Orville Taylor, Contributor"Sa ka fet?" That is how they ask, "How are you?" in St. Lucia. In fact, it more accurately translates as, "What a gwaan?" or "Whaapn?" It is a grass roots expression which goes to the very heart of the nation's consciousness and identity.
All St. Lucians who understand themselves and embrace their identity speak and understand Creole.
St. Lucia is one of the most beautiful countries in CARICOM and has many things in common with Jamaica. Most obvious is that it is a dual society characterised by two sharply different cultures.
On the one hand, there is a Euro-American upper middle urban or urbane class. As with their Jamaican counterparts, they are not necessarily physically white or light brown, although they mostly are. Rather, the 'top' people in society are culturally 'high-brown' Afro-Saxons, sharply contrasted with the rural folk.
Most notable is the use of language. The island, nicknamed 'The Helen of the West' changed hands between the French and English 13 times between the 1600s and 1700s before finally settling with the British for good in 1814 for the 14th time. As a result, the masses speak a creole (Kweyol) or patois, which has the same West African type structure as Jamaican 'patwa', but the vocabulary is French-based.
Thus, both languages are different and mutually unintelligible. However, like patois, Kweyol is the language of the masses and many hypocrites in the upper and middle classes pretend not to understand or speak it, or do so in a condescending way just as some Jamaican 'intellectuals' do. Therefore, they speak the official language, the Queen's English.
Grass-roots people
Being less urbanised than Jamaica and smaller, the majority of its grass-roots people are rural types who, given the small size of St. Lucia, reside only a few kilometres outside of the capital, Castries. However, although it takes only an hour to reach deep country such as Micoud, the banana capital of the Caribbean, both towns are worlds apart. Compare Golden Grove and Gray's Inn with Kingston and you will understand it better.
It's a country where people adore their national dish of saltfish and green figs (bananas), coco tea (country chocolate), coupay (toto) and float (fried dumpling) - the affinity to Jamaica is clear. They even have a regular Friday night street dance in Gros Islet. When compared to the Jamaican ones they quickly retort, "Pa sa, pa sa!"(Not that, not that!)
St. Lucia is both a progressive country with a former prime minister, who was big in CARICOM and keen on taking it firmly into the 21st century global community and very traditional. Its citizens are firmly patriotic and hate intrusions on their identity. Under the World Trade Organisation (WTO) ruling in 1997, thousands of banana farmers were eliminated and unemployment shot up.
The same year, attorney and intellectual, Dr. Kenny Anthony, won a landslide victory for his St. Lucia Labour Party (SLP), defeating incumbent Prime Minister Vaughn Lewis of the United Workers' Party (UWP). Lewis had succeeded retired party founder, lawyer and banana farmer, Sir John Compton, in 1996, and thus had one of the shortest stints of any 'inherited' prime ministers in the Caribbean.
Compton, at the time in his early 70s, had kept the public guessing as to his retirement date for years, much as P.J. Patterson had done since 2002. The image of a party leader and prime minister, who stayed too long and then passed on the baton a year before elections is too tempting to ignore. It is even more intriguing that 'Lucretia' is often shortened to 'Lucia.' Thus, the famous 16th century personality, Lucretia Borgia, daughter of Pope Alexander VI, is sometimes penned as Lucia Borgia.
Anyway, Anthony performed reasonably well as prime minister. He kept his eye on the processes of regionalisation and globalisation. Under his watch, the economy grew and all macro-economic variables improved. This includes unemployment. However, unemployment for youths from age 18 to 25 is 37 per cent. This trend is very similar to the Jamaican data which, despite a nine per cent unemployment figure, have more than 30 per cent of young males jobless.
Most religious
It is, therefore, easy to understand that as in Jamaica they have increasing homicide statistics. Yet, ironically, it is one of the most religious countries in CARICOM. Indeed, the Church is so big that St. Lucia has a Ministry of Ecclesiastic Affairs. Doesn't Jamaica have one of the highest concentrations of churches in the world? Some mischievous researchers, who do not understand causality, could suggest that godliness is killing us both.
Nonetheless, Compton de-fossilised, re-took the reins of the UWP and devastated the SLP, last week, because, despite the economic growth and all other signs of progress, it lost sight of the public. Although Compton is a lawyer and very educated, he is a man of the soil and knows how to connect.
The lesson to be learnt from St. Lucia is that the people cannot be taken for granted. Even when a government thinks or says that it is doing things for the people or the poor, it must do so while making them feel that they count. Many intellectuals keep their head in the air when their ears should be on the ground.
Even as we speak, there is a tree in rural St. Lucia called the massav tree. Why? Because a foreigner asked a native what was its name and he responded, "Ma sav!" (Mi no know!).
But the uninformed European totally misunderstood. By the way, is there a plant called 'minonosah' in Jamaica? Rumour has it that it grows in a Whitehouse and is secretly fertilised in a Dutch pot. Try figure it out!
Dr. Orville Taylor is senior lecturer in the Department of Sociology, Psychology and Social Work at the UWI, Mona.
