Flying out of a New York City snow storm into Antigua & Barbuda. SJ Dodgson. MJoTA 2011, v5n1 p1028 At 6.30am, I fly from JFK airport ahead
of the earliest bad snowstorm in recorded history. My favorite
Dominican Jean Joseph is on the plane. I tell her it is her fault I am
going to Antigua, I had thought about going to Dominica. Next time, she
said!
At 10am I land in Puerto Rico, and spend the day enjoying
watching palm trees sparkle and wave in the tropical sunshine and island
breezes. At 10pm I land in Antigua, and am greeted by Mali Olatunji,
who is a host of Zoomradiofm, and an artist with a long career as a
photographer of fine art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in Manhattan;
and Patrick Dore, station manager of Zoomradiofm, who had a long career
as a telecommunications engineer in New York City.
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Zoomradiofm Antigua. SJ Dodgson. MJoTA 2011, v5n1 p1029
I am in the studio of Zoomradiofm, chatting with a radio manager on air about
social issues.
At 11am, I introduce the weekly health program I have been hosting.
We have some technical difficulties because I don’t know how to seamlessly
integrate live blogtalkradio with the mixer and sound equipment at Zoomradiofm.
I have difficulty interacting with the guests and co-host, later I listened to
the podcast. My voice sounds distant, but all the other callers are loud and
clear.
In the cool afternoon, I walk to the beach, past cormorants and horses, and
wade in the warm Caribbean Sea which washes onto pink sand.
In the evening I am back in the studio, and get to chat with hosts Austin and
Mali, and Mali's guest, journalist Frank.
We have a spirited discussion about the many uses and criminalization of hemp.
Frank claims that deforestation could be eliminated with use of hemp for paper
manufacture. Go for it, I say!
The night winds down with Austin's beautiful calypso music. Every 30 minutes he
says something, like who won the football game being played in St John's, or a
comment on how New York City alerts has told residents to stay away from parks
because branches have been broken by the heavy snow and are falling down.
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St John's, Antigua & Barbuda. SJ Dodgson. MJoTA 2011, v5n1 p1102
In 1979, shortly after I arrived in Philadelphia as a post-doctoral
fellow at the University of Pennsylvania, in the Faculty of Medicine, School
of Physiology, I lived in
a house with a young veterinary student.
We were at the Jersey
shore in the summer, and we watched a dog run away, his owner scream at him, he
come to the owner and the owner bash him. My friend, since 1981 a veterinarian known as Dr Susan M Daly, shook her head, "he
will never again come when called."
I remembered that this morning.
I have been sharing a compound with a
big black St
Bernard dog, whose main interaction with me is to back off when I am
around.
Today he followed me to the front gate, and leaped through the
gate when I opened it. I followed him, tried to head him off, but he ran
further.
Then I remembered Dr Day's words. I told him
he was a good boy, and backed off completely. I opened the gate wide and
stood near it, but out of his way.
After 10 minutes, he was tired of
sniffing grass and palm tree stumps, and ambled back inside.
So I gave him one of
my precious stash of canned fish, and left for a walk.
When I came back, he
came up to me, and let me touch his nose. Wow. Love.
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Armistice Day. SJ Dodgson. MJoTA 2011, v5n1 p1111
Armistice
Day. When the leading war merchants met in a train carriage and signed
the agreement to end the war to end all wars, Nov 11, 1918.
Guy
Dodgson died 3 days later of his wounds. His older brother, a Cambridge
graduate named Francis but always called Toby, had been killed in 1916;
the remaining middle brother, Philip survived a head wound that knocked out
his Cambridge education. They were my grandfather
Hubert Dodgson's cousins.
Hubert married my grandmother Hannah, a war widow 2 months after the
war ended; she had been the wife of a prominent Scottish portrait
painter, Campbell Lindsay Smith. War sucks. Armistice story on click here.
I have been
in Antigua & Barbuda for 2 weeks, and have met quite a few people in
public and private offices. I found a lovely story from a local
Antiguan paper about a quiet, honest, hard-working woman, Mrs Genevieve
Williams. She has been loyal and constant. Beautiful. Click here.
I wonder if anything is better than watching a full moon
and Venus through palm trees. With a black St Bernard sleeping in the
doorway. Listening to gospel music playing in a church back somewhere,
and crickets, and kids calling out to each other. While searching for
information about solar film and collapsed credit unions (a lot, even
this month). And eating fresh pineapple and drinking tea. I love having
no-one talking back to me.
Occasionally Samson ambles over so I can pat
his head.
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The sugar kidnapping and genocides. SJ Dodgson. MJoTA 2011, v5n1 p1119
Antigua
has a history of the original inhabitants being genocided to make way for the
European colonizers and their African slaves. To grow sugar.
The
African slaves were largely, maybe entirely, stolen in an undeclared war
on Ghana, and shipped with their pride and memories intact.
Prince Klaas organized a rebellion in 1736, after he had been crowned
king and led a rally which declared war on the colonizers who had stolen
them. It ended tragically, likely because someone talked and someone
heard and Prince Klaas was murdered brutally, publicly. In 2011, on
November 1, the 30th anniversary of independence from Britain, Prime
Minister Baldwin Spencer granted him and his soldiers official pardons.
Enslaved
Africans stolen in an undeclared was were freed in Antigua in 1836,
long before North America. Some sugar plantations were run better than
others, those that could survive on hired labor hired Africans and
Portuguese, who showed up in large number. The Portuguese were happy to
live in Antigua, and happily married African women, and today, many of
the 90% of Antiguans with African ancestry also have Portuguese
ancestry.
I found out about the Portuguese ancestors after I
asked why the honorary consul from Portugal laid a wreath on the War
Memorial on Remembrance Day. Portugal still has strong ties with
Antigua, and it is a happy relationship, with no history of subjugation
or theft. God bless both countries for this remarkable feat!
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Above, Governor General of Antigua & Barbuda (in white shirt coat) laying the first wreath on Remembrance Day on behalf of the Queen of England.
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Antigua
& Barbuda. Remembrance Day service. MJoTA 2011, v5n1 p1113
The services and the veterans
were out in force, plus the Red Cross, Girl Guides, Boy Scouts.
The
Anglican Dean led the service, standing next to the Prime Minister and
the Governor General. Wreaths laid by the lady Governor General first,
then the PM, then the consuls. Wreaths from Portugal, Italy, China, UK.
One from the US Airforce. Antiguans were on the ground in the Grenadian
conflict, and have fought in all (?) the US wars. I am finding out more.
Beautiful, dignified ceremony.
"At the going down of the sun, and in
the morning, we will remember them." They didn't read that, but I said
it quietly in front of the monument.
After the service, when I came back to Zoomradiofm.com studio, I discovered that the military is the smallest in the
world, with 245 in service. I am realizing I saw them all, the whole
military, today. They have fought in active wars, aside from enlisting
when in the UK and in the US.
But usually they do things that the
military does when no-one is firing at them. Peace work. God bless them
all.
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Whose names are on the war memorials in St John's, Antigua? SJ Dodgson. MJoTA 2011, v5n1 p1114
Antigua & Barbuda. Who is Antiguan? Not a simple answer.
When enslaved humans were freed in 1836, the sudden drop in free labor sent sugar
plantation owners to South Carolina
where they could still buy descendants of Africans seized in an illegal,
undeclared war against the African continent.
The plantation owners that
remained lacked manpower for the sugar fields, so lots and lots of Portuguese
arrived to work and married locals. Meanwhile Antigua
is a small island easily accessible by boat from other islands. Most people I
have talked to have come themselves from other islands, or a parent or 2 has.
What
is amazing to me is that Antigua has never
seen military action since the British seized it illegally. The one attempt was
the attempted revolution led by Prince Klass, a Ghanaian who had been enlaved.
That was in 1736, the plans of the revolution were told by people whose despair
was great, and Prince Klass and his warriors were publicly, horribly tortured,
executed and dismembered.
Not only did the Portuguese show up and settle, and
on Remembrance Day, the Consul of Portugal laid a wreath on the memorial; but
also the Irish. The Irish were treated badly by the British (they were always
treated badly by the British), and so they too married the locals. Then the
Syrians and Lebanese showed up and started shops, which continue to prosper. And
they are Antiguan. So Antiguans are a mix of African, Irish, Portuguese, Africans
from other islands, Syrians, Lebanese, and probably British.
So the question of
whether the names on the war memorial are those of Antiguans remains
unanswered.
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Farewell to Antigua
& Barbuda. MJoTA 2011, v5n1 p1114
Antigua
& Barbuda. My last night here, sob, with the huge St Bernard
sitting at my feet watching the sky past the palm trees (I bonded with
him), my hair braided with tiny tiny braids that took all day and
several life stories (her daughter needs to get faster than 5minutes for
1500m, but she is only 15, and the 13yo plays killer tennis: I bonded
with this Antiguan-Jamaican family), looking at the
West Indies Anglican hymnal (I bonded with the folks at St John's
Cathedral), and thinking about diabetes (I bonded with the health folks)
and health programming for zoomradiofm.com.
What a beautiful country;
how can the misdeeds of one person, Mr Allen Stanford, be allowed to
destroy so many jobs? He was the second biggest employer in Antigua,
after the Government.
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Stephanie's Hair Salon. SJ Dodgson. MJoTA 2011 v4n2 p1215
I
arrived in the nation of Antigua & Barbuda on October 28, 3 days
before this tiny Caribbean nations' 30th anniversary of independence
from Britain, and walked underneath rows of flags into the airport
terminal.
I
was there as guest of Zoomradiofm, my mission, given to me by Wale
Idris Ajibade of African Views, was to talk to the Prime Minister and
tell him that Zoomradiofm needed a license to transmit, and to ready
Zoomradiofm.com for handover of all programming to African Views.
The
minute I met the Radio Station Manager Mali Olatunji and Assistant
Station Manager, I understood that my mission was absurd. I apologize to them.
But
I have been sent on absurd missions before by men, and I have learned
the graceful way out: hang out with the church and with the women. And
if the women are the church, well, that is the best possible solution to
every problem.
So I hung out at the Anglican Cathedral and at Stephanie's hair salon.
Stephanie
is Jamaican, and I have previously had exceedingly positive experiences
with a Jamaican sister, Lydia Williams, who suffered abuse from
everyone when she was office manager of AAUW NYC.
Stephanie
is certainly cut from the same tough cloth as Lydia. Hard-working,
ambitious for her daughters, pious, ethical and decent. I have had my
hair braided in Nigeria, and I watched closely my sister Zainab
Wai-Lansana have her hair braided in Brooklyn and Sierra Leone.
I
now say that all the hair-braiding I have had done, and have previously
observed were done by amateurs.
Stephanie is trained and licensed to do
hair, all kinds of hair, and when she braids a weave, it stays in. For
weeks. Four weeks after Stephanie braided my hair with tiny tiny braids,
not a single braid has come out.
I got to know Stephanie and her family over the 3 weeks I was in St Johns. Her 2 daughters are in high school, they look like Egyptian queens and run way, way faster. Stephanie's man drove me to the airport. He told me he is in construction, and not much is being built at the moment.
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