“…real bridges…”

Just the other day, I read in the news that –no matter what – the government has already set aside hundreds of thousands of dollars to help out with this and next year’s junkanoo parades.

This is good.

As everyone and anyone with an iota of sense would readily recognize, this festival probably matters as much – if not more – than the recently held pageantry and bacchanal that accompanied Solomon Kerzner’s Miss Universe bash.

In this regard, please tell me the answer to this question: what if there is a crying need for incubators for those newest Bahamians who – for whatever reason – have a need to be incubated.

And echo answers, so what about incubators!

There you have it, so much for the littlest ones and incubators.

All I know – incubators or no incubators – this nation is in a real stew and its priorities have gone all wacky.

Let me make myself a tad clearer.

Based on long experience, some education and a dollop of plain old common sense, I tell you that as bad as things are now, they will get even worse.

And since, I am absolutely convinced that this is the case, this is what I base much of my current professing in the College/University of the Bahamas.

And as I profess, I am exploring with some very wonderful Bahamians notions that suggest that the ‘party’ is over and that – as such – a new generation of Bahamians is today embarked on a journey without maps.

I am exploring with these fine Bahamians the idea that party politics – as my generation has known and has defended them – are themselves a thing of the past.

And not only am I suggesting that, party politics – as I have known them – may be grinding to a halt; I am also suggesting that parallel-wise, the economic basis upon which these politics are based is itself anachronistic.

And when I use the word, ‘anachronistic’ – I do so in order that I may throw in at least one big word to describe, out of touch, out of order and stale-dated.

One order of things is dying and a new age is struggling to be born.

And so today, I hear people wailing and railing as death-pangs set in/and as it were –on that same bed where Death toils, something new is being born.

In time, the mid-wife will scream and shout…

Put otherwise, I am telling my students that – as citizens and nation-builders – they now have their own opportunity to take charge of their destiny.

Some other Bahamians who are older than me are saying that they too recognize some of the signs of the times.

One of them, and none other than Perry Gladstone now claims that not only does he understand the need and inevitability of change, but that he fancies the self that is his as one of the bridges to that future.

Well, the news I have for this brother is the word I hear from the whirlwind, new information suggesting that there is a generation of Bahamians that is convinced that, neither the Progressive Liberal Party or the Free National Movement – as currently constituted – can show the way forward.

I share this view with them/ and not only am I sharing it with these fine people, I am also doing all I can to encourage them as they try to break with status quo thinking.

Evidently, evidently and a thousand time evidently, there is today a need for the Bahamian people to make a break with the dead past.

As they do so, they are called upon to respect their elders, emulate their successes, identify their failures, work like slaves, and command like kings and otherwise create like gods.

In other words, a new generation of Bahamians is today being called to service and to action in aid of a nation that is clearly becalmed on an ocean where tired is the norm; and where intellectual weariness is the coin of the realm.

As for me, I would thank God Almighty were I to be given a little Hezekiah time; some days more so that I could get but a glimpse of this new Bahamas that must come into being.

I want to be around long enough to get a glimpse not of the world I helped prepare for my children, but that I get a few more days where I could espy the world my children and that of my peers are currently conceiving.

Evidently, that Bahamas will also belong to Christie’s children; Nottage’s children, Pindling’s children and all those other Bahamian men and women who have done their part in ‘making baby’.

These babies are ours. And for sure, in these babies flow the future.

And since I have no way of fathoming the mind of God, I cannot and will not dismiss the possibility – yea clear probability – that the Bahamas that is on the way may yet be led by one of the newest Bahamians – a no-name child of the Bahamas born to an undocumented Haitian migrant woman, or man/ one who might grow in stature and wisdom/ and one clearly born to bring peace to his troubled land.

In my estimation, such a one would be a real bridge to a future that currently seems inevitable. That noble one and his peers would be the ones who realize that there are bridges to built between the Bahamas and its sister nations in the region, inclusive of Haiti and Cuba; and that there are other bridges to be built between this region and others in the world where Caribbean peoples live, work and reside.

In this salient regard, these newest and world-wise Bahamians would be entirely different from some of those brothers and sisters of theirs who have come to age-maturity bereft of any real sense as to who they are.

As a consequence, some of these youth are today wandering hither and yon, mind-addled on alcohol, floating high on ganja, or other-wise just out of it.

In other words, these youth are bereft of mission – much of this thanks to parents and other leaders who for the past fifty years and more have thought that the good life was all about money.

And since they thought that it was all about money, they did what they thought they had to do in order to get their share.

Very many did.

Some got their money by dealing in drugs and guns.

Some others got their money by dealing in lies and half-truths.

And for sure, some others – the ones who always work hardest – got least. And for sure, some of these fine folk could sing with gusto, Farther Along, we will understand why…

But believe you me, I can tell you that I do foresee the coming of that great day when – as a consequence of policy level decision – the Bahamian people will get access to land acreages that would give them the space and opportunity they need to live lives that are large and commodious, land sufficient for them to understand that land can be bountiful and that as the sons and daughters of God, the land is theirs by birthright.

That day must come.

That great day will come.

But clearly, that great is not coming just yet.

The coming of that day must await the departure of the likes of the people who know that junkanoo is a priority, but who seemingly do not understand that there is a crying need for the government of the Bahamas to invest more money into the care of children, particularly in the care of the littlest and most vulnerable ones.