All Me Eye Water Dun:

VincyMas 2026 is in full swing. The drums are rolling, the costumes are towering, and the brass is cutting through the night like a hot knife through butter. Somewhere in Independence Park a calypsonian is about to tell the truth and call it a joke. Which brings me to a classic that has been living rent-free in my head all season, Poorsah’s 1991 classic. “All Me Eye Water Done”.

For those who don’t remember, the man’s grandfather dies, he goes to the funeral, but he does not cry. People whisper that he is vexed at being left out of the will. The truth is simpler and sadder. He had already cried over so many things in this life that, by the time the old man passed, all his eye water done.

I remembered it this season because the world, the region, and the country have been doing their best to wring out the last drop. Bassy, ah can’t use the language like you but me ah go try ah ting!

Ah cry when the supermarket bill started behaving like it had a diplomatic passport. Flour, rice, oil, eggs, cooking gas, everything moving upward with more ambition than some of our politicians. Government calls it imported inflation; the economist calls it a global shock. The mother in the kitchen calls it “put back half the onions and stretch the stew”. The 2026 Budget says prices rose 20 percent between 2020 and 2025. Food and non-alcoholic beverages? A cool 38 percent, that is not inflation, that is a tax on breathing.

Ah cry at the gas station, where the ticking pump leaves you unsure whether you are buying fuel or sponsoring a small scholarship. The emergency package to cushion fuel, electricity, cooking gas, and freight only confirmed what households already knew: the pressure began long before the official address did.

Ah cry for water. Not sea water, we have that in abundance, enough to make a Blue Economy speech blush. I mean water in the pipe, the kind that should not require prophecy, patience, and three storage drums. It is the bucket behind the bathroom door. It is the dry tap when schoolchildren must bathe before sunrise. It is the CWSA schedule becoming part of family worship. Even the Budget admits SVG is at a “critical juncture” on water security. In plain English, the pipe does not always run.

Ah cry for crime, because in a small island one gunshot has too many relatives. It wounds the shopkeeper who closes early, the grandmother who stops sitting on the step, the child who learns the sound of silence after a siren. We must not become a people who count murders like cricket scores and move on to the next over. The Budget calls public safety a “precondition for stability” and admits the security services need “internal repair and structural correction”. But the corner limers know something too; a man with a gun does not wait for a structural correction.

Ah cry for young people. Not because they lack talent, talent is the one thing SVG has never had in short supply. We produce singers, teachers, nurses, coders, mas men, mechanics, and philosophers under a mango tree. But too often opportunity comes like a minibus that is already full. It slows down, the conductor shouts “one more,” and still you cannot get on. So the young fill out applications, refresh email, check visa requirements, and wonder whether loving your country means staying, leaving, or sending back barrels.

Ah cry for healthcare. Not because doctors and nurses are not trying; many carry more weight than their pay slip can explain. But a people should not have to become fundraising experts when illness comes. A diagnosis should not turn overnight into a barbecue, a GoFundMe, a raffle, and a WhatsApp appeal marked “please share widely”. We can fete with excellence. Surely we can build systems where care does not feel like a favour.

Ah cry for the sea. Not the sea water we boast about in Blue Economy speeches, but the sea in our own front yard, which this year filled up with warships. Boats blown out of the water, more than two hundred lives ended without a trial, a head of state lifted clean out of his own country. The Caribbean became somebody else’s theatre, and the region was reminded of the oldest lesson on the books: in this hemisphere might still makes right, and “by any means necessary” was never only a slogan for the small. We sing about being masters in our own house. The warships did not ask whose house it was.

Ah cry for politics. After twenty-four years the government changed, and some behaved as if the country itself had changed its surname, others as if nothing changed but the colour of the front-row shirts. But the rent is not red, yellow, or green. The light bill carries no party card. The minibus fare does not ask who you voted for. The NDP’s 2025 victory ended twenty-four years of ULP rule, with the new government taking 14 of 15 elected seats. A change that large is not a trophy. It is a warning label. It says people were not whispering, they were shouting.

Ah cry when I heard “Citizenship by Investment.” Not because it is automatically wicked, small states must be creative. We cannot finance hurricanes, hospitals, ports, schools, and recovery with bake-sale economics. But Caribbean people have heard enough sweet phrases to know when to raise one eyebrow. The Budget says the programme is “not about passports” but about resilience, debt reduction, and development, with stringent due diligence. Good, then make the transparency brighter than a Carnival costume. If we are selling confidence, let the receipt be public.

When Carnival Sunday comes and the calypsonians stand under the Dimanche Gras lights, I hope we listen properly. Not only to the jokes that make Independence Park bawl, or who get the biggest forward and who say judging tief. Listen for the old truth inside the laughter. Calypso is not only entertainment. It is the national X-ray with a melody. It lets us laugh because the alternative is to sit and cry in public, and we have done enough of that already.

So if you see me at the funeral of some old promise and ah not crying, do not say I have no heart. Do not say ah vex because ah get leff out of the will.
Maybe I already cried for the grocery bill. Maybe I cried for the dry pipe.

Maybe I cried for the graduate with no work. Maybe I cried for the mother waiting on a clinic appointment.

Maybe I cried for the road that bruk down the bus. Maybe I cried for the village afraid of gunshots.

Maybe I cried for the country that keeps mistaking endurance for policy.

And maybe now, as the old calypso says, all me eye water done.

But a dry eye is not a dead heart. Sometimes it is the country’s warning light. It means we are past sympathy and ready for seriousness. It means, do not bring another speech without a plan, another promise without a timetable, another slogan without the courage to govern beyond party colours.

This Carnival, let us laugh hard, sing, and crown the monarch. Let the drums roll, the costumes tower, and the brass cut through the night while the old people nod because calypso still telling the truth. But when the last note fades and the last lap done, let us remember the refrain.

The country does not need more handkerchiefs. It needs fewer reasons to cry.