THE SWEET, SWEET SCENT OF SLAVERY

So pretty...if you don't live there

Ah, Roseau….

The last place in St Lucia where you can still smell the sweet, sweet scent of slavery.

Just a couple hundreds yards from where a historically white plantation turned the sweetness of slavery into rum for black people, is a slum that makes ghetto people in Castries cry tears of sympathy.

If you don’t live there, you don’t want to know what life is like. And if you live there, you don’t want anyone to know what it’s like for you. Going to the bathroom is a courageous act for some people. For others, it’s just plain dangerous.

Most Caribbean people started the process of liberation a couple of hundred years ago. Roseau people are still waiting for deliverance.

Roseau in 1794
Joking....it's Chester Williams Mist of Roseau

This year, government put up $15m for the relocation of these people. For a new community. A new start. A new beginning away from the invisible chains that bound generations to the vestiges of slavery. And once the people of that blighted community are settled away from the historical location of their ancestors enchainment, what do we do with that stained piece of land? Burn it? Bomb it? Bulldoze it?

Hmmmph! (Big exhale.)

How about we sell it? The Goddard Company (which is basically the Bajan version of the Barnards) bought the rum factory. Maybe they’ll want the piece of land that reminds them of the greatest of their ancestors and the good old days when Negs knew their place and Beches were born on top of the world, regardless of their talent, their intelligence or their actual abilities.