(This column was first published in the Amandala issue of Friday, June 30, 1995)
The “Hurricane Psyche”…
From the time we were children, we have been hearing stories about hurricanes. Hardly a day goes by without one of our elders relating his or her experience during and after the 1931 hurricane. Some stories are tragic, some funny, some confabulated, some harrowing. Whatever form the story takes, there is an underlying note of awe and fear: “I wouldn’t want to experience another”; “Man, a hurricane is something else”, and so on.
Even as they relate, you sense that there is a masochistic desire to want to have the experience again. It is like surviving combat. In our time we have had our hurricane – Hattie, and we now relate our stories to our children in the same manner. From generation to generation, hurricane stories. They have been stamped into our psyche. We have what I call the “Hurricane Pscyhe”.
This psyche has played a major role in our history, both in terms of the people and the land. Each hurricane season this psyche is refreshed and reinforced. In the case of the people, particularly after Hattie, a whole generation abandoned their lodging, their country, leaving that children to be reared in limbo, simultaneously vacating their positions on the land to go North. These positions have been taken up by the refugees from Central America, to the extent that the Creole is now a minority. The slave is being once again displaced by the once conquered.
It is an interesting observation that while they “could not make it here”, the refugees seem to be doing quite well. Travelling the highway of the Hummingbird and the biway of the Sugar Belt attests to this.
It is an even more interesting one to note that our parents after 34 years are now returning “home”, expecting to find their lost nostalgia and “land”, and bemoaning the destruction of their children, as though the land would wait for them and their children would remain children.
The “Hurricane Psyche” has also played a major role in the physical facet of our lives and the way the land has been used or not used. It has caused us to move the capital inland – too bad it’s “Wigan Pier”. It has caused us to move from building with wood to building with cement, an enormous outpouring of capital in a country founded on logwood.
“Suppose there’s a hurricane” is what we ask ourselves and what the insurance companies and branch banks ask us when we apply for financing for our home of wood. Grants and loans to the public sector are predicated on the assumption that the utilities will be of cement. Increased premiums in the in the private case of wood. No dice in the public case. We are thus put in the position where we accept loans we can’t afford to build structures we do not need and cannot maintain. We thus see these monuments to egotism and flush rising in our country, even as our children are deprived of an education, a decent meal, a decent home. All brought about because of the “Hurricane Psyche”. “Boy, suppose there’s a hurricane?”
Our farmers cannot get insurance coverage for their produce and we have yet to develop an agricultural financial agency to facilitate them, and without which talk about agricultural development is so much bull. Our major agricultural exports suffer the same fate.
When you stop to consider that the 31’s and the Hattie’s occur every 30 or more years, and when you look at the average mortgage of 10-20 years, perhaps we should re-examine our hurricane mentality and so redefine our development strategies. Accept the fact that we have developed this psyche; plan as we do now for a hit, but plan for 30 years. There are some among us who have seen the light. One such is the model of Ramon’s at San Pedro and those at Caye Caulker – build the foundation and frame of concrete, and use the cheaper materials now available for the siding. When it is blown down, reframe. The amount of money saved in terms of capital, insurance and maintenance countrywide will be more than enough over a 30 year period to maintain the national bank. The 10 year leverage will contribute to the reserves of the bank. With the national bank, we should be able to establish an agricultural insurance program to protect our farmers. We would be able to expand our classrooms, increase our teachers’ benefits, enabling us to educate more of our children to a higher level. In fact, the whole country would benefit substantially.
It is time to pause and analyze this psyche. It is time to redefine our thinking. If not, for the next 50 years our initiatives will be braked by, “Boy, suppose there is a hurricane.” There will be another hurricane some day. Nature dictates that. But let’s move on. Inshallah.