Saint Lucians like a Roro

Saint Lucians like roro. They like filth. They like the salacious. They think everything is a joke. They make everything into a joke. They show themselves not to be cognitively inclined. They boast of not liking to read and wear it like a badge of achievement. A time has to come when we must stop and think. A time has to come when we must change track or we will be the laughing stock of the world if we are not there already.

The numbers are revealing. The number of people you see reading anything; a magazine, a book, a newspaper. The number of people who attend Nobel Laureate Festival activities. The number of us that will go to a play that is not put on by Chè Campeche. The number of boat rides on a weekend and the number of people who attend them. The number of people who buy lottery tickets and the frequency with which they do it. The number of rum shops in our communities. The number of women versus the number of men who hustle on the streets. The amount of bread we consume and the number of plastic bottles in our drains. The number of boys on the block. The number of women pursuing higher education. The number of men in our prison. The number of people who watch the budget debate online versus the number who watch ‘Can I Help You’. Boy, we need help.

For a nation that has produced two Nobel Laureates we are a dumb-dumb nation, but the politicians like it so. It starts with the kind of people we elect into politics and the fact that we love politics for the chicken and rum, the t-shirts, fete, good times and mudslinging.

We have lost our senses. We disprove and distort all the evidence. As glaring as it is, these nude photos must be photoshopped. The audio recordings, I am hearing are “audioshopped”. Our ministers are reluctant to speak and the opposition has bigger fish to fry. Boy, we are in a mess.

I heard a call made for unity, a call for Saint Lucians to stand up, but with a roro every  day and us liking it and our parties more than nation building, I do not see how that is going to happen. Talk about pissing in our eyes and calling it rain. Like really, where are our deductive reasoning skills? The truth must come out. The truth will come.

Until then, wake me up in 3019.

— Kensley Peter Charlemagne