Aftermath of Hurricane Tomas

Hurricane Tomas has just passed this region, and after having weakened, is projected to regain strength as it moves towards Haiti. From all reports, St. Lucia seems to have been the worst hit in the Eastern Caribbean, and the below video contains some footage of the damage. Many are missing, 14 have been confirmed dead; the destroyed roads and bridges and damaged hospitals mean that transportation and access to basic services are compromised. In terms of the scale of disaster, and compared with some of those we have heard even in recent weeks, this may seem less severe. But in a country the size of St. Lucia, these effects are not insignificant. The entire country is affected and all State resources have to be mobilized in recovery. Aid from other countries is key.



One hesitates to utter the name Haiti in the context of another natural disaster, but communities there are right now bracing for a potential hit from the hurricane; this in the midst of a cholera epidemic and the continued insecurity of tent dwellings which offer no protection from strong winds and rains. Calls to evacuate seem redundant.

I say all this for one reason: perspective. This past weekend was an uncomfortable one. There was a point when the winds reached their highest at which you realized that you were dealing, after all, with a system of nature - there were no guarantees; anything could happen. We had some damage and several people have been displaced as a result. Following the coverage on television, it was difficult to watch the helplessness and disbelief of some people who had lost homes and important possessions: farmers who lost the livestock or crops on which their livelihoods depend; parents with no idea where their children would sleep that night.

But there is helplessness and vulnerability, and then there is discomfort. Losing your home or livelihood makes one vulnerable. It's a significant loss. Losing electricity and water temporarily are uncomfortable; perhaps beyond uncomfortable if there are essential medicines that need to be refrigerated, or if one has small children. But I feel like we need to understand the concept of 'worst-case scenario' here. I was never one to go in for the Olympics of Suffering: it is all relative. I'm not going to tell someone who has lost two limbs to count their blessings because they might have lost three, because where would it end? Things could always be worse. Quite literally, always. That fact doesn't make the current situation any less of a challenge. But yelling and throwing tantrums because you've lost your cable and internet access are a little beyond the pale, I think. This is not to scold, just to encourage us to have some appreciation of what disaster actually and potentially means. It means that while we expect a certain level of service and response in the best of times, a sense of entitlement does not really fit the context of hurricane aftermath. It is the reason airlines promise nothing when bad weather hits. There is the understanding that even as the State, public-private and private sector companies have a responsibility to those they serve to mitigate disaster and provide relief, these very services are often themselves challenged and their resources diminished after this type of event. While making our concerns clear, we should respect and understand that - bearing in mind that the hurricane may very well have levelled the offices of the public utilities buildings. And who would we be yelling at then?

Still, I think the yellers are few, and even then, one understands the place of frustration from where it might be coming. In general, though, we've been putting our heads down and getting on with the repair in our groups and communities. Looking ahead, we will have to extend that approach to St. Vincent and St. Lucia, and, wherever the hurricane leads, continue to support Haiti in their recovery.

Strippoween weekend is here again

Our friends over at What's the Idea raised the question, and as it's Friday and my brain is now on gentle cycle, I'm stealing developing the discussion. So yes, agreed: Halloween is irrelevant to us in the Caribbean. I hardly think that's even an argument. Is it harmless fun? Perhaps. Assuming we consider fostering meaningless, wholesale cultural appropriation "harmless". This isn't hip-hop music, whose origins we can trace back to our own, and which even in its current form we have adapted and given our own unique stamp. Or even Valentine's Day, which has its naysayers, fine, Hallmark holiday, blah blah, but surely a celebration of love and affection can never hurt, especially in a society where we are becoming less patient and more aggressive. (Yes, I'm looking at you, man in the obnoxious Transformer truck who honked at me for letting an old lady take her time to cross the street rather than deciding she had had enough time and running her over.) We're talking about a holiday that has little usefulness and even less imagination. And even were I given to letting the whole thing slide, it's the lack of imagination that really does me in.

If you want to tief the people dem holiday, fine. Go for it. But at least put some effort into it. How many sexy nurses and sexy police officers and sexy Big Birds does one need in a Halloween party? Can someone not wear a shell and some antennae and really high platforms and go as a giant African snail? Or a red plastic bag and go as...well...Red Plastic Bag? Can we not make the thing at least slightly culturally relevant? Or, if you must do sexy because you're going to the club and no one is going to want to slow grind on a mollusc, maybe a sexy school meals server? I once went to an Independence Day fancy dress party in a little, yellow, tank dress under wraparound banana leaves and everyone could tell I was a conkie. It isn't hard.

But we seem to have borrowed (well, not borrowed because we seem not to want to give it back, ever) not only the holiday itself, but the obsession with making everything about women's bodies on display, and any imagination costumes might show suffers as a result. Small clothes are great. I love them, as appropriate. But if you forego them on one occasion, you'll still be sexy tomorrow, and you'll still be sexy underneath your real costume. And we'll know it. We believe you. Your sexy is safe. If you are going to participate in this...'holiday'...unless you are actually going as a stripper, please feel free to make the whole exercise interesting and entertaining. Your butt cheeks will still be there to shine at a later date.

_______________________________________________________

The photo above is meant to be a women's costume for Brian, the dog from Family Guy. Brian is, in fact, a dog, not a cocktail waitress with a picture of a dog on her dress. Notice what the men's version of the costume looks like - fancy that: a dog.

Prime Minister Thompson

Prime Minister of Barbados, David Thompson, has passed. Even in the midst of the political discord of past weeks, the country remained resolute in its well wishes to the Prime Minister and his family, and so this moment seems in some ways surreal. One's first thoughts are to his wife and daughters. Two other Prime Ministers have passed while in office in my lifetime, PM Thompson the first in my adult life, which gives quite a different perspective - less of official mourning as Barbados loses a state official, although of course there is that sense - more of consideration of the man as a politician, a thinker, a father and husband, a Bajan who served his country. My thoughts are with his loved ones.

Your name! Just what I always wanted!

This dude here? McLean? He wants to give me his name. Apparently that is the prize for me picking him up when he was down and being able to do a hell of a Catherine Zeta Jones in Entrapment impression and whatnot. Never mind that I already have a name that I may want to keep. Ah branding. The ultimate expression of love and affection.

I swear if I hear "independent ladies" one more time...

I'm out pretty often: parties, concerts, limes, general lolly-gagging in the wee hours. I've only recently embraced the notion that I do work hard (I grew up thinking that hard work had to involve hot sun, perspiration and calloused hands; anything else - even 20-hour days at a computer or in meetings with seats and coffee breaks - was a luxury and a fiasco), and so I should be able to engage in the types of entertainment that I enjoy.

When one is out as often as I am, one tends to notice certain trends in the ways people seek to entertain the masses. And though not as ire-inducing as some other trends, there is one in particular that makes me itch. Shall I present it as a question? I think I shall. Because I wouldn't mind having an answer, if any of you are amenable.

I ask you: what is up with this "independent ladies" bullshit? Were I a betting individual, I would very readily bet all my jewels and livestock that at any given party or stage show, some DJ or MC - in most cases a man - will take the mic and yell something along the lines of "Ladies if you know you independent, you got on your own clothes, you got on your own hair, your own underwear, you got your own house key, bullshit bullshit bullshit, put your hands in the air." Or worse: "Ladies if you know you independent: SCREEEEAM!"

I beg. Your pardon.

First, that last exhortation is a contradiction in terms. The fact that I (and by "I" I mean "Mar". The rest of you may scream in response if you like, although I have never understood it) may self-identify as an independent "lady" (more on that later) means that I do not scream at the say-so of some random stranger on a mic. That's not to say I will never scream in public. I scream all the time. I screamed just Saturday night when Lil Rick performed some of his old dub hits and made a delightful ass of himself on stage - as only he can do - in another one of his lessons on how not to take oneself too seriously as a performer. But I screamed or bellowed or made whatever noise I pleased in the spirit of general noise-making to show appreciation. There is something about a man telling a roomful of women to scream that makes me feel like he's trying to live out some kind of harem fantasy. Worse is when he tells the women to scream and the men to say "Blat blat blat!" So men's voices are to express aggression and gun violence and women's voices are to express either sexual climax or distress. That is lovely.

But even setting aside the general screaming commands, why the preoccupation with "independent ladies"? And what is an independent lady anyway? And who the hell is this subset of women up in the club wearing other people's underwear?

I have some theories. When I was growing up, I dare say that consumerism wasn't the beast that it is today. Yes we all wanted L.A Gear and bodysuits and whatnot, but foreign markets were not as accessible; we as non-adults had limited resources, and all that resulted in the trend of sharing clothes. I can't say whether women over the age of 25 did it, although I'm inclined to think so as they had similar market access issues, but among my friends, it was certainly done. In a time before snapping cell phone pics and immediately uploading them to Facebook so everyone could see what you wore to every event, people were less self-conscious about what their outfits said about their paycheque and status. If your friend had a hot new trend piece and wasn't wearing it that week, it was an option. But, with our matey culture, in which men's dominance is perpetuated by pitting women against each other along the lines of attractiveness, domestic skills, sexual adventurousness, clothes-sharing soon became a further point of comparison that men used. The jig was up. Now, and as consumerism began to take hold more, wearing your 'matey's' clothes was to be a source of extreme embarrassment and proof you weren't an adequate female person. After all, if you were worthwhile, if you cooked well and could make sufficient babies and fvcked like a porn star, surely you could keep a man who would buy your clothes and therefore you wouldn't have to beg and borrow.

From there, as women began to participate more in economic life and it came to be seen as perhaps not the worst thing that could happen, there came a shift from "be proud your man can buy you shit" to "be proud you can buy yourself shit" (although the former maintains its legitimacy in certain ways and contexts). This would not necessarily be a bad thing, except for the following:

1) In this scenario, women's independence or lack thereof is still being used to pit women against each other. The old divide and conquer. So those of us in the fête who are in fact not financially independent, who depend on the income of a partner because such is the division of labour ('productive' vs. reproductive), or because we may be out of a job, or for whatever reason, we should feel like shit. Because not only are women supposed to be fvckmasters and top chefs and supernannies, we are also supposed to be Bill Gates. What? You aren't all those? Leave the fête immediately!; and

2) It reinforces men's resentment of having to continue to contribute economically when they, in their perception, no longer enjoy the other markers of privilege. So some men were happy to maintain 'their' women and children when it was a guarantee that they also simultaneously got to command higher wages for similar work done by women; or be promoted more easily; or have greater access to political participation; or free reign to commodify women's bodies. But for some, we women just have to damn well choose. You want to be independent? Fine. You get to pay your own way. That's the price. And all the attention to "independent ladies" is a bit of a passive-aggressive fvck-you.

An extension of that idea is that financially independent women who remain commodities or commodified in men's eyes are a huge turn-on. It is the Holy Grail of the whole ordeal. It is the reason a man will boast of his sexual conquest of a woman and qualify it with "and I didn't spend a cent." So all those independent ladies in the fête who are still willing to scream on command? Oh man. That in itself is an orgasm. Because it means that as financially independent as you are, you still require my penis to be ultimately satisfied. You still take orders and I'm still in control.

Disclaimer time: first, there are men for whom interesting, confident women who have charted and followed their own career paths are very attractive. That is clear, and not under debate. But I don't think that sentiment is behind the whole "independent ladies, scream" shout-out in the fête. Second, yes, the whole "independent ladies" meme is not unique to men. In fact, it was made quite popular by Beyonce et al, and their treatment of it is not necessarily problem-free, but I would say it is less problematic than this particular treatment of it by men. It works infinitely better as a celebration among women than as a judgment by men.

Here is my bottom line: stop singling out women as "independent ladies" based on some bullshit basket of goods that you determine of value to women: weave and clothes and underwear. All the women in that particular show or fête are independent by virtue of the fact that they are adults with rights. And they don't need to scream at your command to make that so.

The Mongoose Lives - Blog Note

So I've noticed that you people have completely given up on even acting interested in my whereabouts and wheretofores. At first there were several questions about when I might start posting again, then general dribbles of "Hey wassup. Just checking" messages. And now, not so much as a glance. How fickle, the six of you.

Notwithstanding the neglect, I am passing through to confirm to no one in particular that posting officially resumes on the blog on November 1st, although I may try to add some content before then. The reason for my absence - a new job that has been consuming all my waking hours and most of what should be sleeping ones - will also restrict the range of topics I can cover as well as the range of people I can piss off. Not even sure I can say "piss off", but there I go, living on the edge.

Still, let's see how far we get with these new parameters. See you in November.

The best part of summer: the music of the Crop Over Festival

Tomorrow night I'll be on the internet TV talk show "Reason Deep" on CaribFyah TV discussing this season's musical offerings for Crop Over. Since there is never enough time during these things to say all the gazillion words in my head, I thought I would preempt the accusations of oversight by sharing a list of 15 of my favourite tracks for the season. This list is not exhaustive and is not necessarily in any particular order of preference. Or it might be.

Ooh. Intrigue.


Go Dung - Lil Rick
No Cheating - Tony Bailey
Sweet Soca Song - Red Plastic Bag
Charge Up - Skinny Fabulous
Mekkin It - Bobo
Serious Wukking - Gorg
Drop It - Mr. Dale
My Party - Mikey
De Way You Wine - Peter Ram
Foot on Fire - Blood
Sun Come Up - Statement
La La - Red Plastic Bag
Neighbour - Edwin and Patrice
Can't Stop - Brett Linton
Bounce - Lorenzo

Honourable Mention*
Strong Rum Something - Skinny Fabulous
Too Drunk - Statement


*Actually this mention isn't so honourable. The first two songs here are about not just alcohol, but alcoholism. And while they are extremely well written and delivered, the content is problematic. More on this in a subsequent post.

Look out for the discussion on www.caribfyah.com tomorrow Wednesday at 10:00 p.m.

Me and Samuel Beckett and homophobia in the Caribbean

Some people are willfully hateful bigots, and some people are bigots because they haven't thought long enough or hard enough or well enough about things to be otherwise. They are comfortable in their bigotry; it is warm and familiar, keeps their friends around, and maintains their own privilege. That distinction may not be important if the results are always the same. But every once in a while, that distinction means that people from the latter group, because they are in some measure open and reasonable, are willing to have their minds changed by another party or situation.

I just met someone who I think falls into the latter group. I've been travelling for work quite often, and he happens to work in a hotel I sometimes stay at when I'm travelling in the region. He came to my room to help with something, and we got to talking. I won't share the entire conversation, but it was about homophobia, LGBT rights, and was initiated by the following exchange:

Employee, as he is about to leave: What's your name, though?
Me: Mar. And yours?
Employee: Samuel. Think Samuel Beckett.* You can remember it that way.
Me: (laughs) Is that what they call you though? Because that would be pretty cool.
Samuel: No. They call me Hitler.
Me: Oh no. That's no good. Why on earth do they do that?
Samuel: Because my last name is [something associated with Hitler*]. I hate it. It's awful. And sometimes the joke doesn't stop there...my friends make a lot of Hitler jokes.
Me: Ugh. Yeah. Hitler jokes are rarely funny. Plus, working in a hotel, I guess you have to be pretty careful what you say around people. People are coming from all over the world.
Samuel: Yea. It happened already. We had some Jewish people staying here and the guys were joking around. They didn't like it. (Freezes) Are you Jewish?
Me: No. Not Jewish. But yunno you can tell people to stop calling you Hitler. I don't think that's an unreasonable request.
Samuel (looking troubled): Yeah. I really hate it. You know they say he was gay.
Me: (Blinks) Well...maybe bisexual? I don't know. He had relationships with women though.
Samuel: Yes but they said he slept with men. (Looks increasingly worried) Do you know anything about that?
(In the blink of an eye I've become an expert on Hitler's sexual history.)
Me: Well...no...I couldn't say for sure. But um...he also murdered millions of people...
Samuel: Yeah I know but...here in [country name here], we take gayness very seriously.

At this point I'm suddenly aware that I'm alone in my hotel room with a man who considers gayness far worse than murder, but we press on, talking about homophobia in the Caribbean (apparently Barbados is seen as the champion of LGBT rights in the region, a notion that while laughable to those of us who know the environment, makes me proud, even as it makes Samuel eye me suspiciously as if he is aware of my implied agenda); what it means to discriminate; why it's necessary to have anti-discrimination legislation; and why Caribbean men feel threatened by gayness. 'Gayness' is Samuel's word.

At some point when I ask him pointedly: "So are you saying the thing that worries you about being called Hitler is not the fact that he killed over 10 million entire human beings but that a couple people speculate that he was gay?" he says soberly:

"Well, here in [country name] we have people who are in jail for murder or whatever. And they go in, come out, and people don't really check after a while. But gay..."

I must have interrupted that sentence. I don't recall. Because of course it's not just the thorough and embedded homophobia operating here that is disturbing, but the fact that at the same time, Samuel seems not to understand or acknowledge the importance of the Holocaust. And I'm not talking all of the context of it, the eugenics, the politics, the war: I'm afraid the teaching of that part of history is pretty lacking in the Caribbean, and for that reason, a lot of young people don't appreciate its importance until much later. I'm talking about the fact that Samuel acknowledges the fact that Hitler killed millions of people. Whatever the circumstances, killing millions of men, women and children is a really horrible thing, right? Worse, arguably, than killing one man. And far worse than killing no one at all, i.e being gay. The thing is, I can't even be sure we're operating on that assumption. Because if Samuel thinks a murderer in the jail downtown is meh maybe not as bad as the gay guy on the bus, then who knows? Maybe he also thinks a murderer is a murderer, and after the first 20, it's all the same.

We carried on talking after this, and Samuel began to listen and nod and think a bit. And he started to make some sense after a time, to make some important associations and parallels with other parts of civil rights activism. I like Samuel. He is really a likable guy, open, interested, interesting, not hateful. And I think sometimes we have to realize that what we're working against is an attitude, a culture, not necessarily (although sometimes) the people who inhabit them. In the context of the Caribbean, where anti-gay sentiment is vastly more common and embedded than the opposite sentiment, as compared with other nations in the North where LGBT activism and legislation are far more advanced, engagement of people every day on their thoughts and beliefs, the music they write, the things they tell their children, and why, is where the movement needs to take hold.

*Names have been changed. The name used here was that of a famous person with the same last name. And somehow when I decided to use the name Samuel as a pseudonym, Beckett was the first name that sprung to mind as a famous person I could use. You can tell I'm not a fan of Samuel L. Jackson, right?