When the ceremony to mark the proclamation of emancipation is held on Sunday at the Sunday Morning Well, BVI would have been 191 years into its practice of freedom.

We will leave it to the historians to quibble about where and when the proclamation was first read.  Our concern is that it WAS read and that changed the course of history for the approximately 6,000 people who were enslaved in the BVI.

The history tells us that the British saw it fit to compensate the slave owners for their economic loss but no consideration was shown to the freed slaves whose labour was extracted without consent or reward.

That the plantation owners were paid, underscores the simple maxim; ‘Home drums beat first. Taxpayers and voters matter.’

Have the lives of the Virgin Islanders, their guest workers, accidental BVIslanders and those grafted in…

… Have those lives changed since that proclamation some two centuries ago?  Certainly!

Education, health care, opportunities to advance, community development, have all been possible since that day.  

Some have risen to the helm of organizations; some have become thinkers, teachers, writers far removed from the imposed illiteracy that was a strategy employed to keep the status quo in check during that dark era of slavery and the slave trade.

Others have become capitalist, investors, employers.  All continue to have opportunities to improve their lives.

Still, we agree that the struggle is real.  

But how long is long enough to ‘SUMO’ (shut up and move on) without forgetting the history given that life should be a battle and a march?  200 years; 2 thousand years?

H. Lavity Stoutt took 2 years (1993-1995) to fight the Kingdom so that his administration, instead of the Governor, could keep control of financial services; an industry spawned in the Territory through the efforts of the people’s representatives and their advisors.

Every three months, he, a diabetic, with a compromised foot, went to England to advance his case, for, as former Premier Fahie noted; ‘The harbour does not go to the ship.”  

And like ships on a raging sea, he was tossed about, driven to the rocks by the winds of callous indifference and left, many times for dead, on the shoals of bureaucratic hauteur and cultural superiority.  

And yet, he endured it all for ‘his people’ and prevailed although without any of the three letter recognitions the Kingdom gives for outstanding service.  For Lavity had outfoxed the fox himself and, given his health issues coupled with the angst and harass he endured, his punishing schedule and his strategic maneuvering for that work, he paid the ultimate price.

Five days after the reluctant assent to his legislation from the Kingdom, H. Lavity Stoutt passed the baton and we, his employers, celebrated a life well lived with the highest pomp and circumstance the Territory could give.

The BVI economy is fueled by tourism and financial services.  They are ‘service’ centered industries.  However, BVI people of African extraction have not in nigh 200 years been able to functionally differentiate between service and servitude and it shows.

If you look around businesses in the territory, you will notice a growing multitude from Southeast Asia and other countries who are not encumbered, as we are, by this historical past and they provide good service.

When will we learn that by saying ‘yes ma’am, no sir,’ it does not mean you are a slave?  Perhaps those who pontificate at the Well, annually, can make their messages practical to the times.

And while we are on service, who will help to clear away the mountains of sargassum that drifts into the various bays and coves of the territory and undermine our tourism product.

Private citizens have intervened but this is clearly a job for the collective.

This scourge from the Sargasso Sea (An area of the North Atlantic defined by currents with no land boundary) has been visiting for years and threatening our livelihood.  

We cannot use the argument that the noxious fumes emanating from beached seaweed is undermining health because we are not aware that our various interventions on health, especially geriatric health, resonate with anyone.  Well, we see no evidence.

Perhaps when the sargassum significantly threatens the spectacular party that the Puerto Rican Navy puts on annually at Pond Bay as they did on Saturday; Perhaps only then will it be taken seriously.  For we are committed to our parties and the treasury responds.

For now, our simple desire as we celebrate another year of freedom from slavery is that we use the historical fact as a beacon but that in all aspects of our lives we demonstrate that we are indeed free.

And as for our livelihood, let us; From the gatekeepers of the Territory to the protectors, the businesses, hospitality, social services, professional cohorts, the caretakers, front line workers, everyone;

Let us give good service because that is our only real export to the world:  Service!!  And we should endeavour to be the best service providers possible.  We owe it to ourselves.

Fridays is with Bob Marley “…none but ourselves can free our minds.”  When you no longer allow ‘you’ to be defined to yourself by a third party, healing will begin.

How long?

Happy emancipation and Happy Friday!