Good morning to every soul reading this. I am Miss Violet. I have taught in the schools of Barbados for forty-one years. I retired from teaching but I did not retire from noticing, and I have observations I intend to share with you this Friday morning, whether you wish to hear them or not.

Sit up. Pay attention. I shall not repeat myself.

I. On the Reparations Figure

Barbados has, this week, received the long-promised quantified figure for reparations owed to this nation for the system of slavery under which our ancestors were held, worked, and buried. The figure has been published. It is, as one would expect, substantial.

I shall say this plainly, because plain saying is what is required.

For many years, those who did not wish to discuss reparations had a most convenient shield: “there is no figure.” They would say this with the air of people who had raised a devastating objection. They would say it to close the conversation. They would say it even when the work was being done to produce the figure, because they understood that the absence of the figure was a political instrument of considerable utility.

The figure now exists. The work that produced it was done by scholars and institutions of high repute. It is now part of the documentary record of this hemisphere.

This does not mean that reparations will be paid tomorrow. It does not mean that any single nation will step forward in the coming months with a cheque and a sincere expression. It means, quite simply, that the conversation has entered its adult phase. The excuses available to those who would rather not have the conversation are now fewer. That is the work of this decade, and we must conduct ourselves accordingly.

To those of our young people who will inherit this conversation: study the figure. Understand the methodology. Learn to speak about this matter with precision and without rage, because rage — however justified — is not persuasive in the rooms where this decision will be made. Facts are. Figures are. Moral clarity, expressed calmly, is. You must learn to speak in these registers. I shall help you if you ask.

II. On the Passing of Canon Massiah

Canon Errington Massiah has gone to his reward.

The Canon was a priest of the Anglican communion, a columnist of patience and depth, and a man who understood that national life is not only politics and not only economics but also moral formation. We are poorer this week than we were last.

I did not always agree with the Canon. He and I exchanged correspondence on several matters over the years, including on the place of corporal punishment in our schools — a matter on which he was more indulgent than I was prepared to be. But his letters were always thoughtful, always considered, and always signed with his own hand.

There is a quality in the generation of men of his vintage that we have not reproduced in the generations that followed. I shall not romanticize it — every generation has its failures — but I shall name what I observed: the Canon read widely, wrote slowly, and thought carefully. In an age of hurried opinion, his columns were an act of resistance by the mere fact of being unhurried.

I attended his services a number of times. I shall attend the service of his burial.

May light perpetual shine upon him.

III. On the Burning, Yet Again

The Asthma Association of Barbados has, this week, issued what must be — by my count — its seventh public warning in my lifetime about the burning of vegetation and household garbage.

Let me be quite clear. The burning is against the law. It has been against the law for many years. The law exists because the burning produces smoke. The smoke is inhaled by people. Some of those people are children. Some of those children have asthma. Some of those children end up in the emergency department of the Queen Elizabeth Hospital because of an attack triggered by a neighbour’s fire.

I am being told, every year, that enforcement is “challenging.” I am told that the environmental inspectors are “under-resourced.” I am told that the fines are “difficult to collect.” I have heard these explanations for decades. I have run out of patience for them.

The enforcement is not challenging. The fines are not difficult to collect. What is required is the political will to enforce a law that is already on the books and to collect a fine that is already established. It is not more complicated than that.

When my students would offer me excuses of this quality for work they had not completed, I would hand back the paper and request that they try again. I hereby return this paper to the Ministry responsible. Try again.

IV. On the Forty Percent

The Barbados Union of Teachers has reported that forty percent of calls to the national mental health helpline are now coming from children and teenagers.

I must address myself directly to the adults of this country for a moment.

We have created, over the last two decades, a world in which our young people carry expectations, pressures, comparisons, and exposures that we ourselves did not carry at their ages. We have placed devices in their hands that connect them to the scrutiny of every other person in the world. We have narrowed the paths to success. We have loosened the ties of community. We have, in a word, made it harder to be a child in Barbados than it was when I was a child, and than it was when your children’s grandparents were children.

And now, the young people are calling the helpline. Some of them are calling because they do not know to whom else to speak. Some are calling because the school counsellor is overworked. Some are calling because their parents are themselves struggling and cannot provide the listening ear that is needed.

I am not one to assign blame without also assigning responsibility. I shall assign responsibility now.

The Ministry of Education must fund school counselling properly. The Ministry of Health must expand the helpline and its follow-up services. The parents must — and I say must — put down their own devices long enough to look at their children and speak to them about how their week has gone. The churches must resume the kind of community embrace that they provided in my youth. The teachers must not be asked to perform the role of counsellor on top of the role of educator. And every adult in this country — every one — must take the forty percent figure as a summons to act.

This is not a crisis that can be solved by one minister or one agency. It is the generational wound of a country that has taught its children the forms of modern life without also teaching them how to survive it.

V. On the Hospital

The operating theatres at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital have returned to full service after the air-conditioning issues were resolved.

I shall limit my remarks to the following: the air conditioning in a hospital is not an aesthetic feature. It is a clinical necessity. A nation that cannot reliably maintain the clinical conditions of its principal public hospital has a priorities problem, not a technical problem.

The government will say that the matter has been resolved. The government says this every time it is resolved. We await its resolution the next time it is not.

VI. In Conclusion

We are a small country with large ambitions. We are a nation that has done a great deal with what we have. We are a people with considerable moral and civic seriousness when we choose to exercise it.

What I ask of my readers this Friday morning is this: choose to exercise it. Read the reparations report. Attend a memorial for Canon Massiah if you are in a position to. Put down the matchstick and the garden rubbish. Speak to a young person about how they are. Write to your constituency representative about the hospital.

These are small acts. Small acts performed consistently, by a sufficient number of people, are how countries improve themselves.

I have taught this truth to forty-one years of schoolchildren. I shall teach it again today.

Good morning to you.

— Miss Violet