“I CAN’T REALLY JUDGE IT since there was no clear idea of what we were trying to achieve.”
There are many questions to which people – especially those in certain positions – give expected, acceptable, safe answers.
That did not happen 20-something years ago when one of our politicians was asked for his assessment of what Barbados had made of Independence. With the greatest sobriety, he said the unexpected – quoted above.
What were we trying to achieve? What kind of people/country did we set out to be? Where is the evidence that we were seeking to be more than “own-way”?
Now, I know we have Bajan culture – our dialect, food (cou-cou – and flying fish?), music (tuk, calypso, spouge?), Mother Sally, the Landship, and customs and such. But those things have nothing to do with Independence per se, and the more profound elements of our charting our own way cannot be located in our peculiar expressions, entertainments, artefacts and folkways.
As we live and breathe every day, and work out our sovereignty, there must be things that better represent our character as a nation.
Commitment
Who can gainsay that in becoming independent a country should see that its main thrust should be in the areas of developing a pervasive set of shared noble values, refined governance, what I called elsewhere “profound kindredness”, and unmistakable commitment to country?
And if we are really working at them, those who come among us with time enough to observe should be in no doubt that we are about these things. So, naturally, I ask: what is the manifest Barbadian “way”, the proud marks of our nation, for which there is clear, everyday, pervasive evidence that shouts, “These are the things we stand for and for which we will unyieldingly resist anyone who goes up against them”?
Why the silence? That’s embarrassing.
I have written quite a bit about the kinds of values that should be central to our nation enterprise: respect for the rights of others, the certain and impartial rule of law, meaningful stake in our governance, giving back and charity (two different things in my book), productivity, resourcefulness and so on.
But earlier this month some Senators reminded me of another central area in which our poor reputation is a shameful blot on our Independence and a bane to our prospects. Three Senators in particular, Maxine McClean, Frances Chandler and Geoffrey Cave, found Barbados to be very wanting in the area of service.
But the president of the National Union of Public Workers right away jump up and defended what is often the indefensible. But don’t let the broad brush obscure the point, man! Things would have to have reached very troubling proportions for people to use a broad brush.
When you talk in generalized negative terms about politicians, who bothers to tell you that all of them are not like that? No one. Yuh know why? Because the cap fits an untenably critical mass of them.
So, no amount of knee-jerk standing up for your people can diminish what many Barbadians know day in and day out. Hush. Or call your people to better.
I know a lot of people link service here to our being a country that is highly dependent on tourism. Nothing wrong with that. It is a fact that that matters a great deal to our visitors.
But what we should recognize, too, is that good service is a necessity, period. Regardless of whom you are dealing with. Workers who don’t give good service to their own people will very soon not give good service to outsiders.
And it is not that they are not trained to do so. It is that it is not a front burner issue with many bosses. They don’t major on it; they make nothing ride on it.
Bosses
We don’t so much need NISE (the National Initiative for Service Excellence) to train workers to be nice; we need bosses who will not tolerate workers who aren’t nice to customers (whether internal or external).
If there is going to be any recourse to training, NISE should train bosses on how to hold their staffs accountable for delivering good service. Of course, there are some places where she is some big-up’s keep miss or “the minister send he here”. And in Barbados that may really mean that they are intractable – and untouchable.
But there are many others who come without strings.
Good service is a fundamental facet of community, which is one of the essences of a thriving nationhood – whether you are a tourist island or not.
It’s an irony: to be truly independent, you have to learn to serve others well. No man is an island – and no flourishing sovereign island will ever be made up of self-serving men (and women).
• Sherwyn Walters is a writer who became a teacher, a song analyst, a broadcaster and an editor.
