Vincentians, examine your heARTs

Fri, Jan 25, 2013

Dear St Vincent,

Today is January 17, seven months to the day since a bullet entered the chest of our dear sister Jennifer and she departed, with her gifts of love and creativity intact, to a higher dimension. {{more}}A daughter of the diaspora, she had returned to commit her heART to her island family. We continue to mourn the loss of her energy and that of all our sisters abused, manipulated, attacked and ravaged. And there are many of us.

St Vincent, do you ever stop to consider your productivity, imagination and powers that are compromised by the suffering of your daughters? The energy we muster through courage transfigures the darkest experiences. We still care and work. We rise again and again. We create and recreate over and over. We are survivors and expressers in a hidden land where colonised minds reek havoc with our integrity through sex crime, emotional abuse, intimidation and dismissal. We endure it all.

My daughter Aiko has spent her entire life with you. The last time she was home, we were forced to evacuate our house under police escort, due to gun threats from an incessant stalker. 18 months later she returned to make a film for her university senior project about the life of Lawrence ‘Captain’ Guy. Within a few days, all her electronic devices and data for the project were stolen.

“It’s like a war,” she said.

So, how do we tell when enough is enough? Our bodies warn us with illness; our minds alert us with anxiety, depression or mental breakdowns; those with deeper insights may tell us. But when the concern of officials appears to be for fame and personal comforts (symptomatic of the war having feasted its flesh on remnants of compassion) we may not even be able to hear prodding chants for the survival of our Spirit. Our collective psyche is primed for Opposition to the Truth.

But still the Truth is glaringly obvious:– our good intentions, whether lowly or grand, are targeted for destruction through your addiction to the lowest, densest form of life – life lived obsessively on a material plane where the lack of high arts reflect moral destitution.

“This is still my home, and I will be back, ” Aiko says, as she redirects her project to reveal the intimacy of suffering through loss of homestead, of the legacy of challenges put in the path of artists who know the value of their intangible heritage.

That those of us so abused remain loyal to you may be your only hope, for many sons desert you for far less than what our daughters are enduring.

From one whose heART remains true,

Vonnie