Well, I?m not here to quarrel about development. To begin with, no one ever elected me to any public office, so I don?t speak for anyone except myself. I hope the people who are ?developing? Stake Bank understand that, that this is just about the way how things used to be, what was our ?cosa nostra?, and the unavoidable tide of nostalgia in older people.

There were things that we Creole people considered ours ? cosa nostra. We thought the Barracks was ours, and they took that away. We thought the Cross Country was ours, and they took that away. And we thought Stake Bank was a timeless sea mark as we cleared the harbor mouth, and now it?s not really Stake Bank any more.

I will take you way back to my childhood in the 1950?s, when we went to our family caye by sailboat. Since that time, the family caye itself has been changed by erosion and confusion, so we do see that there is little that we really control in a permanent way.

In those days along the Foreshore, people who owned sailboats used to have mooring posts (botans) planted in front of the sea wall. When you came in from the sea, you tied your boat to the post at a length that enabled you to jump on to the sea wall, while the boat could swing freely without scraping the concrete.

When I was a child, the post my father used for his sailboat was almost directly in front of the Bowen family home on ?Bliss Promenade.? The Bowens were definitely royalty then, because of their skin color, but they were not as incredibly wealthy then as they are now. Those were the days of Crystal lemonade, before Coca Cola and Belikin and so on and so forth.

Our family caye, Spanish Caye, is about 9 or 10 miles south of Belize City. Since the prevailing winds in the good weather months (March to June) are invariably southeasterly, to get out of the harbour and head to Spanish Caye, it meant that you had to ?beat?, that is, sail against the wind and the waves in a fight to get into the open sea. Getting out of the harbour in a sailboat was a tedious process, but finally you made it.

Then you took out your Usher?s bun and your Dutch cheese and your bottle of lemonade, and, of course, there is no food so delicious as food eaten on the sea. You knew that you were well on the way, about a third of the way to Spanish Caye, when you could see Stake Bank directly east of you. Stake Bank had a definite shape, a permanent look. It seemed that it had always been there, and we just naturally assumed it always would be the way it had been from time was time?

The way how things have gone in Belize the last few decades, I personally am not sure of our role in this country any more. I guess that is why we have elevated Goldson and Lumumba to the status of national heroes, because they were sure, if nobody else was, that we had rights in this country and we had a role to play here.

You will note that I used the term ?Creole? earlier in this essay, though it is a word I consider colonial and submissive. I prefer the word ?black?, because it gives my slavemasters the message that I know who I am and I cherish my dignity. Still, nobody here considered themselves black in the 1950?s. So this is how I have to refer to ourselves, the way we were ? Creoles.

To tell you the truth, I feel violated by what has been dome to Stake Bank. From the cerebral standpoint, I know that mine is only a sentimental reaction. Stake Bank was never a source of economic activity or wealth. It was just a beautifully shaped collection of mangrove trees that was always there.

Yet, as I think about it some more, I remember that all the mangrove trees were damaged by Hurricane Hattie in 1961, to the point where everything green became brown. And the cayes were brown for a long time. Stake Bank must have become brown in 1961, but the shape, that beautiful and timeless shape, remained.

My ancestors way back when were so close to nature, they treated the land and the sea with a religious reverence. Times have changed. But myself, I am an old-fashioned man. I loved Stake Bank the way it used to be. Consider this, then, the Stake Bank Blues. It?s the only way I know to ease my pain.