With the end of another Kadooment event, it is time to provide Part 2 of this 2-part series.
In 1854 a cholera epidemic killed over 20,000 Barbadians. By 1861, approximately 400 standpipes were built across Barbados to improve our sanitation. One of the chores of young women was to collect water from the standpipes.
From the 1950s, there was an effort to get piped water into houses and by 1970, most houses in Barbados had piped water. This effectively ended the standpipe tradition.
THE VULNERABLE.
Young women in Barbados have been vulnerable to sexual exploitation in every age. The popular Standpipe folk song described their reality in the standpipe age. Some lyrics follow.
Men: “Every day she come down here, she looking so good. And every time she pass by here, I like to touch up she – boomsie.”
Teenager’s Lament: “Every time I pass they pull at me. Every time I pass they trouble me. I gonna tell me mama don’t send me down here.”
Nearby Women: “Every time she pass you trouble she. I gonna tell she mama don’t send she down here.”
Men: “Every day she come down here, she looking so good, good. And every time she pass by here, she make me feel good, good. If she mama come down here. If she aunty come down here. If she sister come down here. And if she pass back here. Tell she mama don’t send she down here.”
We should be ashamed.
OFFICE RAMS.
In Barbadian communities, there were three types of men who stood out from among the ordinary: (i) bad men with short tempers who fought, (ii) drunkards who frequently beat those in their households and (iii) village rams who got young women pregnant.
Free secondary school education was available to everyone after our Independence in 1966. By the 1980s, many women worked in offices. There, they would encounter the community of Office Rams who would target attractive young women and wager who would bed them first, not by force, but attracting them with compliments, gifts and wearing cologne.
MANAGER RAMS.
Rams in managerial positions would use their authority for the same bedding-goal. Singing Sandra expressed this common vulnerability in her 1987 calypso, ‘Die with my dignity’. Some lyrics follow.
“It have a lot of women just like me,
Who might be not too well off financially,
You need a job and you really need it bad,
A man decide to help, you must be glad.
But if you value yourself as a woman,
You will demand respect from the vagabonds,
Stand up to them and let them know the truth,
Is work you want, you ent no blinking prostitute.
You have a mole on your back, they want to see,
They want to see if you have marks on your belly,
They want to know how much man you had before,
And if you strong enough to take any more.
I have my pride and I have my ambition,
I want to hold my head up high as a woman,
So brother, they go keep dey money, I go keep my honey,
And die with my dignity!”
GROOMERS.
From being abused to abusing others is the normal abuse cycle. Previously, the cycle was to satisfy the sexual urges of rams. Sustaining a steady supply of scantly clad young women willing to wuk-up on strangers while dancing carelessly at Kadooment events became another reason for the cycle. However, this could not be done by rams, but groomers.
The first set of groomers were primary school teachers who convinced our students that wuk up was part of their cultural heritage and they were duty-bound as Barbadians to continue this legacy.
The second set of groomers were the pied pipers of Kiddies Kadooment, who groomed our primary school children to participate in the adult version of the event when they became teenagers.
The third set of groomers were organisers of parties for teenagers, who imported female strippers to convince our girls to expose more of their bodies publicly until it became normalised.
The fourth set of groomers are those who were groomed themselves. They do not need anyone to convince them to get on bad. They are already convinced. Their grooming assignment is similar to that of the imported strippers – to normalise their behaviour among the next generation, convincing them that lewd and promiscuous is who we are and what we do.
COMPLETE CYCLE.
The difference between grooming and typical forms of abuse is that there is no direct violence with grooming. The weapon is the continual subtle suggestion to our girls that lewd and promiscuous behaviour makes them more mature than their peers and more accepted in the community of respected lewd persons.
The compliments and gifts used by STD-laden village and office rams on flattery-starved women at social events and offices respectively are also used by STD-laden groomers at parties.
The groomed-to-groomer cycle is now complete in Barbados. This cycle cannot be broken by those being groomed. They are victims. It must be broken by those doing the grooming – all four sets of them, especially those respected persons who parade with these victims on the streets each Kadooment day.
Grenville Phillips II is a Doctor of Engineering and Chartered Structural Engineer. He can be reached at NextParty246@gmail.com
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