Tuesday, July 23, 2024 at 9:05 AM
In my last column, I wrote about the beauty and wonder and innocence of our Jewel in the days that are no more. It was all the good that I saw and felt and lived through in my younger self. But being a Libra and believing in Ying and Yang, I have to go back to the darker side of those times. There is nothing perfect in life, except for women, who are the miracles we cavemen could not live, or survive without! Well, most of us anyway.
The darker side of that past was in Belize becoming lighter in pigmentation, with thousands upon thousands of Creoles and Garinagu migrating to the United States, the United Kingdom, the Caribbean, and to places unknown. That migration caused a seismic shift demographically, and the effects are still being felt in the Jewel today. It was also the time when the churches and the politicians decided what would be, and would not be taught in our schools; they shaped the curricula to suit their agendas. I believe that those changes were detrimental to us, as students, and gave us a false or incomplete narrative of our past. The British had a vested interest in making us anglophiles; that is understandable from their point of view! But after we achieved self-government in 1964, I believe that we were in charge of what subjects were taught and their contents, including history and civics and geography; so, in effect, it was our churches and the state that decided to keep us dumbed down! That worked out too well, because for me, I learned the history of my country at the university of Amandala, period!
It was also a time when we started to sell our birthright for pennies to speculators, who didn’t have the best interests of Belize in mind. It was all about the Benjamins! It was a time of living in a bubble, not being culturally and socially aware of our importance, that is, until the birth of UBAD, teaching us not to hate ourselves because of too much melanin, but to embrace our ancestry and ancestors, and celebrate and enhance our uniqueness. This message was for all people of color, although some of us still thought that we were white, until America and Europe unceremoniously reminded us that we were not.
Another mistake we made at that time was to make sports very political, while not supporting our athletes the way other countries did, and still do. We did not help foster in them their hopes of becoming national heroes, to excel in their respective sports. There were no serious government programs to harness and develop gifted athletes to reach for the gold, and the goal! Nada. Imagine a Colin Thurton, or a Chukku Young, who just passed away, or a Sonny Meighan, and many others who had the ability to compete on the world stage, but lacked the support, not half-assed, but the full support, of the government. Who knows what additional glories they could have brought to this tiny country, the pride and joy we could have all experienced! But noooo, people like Kenrick Halliday, one of our famous cyclists, had to work 10 hours a day and then go and train, late evenings. Most of the footballers and other sport personalities had a day job, and their sports was secondary. Their gifts were not expanded upon, to make them better and more competitive with other countries. How many Usain Bolts we may have overlooked? With no help from Uncle George, nor Uncle Sam, and all the other succeeding administrations, and that is a travesty, and a whole lot of tragedies.
We weren’t given the opportunity to be ourselves, to be comfortable in our own skins, and to have our own national identity. Instead, we became de facto American or European; we did not fully appreciate our heritage! That all goes back to our educational system, which denied us that right to fully appreciate our genesis. According to the history that was fed to us, our massas loved us, did not abuse us. What a pile of you know what! To this day, most of our children aren’t aware of our complex history, and of our relationships with our neighbors. Some have tried to correct this misguided compass, but TikTok and Facebook and Instagram have drowned out those efforts. Better to keep them hungry for instant thrills, rather than to let them know who they are, and where they came from!
So, while I celebrate those halcyon days of yore, I cannot forget that it was not all perfect, all sunshine and roses, but that we were also overshadowed by the dark clouds of inequality and racism, and by a subdued, but effective campaign, of ethnic cleansing! That we did not fight hard enough for this precious piece of paradise, lovingly called the Jewel. You know, maybe we weren’t that innocent after all. What a shame! What a ting!
Glen