Wellness and redemption

Something is nothing in the state of SVG, and it is not caused by such things as the executive rip-off in Clico/Baico or the economic slowdown and lunatic greed in the capitalist centres.{{more}}

The rot is not just in the icing of the cake, it is in the cake itself. SVG is rotting away. How has this degeneration come about? The truth is that the germ, the innoculum has been there a long time now. Two hundred and fifty years and more, but it has had moments of recession, when our immune system or revolutionary spirit was fortified and made a cleansing difference in our land. Today we are slowly and reluctantly admitting that we are diseased, although we don’t use that word. In fact, when we pick up and use politically correct euphemisms

like “wellness”, poverty reduction, social safety nets and positive growth, our policy makers are trying to both cover the naked truth, as well as to admit that all is not well in the state of SVG. We are rotting inside.

The kindergarten advertisement for wellness programme in SVG are our overweight opposition leader and our obese prime minister, but that is just the tip of the iceberg. When gallant young and adult women take to the road striding, swinging arms and strengthening their heart muscle, I take time to gaze in admiration and jealousy – and I promise again to start next week. They are Health Educators; they indict our lifestyle.

When I read the recent research report that African Caribbean men whose waists measure significantly more than their hips are heading for prostate cancer, and there are thousands of us – while our health system does not have biopsy facilities to test for cancer, I smell the rot in a thousand places. When I further reflect that every year an estimated 200 persons die unnatural deaths, suffer woundings that handicap and incapacitate them, crawl away from accidents and endure injury and worse from an impoverished and poorly monitored health service. I wince at the lack of redress and rehabilitation of the 1000 dependants who are affected each year.

When I read and hear the stories of theft, corrupt practices and victimisation in the public service and executive sector, and also the private sector, resulting in minimal or negative or absent justice and quiet acceptance in the community, I know that a storm is coming, the rot will lead to a purulent festering and an outbreak of unrest. When I observe the build up of youth unemployment, under employment, depression, and tendency to delinquent practices, as against the minority of employed, creative and constructive counterparts. I know that the rot will grow aggressively when talk about wellness goes hand in hand with sickening policy choices, then conscious citizens must make deliberate plans to dissect and diagnose the proximate source of the decay that we tolerate and expose it.

Superficial commentary will not suffice, spontaneous insurgency will not do. Rot must be treated seriously. We must locate its root, analyse its component, take stock of resources we have to deal with it, develop a strategy and programme to recompose our community/national health and mobilise our moral and material forces to change our history. A wellness revolution will not come from a parliamentary debate or a cabinet resolution, nor even from a CARICOM summit. A moral insurrection is the proper instrument to stop our rot from growing and to induce and inspire healthy growth in the organs of our society.

We must carry on the conversation on the gangrene in our community with new purpose. To find how much the rot has taken hold in our own morality and behaviour. To examine our organisations carefully and ruthlessly to see how much they become carriers of rotting culture and conduct,and what seeds of stasis and of change we can introduce in them. The conversation among us must aim to unpin and discard the myths we have believed about wellness instead of rottenness. The outcome, the result of our discourse must be the beginning of a draft redemption charter suggesting where we are strong, where we fall apart, whom we aspire to be and the resources to take us there.

The idea clearly has the imprint of the New Democratic Party(NDP), but the arena of importance is not parliament and the process is at ground level. Wellness and Redemption cannot be bondages and poultice to cover over the rotting state of SVG. They must become revolutionary and gather us together to put fire inside the rot and spirit and creativity into our healing.