I got into business purely by accident. We formed this UBAD organization in February of 1969, didn?t have any money, and so we tried to raise funds to pay our office rent, build some benches and a desk, acquire loudspeaking equipment, and, later, to buy a stencilling machine.

Our high profile project was the ?Ubafu Bakery.? One of our officers was a baker, and he said we could rent the Peters bakery on Dean Street and bake what he called ?UBAD bread.? (?Ubafu? is the Garifuna word for ?power.?) That ?UBAD bread? concept really energized us. The baker was a Muslim, so the dough for the bread would be mixed without hog lard ? only clean, healthy ingredients.

We decided to have dances to raise money to refurbish the bakery. Two dances we had at Liberty Hall were really big successes. The vibes were heavily African in clothing and music. This was what UBAD was about in its initial phase ? culture. Liberty Hall was so crowded, the floor would be falling and rising like an accordion in its motion.

We put the money we raised into the bakery, and the bakery was a loser. The bread was really good, but the money was not handled right. For a young business group, such experiences are discouraging.

There was a contradiction from the time of the dances, which we considered euphoric successes. The contradiction had to do with the fact that two of our leading officers were Muslim followers of Hon. Elijah Muhammad?s Nation of Islam, so they were not supposed to have anything to do with alcohol. But UBAD sold alcohol at our dances, though we all believed that alcohol had proved itself to be an enemy of our people, an obstacle to our liberation.

The UBAD movement got hung up on dances as a means of fund raising. In fact, our dances used to subsidize this Amandala newspaper. But the dances began to be too much fun, with all the drinking and partying. Again, the dance business can be feast and famine. One night you have all the crowd ? the next time you have to eat your food yourself, ?cause there?s nobody to buy.

The club business always looks like a logical investment to our people, but this is a very difficult business. You have to work at night and sleep in the daytime. The next thing is, you can?t party along with your customers. Your discipline must be enormous.

Another business our people like is clothes boutiques. More of us have been wiped out in boutiques than anywhere else. We think we can bring in fine threads from Los Angeles or Miami and make money. We know that we roots people like looking good- the market is there. But boutiques which bring in genuine name brand clothes have to sell at prices which are too high. Plus, credit will ruin you. The competition which kills you comes from foreign merchants who are part of regional networks which buy products by the shipload, get the huge wholesale discounts, and are therefore able to undersell you big time. Many of these foreigners, moreover, are selling counterfeit products. There are gangsters out there who are so slick they will eat our local, untrained people alive.

It took me 12 years to start making money in the newspaper business. I survived along the way through the aforementioned dances, dinners, teaching a couple years, announcing on radio a couple years, and so on and so forth.

We poor people always start off our businesses as undercapitalized ventures, ?hand middle? in the vernacular. We don?t have any extra to spend on the frills which make a product attractive. Plus, we Belize people are always scared that our own people are not going to support us.

Look at the Chinese, the Arabs and the Indians. When they invest, they do it in a big way ? whether it is a disco, a restaurant, a supermarket, a store, whatever. Belize people like the flash and the glamour, so our own people crowd the foreign-owned businesses. Then we say, oh, Belize people don?t support each other. It?s not that simple.

We Belizeans have much to learn where business is concerned. And we are learning. We?re learning fast, but the catching up we have to do is a whole lot. I think we grew up in this colony of British Honduras with a sharing mentality. Our culture was not capitalist. We didn?t have a money mentality. We felt that someone who tried to get filthy rich was mean, selfish, and greedy. We wanted all of us just to have a good time.

Well, we didn?t change Belize. Belize was changed for us, and people from outside have gotten the jump on us where this money business is concerned. We roots are fighting hard just to survive.

Bottom line is ? you can?t be looking to any politicians to save your ass. The politicians are controlled by the money people. The red and blue game is musical chairs. So, let?s look the situation right in the eye. We descendants of woodcutters don?t run the place any more. We?re just fighting to sit near enough to the table so that crumbs can fall our way. We got to keep on fighting.

Amandala. Power to the people.