I have more come to realise that I am a spiritual
being just having a human experience, rather than being a human trying to
be spiritual, and that has completely turned my life around. – Dr Pat Alleyne

EXACTLY 12 days ago, Dr Pat Alleyne, managing director of the Barbados National Terminal for the past ten years, found herself without a job.

About to turn 58, and appointed to the position by the then Barbados Labour Party (BLP) Government which was swept from power last January by the Democratic Labour Party (DLP), she had a strong sense that as her contract ended on April 30, it would not be up for renewal.

"I'm certainly not ready to retire," she said, during an exclusive interview with the SUNDAY SUN last Wednesday.

"In fact, I've already had three job offers, two of them locally and one from an overseas interest," she disclosed. "But I'd like to take about three months off to catch up on a lot
of things that I need
to do," said the woman who ran twice as Pat Thorington on a BLP ticket in the constituency of St John against
then DLP incumbent
and now Prime Minister David Thompson.

Seeking services

Locally, interests in
the insurance field are seeking the services
of Alleyne who holds
a Master's degree from
the University of the
West Indies (UWI) in business management.

In addition to logging 40 successful years in
the Barbados business community – including
21 years with the Goddard Group of Companies, starting with the Purity Bakeries division where she advanced from secretary to financial comptroller, she is also
an ordained minister in the evangelical church.

"There is a regional
oil company which has declared an interest locally, as well as an international offshore consultancy company
in Canada," she said,
as she relaxed in her
cozy "work space"
in her Chancery Lane,
Christ Church home.

What is most striking, however, is Alleyne's almost ethereal calmness, her apparent peace of mind and her fresh-faced appearance which belies the age of this twice- married mother of four and two adopted children.

"I've realised two things in life. The first is that
you really are supposed
to gain the wisdom as you grow. Experiences really do teach something if you learn from them. I am
a completely different person today than
I was growing up.

"It may be because
I have more come to realise that I am a spiritual being just
having a human experience, rather than being a human trying
to be spiritual, and that has completely turned
my life around.

Taken stress off

"The second thing I have realised is that every single human being is at the place where they are at and I have learnt to accept every human being at that place. If they knew to be better, they would
be better. That has taken
a lot of stress off me, especially with my children," she said.

As a black child born
to "a rich white plantation owner of the Edghill Plantation in St John
and a black mother, Alleyne's identity crisis and emotional turmoil began early in childhood.

It took nearly 30 years of spiritual evolution
to become "the Pat I am today, who is even very different from the Pat
I was just ten years ago".

"Growing up, I believe that I looked up to white people. On the one hand,
it was very confusing to me. I looked up to white people at one time because somewhere up in here," she said pointing to her head, "the slavery had us still thinking that white people were superior to us.

"So I grew up with
that, because my father, of course, he was a superior [white] person in my eyes. I mean, I felt fantastic walking down Broad Street at his side.
But when I was with my mother who was black, I was just with my mother," she confessed quietly, adding that her mother died in a diabetic coma at the age of 52. Her father, who was also a road inspector in St John, passed away 14 years ago.

"On the other hand, my father put his family, his sister and her children
to live in the plantation house while we lived
in another village in
a bungalow. And when
we went to the white plantation house there were certain things that we could not touch, certain parts of the house that
we could not go, and when they were having white folks' company, we had
to go sit in the back,"
she recalled, rewinding
a painful part of her past.

"I was a very impressionable child
and it was like that
in that day."

But she also remembered living to see the day she had to give money to that same aunt (who had lived in the plantation house) to get food to eat.

She said that taught her that at the end
of the day, "we are all human. We all have
all these experiences."

However, her racially related scars ran deep.

"From that time I have kept away from white people because I guess
I was so hurt at that age about how I was treated by white people that
were supposed to be
my family, just because
we were black.

Self-esteem grew

"I have never really fully opened myself
to thinking that any relationship I have with
a white person should be the same as I have with
a black person. I have had all black boyfriends and husbands. I have never, ever considered having
a white boyfriend. I just can't think about that
in my mind," she
admitted candidly.

Her self-esteem as a black woman gradually grew, not because of an increasing black population in Barbados, and not because of Independence.

"I think my self-esteem as a person grew because of what I have achieved," she said emphatically.

It was while she was working at Purity that she began to attend UWI and gained her first degree.

"It was also at UWI that I met Owen Arthur. He was my lecturer. And
it was he who talked to
me about politics and
tried to influence me to come into politics and
who got me involved
in politics," she said.

"The first time I ran
in St John in 1994, I was working at Purity. I felt familiar with the territory because I grew up there. After that, the BLP became the Government and I was asked to chair the Barbados National
Oil Company (BNOC) which I did for about two years. Then the decision was taken to build the
oil terminal and I was asked to manage that
and did so for ten years.

The last time she ran against David Thompson in St John was during the 1999 general election when she captured an unprecedented 1 586 votes.

But it would bring her no satisfaction of victory; no more than five years earlier.