CP
No news is not good newes
Sunday 7 August 05
Right now i'm back in baJam. with this strange wet harmattan (since Dec 04) continuing & affecting the hurricane season into cloudiness cloud- cover rain. tropical depression floods all down into the Guyanas & Central America (where the harmattan 'terminates' against the mainland mountains). and many hurricanes. therefore. are not able to make up their minds be- cause of this 'wet harmattan condition' . but of course plenty damage. as you kno (esp recently Grenada/once Green. ada) when they get through [look at yr weather map - one that will inc Africa - for the 'meaning' of the southerly shift of the harmattan/trade winds & the recent intensification - 'global/goëbell warming'? - of the Antarctica channel off the west coast of Africa]
I'm back at CowPastor after our valiant cyberspace struggle & hopefully continuing discourse. to find that tho the ploughing up of the pasture has stopped - no more tractors in sight at the moment - can we think this is because of our campaign? alas. alas Barabados remains MUMM on the matter of our singular. not a single local letter of protest complaint or Query has apparently been ?read/noticed. certainly not acted upon &/or 'reach(ed)' the Authorities. xcept the one small pyrrhic victory of the Lake of Thorns. the deconstruction company that was for no reason at all destroying the pasture was asked by Town&Country Planning to restore (!!) the Lake of Thorns and their response has been to dig a small insulting hole which is now fill of mud. grey stagnant water & mosquitoe matter. somebody has also dumped/left/abandon(ed) an entire white minibus upon the pasture (somebody before this had offered his olde chevrolet upon the now graveyard here) to add more rustre to the place
But is not really true to say that what we've been tryin for has not been 'read'. i think there has been quite a lot of reading & 'mentioning' & <sotto vocalizing> - to such an xtent that very few people. now I've got back. want to speak to me. the phone don't ring. nobody looks me in the eye when i go into the street or shops. the newspaper that use to publish one or two at least of my letters (but none of yours!!) not publishin KB5 anymore and the column of comment of Caribbean literature & culture that had been agreed on before our campaign started. has been switch(ed) off the back-burner. all this is part of the assassination of the pasture. the ?deferral of the dream
I mean. i get up yesterday morning after Kadooment Day and realize that is TEN years now that me & DreamChad have been on the front- lines of this pasture. and is TEN years that we are stymied. given no x- plantation or answears and blocked/prevented from doin nothin on the pasture - not even able to raise a stick or brick to begin the building of my library of alexandria. far less going anywhere with the Bussa Instit- ute. even tho i'm not in the 'flight-path' zone. and on the terrace below us. huge houses goin up think & fat & fast. i can't even use the right-of-way to Parish Lands because a big-shot guy is building a palace that will be taller than my neigbour Jubilee Blackett house (which is down for demolition!) . so the tough-guy set up all his buildin apparatus all across we dirt-track access road. so if a fire-engine or a ambulance was have to come-up in here for me - jah forbid! - is no-way dat dem cd reach & rescue mwe. an nobody have no problem with this illegality. because this guy is a 'big-shot' an e doan care
So that it follow. right? that they can propose to build a ROAD on to the pasture. right thru my house. where i cannot build because of the 'flight-path'. right into the 'flight-path' that mek them (dem seh) move all the people & their cattle from Thyme Bottom. it jess doan make no sense. it jess doan mek no sense. an yet nobody in baJam seein so an nobody sayin so!! jess like in on the waterfront
in fac. the pressure from fiends friends thorns attorneys crocodile ad- visors. <even close family> (!!). is that i shd lissen to Govt. obey what i over- stann as the irrationality of Govt in this matter (as it has been on several sim- ilars elsewhere on Prospero island). accept the UNETHICAL road. the des- truction of this last rare environment and for me my future dream. take what is called COMPENSATION - which amounts to only a careless pittance of what the land is worth in 'real' terms - not to mention what it's worth in poems!! - indeed i'm admonish(ed) for writing poems(!!) about CP and not 'prose'. because somehow (the poem-style/the poet instinct) seems to give the impression - lissen to this! - that i not SERIASS. indeed that i shd juss get the hell outta here
No one bothering to ask whe wd we go. where wd i be able to AFFORD to go. even if - flat chance! - i cd agree to go to in a Bara- bados whe nearly all our land has already been sold out to midas peo- ple willing & able to pay doubloons & diamonds per microspace for now nearly every face of the island
I'm just xpected to behave myself. obey orders and be. i suppose. a 'good' barbadian and not bad barbarian
But i say that we need urgently here a public & accessible register -publish(ed) & broadcast on a regular basis as a public service - of land transactions - buy. sell. quantity. value. remove. manipulate - that goes on here in Barbados
In the mean/time. all I can tell you/repeat to you is that i'm back here after our great six months campaign (see pagnoulle. see HYPERLINK http://tomraworth.com/wordpress/ http://tomraworth.com/wordpress/ and all yr individuals Jan-June 05) which i can't ever properly xpress my thanks & gratitude for. and i've not even yet been able to get around to responding to most of you for the courage & encouragement along the way and asking you not to give up. since i cer- tainly have not. more friends among the stars than on the surface here. tho we kno now that if the friends of the scar & surface don’t come forward. there's nothing much (more) - right now - that the friends from cyberspace can do
I've taken an another year off - leave without pay - to see what i can do for myself in terms of at least trying to organize the archives now scattered in Jamaica. New York and here at CowPastor. and hopefully also find enuff time. energy and inspiration to begin work on the for--too-long-now-delayed RWANDAPOEMS. first drafted ten+ years ago now. at the time of the 1994 genocide. Since then 9/11 (see <ARK>) and now CP have come as new & further tributaries to this vast river of postHiroshima catastrophe & suffering and yet creativity & hope <- O Césaire AmiriBaraka O Darwish O WilsonHarris -> that it has become the bur- den of so many of us to revelation
But as I look around at the homecoming ugly and destruction here at CP. i find it hard/don’t even know where/how/if/if I can/even BEGIN the continuation of the poem. for right now. something not right within me. some like some spider in the heart. as I look out at what has happ- en here: the ramallah the falluja that we have so subtly created here . the removal of the cows & blackbelly sheep and the people of the cows & the owners of the goats. has revolutionized <(yes)> the place from past- ure/pastor/serengetti to wildey - weed rather than grass. dead stone whe they use be to duncks & soft pale flowers. a dirty pit whe they use to be the Lake of Thorns (a small gully/suck-well). as if perhaps they cd make this place which was so beautiful (see <words need love too>). as ugly & vandal as possible. i might come to un/love it. and - hardly likely! - leave! <Kamau>
2 Sept 05
When I went, on appointment, at 10am this morning to see the (young) person in Town & Country Planning - the person, in fact, responsible for this Christ Church district, inc CowPasture & Cow- Pastor. . . even before I cd begin, I was told that 'the person' had been INSTRUCTED not to say anything to me, not to give me any information ref CowPasture &CowPastor. The MUMM syndrome has now reached even those, in a way, responsible for it. How, in a so-called democratic country, does one go from here? I wd be happy to have suggestions <kb5@nyu.edu or HYPERLINK http://tomraworth.com/wordpress/ http://tomraworth.com/wordpress/