In Barbados, we have arrived at the season where our pyromaniacs are allowed to practice their tradition. Once canes have ripened, those with a compulsive disorder to start fires get to satisfy their desires and inconvenience the rest of us. I remember when two of these maniacs were caught ‘red handed’, but were let go with a warning – which only enabled them to go and sin some more.
The smoke and burning cane trash may enter houses to dirty contents and suffocate occupants. Those with respiratory ailments must either flee or risk death. Those who cry for relief must do so in vain – until they are joined by someone important enough whose child has suffocated to death.
TOLERANCE.
Another group of lunatics tolerated for their compulsive disorder is our aquamaniacs, who open ‘water taps’ and ‘flood’ those downstream. Once the resulting flood damage happens, we are told to participate in a futile exercise of bailing water from one flooded area to the next. The sensible action of simply turning off the tap and allowing the flooded area to naturally drain is never done.
Lunacy appears to be a celebrated part of our culture. Burning canes by our enslaved foreparents is taught as a justifiable protest action. However, we are not enslaved, so why continue this tradition? Turning on taps is a recent disorder. Turning on taps is deemed essential to washing (rather than burning) away all vestiges of colonialism and establishing our Africanness. We opened many taps and our children are drowning.
OPEN TAPS.
We opened the tap of undermining discipline in our schools by allowing students to wear their hair any-sort-of-how. This lunacy can only make our sons, who do not choose an entertainment-type career, less competitive when trying to obtain a job in the private sector that requires them to interact with a company’s clients.
We opened the tap of de-facto legalising marijuana for recreational use by a token fine for possessing small amounts. The $200 fine is essentially a permit for recreational use.
We opened the tap of allowing children to view pornography on the Internet by allowing them to use cell phones at school – with no adult filter.
RISK ASSESSMENTS.
The wave of flood damage from opening each new tap only harms our youth who are actively encouraged to indulge in what can only harm them. Our aquamaniacs then blame: parents, teachers, the Church, civic groups and the community for not bailing water fast enough. They also guilt the same groups to exhaust themselves with futile bailing on their claim that not doing so would be us giving-up on the next generation, so we keep our heads down and bail – to distract us from noticing them opening yet another tap.
While our pyromaniacs do the actual burning of fields, our acuamaniacs do not have the power to open taps. They become trusted advisors who whisper their lunatic ideas in the ears of our policy makers, who then follow them without doing the critical risk assessment. Acuamaniacs hate risk assessments because they expose their ideas as lunatic.
COLONIAL HISTORY.
A recently opened tap is supposed to flush away all memory of our built heritage with the justification of destroying all vestiges of colonialism. So successful have they been that being ‘strict guardians of our heritage’ attracts the accusation of ‘defenders of colonialism’. The next ‘colonial’ structures announced for demolition are the stands at the national stadium.
We wanted stands to accommodate people during our Independence ceremony at the Garrison in 1966. Reinforced concrete stands were built so quickly to meet the hard deadline that there were concerns about whether they were strong enough – since concrete needs time to attain its design strength. After the Independence ceremony, the stands were dismantled and used at the National Stadium. However, since they were built in the colonial era, they have no redeeming value in our new Republic.
Since a new stadium is to be built, and since no colonial vestige can be part of the Chinese stadium of the new Republic, the sensible option is to dismantle them again, and erect sections in different playing fields (including schools) across Barbados. However, this disorder blinds us to sensible options and compels us to pursue only the lunatic inspired – destroy this final structure built just before we became independent and our Republic will surely thrive. Welcome to the asylum.
Grenville Phillips II is a Doctor of Engineering and a Chartered Structural Engineer. He can be reached at NextParty246@gmail.com
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