with me; I am still working my way through the two hundred odd pages of the last edition.
It is a book published by the part of the government that is trying to encourage investment from the West. The book has things about history and culture and government and all manner of things, but it is really about helping to develop the economy.
I can tell what kind of book it is, because I used to write corporate communications and advertising for a living. I never wrote a book for a country before, but Ihave written them for corporations, colleges, and hospitals with larger populations and, in one case, a higher GNP. I have been around such books and the people who write them to know enough to have my salt shaker with me when I read them.
If you know how to read them, the books will tell you the things that really matter. You can discover the things about which the government is really proud. You find those things hidden between the lines about overseas investments and GNP and the information economy and all the rest.
And if you know how to read between the lines in the newspapers—something we newspaper people have spent a lifetime doing—you discover the things the people of the island care about the most.
If you read them together, the papers and the government information book, you begin to see other things as well.
One will tell you that economies in the developing world spend a higher percentage of their GNP on healthcare than do the industrialized nations. Another willtell you that the island is especially proud they added a baby warmer at the hospital last year. One points out they have a branch campus of a West Indian medical school here to train doctors to serve throughout the Caribbean and to provide help for the local health clinic. The other celebrates the donation of a dozen chairs to the same clinic so that people who come in now have a place to sit while they wait for one of the ten doctors who work their way through the islands throughout the year.
The official word is that the island’s leaders believe that music and sports are the two greatest influences on youth, and they are committed to using those two vehicles to be involved with and to help shape the lives of the children of St. Cecilia. The other news is that the government runs summer and Easter camps for children where sports and music are taught. And that the new netball complex on Government Road is up and running.
Officially the government proclaims a responsibility to continue to preserve and to nurture the traditionalculture and folklore of the island. Which is how you get the newspaper photos of the annual kite-making workshop and the annual calypso workshop and why both things matter. A major festival is held each year as well, at Christmas and sponsored by the government, which virtually shuts down the island for a week—a week of clowns and masquerades and parades and music.
When you read the official line about the ongoing quality of life for the people of St. Cecilia, there is a great deal of talk about civility and harmony and gentleness and hospitality. And the talk and the reality bear a striking resemblance to each other.
We started to notice it at the first meal we ever ate in St. Cecilia.
The first night we were here, we went to Domingo’s to eat supper.
Domingo’s is off the main road two or three hundred yards, tucked in the trees along the beach. It has a raisedplywood dance floor and several thatched-roofed huts with lights in the top that hang down over the picnic tables. The music is good—Western rock’n’roll mostly with some calypso mixed in. At Domingo’s we eat ribs and lobster and grilled chicken and salad. They serve it all on big platters you keep passing back and forth.
Domingo was actually born and raised on a nearby island. He was a caddy at the golf course there and cooked sometimes in the clubhouse grill. When he was twenty, he came across the straits to take a job cooking lunch on the beach for
It is a book published by the part of the government that is trying to encourage investment from the West. The book has things about history and culture and government and all manner of things, but it is really about helping to develop the economy.
I can tell what kind of book it is, because I used to write corporate communications and advertising for a living. I never wrote a book for a country before, but Ihave written them for corporations, colleges, and hospitals with larger populations and, in one case, a higher GNP. I have been around such books and the people who write them to know enough to have my salt shaker with me when I read them.
If you know how to read them, the books will tell you the things that really matter. You can discover the things about which the government is really proud. You find those things hidden between the lines about overseas investments and GNP and the information economy and all the rest.
And if you know how to read between the lines in the newspapers—something we newspaper people have spent a lifetime doing—you discover the things the people of the island care about the most.
If you read them together, the papers and the government information book, you begin to see other things as well.
One will tell you that economies in the developing world spend a higher percentage of their GNP on healthcare than do the industrialized nations. Another willtell you that the island is especially proud they added a baby warmer at the hospital last year. One points out they have a branch campus of a West Indian medical school here to train doctors to serve throughout the Caribbean and to provide help for the local health clinic. The other celebrates the donation of a dozen chairs to the same clinic so that people who come in now have a place to sit while they wait for one of the ten doctors who work their way through the islands throughout the year.
The official word is that the island’s leaders believe that music and sports are the two greatest influences on youth, and they are committed to using those two vehicles to be involved with and to help shape the lives of the children of St. Cecilia. The other news is that the government runs summer and Easter camps for children where sports and music are taught. And that the new netball complex on Government Road is up and running.
Officially the government proclaims a responsibility to continue to preserve and to nurture the traditionalculture and folklore of the island. Which is how you get the newspaper photos of the annual kite-making workshop and the annual calypso workshop and why both things matter. A major festival is held each year as well, at Christmas and sponsored by the government, which virtually shuts down the island for a week—a week of clowns and masquerades and parades and music.
When you read the official line about the ongoing quality of life for the people of St. Cecilia, there is a great deal of talk about civility and harmony and gentleness and hospitality. And the talk and the reality bear a striking resemblance to each other.
We started to notice it at the first meal we ever ate in St. Cecilia.
The first night we were here, we went to Domingo’s to eat supper.
Domingo’s is off the main road two or three hundred yards, tucked in the trees along the beach. It has a raisedplywood dance floor and several thatched-roofed huts with lights in the top that hang down over the picnic tables. The music is good—Western rock’n’roll mostly with some calypso mixed in. At Domingo’s we eat ribs and lobster and grilled chicken and salad. They serve it all on big platters you keep passing back and forth.
Domingo was actually born and raised on a nearby island. He was a caddy at the golf course there and cooked sometimes in the clubhouse grill. When he was twenty, he came across the straits to take a job cooking lunch on the beach for
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