[dropcap]U[/dropcap]nless something from outer space should land on us, say between now and Monday, something like what had decimated the dinosaurs but not the far more dangerous ubiquitous rats, cockroaches and mosquitoes, it’s a safe bet the lights will go down on 2018 in much the same way they had in 2017 and every other year going back one hundred years, at the very least.
This time around, as I mentally prepare to write my customary end of year review, several names come to mind. Some had been my close friends, acquaintances, controversial holders of public office, writers, avid readers, presumed contributors to our society—all of them now ghosts, memories, some more distant than others: Allen Lewis, Allan Louisy, George Odlum, Eden Hinkson, Pat Brown, Derek Walcott, Suzie d’Auvergne, John Compton, Sessenne, Kenneth John, Irvin Reid, Vincent Floissac, Heraldine Rock, Father Reginald John, Henry Giraudy.
I am thinking, too, of some I came to know only because fate had plucked them from relative obscurity and deposited them in the discombobulating glare of news headlines, if for only a short time: the monstrously ravaged child Trisha Dennis; Valerie Lorde, Mary Racliffe who was decapitated by her live-in lover after she reported to the police his brutal rape of her virgin child; 13-year-old Verlinda Joseph battered on her way to school, raped, forced to drink a killer herbicide; Jezelle Georges, raped and killed at her parents’ Bonne Terrre residence at lunchtime; Yamaha, shot by police and thrown off a Vigie cliff into the sea; 18-year-old Terry James whose body was cut in half by blasts from police shotgun fire as he lay on his back half-naked and unarmed.
I dare to say few living today can readily recall the listed names, let alone how they departed this life. Mine is not to reason why it doesn’t seem to matter. What’s indisputable is we are together in an acknowledged dark place by the minute growing darker, largely because too many cannot remember the past that actually is our present.
Imagine the mass resurrection of the above-named. (Which should not be difficult for those who believe all things are possible with faith, including walking on deep water though none would try even for money!) Would our latter-day Lazaruses turn around and head for the nearest graveyard? Or would they marvel at the improvements to life on the Rock of Sages in their absence? But enough of the dead brought back to life, let us return to the reality of the living. Consider this true story starring Dr. Winston Parris. It had been ten years since he gave up his local practice and relocated with his young family to Nashville, Tennessee, to undertake a plum position at Vanderbilt University that required his involvement in what he described to me during an interview as “important medical research.” He also operated his own lucrative practice, yet had ample left-over time to be a good husband and father. He had returned home, he explained, because “all the money in the world would not be enough to keep me away from Saint Lucia at carnival time.”
I wondered if he regretted leaving home. It seemed my question took him off guard. “Regret? I’m so happy I left,” he assured me. “For nearly five years I served as resident anesthetist at Victoria Hospital. But for the sake of my sanity, my growth and my intellectual development I had no other choice but to leave.” Money had little to do with his decision, he said. While he certainly was not earning a king’s ransom, he was happy. He had a thriving private practice. What he could not handle was “the official contempt for locals.”
He proffered an example: “Outside the hospital’s operating room there was an air-conditioning unit that leaked, as do most of these things. Consequently there was a slimy and slippery area right at the entrance to the main operating room. It is no secret that the porters who wheel the patients in from the wards tend to take a shot or two between deliveries, which does not help. But even the most disciplined teetotaler could’ve slipped on the slime outside the operating room, with horrible consequences both to himself and his patient.”
In the best interests of all concerned, Dr. Parris wrote to the permanent secretary at the health ministry. “He wrote back calling me a troublemaker,” Parris recalled bitterly. “He said Dr. King, the surgeon, had never complained. It was clear to me the ministry did not appreciate my concern for my Victoria Hospital patients. I attended to over six thousand cases at Victoria without an electrocardiogram, including my own mother, sister and son. At Vanderbilt, I am required to use an electrocardiogram—even during research involving dogs. My understanding is that conditions at Victoria Hospital are worse today than when I worked there. Those who say Saint Lucia needs a hospital far more urgently than it needs an office block are absolutely correct. It’s as if no one cares about the country’s health.” The recalled interview was conducted in 1988—30 years ago. Conditions at St. Jude were worse then than at Victoria Hospital.
A year or so before he left for the States, Winston Parris and I had shared a rented two-storey residence at Sans Souci and often bumped into each other as we set off for work each morning, he at Victoria Hospital, I at the Voice newspaper. Sometimes we killed a few minutes talking about my stories, in particular those related to the nation’s health services. One item had given Dr. Parris much cause for pause. It centered on a Saturday afternoon road accident halfway between Castries and Dennery: a bulldozer had somehow flipped over on its side, pinning the driver to the dirt road. It was almost an hour before an ambulance arrived at the scene with three individuals aboard, including the driver. A few minutes was all the time it took to establish the man had expired. Then off they went, leaving him face down in the hot dirt. It emerged that existing hospital regulations prevented ambulance personnel from picking up road fatalities; that special privilege was reserved for hearse operators. It had taken more than four hours from the time of the accident—which I came upon by happenstance while en-route to Vieux Fort—to the removal of the casualty to the Victoria Hospital mortuary. (I suspect, dear reader, you may at this point be recalling other road kills and deciding how much had changed in 30 years or more!)
So much for back in the day healthcare, healthcare in 2018 and in the foreseeable future. Are we better off today than were our conveniently conjured ghosts in their lifetime?
We turn to crime. By recent police account their records show over 400 unresolved homicides; cold cases. While the killings did not occur all at once, we have been averaging for several years around twenty-something homicides annually. There were 42 by gun and by blade in 2018. Remarkably, our police seem to consider homicides “resolved” once suspects have been arrested, seemingly oblivious of our constitution that holds all suspects “innocent until proven guilty.” Some murder suspects have been sixteen years at Bordelais awaiting trial—in blatant defiance of our constitution—mainly because of state shortcomings. Some readers might conclude from all this that never before was it as easy to get away with murder. I, for one, would not challenge the observation. But let us not imagine killers are our only problem. The record shows it’s just as easy to get away with molesting or impregnating eight-year-olds, rapes in the noonday sun, at our incomparably beautiful but under-patrolled beaches, even during regular work hours. So commonplace are such incidents that most victims consider it pointless to report the assaults to the police.
Just over a month ago the wife of a police sergeant, presumably while preparing herself and two young children for bed, was fatally shot in the head. Her husband was reportedly not at home. To date, no arrests. As for our politicians, if we were to judge them by the fruits of their labor alone, it would be difficult not to consider them aiders and abettors of crime. They talk today as they had talked when our imagined resurrected were still alive—and look where the political claptrap got them.
The weight of IMPACS has been dragging us deeper and deeper into deep do-do, with no relief in sight. Meanwhile, the people have for three administrations been calling for information, at the very least, concerning the birth of the monster known simply as Grynberg—to no avail. Which is what usually happens when suspect politicians are free to be their own judge, jury, and executioner. As for my review of the year 2018, I could continue underscoring the inconvenient truth that little has happened since the early nineties that might not be considered déjà vu and therefore worthy of record, save for the horrifying fact itself: we are where we were in the early 1900s, headed downhill in reverse—and gaining momentum!
