Commentary: Caribbean Locusts

The Locusts Won

CAYMAN ISLANDS – The first time my homesick father planted yam at his farm in Belize, the entire crop was enveloped by locusts. They were so big you could shoot them with a shotgun. The same thing happened down the road to a countryman with insects unusually called, frog hoppers, which devoured a large field of rice. That victim returned to Jamaica to sell guns and my father persevered, unsuccessfully.

The locusts won.

The Human Locusts

This was a story repeated many times, in many places, in many enterprises by many people, worldwide. The difference is that there are many types of human locusts with many names, so much so, that the great singer Anthony B pointed out, they like to raid the barn but not to plant the corn.

I have some family members in Cayman like that.

They are not alone, but you probably know quite a few people locusts, but that pestilence can reveal itself in many forms. Burglars, thieves, fraudsters, estate robbers, businessmen, tax evaders, money launderers and Caribbean bank account holders in the Cayman Islands. In your mind you think of large bugs in the sky descending on a crop ready for harvest. It can take the form of relatives evading taxes, politicians lying about assets, businesses avoiding customs duty and the like.

Wealth and Empathy

You would be hard pressed to find locusts among people of fixed income with a regular cheque but no foreign company or bank account abroad. Policemen, teachers and nurses do not have wings nor do they raid the barn. That is a very telling thing that the greater the income of a person, the more likely they become a predatory insect instead of an empathetic human being.

There is a correlation.

Poor people are more understanding than rich people. Poor people are kinder than rich people. Poor people believe in God.

Children Deserve Better

Regrettably their children are unable to use education to escape that economic trap, or locusts, so long as the government vacillates on school repair in Western Jamaica, thereby condemning children to mimic their parent’s reality as well as to avoid examinations, 35,000 at the last count.

When the book of Matthew says suffer little children it does not mean just that, nor is it authority to punish Caribbean children by depriving them of resources in favour of matters at the bottom of the proper budget pole.

Simple decency and respect must prevail.

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