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By Will Johnson
This is an Editorial which I wrote in the "Saba Herald" on Friday May 24th, 1991, #274. I thought it would be good to repeat it for those who try Island Life to get to know us and why we think of ourselves as "We Fo We." The idiots of the world can come here and fool us now. They made us dependent on television and the lying liars who bring us the news . We believe what we are told now because we do not read like before and so what I wrote here seventeen years ago is no longer relevant. There are no islands left. We are part of a larger world. Even though we are frustrated we have difficulty in carrying on the legacy of our forefathers who stone by stone, built up our island so that others can come here now to exploit us and to have us believe that we are nothing and have never done anything worth recording.
" Island life is not for everyone. Those who come here to live must realize that Saba is OUR ancestral home and that there are certain ties that bind. Life on an island is not easy. We who have come down through the generations clinging to this frail thread of our existence can attest to that.
What is it that binds us to these cliffs, these windswept hills, this tiny speck of dirt in the ocean which is prone to hurricanes and habitation of the mighty earthquake and volcano?
I look for answers in the small pleasures of life which are still with me and which bring back memories of my youth. Home made "cow-butter" fresh from my neighbour, and "cane-liquor" once in a while processed from a local hand-mill; the art of making it having been handed down by word of mouth through the generations. These simple things are with me still reviving and refreshing memories of another day.
So what if life on our island has changed? Some who could not adapt to change have fallen by the wayside. Others learned from their first blows and are rising up and standing firm and tall, and controlling events in their lives.
Obviously island life is not for everyone. Some people cannot cope with the "it's on the next boat" way of life. People accustomed to the fast lane cannot seem to slow down to island routine.
People in other worlds become comfortable in the isolation of their existence. It is comforting to them not to have to know their neighbour. On islands the neighbour KNOWS YOU! He knows who your grandmother was. He knows that you have a mole on your chest, and that you have a preference for scotch whiskey (not to take more extreme examples), and from whom you received your last letter and what your plans are for the coming week, or month.
Some people never get accustomed to that much familiarity. They cannot cope with Island Life. And one great truth about island life is, don't ever try to change a thing. Island people remember their roots, and a sixth or even a tenth cousin is in some islander's books a 'close relative.' And if great-grandma did it this way, then to hell with your 'high fallutin' arguments about men having been to the moon. It would be a slap in the face to great-grandma's memory if we did it different.
Islanders do their planting by the moon. They fish for the 'moon-fish' two days after the full moon in the winter in order to enjoy the delicacy of a moon-fish roe. Islanders are not impressed with the changes in the world and by men having been to the moon. I had an old cousin nicknamed "Tat". Every islander has a nickname. Here of late it is not necessary anymore. Parents give children names which are just as good as a nickname. My cousin 'Tat's' real name was Edward Simmons. If you wanted to get 'Tat' mad and in the knife pulling stage, you shouted at him only while moving in a fast moving vehicle; "Hey 'Tat' man, the Americans been to the moon!" There were other things which upset 'Tat' of course, but nothing got him madder than to try and tell him that the Americans had been to the moon.
Our way of life may have changed in certain respects, but island life as a whole goes on undisturbed through the centuries. On islands the more things change the more they remain the same. I am certain that my ancestors back in the 17th century enjoyed "cane liquor" and "cow butter" and "blood and Haslett" as much as I still do. And they did not have to hassle with the complex problems of today like drugs, aids, television, and men going to and coming back from the moon. The sun then as now rose in the East and set in the West. The same things which bring us joy now must have brought joy back then.
And so what if "it's on the next boat"? We islanders made do in former times. An empty tin can was a treasured item. I remember in Cuba once the toilet was not working. I called on maintenance. His repair kit was a pliers and an old sardine can. In a jiffy he had made the part and the toilet was working again. Problem solving here used to be that simple as well. And we never minded having to go bare-foot. We always held out hope that we would pass through the cycle of poverty we had landed in and we would wear shoes again. And it has come to pass.
Small talk, 'bread-line speak' was for us a video of the mind into the adventures of our ancestors. Sitting around listening to the stories of surviving storms around Cape Horn, opened up the young mind to new windows on the world. That regrettably has changed and we have suffered much as a consequence of that loss. The same with reading, and with writing of letters. The dreaded 'T' word, the telephone and the television have now replaced 'old story time', and reading, and letter writing, and our imagination has been dulled as a consequence.
Just the other day sitting at Scout's Place with Jack Lincoln telling stories ranging from Robert Louis Stevenson's travels with a donkey through the South of France, to how long a tannia must be planted, we were asked by some young tourists to allow them to take our photo. Or, as my grandfather would have said, "our likeness."
They said how much they had admired eavesdropping in on our conversation. They told us that our style of conversation did not exist where they came from. Political correctness has robbed us of eloquence in speech.
And finally islanders feel a sense of permanency. Take for example the fact that all four of my grandparents are buried in the same small Roman Catholic cemetery in Windwardside or as we call it 'The Quarter'. The three from Hell's Gate on one side and the grandmother from Windwardside on the other side. It was her express wish not to be buried next to her spouse but in her fathers' grave with her 'Quarter' people. And islanders can choose to even be buried in their own yard, as did my parents. And as a note of conciliation to those who cannot make it on small islands, we too have our doubts at times as Paul Keynes Douglas states in his dialect poem:
De SMALL-ISLANDER
Lord God, is why yu put me here
Pon dis rock,
In de middle ah no-where?
Why yu give all dis brain
An' no place to use it?
Eh, Lord?
Why you do a ting like that?
Why yu give me all dis speed,
Dis strength, dis muscle,
An' yu only give me ten acre
To run on?
Eh, Lord?
Why yu do ah ting like dat?"
Yes indeed sometimes we wonder. We question and yet we stay. Why, Lord? Only islanders know the answer.
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