Letters & Opinion

A Split In The Middle!

Image of Carlton Ishmael
By Carlton Ishmael

IT bothers me the direction that this country is heading as it relates to its development and its sustainability.

We were blessed, no too long ago, with a natured isle, we cherished nature and lived in harmony with our environment. After all, being descendants of Africans, as well as having roots connecting us to our early settlers, we practiced farming and craftsmanship as a way of life.

We took pride in our ancestral customs, dealt with our healing through natural means, ate healthy and adopted a caring attitude to our fellow man. Today, sad to say, all of that seem to have disappeared.

But as the world progressed, we began to see development in the eyes of others, mimicking the lifestyle of foreigners and adopting new and alien values. All that meant something to us is seen only in traditional terms and disconnected from our present existence.

Now we are trained to become hotel servants, IT specialists, and hired help for the business community. And we have now accepted a totally new way of life, aiming to satisfy the vision of the government of the day.

We are now looking for new worlds to conquer and partnering with the rest of the world’s people and having no identity of our own, so we become nobodies in our own country.

I recently heard of how many jobs that are to come from the IT sector and the hotel sector and the hospitality sector, but not about jobs that will make the masses of our people gain meaningful revenue on a consistent basis.

I would have thought with the new advent of the softening of the ganja laws that would create new opportunity for trade as well as industrial opportunities. I would have thought that ganja would be a purpose to return to the soil and get thousands of nationals jobs in agriculture, considering the variability of options and diverse segments that can be dealt with.

For instance, from an industrial point of view, hemp can be seen as a means of creating several creative ventures, making us self-sufficient in selective goods and services. It is also said that there is a need to assess the potential of marijuana for medicinal purposes and as a trade commodity. It can also be used for home consumption and to satisfy the influx of tourists who would be more than glad to smoke some good locally-grown herb in the sunshine.

Coupled with this new thinking, agriculture can be revived because the new buzz word is ‘Health for Better Living, which means growing more of what we eat, changing from the junk food culture to improve the health of our children and going back to our roots in a meaningful way.

I think that this is the direction we must take. We are who we are and not accepting that our purpose is to improve the living for this generation and the ones to come will only land us in more hardship.

Caring is real and the needs of the grassroots people need to be considered because they need support.

Granted, education plays a major role in being in touch with the times, but all our children cannot be expected to go that way — especially those who are not able to grasp this new technology — and we must take care of the needs of most, not a selected few.

Having new ideas and new values are good, but we cannot leave the many behind because we should all be able to enjoy the development gains from our growth.

What we need is ‘a split in the middle’ — as the popular songs says – when dealing with various needs of all the people. Why? Because we all vote and make it possible that some inherit the political throne.

So it is their duty – those we put on our throne — to do what must be done in the interest of ‘We the People’.

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