Peter Minshall on the Commercialization of Carnival

Here.

“The Savannah stage has done so much harm,” says Minshall. It has evolved to suit the needs of the bigger Carnival bands (i.e.: commercialism), and in the process, has “cut out the light for anything small to grow.” As the big bands got bigger and made more money, the expression became more shallow, to the point where costumes are now no different from Las Vegas showgirls. “We have sold our soul,” says Minshall sadly, as we pay homage to “the cheapest of the cheap: American standards of entertainment.” T&T Carnival has become a celebrity thing and mas’, in its purest sense, is not about celebrity. In fact, it’s the antithesis of it.

We should take heed. For those of you who don't remember, when Minshall was here, two years ago, he was blown away by the vibrancy of Junkanoo, by the fact that it's a parade created by the participants, by the energy and the people-ness of it all. And for people who don't know, Trinidad and Tobago has closed the Savannah grandstand down for renovation; CARIFESTA was held at the National Stadium, not at the Savannah as a result, and Carnival 2007 will have to find a different venue as well.

In our calls for the "improvement" of Junkanoo, we should look to Trinidad and Tobago not only for inspiration in terms of organization and engineering, design and sound, but also in terms of their mistakes. There's no good reason why we should repeat mistakes that have been made in the past. The reasons will only be bad — powermongering, or selfishness, or greed.

On Commemorating Abolition

This continues a topic I started last week.In November 2006, the United Nations adopted a resolution declaring March 25, 2007 as the International Day for the Commemoration for the Two-hundredth Anniversary of the Abolition of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade. That the resolution was put forward by the CARICOM states is remarkable. That it was supported widely by other members is important. But what we do with it here in The Bahamas, where we are generally unaware of our role in the international community, and where we are usually ignorant of our place in history, will demonstrate, and perhaps determine, who we really are, and in which direction we are heading.We live, you see, in a society for whom the history of slavery is palpably uncomfortable. For many of us, it’s preferable to forget our slave past, perhaps because we’re ashamed of having been enslaved. For others, we’d rather forget the fact that we owned slaves. For still others, we are torn – some of our ancestors were slaves, and others were their owners.We also live in a society whose images of slavery have been shaped almost indelibly by the depictions of the slave pasts of other people – of the USA, or of the West Indies. We imagine plantations and overseers and whips and brands, but we don’t know that there were fundamental differences between slavery in The Bahamas and slavery in the West Indies and in the southern USA. We don’t realize that our plantations failed miserably, making our slavery quite a different animal.In the first place, although cotton was grown here for a mere thirty years, slavery was legal in The Bahamas from 1648, when the Eleutherean Adventurers settled in Eleuthera, until 1834, when it was officially abolished altogether, and the slaves technically set free. In these 186 years, only thirty of them involved plantation slavery. So what about the remaining one and a half centuries?According to Gail Saunders, large numbers of Bahamian slaves worked alongside their masters in any number of professions. Many were skilled labourers – bakers and masons and carpenters, cooks in people’s houses and cooks on boats, bosuns and mates and fishermen, farmers and scribes, and seamstresses and laundresses. Bahamian slavery involved the kinds of people who might in other societies be called “house slaves” – people who were able to gain diverse skills and glean some education to give them some standing in the world. So we might be forgiven for thinking that Bahamian slavery was relatively kind.But it isn’t what Bahamian slaves had to do that was important. What made slavery evil was what it said slaves were. Although on the surface Bahamian slaves were better educated and better treated than others to the north and the south, we cannot overlook this one fundamental fact: that slavery made people, into objects, things that could be owned and bought and sold.So in tandem with the sense of independence and individuality that Bahamian slave ownership bred, there was also inculcated in Bahamians the same sense of basic dependency, the very self-denigration that all slave societies create. Bahamian slave society may well offer fewer examples of brutality to the historian; but at least one the examples of brutality was outstanding. The story of Kate Moss, the young slave girl who was so badly punished by her owners that she died at their hands, became one of the examples used by British Abolitionists in their arguments about the inhumanity of the institution.And the closer relationship between the Bahamian masters and their slaves, while appearing to be kinder and gentler on the surface, had its own insidious result. You might say that on the plantation the relationship between the master and the slave was clear-cut, and this enabled the slaves to come to terms with their condition in such a way that they were able to rebel against it – and did, in many places. In the Bahamian situation, though, where slaves were often very closely connected with their masters, and where they often forged friendships and partnerships with them – at sea, at home, in the yard, in the shop – the line between property and owner became blurred, and made the struggle for freedom far more complex and difficult.You see, it’s often easier to fight one’s enemies when they’re obvious. When the person who is defining you as a piece of property is also the same one who is feeding you and clothing you, from whose very hands you might accept the gifts, and beside whom you might work, day in, day out, it becomes very difficult to separate the kindness of the individual person from the fundamental injustice of the system. When the person who is keeping you in your “place” is also the one who offers you assistance, and whom you might like and respect and even emulate, it becomes almost impossible to seek freedom. The comfort brought by the relationship you have is often too much to put at risk.Perhaps that’s why we Bahamians today are so uncomfortable with remembering that we were once slaves. Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that our freedom is only half-here; for we are still quick to surrender our identities and our sovereignty for a taste of the comfort offered to us by the masters of today. There’s nothing new for us to be asked weigh the tough realities of forging our own way against the ease offered us by people who come in from abroad, smiling and handing us treasures we don’t truly understand. Old habits are hard to break, after all, and it’s happened to us before. The Lucayans lost their islands, and their culture; the slaves and their descendants got material assistance in the place of freedom. Why should we be any different?And so, the commemoration of abolition in The Bahamas has got to be a very serious, a very solemn thing. We must recognize what the process of abolition began, while recognizing too the role we – black, white, slave, free, cruel and kind – all played in the dual struggle between servitude and liberty. And above all, we must recognize that that struggle is not over, and steel ourselves to continue it for as long as it takes for us to be truly free.

On Abolition

In 2007, we in the British New World will observe a bicentenary of great significance. The anniversary I’m talking about is the abolition of the slave trade by Great Britain. That is a different thing from the abolition of slavery, which made it illegal for anyone throughout the British Empire to own other human beings. Rather, it was the abolition of the practice of sailing to other people’s countries and enslaving their people to provide free labour on land appropriated from yet another set of people.In 1807, the British Parliament made it illegal to enslave human beings afresh. The Abolition Act didn’t grant immediate freedom to those people who were already slaves; but it put an end to the profiteering that came from capturing new people.We know slavery was bad. We know it’s an indelible part of our history. But it’s over, and it has been in our country for almost two hundred years. So why should we commemorate Abolition, when it didn’t actually erase the institution of slavery or free the slaves?The short answer is that it marks the beginning of a process of emancipation that involved all parties -- the slaveowners as well as the slaves. The long answer is that Abolition created a culture that provided the foundations of the one in which we live today. If we begin with the question about who enslaved whom and when that ended and who ended it, we begin in the wrong place. We already know those answers, and we tend to use them to justify weaknesses and cast blame. The commemoration of the Abolition of Slavery, however, allows us to approach the institution in a different, and, it’s hoped, more constructive way.Currently, we’re taught to consider the institution of slavery as an unrelieved victimhood, with the Bad White Oppressor and the Poor Black Oppressed -- Simon Legree, for those of you who still remember Uncle Tom’s Cabin, and Uncle Tom, Topsy, and company. But what we overlook is that the real institution was far more complicated. The slaves themselves struggled for their freedom from the moment of their capture, and their activity in that struggle for freedom contributed to importantly to the Abolition movement. The slave-owners, on the other hand, were not all greedy and cruel, and several engaged in the education, religious and otherwise, of their slaves. Not all people of colour were slaves, not all white people were slave-owners, and not all slave-owners were white; some, like the Fox after which Fox Hill took its name, belonged to the group of people known as Free Coloured People.So we have to approach this bicentenary of Abolition in a spirit of openness. We need to understand the processes of emancipation that began with/led up to/culminated in the passage of the Abolition Legislation through the British Parliament in 1807, and to recognize that those processes must continue; for two hundred years later, we are still not entirely free.So what should we commemorate about Abolition?Well, to begin with, (and for this article, I’m going to end here too; I’ll continue in other articles, and the one after that) though it didn’t do away with slavery, it changed the face of the institution in very important ways.Politically, Great Britain’s Abolition of the slave trade had the interesting side effect of making Great Britain the protector of the innocent on the high seas. The abolishing of the slave trade made it possible for British ships to police the Atlantic, capturing slave ships and setting the people on them free. The impact that this practice would have on The Bahamas for the rest of the ninetenth century was huge; if the slave ships were captured on the western side of the Atlantic, the likelihood that they would be towed to Nassau and the slaves on them set free in The Bahamas was high. The result was that the black population of The Bahamas was augmented throughout the 1800s by the arrival of Liberated Africans, and these people, who had never had their cultures stripped from them by the institution of slavery, contributed to the development of many particularly Bahamian traditions, such as lodges, Junkanoo, asue and so on. These people were responsible, further, for the creation of many of the villages we currently celebrate; Bain Town, Grants Town, Delaporte, Gambier, Adelaide, Carmichael and Fox Hill all had as their origins villages created for the Liberated Africans.Culturally, perhaps, the greatest legacy of the Abolition of the slave trade in 1807 was the stabilizing of that language that we now know as “Bahamian dialect”. There were other things, of course, but as I believe that a language is a basic cornerstone of identity, I’d like to focus on it for now.The creation of new languages is an interesting process. In the British West Indies, until 1807, the pool of Africans was constantly being added to by new arrivals. These people had diverse tongues, which meant that in order to communicate with one another and with the whites, an intermediary language, structured around African grammar systems but using English words, was established.When Abolition put an end to the fresh enslavement of people, the result was simple and interesting: the language that the slaves and their masters used for communication began to stabilize. In the absence of new languages being added to the pool, and in a situation where people were learning the intermediary tongue as their first language, a dialect was born. After Abolition, the creole languages that developed in the New World were the foundations of today’s various Caribbean and Latin American dialects -- fundamental markers of local identities.So why should we commemorate Abolition? For our culture and our language, at the very least. And of course, for all the ancestors who were changed by it, and who by that change changed us -- African, Creole, White, liberated, slave, and free.

Yet another update - hope springs

Dear Sista, I hope this letter finds you alright. I wonder if you realize that when you bravely told your story to us, you were waking up the world.Officials of the Royal Bahamas Police Force Training College heard you tell of your ordeal and they are responding brilliantly, they are taking proactive and positive measures now to make sensitivity to domestic violence issues a much greater part of their training. They heard your voice and want you to know that the policemen who arrested and detained you without allowing you to dress should never have done such a thing. The Good Guys of the Police Force heard you sista, and want to make it right.

It's easy enough to criticize.  Finding fault is not just something that can happen without a huge amount of effort; it's also often something that helps people with low self-esteem make themselves feel better.  And so it's heartening to follow Lynn Sweeting's letters to the woman whose experience at the hands of the Bahamian police, and see that she's telling every side of the story.This is her third letter, posted on her blog.  In her second, she expressed hope that the woman's story would make a difference, would galvanize the police force to act.  In this one, she's commending the Royal Bahamas Police Force for their action.It's also a letter of encouragement to support somebody who took the hard road — the telling of her story.Anyway, here's what Lynn said.

Lynn posts an update

Last week, Lynn Sweeting posted an update on the status of the case involving the police who took a woman in custody without permitting her to put on any clothes:Calling the Commissioner

Because you are speaking out, Commissioner Farquarson is speaking too. He said: “I want to assure all women that there must be common decency for all persons we arrest, and especially for women. Women must be treated with respect and care and with the utmost professionalism. And common decency for women is what I want share with the junior officers too, as part of their training to make sure that we do not have a recurrence.”

Ringplay Productions' Memorial Pages to Winston Saunders

Ringplay has set up a series of tribute pages for Winston Saunders. Go to:www.ringplay.comOr check out the Memorial Page itself.There's also a thread on Saunders at ...conch een ga no bone, the Bahamas arts board.

A place without dust

Memorial Service for Winston Saunders

Friday December 8, 200610 a.m.Christ Church CathedralHow do you hold a memorial for a man who was so fully alive?When my father died, almost twenty years ago now, the months that followed his leaving us were bright with sunshine, the kind of sunshine that picks up dust motes and reveals what is hidden, but the light was cold and flat. Life went on — it never stops — and the winter that followed was as beautiful as winter always is, with clear clean skies and silhouettes to make your breath stop, with water the colour of, well, God, and air as light as it gets. Things were sometimes more beautiful, maybe because the world stopped turning so often — every time he came into your mind.What's happening to me now is a similar feeling, with a key difference. I had the opportunity to work with him, with Winston Saunders (this isn't the place to call him what I called him all my life, Uncle), and the loss is professional as well as personal. And both are immeasurable. There's a big gap in the warp of life and it will take a lot of time to close.The only words I could find to describe my father's loss, after the pain began to dull and the confusion began to clear, weren't mine. They were the words of Clarice Lispector — a place without dust, a place where something was once and isn't anymore.

Ordinary miracles to pry open the eyes of the blindhappen every day. Yet my deep faith holds:sun, wind, rain, and the dark nights will changemy Boschka's cinders to deathless apples and poems— Irving Layton

Tribute to Winston Saunders by Rex Nettleford

TRIBUTE TOWINSTON V SAUNDERS, CMG

By Professor Rex NettlefordVice Chancellor Emeritus

Every society throws up in each generation persons of immense talent, intellectual energy and creative excellence. Winston V Saunders, legal luminary and cultural activist was such a person with talents ranging from playwriting and acting to musicianship and the sort of vision about culture and development. That vision and the actions that followed from it informed his stance on the building of a new Bahamian nation and the shaping of the self-directed society he wished to have tenanted by a confident, culturally aware citizenry with a sense of place, of purpose and of history to undergird the certitude which he saw an independent Commonwealth of Bahamas becoming.He made sure to marry a historian – Dr. Gail who is the proud recipient of an honorary doctorate from our University of the West Indies. As a highly respected Caribbean historian among her peers, she was his best friend offering to him the kind of support that true friendship engenders. Packed in Winston’s bags on coming to Jamaica and sadly to his untimely passing was her latest chronicling (along with Patrice Williams) of the conflict, controversy and control that attended constitutional and parliamentary issues in the contentious 18th and 19th century Bahamas.

For Winston, the natural scholar and student of Bahamian affairs, understood such congenital indulgences of his well-nigh ungovernable contradictory, contentious but exciting Bahamas which he cherished and which cherished him no less. It was that loving, compassionate, caring relationship with the history and existential reality of the Caribbean region as a whole which made him the most engaging of informed and witty conversationalist, the most engaged of Bahamian national and optimistic Caribbean man that he became. Such special attributes endeared him to all who had encounters with this civilized, hospitable, sophisticated, multifaceted polymath of a textured human being whom we will all remember and forever treasure.It was his understanding of the persistent historical features of both his own and the wider Caribbean society that drove him to Jamaica to participate in discussions about collaborative engagement in the commemoration of the abolition of the Transatlantic Slave Trade which has had such a profound and lasting impact on the lives and being of us as a people of the Americas – that is ever since Cristobal Colon accidentally landed and was discovered by Native Americans on a Bahamian beach. Unfortunately, Winston was not to participate in the meetings that followed his arrival in Jamaica. But to his conscious end his mind continued to grapple with the awesome challenge facing his Bahamian compatriots in the quest “to be”, by engagement of a history of severance suffering and survival.It was beyond that survival that we both, along with kindred spirits like the late Clement Bethel his dear departed friend, often discussed throughout the 1970’s and since – always dreaming about a future that spelt hope rather than despair. So what a joy it was to visit the Bahamas to see Winston Saunders and to continue the never ending dialogue which had its full and robust, sometimes humorous, but always profound effect on life and living in our post-colonial Caribbean.His special talents and profound grasp of the centrality of creative energy to the building and shaping his society made him the natural fount of the richness of that sense and sensibility needed to inform the cultural development of his native Bahamas as well as of a philosophy that needed to bring sensitivity and sanity to public policy. He was certain of the need for appropriate institutions to give form and purpose to the innate creativity of his people as well as to preserve the intangible heritage of his fellow Bahamians. And, he was no less certain of the passion and generosity and magnanimity of spirit he felt was vital to strategies of growth and development through the engagement of the arts of the imagination working in tandem with the creative intellect -- individual and collective.The wisdom of the present Administration to engage his services as cultural guru and formally as chairman of the Cultural Development Commission, as well as draughtsman for the legal instruments that reflect the need to formalize but not to gird in an iron-grid framework either the exercise of the creative imagination or the general vision on how to have the arts of the imagination inform intellectual pursuits and public policy. People like Winston Saunders do not grow on trees! He shall be severely missed.All the more reason, then, to celebrate a life rather than to mourn a death. Winston Saunders would not have had it otherwise. And nor should we.

On the Passing of Winston Saunders

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone.Silence the pianos and with muffled drumBring out the coffin, let the mourners come.Let aeroplanes circle moaning overheadScribbling on the sky the message He is Dead,Put crépe bows round the white necks of the public doves,Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.He was my North, my South, my East and West,My working week and my Sunday rest,My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song,I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong.The stars are not wanted now, put out every one;Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun;Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood.For nothing now can ever come to any good.W. H. Auden

---

Winston V. Saunders3 October 1941 – 25 November 2006

Winston Saunders was born 3 October 1941 to Harcourt and Miriam Saunders. He attended Quarry Mission School under the late Thelma Gibson, Western Junior School under the late Timothy Gibson, and studied piano under the late Meta Davis-Cumberbatch. He won a place at the Government High School, and attended under Dr. Dean Peggs and Mr. Hugh Davies, where he served as Head Boy. As a musician, he was Organist at the Church of the Holy Spirit and at St. Mary the Virgin Anglican Church.He attended the Bahamas Teacher's Training College in Oakes Field under the Rev. Dr. Charles Saunders, and in 1964 obtained a B.A. Degree from London University in Classics. He returned to Nassau, and taught English at St. Anne's High School from 1964 until 1968.He married the former Gail North on April 15, 1968, and returned to London that autumn to pursue a Postgraduate Certificate in Education at London University.Mr. Saunders returned to Nassau to take up the post of Vice Principal at R. M. Bailey, a position he held from 1969 till 1970. He joined the Chambers of Isaacs, Johnson and Co. in 1970 as an Articled Law Student to Ms. Jeanne Thompson, and was called to the Bahamas Bar on September 19, 1974. He became a partner in the law firm of McKinney, Bancroft and Hughes, and worked as a lecturer in Law at the University of the West Indies (Nassau Campus). Between 1993-2000 he served Her Majesty's Coronor.In 1975, Mr. Saunders took up the position of Chairman of the Dundas Civic Centre, and served as Chairman until 1998. During his tenure as Chairman of the Dundas, Bahamian drama thrived. He oversaw the renovations of the theatre, established a repertory season, and under his guidance an entire generation of directors, actors and playwrights was raised. A consummate actor and playwright himself, he is best known for originating such roles as "Pa Ben", in Trevor Rhone's Old Story Time and "Maphusa" in Ian Strachan's The Mysterious Mister Maphusa. He also played "Zachariah" in Athol Fugard's The Blood Knot, "Peter" in Edward Albee's The Zoo Story, "Midge" in Herb Gardner's I'm Not Rappaport and "Charlie" in Larry Shue's The Foreigner — all on the Dundas stage. As a director, he brought productions such as Shaffer's Equus and Baldwin's Amen Corner to Bahamian audiences. He co-directed E. Clement Bethel's Sammie Swain with Philip A. Burrows in 1983 and in 1985 for the Command Performance for H. M. Queen Elizabeth II, and in 1987, co-directed the first Caribbean opera in English, Cleophas Adderley's Our Boys with Philip A. Burrows; in 1989 and 1990 he produced Dis We Tings I and II.It is as a playwright, however, that Mr. Saunders' greatest achievement was gained. He is the author of two seminal Bahamian dramas, Them and You Can Lead A Horse To Water, as well as a series of satirical commentaries on Bahamian life, the Nehemiah Quartet. You Can Lead A Horse To Water is widely recognized as the greatest Bahamian play, and has been produced in Nassau, Freeport, San Francisco, Edinburgh, Michigan, and Trinidad and Tobago.He is a recipient of a number of awards, including several DANSAs for playwriting, the Meta, a special DANSA for Excellence in Theatre, the Chamber of Commerce Distinguished Citizen Award for contribution to Culture, the Silver Jubilee Award for Culture given by the Government of the Commonwealth of The Bahamas in 1998.Until his death on November 25, 2006, he served as the Chairman of the National Commission on Cultural Development and chaired the Independence Committee since 2003. In 2004, he was made a Companion of the Order of St. Michael and St. George (CMG). Most recently, his work was the featured presentation of the Bahamas CARIFESTA Contingent in Trinidad and Tobago.Original Post:

Some things you just can't write about straight away. Some things are too raw for writing, or at least for sharing.The death of my second father, Winston Vernon Saunders, on Saturday evening, is one of those things. It would be bad enough if we just had the personal connection with which I've grown up; but in the last four years, he has been my mentor and my balance, especially in the job of Director of Culture. People who know me personally will understand.

So for people wondering where my post on Winston Saunders' passing is, it has yet to be written. In the meantime, here are the words of W. H. Auden.

On Travel

You ever notice how, when certain people travel, they go wherever they please without a second thought? From Ethiopia to Tibet, from Vienna to Baton Rouge, from Moscow to Santiago, they step off the plane or train or whatever got them there, they look around, and they feel well, not exactly at home, but entitled to be treated with a measure of dignity? These are the people who rise up in indignation when they’re challenged at borders, when they run into snags or problems, when their dignity is not recognized.On the other hand, you ever notice how, when certain other people travel, they pick where they want to go? They avoid certain places, they pick certain routes, they travel by specific forms of transport where security is the norm and not the exception, and when they step off the aeroplane, they prepare to be treated like immigrants or criminals or worse? These people may rise up in indignation when they’re challenged as well, but it’s not because they are shocked into that state. It’s because they’re all to familiar with their dignity not being recognized, and they’ve just become tired of it all.I’ve been travelling a lot lately. Now I’m not one of the people in the first group. I tend to expect border officials to be unfriendly, to be unwelcoming, to try and intimidate me into not blowing up whatever it is that they have. But lately I’ve been reminded that travel is good for you, despite the security clearances and the surly immigrant immigration officers who patrol the US border and the puffer machines and the various other beeping things. Travel is good for you.It doesn’t just open your mind, it blows it.On my recent trip to Trinidad, what blew mine is how fundamentally similar we Caribbean people are. While we Bahamians like to draw imaginary lines around and between us, aligning ourselves with northern people and assuring ourselves that we’re nothing like the Others, we lie to ourselves; even white Caribbean people (I met some in Barbados) are like white us.On my recent trip to Britain, what blew it then was the fact that London has become a European city. Never mind the rhetoric of the tour guides and the joshing that happens every now and then; every waiter who served us in a restaurant, half the ushers who seated us in the theatres, and every employee in our hotel was from Europe. And the pedestrians now walk on the right side of the sidewalks in London, and trot up the right side of the stairs of the Undergound, and London appears to have given in to it. Rare and far between are the signs instructing pedestrians to Keep Left; the Battle of Britain, at least in London, has been lost.But we — and by we I mostly mean Bahamians, but not entirely — don’t travel. Don’t get me wrong. We go places; we go shopping. We take planes and trains and we carry lots of money with us and several empty bags, and wherever we follow bargains and objects for consumption. But travel, the kind of travel I’m talking about, the travel that is part of one’s education, that stems from basic curiosity, that involves the discovery of unfamiliar places, is not a part of our cultural vocabulary.The thing is, it’s part of other nations’. It’s fundamental to their self-definitions. Europeans and Canadians include travel as part of their socialization in the world. Consider this. There are far more British and French and German and Danish and Austrian teenagers who are familiar with Africa and its various cultures than there are Bahamians, whose ancestors were brought from Africa. Young Europeans take summers and even years to travel around or even live and work in countries and cultures as different from theirs as they can possibly find. They learn other people’s languages, and they collect other people’s customs. Canadians do the same thing. Even Americans, who (apart from us Bahamians, who imitate Uncle Sam in every possible thing, good and bad, and bad more than good) are some of the most geographically challenged people in the universe, include summers in Europe or visits to Latin America as important parts of their exposure.There’s a reason for this, and it’s a far bigger reason than one might usually imagine. It’s so big I can’t possibly begin to address it in this article. But it’s so big it’s fundamental to who we are and where we place ourselves in this world.Because this distinction I’ve noted, about the way different people travel, is indicative of who we are, where we stand on the world stage, and what we ultimately think about ourselves.And it’s not something that we have a whole lot of control over.But it’s important. It’s important because it has something to say about us, our identities, our self-esteem. That’s the Big Picture.Here’s the little one, the one most policy-makers and decision-brokers pay attention to. We’re in the travel business. We have built our industry on the comfort-traveller. This person is usually American, and is usually unadventurous. This is the very person who’s unlikely to dash out and get a passport just to be able to leave his country and come to ours. Because we don’t understand travel, come January 2007 we are going to suffer an economic downturn while the comfort-travellers who are like us get around to securing their travel documents. We want to keep our market share, to remain head and shoulders above the our competition. But until we understand why people travel, unless we can step into their shoes, we are going to stay right where we are, and other people are going to catch us up and grow taller.Here’s what we have to begin to understand. Travel isn’t just about beaches and shopping, sunshine and good roads, or Coca-Cola in our vending machines. For many people in the world, travel is exploration. For them, the world is an empty map, waiting for them to blaze a trail onto it. Uniqueness, not imitation, is important. And until we learn this fundamental truth, we are going to find ourselves challenged, at least for a little while. It’s time for us to learn about travel.

Being a Bahamian Woman

I'm catching up on my blog-reading, today, and I come across this post by Lynn Sweeting.I'm not going to say too much about it. Lynn's writing is powerful enough to speak for itself. But it's a story that has to be shared, one that has to be told, and one that can't be ignored.Here's the beginning:

Dear Sista,Four silent weeks have passed since that day you were so horribly victimized by the officers of the Royal Bahamas Police Force, three since we sat down and talked about it. You told me the entire story, how they barged in that Sunday morning and took you away in nothing but a towel, and kept you there at the station naked for four nightmarish hours, in the public waiting area, handcuffed, breasts exposed, having nothing at all on but a small towel over your lap. You told me how that unknown mother spoke up for you, demanding of the four policemen on duty to allow you to put something on and how they ignored her. By that time, you said, you had gone into shock.

Do you care? Then read the rest.

Sabbatical

So I've been on sabbatical.Well, if one were to be pedantic, it wouldn't strictly be a sabbatical, which means literally something that falls seventh, like the Sabbath day, or the seventh year of employment which should be a year of rejuvenation and refocussing. But I've taken a break, anyway, from Essays on Life. It's been a break that's been full of other things, like CARIFESTA and its aftermath and the vacation we took in the wake of that, and it's been used (but only in part) to prepare old essays for publication so that people can, if they want to, walk around with Essays on their person.And it's been a break that's tried to refocus Essays on Life; I've been thinking about and planning an interlocking series that digs at issues that underlie the ones I've hitherto written about. You may find that the essays get a little less accessible, though I hope that won't be the case. I do hope that they will draw a little more on my anthropological training, which I have found invaluable in shaping the way I see the world. But anyway.You'll see in good time.Till then.

New York City

I've set up a travel blog for Philip and me, over here:http://nicobeth.wordpress.comWatch that space, if you're interested in big cities and theatre.

Let's not open up a restaurant in Santa Fe

Let's go to New York City instead.Travel time.  If you're wondering why the silence, it's because last week I spent time trying to bring my work up to date so that our vacation might be worry-free.Didn't quite finish. Worry-free anyway.Watch this space.  Oh, and—Watch Rent.

Teen jes us

It's the Jamaicans as well, or so Marlon James says.  To wit:

Even though I’m dead set on becoming one, I have a huge problem with expatriates. Bad times are good times for somebody and as some Jamaicans go through the worst of times, expatriates seem to be coming here by the plane load, taking jobs, many of which Jamaicans are qualified or can be trained to do. I see them at Heathers, Peppers, Red Bones and sometimes I can’t shake this feeling that we are entering a new era of Massas disguised as marketing managers, efficiency experts, HR managers and police commissioners. I can’t shake this feeling even as I scour the online career website looking for a way to put this creative writing MA to good use. I was ambivalent about my ill will to expatriates for a long time until I realized that it wasn’t them I was pissed off with. It was Jamaicans. We are the people of the plateau—we work as much as is necessary to reach a flat, safe place. Then we stay there for thirty years.Is there anything so ludicrous as the Long service award? It’s to reward someone for not making anything of their lives, for hedging their bets, for playing it safe, for setting their brain on dim for thirty years. For being mediocre. And not just in work but in education, politics, philosophy, music, and life. It's not that expatriates take jobs that Jamaicans can’t do—its that they take jobs we don’t feel we have a right to.

And I'm not so sure he's wrong.  After all, we're all saying it: mediocrity is all around us, and it not enough.Food for thought, hey?

Undergrounding

For those of you who've wondered two things, let me fill you in.The first thing may be what's happening with Essays on Life. Well, here's the story. I'm on hiatus from writing at the moment. I blame CARIFESTA preparation and follow-up; but I also need to blame election fever. Essays on Life are not intended to be political in any way, but now that the Season is upon us it's difficult to write essays that aren't received as being political one way or another. (By "political" I mean, of course, party politics; all social comment is political in a wider sense.)In the meantime, I'm working on a couple of things. I'm seriously considering self-publishing Essays on Life, having investigated Lulu.com as a possibility. I'd hoped to get them out of the way in time for Christmas, and may still manage to do so (though time is running out). I've prepared the first volume — the first fifty, arranged chronologically but intended to be indexed alphabetically and by subject as well. I'm also sketching out a series of Essays of Life to be finished and polished outside of deadlines and resubmitted to the Guardian for their use. I hope to finish these by December so that they can begin to run again. It's time for a change of approach, and I'm hoping to tackle bigger subjects than the ones I've already covered.Two: where I've been. Well, this has been a travelling time. I recently attended a workshop in Barbados treating Caribbean cultural industries. I invite you to check out the website for yourselves, as a lengthy explanation of the whys and wherefores will take too long and will make me run out of Starbucks internet time, but let me just say that the workshop has led me to envision the action plan that needs to be encompassed in the draft Cultural Policy. Watch this space.

Linkables

Two things I found today that I thought might be worth checking out.The first one's from Rosemary Ekosso, and it's a post that provides a different take on my own post on Africa, below. Check it out — it's worth it. Here's a snippet:

Have you not met the kind of African who likes to detail the things that are wrong with our continent, how we have been raped and plundered over centuries, the sort of African who has all the details (real and imagined) of what the White man did and did not do, and who enjoys the telling? Have you not met them?They ... like being victims.

The other's a new Bajan blog, gallimaufry.ws (new to me, anyway), which I've added to my blogroll, and a post about shaving one's head for cancer and the Bajan preoccupation with "good" hair. Having been told how "good" my hair is all my life (these days it's so good people keep taking me for white) I identified.A snippet of this one:

Today, there’s a little snippet about how cancer patients are often averse to having chemotherapy, in part because they fear losing their hair, and about a woman who recently shaved her head before an audience in a show of empathy for what cancer survivors go through. Which I think is pretty cool. What irks me a little is that the newspaper says the the woman in question “shaved her full head of naturally curly hair”, and I don’t quite see why it was necessary to specify/emphasize that her hair is “naturally curly”. I don’t think it was necessary, but I have a feeling about why it was done. I think that it’s because Bajans are still the kind of people who are impressed by “good hair” and “soft hair”, i.e. naturally curly hair. That kind of hair is more valued, and therefore to give it up (via a haircut) is more striking/brave/tragic (depending on who you ask). It wouldn’t be quite as notable if the someone had shaved her “full head of naturally kinky hair” (or, as one of my aunts would put it, her “nigger knots”) or her “full head of chemically treated curly hair”, but for someone to cut off all that naturally curly, “nice, pretty hair”? Wow!

So there it is.

Celebrations of Mediocrity

I don't normally listen to Immediate Response; I'm normally a FM listener, switching between More 94 and Love 97 when it comes to talk shows. This week, though, I missed several very interesting shows, apparently. Most interesting were those that criticized those in government who prefer to use excellence and mastery of craft as a criterion for selecting people to represent the country instead appearance or show.I didn't hear the show, but heard of it. I want, though, to link to Obediah Michael Smith's blog, where he puts the point better than I will at this moment. Here's what he has to say:

Such a debate needed to be fixed upon and centered around, not the nonsense giggled about, petty complaints and concerns which took up most of the two hour show, but craft, instrument, art...The audience, the public, everybody involved, must be directed by the artist to focus upon these central, sacred elements: instrument and craft. The body as sex object belongs to the profession of prostitution.A singer’s instrument is the voice. A dancer’s instrument is the body and a body is filled with memories, personal and cultural and speaks many languages. The singer of popular music is usually a singer and a dancer, like Michael Jackson or Tina Turner and has therefore two instruments to perfect and to play.Too often though, especially where popular culture is concerned, fascinated by the phenomenon of fame and fortune, out to exploit the public, persons take to the stage with a bit of talent and a little training, dreaming of being stars.A large part of what we in our country call entertainment and culture is inspired by and is part of this crude phenomenon. I turn away from this. I turn my back upon it.Many do attempt to disguise a lack of craft with what is gratuitous and cheap: gyrating, near-nudity; emphasizing what should not be emphasized, attempting to distract from what they have not had and have not got: training.

Hear, hear, Mr. Smith. And here's the rest.

Bahamian, Woman, Poet, and Good

In this post, Lynn Sweeting calls attention to the achievements of Lelawattee Manoo-Rahming (otherwise known as Asha), who is featured in Anthurium Vol 4 No 1. Lynn also, quite rightly, laments the fact that Asha wasn't one of the writers who went to CARIFESTA.Lynn's post made me think, and rethink, the concept of selection, of representation, of nationality, and the nature of my job. I don't think it's my place to go into specifics; there are some things that shouldn't be expressed on a personal blog. But I'm finding that there are certain decisions one makes that one would ordinarily disagree with. On the other hand, one finds out that one's private opinions are not always relevant — a strange fact, but true.So I'll try and be general here. How do we collectively decide who represents our nation? When we choose people to send abroad to represent us, what criteria are foremost? And do we use different criteria for different arenas? In sports, for instance, aren't we more forgiving than in culture? How many people we might ordinarily classify as "Jamaican" or "Haitian" have held, and hold, medals for us in the sports arena, and how many of our major sports heroes hold Green Cards or even American passports?Because I find I agree with Lynn; Asha is ours. She is Bahamian, woman, poet, and good. Could she represent our nation in an international festival? Should she? What criteria should we use to pick? And who should decide? Should people who occupy positions of responsibility be guided by the collective will, or should they try and direct that will — or perhaps a little bit of both?I'd better stop writing now. But I'd be interested to see what others think.Edit: for those people who aren't aware, here's some background on Asha Rahming:

Lelawattee Manoo-Rahming was born in Trinidad and lives in Nassau, Bahamas. An artist, poet, fiction writer as well as mechanical/building services engineer and part-time lecturer, she has published poetry in several magazines and anthologies in the Bahamas, the Caribbean and London. She won the David Hough Literary Prize from The Caribbean Writer(2001) and the Commonwealth Broadcasting Association 2001 Short Story Competition. Her first book of poetry, Curry Flavour (2000) was published by Peepal Tree Press.

If you read French

You'll find this blog entry as amusing as I did.(Not to worry, I'll translate to the best of my ability by the end of the day.)What it does is illustrate the attitude of many people on this side of the Atlantic — beyond the coasts of Africa, in fact — about "Africa" and its "problems". I include it because it's important to make a point. Just as Bahamians take offence when people confuse us with Barbadians or Bermudians or, God forbid, Jamaicans, citizens of the various countries in Africa take offence — even when it's reported as absurdity — people from the African continent do the same. And to be honest, there are more differences between various African cultures and nations than there are between any Caribbean or American country.Google-translated version here, courtesy, I do believe, of Rick Lowe.I can use the weekend to do a less stilted translation than the computer.