in 1950.
Back in the 1950s – and much later since then – it was accepted that when 19-year-old George Washington came to Barbados with his ailing brother Lawrence, they lived at the corner of Chelsea Road and Bay Street. Indeed, the house was for several years known and marked as George Washington House.
Corrected history would later locate the residence further up the road, opposite the Garrison Savannah racetrack. That’s the fascinating thing about history: it’s not so much about what happened, but what people believe happened.
George Washington would later go on to become the first president of the United States from 1789 to 1797.
The Barbados so graphically described by National Geographic has come a long way since the 1950s. There has been much physical development coupled, at the same time, with equally as much, if not more, destruction of our environment.
The place is overrun with bush. We would do well to reflect on the American journalist’s observation: “Weeding has been done so carefully and for so many years that weed seeds are virtually non-existent except as they arrive from lands outside.”
Whimsically, two years ago, I suggested that in much the same way as we allow all sorts of bush and weeds to cover good productive land, why not let’s plant some food along the wayside: tomatoes, sweet peppers, okras, and so on and let everybody reap to their hearts’ content?
No one took me up on it – the dreamy ruminations of an ageing fogey!
This was perhaps what was behind the question put three years ago by one of this country’s many centenarians. Archibald Taylor asked Governor General Sir Clifford Husbands: “Why is there so much bush in St Lucy, Mr Governor General?”
The scene that perturbed him was not only in St Lucy; it has become islandwide. And so many Barbadians saunter along completely oblivious and uncaring about what we are doing to our country, a far cry from what the National Geographic told the world about the Barbadians who lived at that time – including Taylor.
During World War II (1939 – 1945), Barbadians could not afford to grow bush and weeds; we had to turn to the land for food, thanks to an edict from another expatriate, Sir John Saint.
With Hitler’s submarines sinking the ships that brought our rice, milk products, salt fish, animal feed, and other goods, the director of agriculture required all landowners to allocate 35 per cent of their land to vegetables and, to take care of surplus, a dehydrating plant was built for drying crops. Before the war, only five per cent of arable land had been planted in food crops.
Sir John Saint ensured our food security.
We might have to do it again . . . if we can wean ourselves off the macaroni pie.
Carl Moore was the first editor of THE NATION and is a social commentator. Email [email protected].
