The Scandal of the Bajan Man who Woke Up in the Morgue

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For some reason, the following story is causing serious waves in Barbados. Earlier this year a man reportedly woke up in the morgue of the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Bridgetown after suffering an epileptic fit. The story's making the rounds of the cybersphere, and the Bajan government seems not to take kindly to the fact at all.OK, as far as it goes. It's not all that unusual; apocryphal stories abound in the Bahamian canon about people who were not dead but were almost buried nevertheless. My favourite two are quite different, but nevertheless render the story curious but commonplace. The first is the story, told by the late Pandora Gibson Gomez, about the man who died in Hatchet Bay, who was put in the coffin, and walked through the streets to the graveyard. In those days coffins were simple, made out of pine, carried on people's shoulders and Hatchet Bay is small and narrow and hilly and as the coffin was carried around a corner it bumped into the building and the man woke up, banging on the coffin and demanding to be let out. Some years later, the man died again, and the pallbearers began the trek from the home to the graveyard. As they neared the blessed corner, the man's wife yelled out:"Y'all be careful there now, you hear? Remember what happen last time!!"The other was the story, true as far as I know, and relatively recent too, told by the late Kayla Lockhart-Edwards about a woman who danced the quadrille at the Smithsonian Festival of the Americas. After we returned from Washington, many of the tradition bearers we took began to die (they were in their eighties when they went, so it's not that surprising), and we became morose but prepared for more people to pass away. This woman, though, was one of the youngsters—in her sixties rather than her eighties, but word came that she died. So Kayla phoned the family to wish them well and offer condolences. The daughter answered and said, "Thanks, Mrs Edwards, but Mummy ain't dead no more!" Like the Bajan man, this woman had woken up in the morgue.(Now for some unrestrained ethnocentrism): Here, we laugh. Here, these stories don't make it into the papers (our papers are far too fixated on politicians anyway. If it happened to one of them ...) Here, the survivors are little miracles in themselves; they don't get death threats.But it seems as though the hospital and the government in Barbados are taking what seems to be a not-uncommon occurrence around the world a little seriously:

Nation News, 11/5/2009: No kicking bucket! The bizarre story of an apparent escape from a Barbados morgue has taken another turn. Mr. Scantlebury’s claim that he was put in a drawer in a cold room appears to be substantiated by the evidence. Regrettably after his ordeal, Mr. Scantlebury says he has received threats.

Scantlebury alleges that he woke up in a dark room that was “black and cold” after suffering an epileptic seizure, but was hazy as to the exact date. He claimed he kicked until whatever he was in slid out “like a drawer”. After this, he said, he walked out of the morgue and into the night wearing only a disposable diaper and pyjama bottoms. The hospital management on Monday initially denied in a radio broadcast that Scantlebury was ever in the hospital. However, chief executive officer Dr Dexter James in a later broadcast did say that Scantlebury was treated in the Accident & Emergency Department on (Sunday) September 20, 2009 and released the next day. Prescod, who had heard her friend was dead, was shocked when he turned up at her canteen on Tuesday, September 22, looking frail and worn, wearing a diaper and pyjama bottoms.

and

He added that since he went public with his claims, he had received threats and endured many sleepless nights.

Keltruth Corp.: News Blog of Keltruth Corp. - Miami, Florida, USA.

On Holding One Other in Contempt

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There's an affliction that strikes countries whose histories come out of colonialism. It's one of the legacies that dangles on, like a dying but not-quite-dead jellyfish, wrapping its tentacles over whatever it can reach, spreading its venom to newer and newer generations. It's the sense that what happens in your space of the world, what takes place in your territory, is not quite real. It isn't really happening to proper people. What is real, or important, or of anything significance at all, happens Over There -- in the Real World, where Real People Live. Where we inhabit are the realms of the shadow people.This post was prompted by, but is only partly about the closure of Starbucks COB. It's also about bigger issues: about the way in which we treat ourselves, about our expectations that we citizens have of our country and our development, and the way in which those expectations are exploited by those people who enter the political arena. It's tangentially about the way in which we behaved like adults when following the US presidential elections one year ago, but how we revert to childishness when we follow our own (although the idiocies presented us by our own politicians are no different from the mass of idiocy force-fed to American citizens, and, in many cases, are less egregious (can anyone say Rod Blagojevich?)). But it's fundamentally about what lies at the core of this tendency, and it's this: somehow we think we are only good enough for second-class everything. Somehow, we believe that the good stuff should be saved for our visitors, put on display for the real world. Somehow, we don't actually think we're real.Let me put it another way. We don't think we deserve stuff that other people consider ordinary. Now this doesn't simply affect us here in The Bahamas. It occurs throughout the Caribbean and Africa, with notable exceptions. In this, we mirror our colonial pasts, when the good stuff was saved for sending to the motherland (or serving to her representatives) and the dregs were good enough for us.We see evidence of this situation in many of the homes in which we grew up, where we had one room in which we put all our goodies -- the best furniture, the best decor, the good china, the pretty drapes -- and which we used only when visitors came by -- and only very special visitors at that. Some of us kept the dining table set with our china and silverware, making that space a kind of museum for our good stuff. Many of us kept the plastic on the furniture. In some cases, in houses that were built in the second half of the twentieth century particularly, we even had a separate entrance for different sorts of people: friends and relatives and family would enter through one door (usually the kitchen or side door) and only visitors would walk through the front.Now as far as that goes, it's an interesting cultural adaptation to a history of violence and subordination. By itself, it isn't remarkable. It's even got many good qualities about it -- there's always a space in one's home that is ready to entertain visitors, there's room for hospitality, there's order, there's good sense.But where it becomes dangerous is when we take that practice outside our homes and apply it to the society at large -- to our core institutions, to our city, to our nation as a whole, as we do -- reserving the new and the shiny for the special visitors (or the people at the top), like having a special conference room for the Minister in many agencies, and another "conference room" for ordinary mortals; or reserving the use of a newly renovated building for special occasions and special people; or deciding, implicitly, that a certain level of comfort or service, a certain quality of experience, is "good enough" for ordinary Bahamians, and that the kindness and warmth and smiles are only turned on for foreign visitors.(more to come)

The Closing of Starbucks COB

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First of all, the disclaimers.One, I am a coffee addict. Specifically, a Starbucks coffee addict. Let's just get that out of the way right now.Two, I know that Starbucks isn't the company of the year and that trueblue radicals eschew it just as much as they fight the WTO.And three, I live in The Bahamas where issues get very complicated and some things are not what they seem.That said, here's what's bothering me. The Starbucks outlet at the College of The Bahamas is closing down. It's a big secret, too, with nobody announcing it beforehand, just a locked door on a new-week morning with the dark drawing in and students heading for finals.And last Monday, when I was on campus with my class, and when the glut of students that meets in the Michael Eldon Building on a Monday evening, when I took my students into Starbucks for a class meeting just before it closed down, there was an incident in the parking lot in which four rather large young men stood around and mingled with the students. They looked somehow out of place, too alert and watching too many different people, to be entirely unsuspicious, and after hanging around the dark edges of the buildings at the perimeter of the crowd, they noticed that they had been noticed (by lecturers as well as by security guards) and they moved towards the edge of the lot, heading towards MacDonald's. As they neared the gate, the incident happened.By "incident", of course, I mean "fight"; they tried to steal a student's cell phone, and the security guard who'd been watching them intervened.The difficulty was that the guard was smaller than they were, and, they tell me say, one of the young men has a black belt in karate. The result was that the attempted mugging turned into a fight in which the four began to beat and kick the guard. The other guards came to his rescue and the police and the ambulance were called (and came), and the four scattered. Two were caught, they tell me say, and two got away.I say all of this to say something else.The College of The Bahamas campus has absolutely nowhere for students to gather. It is an excellent academic institution, and I have long ago resolved in my mind that it is a university, no matter what detractors say. But as a place where people gather and talk and think and create the kind of change that makes societies grow? Not a chance.  There's no place for people to sit and meet and talk. What happened on Monday night is too unfortunately commonplace on the campus because of this very fact. And because Starbucks is pulling out of the campus, it is likely to become more commonplace still.For the past two years, the only such place was provided by an outside entity -- Starbucks, owned by John Bull. In the past two years, John Bull has provided an immeasurable service to the college community, and, by extension, to the city of Nassau, by having had the guts and the foresight to place one of its outlets on the college campus. A brilliant stroke, I thought. A wondrous place. Besides the overpriced caffeine shots and the too-large bits of food, it was a cafe in the place where young minds are beginning to wake up, and the fact that it was a corporate entity, part of a chain, was important, for more than students gathered there. It was a node where all parts of the society could come in safety. You could run into anyone there. Each local Starbucks outlet has its own clientele, its own feel; in this one, though, it seemed that you could run into almost anybody. For the past two years, Starbucks has contributed to the studies of students, by providing a sensible place where people could meet and talk and plan group work. It has been intimately involved in book fairs, by allowing its porch to be used for readings. It has embodied Bahamian art with its mural on the wall. And, while supplying the campus with its special drugs, it has helped festivals get planned, books get written, research get done, and a future Bahamas be made.Apparently, however, none of that is important. What appears to be important is some kind of bottom line.  I hear rumours that it is the least profitable of the chain, and it has long been on the chopping block.Corporate Bahamas, hear me loud and clear: WHEN ARE YOU GOING TO REALIZE THAT PROFITS ARE NOT SIMPLY MONETARY? When are you going to understand that sometimes profits are like dividends; they pay off down the line? (You expect your shareholders to get that concept -- what if shareholders treated you the way you treat your customers, suspended their goodwill, and expected major returns straight off?) The profits that are being borne by the Starbucks COB would have been reaped by you, or by John Bull, or by the society at large five, ten years from now when the students you allowed to congregate in your outlet, even though they didn't spend as much money as the corporate individuals or the tourists in your other places did. The service you were providing to the community is worth far more than profit margins or overheads. (Perhaps this is something one could pass on to your landlord as well; perhaps the College itself is to blame for charging too much rent). But when the outlet closes, something far more than coffee will be gone -- and the society as a whole will feel it down the line as well.So this is my answer to those people who don't think it's worth fighting to keep that Starbucks open. I don't care about the coffee or the prices or the reputation of the place. I care about the people and the society and the service that that cafe provides for the community. There are precious few places in this Bahamas that treat Bahamians like fully fleshed human beings; Starbucks is one of them. I go into Starbucks for the smiles, not the coffee (I can buy the coffee and take it home). I go there for the feeling of being treated like I belong, that I am worth something in my own country. Too few other places provide that feeling, and none of them exist where young people congregate. That alone is more important, and more revolutionary, than any coffee, tea, or muffins could ever be.

Passer-By Pushes Potential Suicide Jumper From Bridge In China

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Passer-By Pushes Potential Suicide Jumper From Bridge In ChinaBEIJING — Chen Fuchao, a man heavily in debt, had been contemplating suicide on a bridge in southern China for hours when a passer-by came up, shook his hand _ and pushed him off the ledge.Chen fell 26 feet 8 meters onto a partially inflated emergency air cushion laid out by authorities and survived, suffering spine and elbow injuries, the official Xinhua News Agency said Saturday.The passer-by, 66-year-old Lai Jiansheng, had been fed up with what he called Chens "selfish activity," Xinhua said. Traffic around the Haizhu bridge in the city of Guangzhou had been backed up for five hours and police had cordoned off the area."I pushed him off because jumpers like Chen are very selfish. Their action violates a lot of public interest," Lai was quoted as saying by Xinhua. "They do not really dare to kill themselves. Instead, they just want to raise the relevant government authorities attention to their appeals."

Friendship Around the World Award

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*ahem* - Thanks, Geoffrey, I think ...

Friendship Around the World AwardBlogworld: Nicolette is not only a scholar and poet, but also someone who writes critically about the state of Caribbean life and letters....Now, fellow awardees, you all have a job to do. Tell me about your favorites

Give me some time and I'll do so.

Presentation Zen: Is education killing creativity?

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Came across this:

our education systems (around the world) are outdated and mainly designed to meet the needs of industrialization. Sir Ken [Robinson] makes many good points — some you may not agree with — but he certainly is not saying that math and science should be taught or studied less, rather that music and the arts and creativity in general should be pursued more.Presentation Zen: Is education killing creativity?

I think I tend to agree.Forget being tentative. I totally agree.Here's what Sir Ken says in his own words:

Every education system on earth has the same hierarchy of subjects ... At the top are mathematics and languages, then the humanities, and at the bottom are the arts. Everywhere on earth. And in pretty much every system too, there's a hierarchy within the arts. Art and music are normally given a higher status in school than drama and dance. There isn't an education system on the planet that teaches dance everyday to children the way we teach them mathematics.

See for yourself - the YouTube clip via Riz Khan:[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YAt-3Yk2u80&hl=en&fs=1]And the whole thing itself thanks to TED:http://static.videoegg.com/ted/flash/loader.swfArt and culture make good business.

Our Heterogeneous World

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... and if you don't know what that long word up there means, go look it up.I was reading Shashwati's Blog this morning.  It's been a long time since I've checked her stuff out, which doesn't mean that I don't value what she says, but rather that I really have not had the kind of time to do the kind of blogging I would like to do.  But this post resonated with me, because I think we suffer from the same malaise.  She talks about an experience she had (as an East Indian woman, in Caribbean parlance) with a Taiwanese masseur who, having heard her voice, questioned her about her colour.  As Shashwati says:

[He (the masseur)] realized my English was better than my Chinese and asked me where I was coming from. I replied, “United States of America.” He turned to a seeing woman next to him and asked her what I looked like. Specifically what the color of my skin was (I could comprehend that much despite my poor language skills), then he turned to me and said, “Are you White?” what reply was he expecting me to give? Yes that I was White, so should be treated better. But he already knew the answer, so was he testing the “truthiness” of a non-White person? I told him no, I was browner than the brownest Taiwanese, and that the US had many people of different races and colors, and America should not be equated with being White, it was a big diverse country. I was suddenly in possession of language skills that normally elude me.

By that I mean that, just like the Taiwanese she writes about, we Bahamians appear to imagine that the world is monocultural.  More specifically, we tend to associate specific nations with specific "races".  We don't question this tendency, and we imagine that it is somehow natural.  But the world is a multicultural world, and, colonial mythology aside, it is not divided into clumps of people who fit specific moulds.We should question it.  Our history has determined how we see -- the world, our nation, ourselves.  We should not accept that way of seeing without interrogation.  We need to carve out our own existence, make our own reality.  We cannot allow past oppression to stretch into, and shape, our futures.