?An island's course towards development is not supposed to be mapped out along the lines of a large developed country. Island life is meant to be just that–island life. Herein lies one of our problems in Trinidad. We keep forging towards development and setting our standards and understanding of development on big countries and losing, in the process, the big picture of what development encompasses to us as a people based on our size and our identity. Inevitably, we have not stopped, looked, reassessed and reanalysed, and many of us are asking ourselves: what are we developing into? While we remain an island, we have all of the big-country stress like traffic, crime, pollution, without the ease of big-country living like healthcare and water. Take a simple example of a small house. The owners of this small house want to raise their standards. Their idea of raising their standards is to fill the house with large, ornate furniture, put up more walls to create more rooms and fill the rooms with big-screen tvs and computers?
What happens in that house? Doesn't it become cluttered. confused, chaotic? Wouldn't the members be squeezing past furniture and each other to get from one room to another? Wouldn't all that electronic equipment cause noise, distraction and stress? With this approach to raising their standards, wouldn't the family have in fact lowered its standard by narrowing its space and creating disharmony? This is how I see our concept of development–a continuous expansion and adding and putting up and cluttering without any thought of space and its limitations, people and their movement, island and its essence. Like the owners of that small house, we are creating more noise, more distraction, more stress, rather than breaking some walls to let the breeze in. Without first considering who we are and what our needs are, we will, with the money we have, surely, eventually develop. But again I ask, what will we develop into?
Already we are a confused people who call our July-August period "summer" instead of dry. Already we are a confused people, looking at American TV and following seasonal styles and we end up wearing winter boots during "summer." Already we are a confused people who rebrand our local bands into "boy bands" and turn our soca stars into Disney stars, calling them our own Jonas Brothers. Already we are a confused people who pride ourselves on being able to bring big stars for big concerts while our own big stars spend most of the year without getting work. Already we are a confused people perpetuating elitism by turning national, flag-waving events of cultural pride and harmony like cricket and Carnival and pan into VIP and VVIP sections. Already we are a confused people, saying we are promoting local, but we map out our local shows along the lines of BET, MTV, VH1, Disney (with the exception of Gayelle) and the real promoters of local, like Holly B, Allison Hennessy and Dave Elcock, move to the background as development takes over.
I ask you to ask yourselves: what are we developing into? We seem to think, in Trinidad, that development means doing things big and ornately, very much like a show-off child priding herself on wearing the latest, most expensive footwear, who can only look on as other children run in their everyday shoes. The shoes–not the fun, the laughter, the essence of being a child–are what is to be protected. In our case, the opulence, the elitism, the show-off style and money are what we call development, not the maintenance of simple everyday island living, where we are comfortable to leave our doors open to let the breeze in, where we have enough time and peace of mind to sit in a hammock at the end of the day, where we all go cricket and pan together, as one people, celebrating true development. Again, as I often do, I make reference to Tobago as an example to Trinidad. When Clico did the Plymouth Jazz Festival, it was the most star-studded event, rated by Forbes magazine as one of the top three events in the world. Development, not so?
Then what? Like many other things that do not consider that island life is not meant to be patterned off big country styles, it crashed. Now what? Now the THA takes it over, island-style. Now the big event isn't about big stars, big crowds, big rank for VIP tickets. Now the big event is big, island style, with jazz on the beach, access to all and more big local stars than big foreign stars. Now take the example of Napa as a space of development. If Napa is the final frontier of arts and performance, I ask you, where are the spaces for honing this talent before one has the "privilege" of performing on this grand Napa stage? Is it taken for granted that all schools have dedicated music, drama and dance teachers? Is it taken for granted that all parents can afford to pay privately to hone their children's talents? Or is this, not again, an example of a big money, elitist approach to island living on an island that is full of creativity and talent?
Wouldn't the island approach to cultural, artistic development first begin with paying attention to what we say is our island's pride: our steel pan? Wouldn't true island development focus firstly on giving deeds to our steelbands so they have a space to call home? Wouldn't furbishing these spaces with beautiful toilets and well-run cafeterias create employment and encourage both our pannists and our people to see pan as ours rather than as a season? Wouldn't comfortable seating for listeners, an air-conditioned restroom for our pannists and well-lit, secured parking facilities for band members and audience raise our levels of love, identity and appreciation?Wouldn't paying our band members salaries throughout the year be a true testimony to developing talent more than any fancy building can? Wouldn't spreading the wealth around impact on crime, social development, cultural identity, national harmony, more than any one stage ever could? This to me is true development, the island way. I beg the powers that be and whatever powers that come after May 24, to engage the many philosophers of our land in productive talks on island development, so that we stop, reassess and redefine, so that our children will truly live in a developed country, island style, knowing who they are and proud to be T&T.
?Joanne Haynes
San Fernando