As we bring another disappointing and traumatic year to an end I can’t help but ponder pun how strange life and people can be!
Not a year one would remember except fuh the bad things. The terrible earthquake in Haiti will also be remembered for that magnificent radiothon staged by Starcom and THE NATION newspaper, which raised over $1.2 million dollars fuh the people of that battered nation.
The passage of Hurricane Tomas, which only showed how harmful passing wind can be, becausing iffing that was a category 3,4 or 5 all like now Bubbadus would still be flattened. Poor St Lucia get rinse out and still coping with the blows and then in the last quarter of the year we lost a beloved leader in David Thompson after a hard battle with pancreatic cancer. The nation still feeling the pain, followed shortly after by the pain of the Budget. that pain gwine last a while yet.
Not much to celebrate in 2010 – a year we would rather forget! But forget we do and we got short memories. Just months ago we waited for every word to drop from the lips of a brilliant home-grown physician specialist who had tended to the PM and who earned the love respect and thanks of a nation, a Prime Minister and his family. yet mere weeks later that same physician specialist, who is apparently the only person with certain specialist skills in the country, was being suspended from the QEH, presumably on full pay! Is this the way we repay a man who devoted day and night to looking after our leader?
I am only a simple market vendor, but I have to ask iffing he is the only paediatric cardiologist in the country, how could people who don’t have his skills determine that patients are not at risk while he is on suspension? Open wunnah mouths and speak!
And as the new year about to break, the news came that the Bubbadus Jazz Festival had folded,at least fuh the time being. I see the producer Mr Gilbert Rowe pelt some warm lashes in the Bubbadus Tourism Authority, blaming them fuh a lack of support and fuh causing the cancellation of de festival but the president Mr David Rice counterpunch and accuse the organizers of not even furnishing them wid a list of talent who would perform at the festival.
The blame game start and somebody looking fuh scapegoats! But I ain’t meet a fella yet who surprised that the festival gone through the eddoes. Year after year I did noticing that the numbers getting smaller and smaller, the performing acts getting fewer and fewer, the breaks between artistes longer and longer, the names less and less known, the sponsors tents pun the hill fewer and fewer. Even Starcom Network gave up their sponsorship and did not take part in 2009 even though they had been a part of the festival from day one and in Mr Rowe’s own words it would never have been possible without them. But nobody was surprised that it was not going to happen in 2011.
Meanwhile, over the pond, the St Lucia Jazz Festival getting bigger and sweeter.
One thing though that I Market vendor learn a long time ago is that you got to cherish the people that is yuh partners, that yuh got to mek sure that yuh keep them happy and that yuh deliver value fuh money. Never tek them fuh granted and remember, that when they walk away from something they ain’t coming back. Brilliant as he is, an icon of titanic proportions, the Mighty Sparrow can never fill Garfield Sobers Gymnasium again after a decade ago. He failed to deliver the goods. They walked out never to return again. Lessons to be learnt!
I Market Vendor gone fuh now.
You have a blessed and a wonderful day, yuh hear?
