The Independent September 30 2017 The Independent September 30 2017 | Page 4

4 The Independent. the Diaspora’s Multicultural Voice September 30 2017 Our View Editorial Abandon hope Just when we thought lessons were learned from hurricane Kat- rina in New Orleans, it seems that eleven years later, nothing has changed. The level of incompetence shown by the Bush administration then can only now be compared to the incompetence being shown by the Trump administration in Puerto Rico. More than a week after Hurricane Maria devastated the island, which was hit by another strong storm (Irma) just a week before, mil- lions of Puerto Ricans remain without water, food, medicine, emer- gency supplies and power. It took the Trump government a week to temporarily lift the Jones Act to allow non-American ships to call at the Port of San Juan with aid. Prior to that, only American ships with American crew were al- lowed to go between US ports under the act. Further, more than a week later, over 3,000 containers with emer- gency aid remained stuck at the Port of San Juan because of red tape issues regarding their clearance. Yet the acting Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, under whose watch that falls, had the audacity to go on national tel- evision last Friday to say that Puerto Rico is a “good news story”. Good news to whom? Certainly not the millions of men, women and children who are thirsty for a drink of clean water, and a morsel of food. Puerto Rico as well as the US Virgin Islands, another territory seemingly abandoned by the Federal government in Washington, should start rethinking their relationships with the mainland. Clearly, they are second-class citizens not worthy of the attention given to Floridians after Irma or Texans after Harvey. They must ask why. Is it because, like New Orleans, their popu- lations are largely black, making them less important? That’s a hard question to ask, but it needed to be said. Katrina lessons not learned. And dare we say it, neither will the lessons from Maria or Irma. God help those who the powers that-be in Washington do not consider important. Because Washington isn’t helping them. E-mail: [email protected] 416-278-9302 The Independent is a digital bi-weekly newspaper for the intelligent reader and is designed to serve minority immi- grants in the Diaspora on the basis of commonality of ex- periences and needs. Writers/Photographers: Herman Silochan, Dr Susan Gosine-Herrera (NY), Rajesh Ragbir, N.D. Robert Ranjitsingh, Tony Deyal, Raynier Maharaj The Independent prefers to be contacted via email. Please send all communications to the email address listed above. The Independent is a proud supporter of Hurricanes: Act now, save later By Simon Ticehurst The hurricane season here in Haiti runs from June to November. There are still two months to go. We keep checking the latest data from the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administra- tion as it predicts more hurricanes. We've already had Harvey, Irma, Jose, Katia and Lee, now Maria. The World Meteorological Association has a list of names ready for those that could come next: Nate, Ophelia, Philippe, Rina, Sean, Tammy, Vince, Whitney. And so we prepare. Scientists say this season is unusual for hav- ing two Category 4 and two maximum Category 5 hurricanes in a single month. In October last year, Category 5 Matthew hit more than a million people in south-east Haiti. This year, another Category 5 - Irma - threatened northern Haiti after having all but destroyed some of the smaller Caribbean islands. But Irma skirted Haiti and, as if reminding itself of its de- structive sense of purpose, hit Cuba instead, dev- astating housing, infrastructure and agriculture, and rebounding into Florida. In Haiti's northern municipalities, Oxfam, Unicef and the local health ministry run a "fire- fighter" cholera elimination programme. Cholera is like wildfire. Oxfam teams work to isolate the case, set up a sanitary cordon, and then seek the source and treat the water. "The programme is fi- nally achieving success," says Laurence Desvi- gnes, who coordinates the programme. "Zero cases here since July, and now just ten cases a week in the north, down from hundreds each week at the peak of the epidemic." There was a lot of cholera in the United States back in the 1800s. People become stricken with diarrhoea and dehydration. It's a killer. Modern water and sewage treatments can stop it. The solution is not a mystery but it is incredibly difficult in Haiti because it has such poor water and sanitation. "If the hurricane had hit us hard it could have ignited another epidemic very eas- ily," says Desvignes. One immediate task is to spend more on get- ting people prepared. That means developing ex- pert local humanitarian capacity, leading to better contingency planning, risk mitigation, education and awareness. Climate change is changing the game for us. Warmer Atlantic waters are super-charging these storms, making them more frequent and intense. Caribbean island nations are terribly exposed on the front line. Many people turn to religion, "the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions …the opium of the people". That might help give comfort but isn't going to fix the problem. Climate change needs us to rethink, globally and locally. We need a new direction for public and private invest- ment. One immediate task is to spend more on get- ting people prepared. That means developing ex- pert local humanitarian capacity, leading to better contingency planning, risk mitigation, education and awareness. This must involve vulnerable communities. We already have policies and often even laws. But there's a big gap in acting upon them - and a stunning absence of political will. Everywhere. The Inter-American Development Bank's new Risk Management Index measures countries' capacity to reduce risk, recover from disaster and One for each and each for all www.tccfangels.com Toil with hearts and hands and voices. We must prosper! Sound the call, In which ev'ryone rejoices, "All for Each and Each for All." (Last stanza of Dominica’s National Anthem) I stumbled out of my bedroom at my usual 4.30 am and realised that we had a royal presence in the living room. One of my father’s friends and drinking buddies, Mr. Prince, who was sitting in one of my mother’s chrome chairs, dropped the bible he was reading, jumped to his feet in alarm and prepared to take off for parts unknown. I was as surprised as he was and would have started a dash into my parents’ bedroom except that Mr. Prince was more terrified than I was. “Mr. Prince”, I said, voice shaking a bit and while it quavered it might not have been a full Demi Semi. Fortunately, before he could respond, my father came out, ready to head to work, and ex- plained the situation. Mr. Prince was what we called a “Vincelonian” in those days. In other words, he was from the nearby island of St Vincent and had arrived in Trinidad looking for work and finding some tempo- rary employment in the oilfield town of Siparia where we lived. Mr. Prince had high hopes of being able to bring his family to Trinidad so that they would all have opportunities they did not have at the time in St Vincent. However, he had a falling out with the person he worked for over the low wages, very long hours and bad treatment. That gentleman, miffed, peeved, angry and upset with Mr. Prince de- cided that he would complain to the authorities, he being one of them, to capture Mr. Prince, have him declared an “illegal immigrant” and post his butt back to his native land. Mr. Prince appealed to my father and his other friends for help. It was decided that the last place the police or immigration authorities would consider as a hideout for Mr. Prince was our house since we lived on the street-side of the area in which Mr. Prince was renting a shack, a well-inhabited place without streets or paving of any sort with houses many of which seemed randomly built and distributed, called Cas- sava Alley and later, because of the lifestyle of many of its itinerant population, Peyton Place. It was a kind of hole-in-the-wall place where people hiding from the law or “breaking warrant” as we called it, spent some time while the situations in which they found themselves cooled down. For the next few weeks, while my father and oth- ers sought to legitimise his status, Mr. Prince resided in our aptly-named living room which together with two small bedrooms, a kitchen and a tiny verandah was our home. He shared our food and used the primitive facilities late in the night. Otherwise he spent his entire period reading the Bible, sighing loudly and praying. There were occasional alarms. The promised police and immigration raid on Cas- sava Alley took place with a lot of noise and threats. The police had their bull-“pistles” ready and were itching to take the action that in a calypso some years later, Lord Blakie, described, “If you see how dey beating the scamps and dem friends youh bound to bawl,/ Some ah dem could read and spell but dey cyah pronounce at all./ A police tell one to say “box” ay you stupid man/ And as he say “bax”, licks inside de van.” Fortunately the search was fruitless since it was anticipated and many of our friends had chosen to be away when it happened. Another time a police SUBSCRIBE it’s FREE to your smart device car passed slowly in front of our house but did not stop. It was an anxious moment. Eventually Mr. Prince got his “papers” and then one day, about a year later, my father took his Hillman car and Mr. Prince to pick up the Prince family at the Port. It was a great day in Cassava Alley. I have never wondered why my mother, who had the final say in everything, or my father for that matter, sheltered Mr. Prince especially knowing that if he was caught we would all have been arrested for harbouring him. The reason I was not surprised is that before we went to Siparia we lived in the village of Carapichaima in Central Trinidad where the peo- ple, though of different races, lived in relative har- mony. At that time, in the 1950s, there were a lot of immigrants. Across the road from us was Miss Robin- son, a “Vincelonian”, my mother’s best friend. We had a “Baje” or Barbadian and several mispro- nounced names like “Casmo” and Mr. Ocano (O’- Connor). At the Anglican School which my cousins and I attended, there was a mix of races with no ques- tions asked about origin. We were all immigrants I suppose or, as children, all that mattered is how you spent your recess and lunch-time and who would play “stick-em-up”. I went to the Picadilly E.C. school in Port-of-Spain for a year and, situated at the foot of the Laventille Hill, it was a place where many immigrants sent their children to school. It made not a whit of difference. In fact, we from outside of the area were the immigrants there and sometimes were threatened with expulsion and occasionally, extinc- tion. For most of the past twenty-five years I have worked and lived in the Caribbean. I have friends and acquaintance in all the islands. My two younger the Diaspora’s Multicultural Voice provide financial protection. Every country meas- ured in this region has failed to reach even a sat- isfactory level. The international community currently spends only 1 percent of aid on disaster prepared- ness. Since 2000, more than a million people have died in disasters. Recovering from them is costing us between $250bn and $300bn a year. The UNDP says that each dollar invested in disaster pre- paredness saves seven dollars in recovery. We know what to do. We just need to do more. But what really causes the "disaster" is not wind or rain … its economic inequality. Haiti is less than 500 miles from Florida but may as well be on another planet. Haiti's once prosperous rice production, its principal economic activity, has long-since collapsed after tariffs were stripped from 50 percent to 3 percent and subsidised US rice was able to be dumped onto its market. There are few jobs in Haiti, no social protection, safety nets or insurances. Haiti's social and economic sit- uation is one of the hemisphere's biggest collec- tive failures. This is why we end up fire-fighting cholera after a hurricane in Haiti. This week - even as Hurricane Irma spared it - violence erupted on the streets of Port au Prince. Police sprayed tear gas at people. The spark was a new budget, approved by parliament on the eve of Irma, that voted in a 74 percent in- crease in salaries and benefits to members of par- liament alongside new taxes on consumption that will hit the pockets of the poorest. That is a preparatory measure to guarantee a disaster. Simon Ticehurst is the Oxfam Regional Director for Latin America and Caribbean. children went to school first in Be- lize, then in An- tigua, and swam or played cricket against kids from some of these is- lands that were Tony Deyal devastated by Hurricanes Irma and Maria. My wife is from Guyana and many of her compatriots found refuge in these islands. I was in Grenada in the aftermath of Hugo, and we had to face at least two close calls in Antigua during our ten years there. Had anything happened to us, I am sure that people in Antigua or my friends in other islands, especially Dominica where I spent a lot of time, or my family in Trinidad, would have offered help. We most likely might not have taken up the offers or even sent our children. Even now, we would defi- nitely want to keep them closer to us if something like a hurricane or earthquake destroyed everything that we have. The thought, the offer, the reaching out to us in our time of need is what would have counted enormously. It would make us feel that if things got really bad we had a place to shelter but we would have stayed with our neighbours and try to regroup, rebuild and rise again. But, like Mr. Prince, we would be very much aware, and feel much safer knowing that we were not alone in our plight and our misery. Tony Deyal was last seen saying that Dominicans are a proud people and will rise again higher than their misty mountains which even the clouds have problems crossing. E-mail “subscribe” to [email protected] Join the 50,000 people who get The Independent each issue