By Man from Baker Hill
Goodness is the law of God! There is no other way to ‘peace and love’ or national prosperity except through the footpaths of goodness. A couple days ago, I listened to Lord Cepeke Lake on ZJB radio playing the Basil Chambers song, Good, Good is better than bad. And remarkably, he explained goodness as being akin to caring and sharing, charitableness.
He asked Montserratians how much of their treasure would they give to charity. How much do we care, he lamented? And although he seemed to consider treasure as money only, I was deeply touched by his understanding of the word Goodness and his passion about caring and sharing.
Thank you Mr. Cepeke MBE! It was a lovely way to speak to Montserratians as we celebrated the New Year amidst the foolishness of our air and sea travel and ‘Win Air and Fly Montserrat and Ferry Coordination’.
Certainly, being charitable is good; but it is just one aspect of goodness. Yet he is correct; charity is to share your treasures with others. Many of us have treasures within that are more valuable than money that we could share. For example many Montserratians have the gifts of the tongue and the pen.
And we can improve the quality of life on Montserrat if more of us embrace the concept of goodness, sharing our gifts speaking and writing and being charitable. You do not have to judge or condemn, but you can speak out or talk back. Share your feelings on the state of affairs in Montserrat and show an alternate footpath. You might experience great peace and comfort just by sharing your thoughts with others.
I am sure that every Montserratian feels the wrongness and the badness of our ‘airline and flight and ferry and coordination’ situation. There was not much good about getting into or out of Montserrat this 2010 Christmas season. But who cares? But who will write about it? Who will stamp their feelings into a permanent record for historians to read? Who wants to be good, good and speak out?
I feel as if we are suffocating. We have been coordinated. In one short year we have paid great salary to eliminate our access. And now Montserrat is no longer a one-door island; we have become an island waiting for a window of calm seas to open. What went wrong, So many passengers, so few flights?
And what is bad, so very bad, is the increase in ticket cost. How much money did Tourism Challenge Fund give to Fly Montserrat? How much Money did Fly Montserrat receive from MDC? Did they receive more from the treasury too? Oh dear! Fifteen minutes of flight time, fifteen days to confirm a flight, this is bad for Montserrat. Who brought this badness on Montserrat?
Once upon a time we had LIAT and Montserrat Aviation Services, (MAS). Montserrat owned a plane; there was the famous TRI Lander airplane. We used to smoothly coordinate the access in or out of Montserrat too (with the help of LIAT).
How did we get from then to now?
Who own FLY Montserrat?
What is the management structure of FLY Montserrat? Is FlyMontserrat just another family business?
What is the alternative to the access coordinator and FlyMontserrat?
Montserrat is in a very bad situation. Will it get from bad to worse?
Oops! We have never been here before. So I am jus wonderin… how did we get here?
I have heard stories of politicians telling Montserratians that it does not matter how you get money as long as you do not put your hands in the till. And since the onset of the volcano our political campaigns mostly ring out messages about money in our pockets. And today we speak of icons and amassed wealth as if the only good thing is wealth.
In the mean time we have become an unmotivated people gravitating only towards money in our pockets while waiting for the final order to evacuate Montserrat. And in the meantime a foreigner manages every financial institution, almost. We are being managed by Non-Montserratians. We are being organized. We are being coordinated. We are being corralled by FLY Montserrat as if we and our tourists are donkeys. Every bad thing has happened to us, in the meantime.
How could we get back there, to the time and place when we had leaders who loved Montserrat? How can we get back there when Montserrat had great managers?
Will we ever get from here to there? Can we?
Yes, but we must accept that it was a very bad thing to give FlyMontserrat the people’s money to set up a family business. And secondly, we must agree that Bank of Montserrat’s ownership and management structure should have been the model for FlyMontserrat, if that company wanted the support of government and people of Montserrat.
Montserrat…so many educated people, so many university graduates, yet we allow foreigners to trample on us in the name of management. So many people with money in their pockets, yet we are unwilling to join hand in hand and do good for Montserrat. Money is in our pockets but we do not care and we do not share. My God, will we ever understand that good is better than bad or that goodness, to care and to share for the good of Montserrat, is the footpath to our nation’s prosperity and respect?
