Give monument some attention

I cannot pretend to understand Rihanna’s music to the same extent as the majority of her young followers, but I do appreciate and laud her humanitarian and patriotic generosity. I commend those responsible for renaming the road of her childhood in her honour. As is the case now, many of her fans, when visiting Barbados, make a point of going to see where she once lived.

I would suggest that a pedestrian crossing should be placed directly on the road in front of her house and she should be asked to be photographed crossing it with her house in the background. If she could be persuaded to adopt a dance pose, so much the better, and the photograph should be used in one of her videos or on the jacket of a CD. I feel confident that many of her young fans would make the trip to Barbados just for themselves to be photographed on the crossing and possibly striking a similar pose.

This is not an original idea. On one of the Beatles’ record jackets there is a picture of them on a pedestrian crossing in Abbey Wood near their studios, and to  this day fans are still going there to be photographed on the crossing.

Secondly, I wonder if our tourism authorities are giving sufficient thought to the many hundreds of children born to Barbadians in Britain, United States and other countries.  Some of them have a hunger for the true history of Barbados, which does not gloss over the suffering of our slave forbears or their achievements. I now find myself taking visitors from overseas to see the First Free Village monument in Rock Hall in St Thomas. I then take them to Mount Wilton, also in St Thomas, and tell them how the slaves acquired the finance with which the land for the first free village was purchased. All this will be of enormous interest to younger people in the Diaspora.  

But, sadly, there is an air of neglect about the monument, especially the approach to it. This is a pity because the monument itself is a really fine work of art, of which we can all be proud and is well worth a visit  by every Barbadian. Could the Ministry of Tourism  give this matter some attention, please?

– WILFRED WOOD