All progress comes at a price. The peaceful boredom of an isolated fishing village or farming community must be surrendered if the locals want a road connecting them with someplace else. Next thing you know, one of the locals sells a patch of ground with a shed on it to a stranger, who fixes up the shed and rents it to weekend visitors. Another local hires himself and his boat out to the visitors and shows them the reef. The next thing you know, it’s happening all over. There’s no more boredom, but there’s no more peace either. The rent-money or the boat-hire pays for a motor for the well, or a bicycle, or a kerosene fridge- and the next thing you know, you don’t know what will be next.
Economic progress and social progress tend to come hand in hand. Were the good old days really as good as we remember them? The smaller the community, the less privacy, and that wasn’t always a good thing. I can recall listening to Loretta Lynn singing about love in a small town, on Loxley Banks’s Country Classics afternoons on Radio Cayman.
Tonight at nine we get married
Friends all say it's a shame and disgrace
That he's loved every woman in Jackson
But Jackson ain't a very big place.
Sometimes it was a yearning for a proper education that began the progress. The first school-teacher in a community was often the best-educated local parent; the children’s learning was limited by the teacher’s knowledge, but it was progress. The usual standby option of home-schooling might be chosen by parents whose knowledge was equal to that first teacher’s. Later, a trained teacher would assume the job. External exams would become available for children with the proper level of achievement.
Cayman’s educational system would have grown from that sort of beginning- as did my own home community’s. In the absence of a school, our mothers taught us the syllabuses set by the provincial authorities and mailed our homework exercises in for marking. A few families paid a neighbour to teach their kids. After a few years of this, the authorities responded to pleas for a qualified teacher. “Build a schoolhouse and guarantee twenty pupils and we will send you a teacher.” So our fathers built a one-room hut with wooden awnings and we got a teacher.
Exactly the same kind of progress occurred in the Cayman settlements that were too small even to be called villages. The pattern must have been common in the West Indies, as indeed it was everywhere. The settlements grew into villages, then small towns. From Barkers to Savannah is a middling-size town now, isn’t it? Will the Shetty Hospital and the SEZ and the new school help fill the gaps to North Side and East End, or will those two small towns always be separate? Will their residents resist the temptation to progress to something larger?
I looked up the last words of Loretta Lynn’s song on YouTube. Loxley, are you there? The good old days really weren’t quite as good as we remember.
Yes, Jackson is a mighty small town
Where gossips and rumors go round
But the gossips are the ones he turned down
And Jackson ain't a very big town...
Thursday, September 1, 2011
Sunday, August 21, 2011
The Price of Eggs (inflation in Cayman)
The world is in an economic mess. All the experts are telling us that, and I guess they should know. We haven’t experienced much of a mess in Cayman yet; ours is more of a minor inconvenience. Count the monster-SUVs on our roads and you’ll see how well off we are. However, we can get a glimpse of what the future might hold for us by taking note of what is happening in the US and Europe.
Statistical unemployment in some places is at levels not seen since the Great Depression. Cayman doesn’t have statistical unemployment yet; all we can say is that our chronic OVER-employment has shrunk a bit. The boys and girls at our government Economic Statistics Office (ESO) are much too far out of their depth to give us useful comparative figures- or even relevant ones. Well, ours is a small dependent territory, and we can’t expect anything better than the statistics we get.
The ESO hasn’t a clue how to allow for the doubling of the citizenship base following the mass Status grants. Nor can it cope with the sudden halving of the proportion of migrants in the workforce. The statistics that are published are largely meaningless, so our planning process has to operate “by guess and by God”. When local property development slowed down, the pool of construction workers shrank because of the expulsion of migrants. Unemployed citizens go on the dole and continue to spend money in the community; unemployed migrants (and their savings) are deported pretty much immediately. I’m not sure the ESO is even aware that we have over-employment.
All during the Great Depression of the 1930s, Cayman’s boot was on the other foot. Most men of working age (women were rarely employed outside the home) were overseas sending their savings back to their families. There was no domestic unemployment; there never is in a subsistence economy. So there is no valid comparison to be made between the circumstances of then and now. Statistically (as well as economically), we are in virgin territory.
Our MLAs and senior Civil Servants can therefore be forgiven for being clueless about how to govern in hard times- though not for being irresponsible, reckless and arrogant. Or for pretending they aren’t any of those things. If you don’t know what’s going on around you, for God’s sake be humble about it and seek help. Fizzing around like a fart in a bottle is not the way to solve our imminent economic problems.
All our Pension Funds may well fail to provide enough money for our individual retirements. MLAs and Civil Servants who retired on the “defined benefits” scheme (a percentage of salary, index-linked) don’t worry about that, because their pensions will come directly out of taxes and government borrowings. It’s everybody else who will be in trouble.
Except for senior executives in the tax-haven sector, everybody’s wages probably won’t retain their purchasing power, when the US Dollar falls in value against many of the things we consume. Meat, eggs, and most other foodstuffs will likely cost more dollars to buy in the future than they do now. Rent and the price of houses might require fewer dollars. Jamaican dollars might become cheaper, Euros and Canadian Dollars might become dearer. It’s a gamble!
If you’re worried about a devaluation of The Cayman Dollar, don’t. It is a coupon currency (look up “local currency” in Wikipedia), and will go up and down with the US Dollar. There would be no point in devaluing it. It could conceivably go up- but only if we were governed prudently, and we know there’s not much chance of that.
Statistical unemployment in some places is at levels not seen since the Great Depression. Cayman doesn’t have statistical unemployment yet; all we can say is that our chronic OVER-employment has shrunk a bit. The boys and girls at our government Economic Statistics Office (ESO) are much too far out of their depth to give us useful comparative figures- or even relevant ones. Well, ours is a small dependent territory, and we can’t expect anything better than the statistics we get.
The ESO hasn’t a clue how to allow for the doubling of the citizenship base following the mass Status grants. Nor can it cope with the sudden halving of the proportion of migrants in the workforce. The statistics that are published are largely meaningless, so our planning process has to operate “by guess and by God”. When local property development slowed down, the pool of construction workers shrank because of the expulsion of migrants. Unemployed citizens go on the dole and continue to spend money in the community; unemployed migrants (and their savings) are deported pretty much immediately. I’m not sure the ESO is even aware that we have over-employment.
All during the Great Depression of the 1930s, Cayman’s boot was on the other foot. Most men of working age (women were rarely employed outside the home) were overseas sending their savings back to their families. There was no domestic unemployment; there never is in a subsistence economy. So there is no valid comparison to be made between the circumstances of then and now. Statistically (as well as economically), we are in virgin territory.
Our MLAs and senior Civil Servants can therefore be forgiven for being clueless about how to govern in hard times- though not for being irresponsible, reckless and arrogant. Or for pretending they aren’t any of those things. If you don’t know what’s going on around you, for God’s sake be humble about it and seek help. Fizzing around like a fart in a bottle is not the way to solve our imminent economic problems.
All our Pension Funds may well fail to provide enough money for our individual retirements. MLAs and Civil Servants who retired on the “defined benefits” scheme (a percentage of salary, index-linked) don’t worry about that, because their pensions will come directly out of taxes and government borrowings. It’s everybody else who will be in trouble.
Except for senior executives in the tax-haven sector, everybody’s wages probably won’t retain their purchasing power, when the US Dollar falls in value against many of the things we consume. Meat, eggs, and most other foodstuffs will likely cost more dollars to buy in the future than they do now. Rent and the price of houses might require fewer dollars. Jamaican dollars might become cheaper, Euros and Canadian Dollars might become dearer. It’s a gamble!
If you’re worried about a devaluation of The Cayman Dollar, don’t. It is a coupon currency (look up “local currency” in Wikipedia), and will go up and down with the US Dollar. There would be no point in devaluing it. It could conceivably go up- but only if we were governed prudently, and we know there’s not much chance of that.
Saturday, August 13, 2011
The Silence Of The Dogs (after the hurricane)
More than any other time of year, Hurricane Season is when it's prudent to be on good terms with one’s neighbours. Most hurricanes pass Cayman by without disrupting our lives much. The electricity and water are only briefly lost, and one doesn’t need help from neighbours. Hurricane Ivan was different.
The secret of survival after a severe hurricane is to be independent, and not reliant on the neighbours at all. First, your roof has to stay on, and your walls, doors and windows have to stay whole. Cooking gear, water and tinned food are the only essentials, and cash. Pretty much everything else is a luxury. Cash in the bank is nice, if you have a bike to get there and back; cash in the house is better. After Ivan, we needed cash for the small army of Jamaican women who cleared our house of sludge from the sea-surge. And for William, who entered our lives as a passer-by who buried my wife’s dead cat; he ended up with a small fortune by being a handyman to all and sundry.
Work Permit? For all we knew he wasn’t even on the Island legally. In the emergency, government experimented with a free labour market for low-skilled migrants. For once in their miserable lives, all the Gestapo agents had something else to do besides harass hardworking Jamaicans and Latinos. If our politicians weren’t so blinded by their pro-slavery instincts, they’d have noticed how well the free labour market worked. Sigh.
We were lucky with rain, after Ivan. It allowed us all to fill up every container we could find- one lot for drinking, one for washing, and one for the toilet. Once or twice we raided a neighbour’s swimming pool for water to flush the loo, and once or twice we raided Smith Cove. But most of the time we had water to spare. Ah, the advantage of being brought up in a land short of water! We knew how to brush our teeth with a minimal amount of drinking water, and to wash our bodies in a cupful of water and save the run-off. There was a camaraderie in the neighbourhood. We shared mosquito coils and endless cups of tea, and thanked our stars for having enough cooking fuel among us.
Without a live cat, we ourselves didn’t have the extra burden of pets. Strange to tell, I don’t recall ever being kept awake at night by barking dogs in the weeks after Ivan. Our neighbours were responsible enough to keep their dogs quiet; that’s what neighbours should do, after all. Barking-dogs are the bane of my life, and I can’t be the only person in Cayman who hates being kept awake by them, or woken up by them. There is a strong whiff of sociopathy about people who allow their dogs to bark during the night or early morning. (Sociopaths are defined as people who don’t give a damn about other people.) I don’t blame the dogs. Dogs are social creatures, and get lonely when left alone for hours in a confined space. Indeed, there is a strong whiff of cruelty in doing that to one’s dogs. Humane Society, are you listening?
I don’t kill dogs, even barking-dogs. However, plenty of people do kill barking-dogs. You read about dogs being poisoned in their yards and beyond, and why else would they be killed except to shut them up? Poison might well account for the silence of the dogs after Ivan. If so, we can probably expect more of the same after the next hurricane. Responsible owners’ dogs will be okay: sociopaths’, perhaps not.
The secret of survival after a severe hurricane is to be independent, and not reliant on the neighbours at all. First, your roof has to stay on, and your walls, doors and windows have to stay whole. Cooking gear, water and tinned food are the only essentials, and cash. Pretty much everything else is a luxury. Cash in the bank is nice, if you have a bike to get there and back; cash in the house is better. After Ivan, we needed cash for the small army of Jamaican women who cleared our house of sludge from the sea-surge. And for William, who entered our lives as a passer-by who buried my wife’s dead cat; he ended up with a small fortune by being a handyman to all and sundry.
Work Permit? For all we knew he wasn’t even on the Island legally. In the emergency, government experimented with a free labour market for low-skilled migrants. For once in their miserable lives, all the Gestapo agents had something else to do besides harass hardworking Jamaicans and Latinos. If our politicians weren’t so blinded by their pro-slavery instincts, they’d have noticed how well the free labour market worked. Sigh.
We were lucky with rain, after Ivan. It allowed us all to fill up every container we could find- one lot for drinking, one for washing, and one for the toilet. Once or twice we raided a neighbour’s swimming pool for water to flush the loo, and once or twice we raided Smith Cove. But most of the time we had water to spare. Ah, the advantage of being brought up in a land short of water! We knew how to brush our teeth with a minimal amount of drinking water, and to wash our bodies in a cupful of water and save the run-off. There was a camaraderie in the neighbourhood. We shared mosquito coils and endless cups of tea, and thanked our stars for having enough cooking fuel among us.
Without a live cat, we ourselves didn’t have the extra burden of pets. Strange to tell, I don’t recall ever being kept awake at night by barking dogs in the weeks after Ivan. Our neighbours were responsible enough to keep their dogs quiet; that’s what neighbours should do, after all. Barking-dogs are the bane of my life, and I can’t be the only person in Cayman who hates being kept awake by them, or woken up by them. There is a strong whiff of sociopathy about people who allow their dogs to bark during the night or early morning. (Sociopaths are defined as people who don’t give a damn about other people.) I don’t blame the dogs. Dogs are social creatures, and get lonely when left alone for hours in a confined space. Indeed, there is a strong whiff of cruelty in doing that to one’s dogs. Humane Society, are you listening?
I don’t kill dogs, even barking-dogs. However, plenty of people do kill barking-dogs. You read about dogs being poisoned in their yards and beyond, and why else would they be killed except to shut them up? Poison might well account for the silence of the dogs after Ivan. If so, we can probably expect more of the same after the next hurricane. Responsible owners’ dogs will be okay: sociopaths’, perhaps not.
Friday, August 5, 2011
Draconian Laws (in ancient Athens)
Law-enforcement in Athens in the 7th Century BC was a shambles. Government was undemocratic and irresponsible. The city-state was home to a mixed populace of citizens, immigrants with Permanent Residence, and a caste of slaves and indentured migrant workers. Its rulers were drawn from an upper caste of hereditary citizens who used their wealth to cheat and exploit their subjects. Laws were uncertain, and their enforcement even more so. The ruling elite exempted its members from prosecution on an ad-hoc basis and for most offences, and invented ad-hoc laws to keep the lesser folk in their assigned places.
The situation was out of hand. In desperation, the rulers commissioned one of their number to give the community a written constitution and body of laws. The Commissioner (called Draco: it meant “dragon”, and was probably a nickname) began his task by identifying all the written and unwritten laws recognised and enforced by the rulers, and who those laws did and didn’t apply to. Since most of the laws favoured the ruling caste (slave-owners, businessmen and citizens) and disfavoured the Permanent Residents and slaves, etc, the laws Draco presented to the ruling Council were extremely harsh for 80-90% of the population – “Draconian”, in fact. The new body of laws, embodied in a draft new constitution, so shocked his peers that they ordered a reform of the whole legal system, law by law and line by line.
The Cayman of today is equally a community with laws written and unwritten, and a rule of law that is selective at best and wholly absent in some places. Our most influential citizens are exempted (at their option) from as many laws as their money can buy. Regarding corruption: here are two questions and sets of options to think about.
1) How much corruption do we have in Cayman? a) not much; b) too much; c) about average for the Caribbean.
2) How many people are sent to prison for corruption each year? a) none; b) probably none; c) none that we know of. (Note: this is not a scientific survey.)
The marl road has always (since I’ve lived here) pointed to the Police, Immigration and Planning bureaucracies as where most of the corruption occurs. That may be a terrible slander, but in the interest of transparency I must report what the marl road tells me. What are our law-enforcement agencies doing about it all? Well, we have an Anti-Corruption Commission, whose name seems to belie its real purpose, which is to do nothing. They say they have discovered nothing worth reporting. Hmmm. Either the crooks are devilishly cunning or the Commission is blowing smoke.
The Commission on Standards of Public Life is another do-nothing body fulfilling its secret purpose. The Human Rights Commission, another. Corruption usually involves human-rights abuses, and turning a blind eye to evident corruption is itself an abuse. Draco’s one-man Commission of 3,700 years ago, operating in the absence of a working constitution, did what all our over-manned and under-performing Commissions apparently can’t do. You or I could do more in a week than all the Commissions have done in eighteen months.
We honest folk are urged to respect the law, but how can we when so many crooks are- informally- licensed to break it. There’s not one person who is on the hook for corruption, at the present moment. Not one policeman on trial for perjury, not one Immigration Officer on trial for illegally hiring out his slaves (indentured migrant workers), not one Civil Servant on trial for accepting a bribe.
Instead, our law-enforcers harass and imprison kids for a spliff or two outside nightclubs. As a community, we judge ganja to be more of a danger to our values than corruption. What the hell is wrong with us? How did our priorities get so screwed up?
The situation was out of hand. In desperation, the rulers commissioned one of their number to give the community a written constitution and body of laws. The Commissioner (called Draco: it meant “dragon”, and was probably a nickname) began his task by identifying all the written and unwritten laws recognised and enforced by the rulers, and who those laws did and didn’t apply to. Since most of the laws favoured the ruling caste (slave-owners, businessmen and citizens) and disfavoured the Permanent Residents and slaves, etc, the laws Draco presented to the ruling Council were extremely harsh for 80-90% of the population – “Draconian”, in fact. The new body of laws, embodied in a draft new constitution, so shocked his peers that they ordered a reform of the whole legal system, law by law and line by line.
The Cayman of today is equally a community with laws written and unwritten, and a rule of law that is selective at best and wholly absent in some places. Our most influential citizens are exempted (at their option) from as many laws as their money can buy. Regarding corruption: here are two questions and sets of options to think about.
1) How much corruption do we have in Cayman? a) not much; b) too much; c) about average for the Caribbean.
2) How many people are sent to prison for corruption each year? a) none; b) probably none; c) none that we know of. (Note: this is not a scientific survey.)
The marl road has always (since I’ve lived here) pointed to the Police, Immigration and Planning bureaucracies as where most of the corruption occurs. That may be a terrible slander, but in the interest of transparency I must report what the marl road tells me. What are our law-enforcement agencies doing about it all? Well, we have an Anti-Corruption Commission, whose name seems to belie its real purpose, which is to do nothing. They say they have discovered nothing worth reporting. Hmmm. Either the crooks are devilishly cunning or the Commission is blowing smoke.
The Commission on Standards of Public Life is another do-nothing body fulfilling its secret purpose. The Human Rights Commission, another. Corruption usually involves human-rights abuses, and turning a blind eye to evident corruption is itself an abuse. Draco’s one-man Commission of 3,700 years ago, operating in the absence of a working constitution, did what all our over-manned and under-performing Commissions apparently can’t do. You or I could do more in a week than all the Commissions have done in eighteen months.
We honest folk are urged to respect the law, but how can we when so many crooks are- informally- licensed to break it. There’s not one person who is on the hook for corruption, at the present moment. Not one policeman on trial for perjury, not one Immigration Officer on trial for illegally hiring out his slaves (indentured migrant workers), not one Civil Servant on trial for accepting a bribe.
Instead, our law-enforcers harass and imprison kids for a spliff or two outside nightclubs. As a community, we judge ganja to be more of a danger to our values than corruption. What the hell is wrong with us? How did our priorities get so screwed up?
Wednesday, July 20, 2011
Crimes-Czar-Us (crime in Cayman)
I’ve been trying to think up a slogan for the proposed Office of the Coordinator of the three Islands’ Crime-Prevention and Law-Enforcement Agencies and Organisations. “Crimes Czar Us” is the best I can do. Any other offers? The Coordinator will need all the help he or she can get. My column in this weekend’s Cayman Net News expresses serious doubts that the Office would or could be effectual.
My blog of 8th July wondered if the RCIP was wholly relevant any more, and suggested it phase itself out of crime-prevention altogether. Concentrate on the old community-policing task of “thief-taker” (investigating crimes and catching suspects), and leave crime-prevention to private businesses and individuals. What might a Czar be able to do that the Commissioners apparently can’t do?
Cayman is a difficult place to police. There are umpteen ethnic minorities, none of them fully integrated with any of the others. Our languages include twenty or more dialects of English, Spanish as she is spoke in each of a dozen nations, Tagalog, Hindi, Urdu and Cantonese. The main religion is Christianity, with either Hinduism or Islam in the second rank - all with umpteen varieties and all competing with the intellectual force of post-religion heathenism.
The minorities don’t live in ghettoes, but each operates in a fairly tight self-protective circle- ethnic Caymanians most of all. Our government’s law-enforcement agencies view this hodge-podge as a single community; after all, how much internal division can a tiny community of 50,000 have? The agencies make no concessions to the differences in cultures: that’s no way to control crime or catch criminals.
Of the two chief law-enforcement agencies, Immigration is the more influential, and the one whose policies most threaten our peace and security. The Police are top dog in theory, but this is a case of the tail wagging the dog. Immigration has the power to save favoured criminals from trial and prison by deporting witnesses and complainants. In effect that gives it a veto over criminal prosecutions; you can’t get more influential than that!
The top priority of Crimes-Czar-Us (CCU) ought to be to exhibit a commitment to openness and transparency. If it doesn’t, it will be dismissed by the general public as unresponsive and unreliable, and perhaps irrelevant. Openness would help identify the exact nature of corruption within government, and might help focus the search for individuals involved in it.
Another CCU priority might be to question the prohibition of legal access to ganja, decades after proof of its failure. There is no logic in treating the drug more severely than alcohol. It’s a lot safer, after all: very few pot-heads beat up their wives and children while under the influence – unless of course they have been drinking as well. Legalise it and tax it, is my advice.
The toughest job on a CCU agenda would be to create a link with every ethnic minority. Reaching out to those groups would set the CCU on a collision course with an Immigration bureaucracy that is inherently hostile to them. Well, that can’t be helped. The RCIP has always gone out of its way to be chums with Immigration, and that has cost the Force every bit of trust it ever had.
Would a Crimes Czar be nimble enough to avoid the trap? We must hope so. If not, the whole project will founder. Then, it would be a futile and expensive gesture like the Tempura and Cialis operations. Cialis, was it? Some Celtic word. You know the one I mean…
My blog of 8th July wondered if the RCIP was wholly relevant any more, and suggested it phase itself out of crime-prevention altogether. Concentrate on the old community-policing task of “thief-taker” (investigating crimes and catching suspects), and leave crime-prevention to private businesses and individuals. What might a Czar be able to do that the Commissioners apparently can’t do?
Cayman is a difficult place to police. There are umpteen ethnic minorities, none of them fully integrated with any of the others. Our languages include twenty or more dialects of English, Spanish as she is spoke in each of a dozen nations, Tagalog, Hindi, Urdu and Cantonese. The main religion is Christianity, with either Hinduism or Islam in the second rank - all with umpteen varieties and all competing with the intellectual force of post-religion heathenism.
The minorities don’t live in ghettoes, but each operates in a fairly tight self-protective circle- ethnic Caymanians most of all. Our government’s law-enforcement agencies view this hodge-podge as a single community; after all, how much internal division can a tiny community of 50,000 have? The agencies make no concessions to the differences in cultures: that’s no way to control crime or catch criminals.
Of the two chief law-enforcement agencies, Immigration is the more influential, and the one whose policies most threaten our peace and security. The Police are top dog in theory, but this is a case of the tail wagging the dog. Immigration has the power to save favoured criminals from trial and prison by deporting witnesses and complainants. In effect that gives it a veto over criminal prosecutions; you can’t get more influential than that!
The top priority of Crimes-Czar-Us (CCU) ought to be to exhibit a commitment to openness and transparency. If it doesn’t, it will be dismissed by the general public as unresponsive and unreliable, and perhaps irrelevant. Openness would help identify the exact nature of corruption within government, and might help focus the search for individuals involved in it.
Another CCU priority might be to question the prohibition of legal access to ganja, decades after proof of its failure. There is no logic in treating the drug more severely than alcohol. It’s a lot safer, after all: very few pot-heads beat up their wives and children while under the influence – unless of course they have been drinking as well. Legalise it and tax it, is my advice.
The toughest job on a CCU agenda would be to create a link with every ethnic minority. Reaching out to those groups would set the CCU on a collision course with an Immigration bureaucracy that is inherently hostile to them. Well, that can’t be helped. The RCIP has always gone out of its way to be chums with Immigration, and that has cost the Force every bit of trust it ever had.
Would a Crimes Czar be nimble enough to avoid the trap? We must hope so. If not, the whole project will founder. Then, it would be a futile and expensive gesture like the Tempura and Cialis operations. Cialis, was it? Some Celtic word. You know the one I mean…
Friday, July 8, 2011
Thief-Takers (Cayman's Police Force)
Sad to say, the “Island Watch” proposal [see June archives, on the right] hasn’t generated enough interest to give it legs. There were a few positive comments on my CNS Viewpoint article, but the effect of noisy fireworks on sensitive pets was a much more popular topic.
Of course it’s still possible that the National Security Council will look the idea over, and that its Crime Prevention sub-Committee members will kick themselves for not thinking of it first. Crimestoppers Inc might one day volunteer to implement the program. Sherlock Holmes used to rely on his Baker Street Irregulars- street urchins who acted as his eyes and ears in the criminal underworld of 19th-Century London. Maybe our Police Force will one day see the virtue of having an army of cellphone-users doing the same sort of thing.
The biggest obstacle to recruiting the general public into the service of any anti-criminal venture is the need for anonymity. Last Thursday’s Caymanian Compass editorial related yet another example of why the Police aren’t trusted to keep their informants’ identities secret. One of their reporters’ confidential enquiries was leaked to the Premier. The leaker apparently couldn’t care less about the RCIP’s public image – or he or she was paid not to care. Who knows? When the Compass goes on record with a complaint, you know things are serious!
On Tuesday last week, only five people turned up for a public meeting called by the Police. It’s not the first such meeting to have had a disappointingly small audience. A word popped into my head while I was mulling this situation: the word was “irrelevance”. Many of us perceive the Police to be irrelevant- which in a way is worse than being perceived as untrustworthy. Our authorities all deplore the public’s apathy- but it’s not apathy, or lethargy, or not caring; it’s just a reluctance to waste our time. We’d rather stay home and watch TV. If Tuesday’s meeting was anything like the meeting at South Sound Community Hall a few months ago, it began with ninety minutes of boring speeches from the High Table. Why would we put ourselves through that again?
Are the Police aware of their perceived irrelevance? They must be. Unfortunately, they don’t know how to change the perception. God knows, they’ve been told often enough to shake up their image, but for them (stale joke alert) denial is just a river in Egypt. Actually, the whole role of the RCIP needs a serious re-think. We can’t go on the way we are.
Look, catching criminals is one thing and preventing crime is quite another. There are reported to be 650 private security guards in Cayman whose job it is to provide a presence that might discourage criminals from committing crimes where the guards are. I don’t want to make Stuart Bostock even richer than he already is, but maybe we need another 650 private guards. Maybe the Police should give up trying to prevent crime and concentrate on catching criminals.
Once upon a time, every parish in England had its specialist “thief-takers”. It was a natural enough transition from catching criminals to preventing their crimes, but maybe Cayman would be better off with the old system for a while. At the moment the general public (however unfair this might be) trusts neither the RCIP’s integrity nor its competence, and that has to change, asap. The RCIP needs a breather- some time and space to get on top of its issues. Giving more authority and responsibility to private security guards might be a practical, and temporary, compromise between an over-stretched Police Force and a vigilante society.
Of course it’s still possible that the National Security Council will look the idea over, and that its Crime Prevention sub-Committee members will kick themselves for not thinking of it first. Crimestoppers Inc might one day volunteer to implement the program. Sherlock Holmes used to rely on his Baker Street Irregulars- street urchins who acted as his eyes and ears in the criminal underworld of 19th-Century London. Maybe our Police Force will one day see the virtue of having an army of cellphone-users doing the same sort of thing.
The biggest obstacle to recruiting the general public into the service of any anti-criminal venture is the need for anonymity. Last Thursday’s Caymanian Compass editorial related yet another example of why the Police aren’t trusted to keep their informants’ identities secret. One of their reporters’ confidential enquiries was leaked to the Premier. The leaker apparently couldn’t care less about the RCIP’s public image – or he or she was paid not to care. Who knows? When the Compass goes on record with a complaint, you know things are serious!
On Tuesday last week, only five people turned up for a public meeting called by the Police. It’s not the first such meeting to have had a disappointingly small audience. A word popped into my head while I was mulling this situation: the word was “irrelevance”. Many of us perceive the Police to be irrelevant- which in a way is worse than being perceived as untrustworthy. Our authorities all deplore the public’s apathy- but it’s not apathy, or lethargy, or not caring; it’s just a reluctance to waste our time. We’d rather stay home and watch TV. If Tuesday’s meeting was anything like the meeting at South Sound Community Hall a few months ago, it began with ninety minutes of boring speeches from the High Table. Why would we put ourselves through that again?
Are the Police aware of their perceived irrelevance? They must be. Unfortunately, they don’t know how to change the perception. God knows, they’ve been told often enough to shake up their image, but for them (stale joke alert) denial is just a river in Egypt. Actually, the whole role of the RCIP needs a serious re-think. We can’t go on the way we are.
Look, catching criminals is one thing and preventing crime is quite another. There are reported to be 650 private security guards in Cayman whose job it is to provide a presence that might discourage criminals from committing crimes where the guards are. I don’t want to make Stuart Bostock even richer than he already is, but maybe we need another 650 private guards. Maybe the Police should give up trying to prevent crime and concentrate on catching criminals.
Once upon a time, every parish in England had its specialist “thief-takers”. It was a natural enough transition from catching criminals to preventing their crimes, but maybe Cayman would be better off with the old system for a while. At the moment the general public (however unfair this might be) trusts neither the RCIP’s integrity nor its competence, and that has to change, asap. The RCIP needs a breather- some time and space to get on top of its issues. Giving more authority and responsibility to private security guards might be a practical, and temporary, compromise between an over-stretched Police Force and a vigilante society.
Wednesday, June 29, 2011
Rolling Over (Cayman's expats)
How intriguing it is, that some of our not-in-power politicians have declared that the Rollover Policy has “served its purpose” and can be put back on the shelf for a while. What purpose did it serve, exactly? Well, it was a successful ethnic-cleansing exercise, that’s for sure.
A couple of thousand domestic servants and labourers were sent back to Jamaica despite having established domicile in Cayman. Some domiciled immigrants from other countries were also deported to their original homes - even some white people. Yes! Their removals provided handy cover for getting rid of lots of unskilled and unmoneyed black Jamaicans. Anti-Jamaican sentiment is the driving force behind most of our immigration “reforms”, isn’t it?
Most ethnic-cleansing exercises replace settled immigrants with newcomers, often transient migrants. Was that part of the purpose of Cayman’s Rollover? Presumably so. Quiet, law-abiding individuals and families with years or decades of residence in their established homes were replaced by persons of unknown quality. Most of the latter were good people too, but not all.
Immigration is always a risk. Every village and town in the world of our size can confirm Cayman’s experience with newcomers. The sensible thing to do with them is to encourage them to settle - to put down roots and think of themselves as belongers. The worst thing a host community can do is erect barriers to integration - to keep reminding them how unsuitable they are to hold any stake in the community’s future. “This is NOT your home, you bastards. Don’t even think about it.”
Presumably, the PPM Team is hoping that its Party’s anti-immigrant reputation will be forgotten by immigrant voters in the next elections. And maybe it will be - who knows? Somebody posted on the CNS website the other week, “A lepper [sic] doesn’t change his spots.” But there is a first time for everything. Maybe the PPM “lepper” can indeed change its spots. We shall see.
Its leaders have a wonderful chance to improve its image among immigrants (if they want to) by taking a stand in favour of the latest United Nations human-rights Convention. The ILO Convention on Domestic Workers was adopted on 16th June (two weeks ago), and of course it has great relevance for Cayman. Its contents are the stuff of nightmares for householders who exploit their migrant helpers - and for the politicians who support that exploitation.
The elimination of discrimination in respect of employment and occupation (Article 3) - BOO! Fair terms of employment (Article 6) - COMMUNISM! No exemption from overtime rules (Article 10) - HOWL! The same protection as other workers (Article 14) - SAVE US, JESUS!
Mind you, our authorities take no notice of any other human-rights Conventions, so why should this one be favoured? Our new Human Rights Commission is already too cowed by the politicians to even bring this new Convention to the public’s notice. Good God! How pathetic is that?
However, hypocrisy is the backbone of our local politics. Will somebody from the new-image PPM cross fingers behind his back and say something positive about the new Convention? Maybe welcome the remote possibility that migrant helpers will actually come under the full protection of the Labour Law one day? Come on, one of you chaps! Be a devil.
A couple of thousand domestic servants and labourers were sent back to Jamaica despite having established domicile in Cayman. Some domiciled immigrants from other countries were also deported to their original homes - even some white people. Yes! Their removals provided handy cover for getting rid of lots of unskilled and unmoneyed black Jamaicans. Anti-Jamaican sentiment is the driving force behind most of our immigration “reforms”, isn’t it?
Most ethnic-cleansing exercises replace settled immigrants with newcomers, often transient migrants. Was that part of the purpose of Cayman’s Rollover? Presumably so. Quiet, law-abiding individuals and families with years or decades of residence in their established homes were replaced by persons of unknown quality. Most of the latter were good people too, but not all.
Immigration is always a risk. Every village and town in the world of our size can confirm Cayman’s experience with newcomers. The sensible thing to do with them is to encourage them to settle - to put down roots and think of themselves as belongers. The worst thing a host community can do is erect barriers to integration - to keep reminding them how unsuitable they are to hold any stake in the community’s future. “This is NOT your home, you bastards. Don’t even think about it.”
Presumably, the PPM Team is hoping that its Party’s anti-immigrant reputation will be forgotten by immigrant voters in the next elections. And maybe it will be - who knows? Somebody posted on the CNS website the other week, “A lepper [sic] doesn’t change his spots.” But there is a first time for everything. Maybe the PPM “lepper” can indeed change its spots. We shall see.
Its leaders have a wonderful chance to improve its image among immigrants (if they want to) by taking a stand in favour of the latest United Nations human-rights Convention. The ILO Convention on Domestic Workers was adopted on 16th June (two weeks ago), and of course it has great relevance for Cayman. Its contents are the stuff of nightmares for householders who exploit their migrant helpers - and for the politicians who support that exploitation.
The elimination of discrimination in respect of employment and occupation (Article 3) - BOO! Fair terms of employment (Article 6) - COMMUNISM! No exemption from overtime rules (Article 10) - HOWL! The same protection as other workers (Article 14) - SAVE US, JESUS!
Mind you, our authorities take no notice of any other human-rights Conventions, so why should this one be favoured? Our new Human Rights Commission is already too cowed by the politicians to even bring this new Convention to the public’s notice. Good God! How pathetic is that?
However, hypocrisy is the backbone of our local politics. Will somebody from the new-image PPM cross fingers behind his back and say something positive about the new Convention? Maybe welcome the remote possibility that migrant helpers will actually come under the full protection of the Labour Law one day? Come on, one of you chaps! Be a devil.
Saturday, June 18, 2011
Island Watch (catching criminals)
The concept of a “neighbourhood watch” is well established in Cayman. A friend of mine has suggested extending the concept to an island-wide community-alert program: “The Island Watch”, using mobile phones and texting. SMS texts are already used by LIME to notify hundreds (thousands?) of subscribers - all at the same time - of special events.
The Police have said repeatedly that the active participation of the general public is essential in the fight against crime; combining the speed of mobile telecommunications with an island-wide “neighbourhood watch” might be very useful in this regard. The aim would be to mobilise IW members in the vicinity of a reported crime to observe and identify suspected burglars, robbers, muggers, attackers or drugs-sellers – and maybe catch them too, if that could be done safely.
At the moment, witnesses to crimes in progress can phone 9-1-1. The operators there first authenticate the calls as best they can, and then connect the callers to the appropriate unit of the Police. The caller receives no feedback. You make your call, and the Police take it from there at their own pace.
An Island Watch communications base would receive SMS messages from IW members reporting a crime in progress or shortly afterwards, and relay the messages first to the Police (or to 9-1-1, if that service can receive texts) and second to all IW members. The relaying could be virtually instantaneous, unless heavy monitoring or authentication were required: texts in, texts out, texts in, texts out. Photographs would be a bonus.
A question arises, relating to liability in respect of libel, in the event that a message carried the name or other identifiable description of an innocent person. Would some lawyer please advise on this?
The communications base could be provided by Crimestoppers (an independent volunteer committee), or the Chamber of Commerce, or one of our local telecom companies, or even one of the service clubs. (Not the 9-1-1 organisation, I think. Cayman doesn’t need to be adding to government services, at this stage of the game.) I know nothing about Twitter or how it operates; could IW open a Twitter account and give its members access to it? Answers by email, please.
Who might IW’s members be? All residents of Grand Cayman by default would be best, if the telecom companies would allow it. That might deter a lot of crime as well as help the Police identify and maybe catch those whom it didn’t deter. I’m not talking special constables, here, just plain old public-spirited residents of Grand Cayman.
Of course it’s one thing for people to receive incident-alerts and quite another for them to be pro-active in feeding information to the base. Would it be possible to guarantee their anonymity? Maybe not. Calls from cellphones are famously traceable. It would be a foolish expat security guard who put his name out there to be picked up by someone who resents his presence on the Island. An anonymous and untraceable denunciation to Immigration might have him deported in a flash.
Indeed, any expat without Status would be foolish to allow himself or herself to be identified in relation to any incident that might carry the risk of deportation. Is there a way around this problem, or would an Island Watch just have to get by with the citizenry alone?
Any reader with a constructive suggestion to make on this topic, please email it to barlow at candw dot ky. I will forward it to the Brains Trust. The more, the better. Updates will follow here, when there’s something worth reporting.
The Police have said repeatedly that the active participation of the general public is essential in the fight against crime; combining the speed of mobile telecommunications with an island-wide “neighbourhood watch” might be very useful in this regard. The aim would be to mobilise IW members in the vicinity of a reported crime to observe and identify suspected burglars, robbers, muggers, attackers or drugs-sellers – and maybe catch them too, if that could be done safely.
At the moment, witnesses to crimes in progress can phone 9-1-1. The operators there first authenticate the calls as best they can, and then connect the callers to the appropriate unit of the Police. The caller receives no feedback. You make your call, and the Police take it from there at their own pace.
An Island Watch communications base would receive SMS messages from IW members reporting a crime in progress or shortly afterwards, and relay the messages first to the Police (or to 9-1-1, if that service can receive texts) and second to all IW members. The relaying could be virtually instantaneous, unless heavy monitoring or authentication were required: texts in, texts out, texts in, texts out. Photographs would be a bonus.
A question arises, relating to liability in respect of libel, in the event that a message carried the name or other identifiable description of an innocent person. Would some lawyer please advise on this?
The communications base could be provided by Crimestoppers (an independent volunteer committee), or the Chamber of Commerce, or one of our local telecom companies, or even one of the service clubs. (Not the 9-1-1 organisation, I think. Cayman doesn’t need to be adding to government services, at this stage of the game.) I know nothing about Twitter or how it operates; could IW open a Twitter account and give its members access to it? Answers by email, please.
Who might IW’s members be? All residents of Grand Cayman by default would be best, if the telecom companies would allow it. That might deter a lot of crime as well as help the Police identify and maybe catch those whom it didn’t deter. I’m not talking special constables, here, just plain old public-spirited residents of Grand Cayman.
Of course it’s one thing for people to receive incident-alerts and quite another for them to be pro-active in feeding information to the base. Would it be possible to guarantee their anonymity? Maybe not. Calls from cellphones are famously traceable. It would be a foolish expat security guard who put his name out there to be picked up by someone who resents his presence on the Island. An anonymous and untraceable denunciation to Immigration might have him deported in a flash.
Indeed, any expat without Status would be foolish to allow himself or herself to be identified in relation to any incident that might carry the risk of deportation. Is there a way around this problem, or would an Island Watch just have to get by with the citizenry alone?
Any reader with a constructive suggestion to make on this topic, please email it to barlow at candw dot ky. I will forward it to the Brains Trust. The more, the better. Updates will follow here, when there’s something worth reporting.
Sunday, June 12, 2011
Absent Fathers (juvenile crime)
This week my column in Cayman Net News deplores our community’s failure to tackle the root causes of juvenile crime and ignorance. Generally speaking, the young wastrels are those who are raised by incompetent and/or irresponsible parents. Their mothers can’t cope with them financially, educationally or socially; their fathers often aren’t in the picture at all.
We tend to concentrate on the mothers more than the fathers. Well, these sweet-talking Caribbean men, you know; what can you do? They are what they are, and they do what they do, and the culture has been around since slavery times. And anyway, it’s up to the women to take care of birth-control, right? The men don’t care, and never will care. That’s just the way of the world.
Bob Dylan once wrote a cynical song in defence of male arrogance -
I ain't sayin' you treated me unkind
You coulda done better but I don't mind
You just kinda wasted my precious time
But don't think twice, it's all right*
He also wrote what must surely be the theme song of all bachelors -
But it ain’t me, babe
No, no, no, it ain’t me, babe
It ain’t me you’re lookin’ for, babe**
Middle-class morality requires that men who sire children take some responsibility for their upbringing. There is a comprehensive body of law relating to families and to parents’ duties to their children. In marriages, fathers and mothers are legally obliged to share those duties. Usually, the main burden falls on the mothers; that’s the way of the world, too. And, more often than not, it is the fathers who contribute most of the money needed to ensure that the children are properly prepared to cope with the world. When parents divorce, their responsibilities towards their children don’t cease. The justice system is there to ensure that both parents continue to contribute fair shares of the children’s care until they are old enough to care for themselves.
It is usually outside the middle-classes that the social problem exists of children with mothers who can’t cope financially, educationally or socially, and fathers who often aren’t in the picture at all. Those children are currently posing a very serious problem to our community here in Cayman. Many of them are running wild, and we don’t know what to do about them. The mothers are often working, instead of being at home caring for the needs of their children. The fathers are often uninvolved to the extent that they don’t even contribute money.
Oh, dear: these young girls! Surely they know how to stop babies coming, even if they don’t seem to know how to stop their boyfriends. It’s their own fault if they end up with four kids by four different men. Let them sort out their own mess.
But it’s not just their mess, is it? It’s the entire community’s mess. It’s our homes the out-of-control kids are burgling, and it’s we whom the kids are looking to rob, and it’s our kids whom those other kids are trying to get addicted to illegal drugs. So: if it’s our mess too, what are we doing about it? Not a lot, as far as I can tell. We (as a community) pay one of our bloated Civil Service empires to ensure they don’t starve, but that’s about it. There is only a token effort to make fathers pay for the maintenance of their children. The rest of the time we all sit around and kiss our teeth whenever somebody mentions how silly it is for young girls to get pregnant.
But why do we take it out on the children themselves? Surely they deserve better from us than that.
* Don't Think Twice, It's All Right Bob Dylan, 1962
**It Ain't Me, Babe Bob Dylan, 1964
We tend to concentrate on the mothers more than the fathers. Well, these sweet-talking Caribbean men, you know; what can you do? They are what they are, and they do what they do, and the culture has been around since slavery times. And anyway, it’s up to the women to take care of birth-control, right? The men don’t care, and never will care. That’s just the way of the world.
Bob Dylan once wrote a cynical song in defence of male arrogance -
I ain't sayin' you treated me unkind
You coulda done better but I don't mind
You just kinda wasted my precious time
But don't think twice, it's all right*
He also wrote what must surely be the theme song of all bachelors -
But it ain’t me, babe
No, no, no, it ain’t me, babe
It ain’t me you’re lookin’ for, babe**
Middle-class morality requires that men who sire children take some responsibility for their upbringing. There is a comprehensive body of law relating to families and to parents’ duties to their children. In marriages, fathers and mothers are legally obliged to share those duties. Usually, the main burden falls on the mothers; that’s the way of the world, too. And, more often than not, it is the fathers who contribute most of the money needed to ensure that the children are properly prepared to cope with the world. When parents divorce, their responsibilities towards their children don’t cease. The justice system is there to ensure that both parents continue to contribute fair shares of the children’s care until they are old enough to care for themselves.
It is usually outside the middle-classes that the social problem exists of children with mothers who can’t cope financially, educationally or socially, and fathers who often aren’t in the picture at all. Those children are currently posing a very serious problem to our community here in Cayman. Many of them are running wild, and we don’t know what to do about them. The mothers are often working, instead of being at home caring for the needs of their children. The fathers are often uninvolved to the extent that they don’t even contribute money.
Oh, dear: these young girls! Surely they know how to stop babies coming, even if they don’t seem to know how to stop their boyfriends. It’s their own fault if they end up with four kids by four different men. Let them sort out their own mess.
But it’s not just their mess, is it? It’s the entire community’s mess. It’s our homes the out-of-control kids are burgling, and it’s we whom the kids are looking to rob, and it’s our kids whom those other kids are trying to get addicted to illegal drugs. So: if it’s our mess too, what are we doing about it? Not a lot, as far as I can tell. We (as a community) pay one of our bloated Civil Service empires to ensure they don’t starve, but that’s about it. There is only a token effort to make fathers pay for the maintenance of their children. The rest of the time we all sit around and kiss our teeth whenever somebody mentions how silly it is for young girls to get pregnant.
But why do we take it out on the children themselves? Surely they deserve better from us than that.
* Don't Think Twice, It's All Right Bob Dylan, 1962
**It Ain't Me, Babe Bob Dylan, 1964
Friday, June 3, 2011
A Tourism Idea for the Brac (Cayman tourism)
It’s always puzzled me why so many people on the Brac want the place to become like Grand Cayman. “More hotels!” “More jet planes!” “A dock for cruise ships!” Maybe Brackers aren’t as laid-back as they pretend. Maybe they dream of getting among the big tourism dollars like GCM.
While Manager of the Chamber of Commerce I was once thrown out of the Director of Tourism’s office for suggesting that the Brac should aim to attract budget travellers by opening the Island to a Youth Hostel and camping ground. The reaction was hostile. Why should Brackers aim for anything less than Grand Cayman was achieving? Hmm... how has that strategy worked for them, these past 24 years?
The International Youth Hostel Association is still going strong, although overtaken now by generic backpackers’ hostels. In my travelling days, official IYHA hostels were spread over most of the world. In Europe only USSR, East Germany and Albania didn’t have any; Poland had hundreds. Some were fairly grand, some very simple; some were attached to fancy hotels. All were cheap.
I recall paying a pittance at one basic-but-comfortable place beside a lazy river in a small town in France. The hostel’s warden was also the town’s mayor; he admitted the town lost on the venture. “It’s a long-term investment”, he explained. “Of course we lose money on you. But when you’re older and in a good job, you might remember us kindly and want to come back with your family. Then, we’ll make a profit.” “I might not come back,” I said. “Maybe not, but most of you will.” He was full of confidence.
That’s what I had in mind for the Brac- a long-term investment in the form of a cheap hostel and camping ground, listed in every budget-travel book in the world, in forty languages. It was a big mistake for our Tourism man to rubbish the idea. Young backpackers in 1986 would be around fifty today- ready to come back with their families and rich enough to spend real money.
There are plenty of places where the idea has worked. In 1973 there were a hundred of us staying beside Kuta Beach in Bali, paying a dollar or two a night for simple rooms. Despite its fame as a hippy hangout, Kuta wasn’t much of a beach. Unless they’ve brought some clean white sand in since, it still isn’t. But now, there are 114 hotels listed, priced up to $200. The local tourism people knew what they were doing, back in 1973, and weren’t too proud or greedy.
As soon as we got back from Kuta to our home on an island near Fiji, Linda and I turned our backyard maids’ quarters into a simple, informal (and slightly illegal) hostel. We charged a buck a night (about $10 in today’s money) for a bed, toilet, cold water shower and basin, and no cooking facilities. The word spread gradually on the travellers’ grapevine. Hey, it was worth flying into Vila after all; there was a place that didn’t cost an arm and a leg. Before, Vila was not on the backpackers’ list of places to go.
Embarrassingly, the situation was getting out of hand by the time we left. One night we had two in the tiny room, six in tents, and three in our house. That’s when we got rumbled for doing business without a licence. “Come on! A buck a night is a hobby, not a business!” Well, okay. So ruled. Case dismissed!
Would the concept work on the Brac? I don’t see why not. It’s not as though anybody has a better plan.
While Manager of the Chamber of Commerce I was once thrown out of the Director of Tourism’s office for suggesting that the Brac should aim to attract budget travellers by opening the Island to a Youth Hostel and camping ground. The reaction was hostile. Why should Brackers aim for anything less than Grand Cayman was achieving? Hmm... how has that strategy worked for them, these past 24 years?
The International Youth Hostel Association is still going strong, although overtaken now by generic backpackers’ hostels. In my travelling days, official IYHA hostels were spread over most of the world. In Europe only USSR, East Germany and Albania didn’t have any; Poland had hundreds. Some were fairly grand, some very simple; some were attached to fancy hotels. All were cheap.
I recall paying a pittance at one basic-but-comfortable place beside a lazy river in a small town in France. The hostel’s warden was also the town’s mayor; he admitted the town lost on the venture. “It’s a long-term investment”, he explained. “Of course we lose money on you. But when you’re older and in a good job, you might remember us kindly and want to come back with your family. Then, we’ll make a profit.” “I might not come back,” I said. “Maybe not, but most of you will.” He was full of confidence.
That’s what I had in mind for the Brac- a long-term investment in the form of a cheap hostel and camping ground, listed in every budget-travel book in the world, in forty languages. It was a big mistake for our Tourism man to rubbish the idea. Young backpackers in 1986 would be around fifty today- ready to come back with their families and rich enough to spend real money.
There are plenty of places where the idea has worked. In 1973 there were a hundred of us staying beside Kuta Beach in Bali, paying a dollar or two a night for simple rooms. Despite its fame as a hippy hangout, Kuta wasn’t much of a beach. Unless they’ve brought some clean white sand in since, it still isn’t. But now, there are 114 hotels listed, priced up to $200. The local tourism people knew what they were doing, back in 1973, and weren’t too proud or greedy.
As soon as we got back from Kuta to our home on an island near Fiji, Linda and I turned our backyard maids’ quarters into a simple, informal (and slightly illegal) hostel. We charged a buck a night (about $10 in today’s money) for a bed, toilet, cold water shower and basin, and no cooking facilities. The word spread gradually on the travellers’ grapevine. Hey, it was worth flying into Vila after all; there was a place that didn’t cost an arm and a leg. Before, Vila was not on the backpackers’ list of places to go.
Embarrassingly, the situation was getting out of hand by the time we left. One night we had two in the tiny room, six in tents, and three in our house. That’s when we got rumbled for doing business without a licence. “Come on! A buck a night is a hobby, not a business!” Well, okay. So ruled. Case dismissed!
Would the concept work on the Brac? I don’t see why not. It’s not as though anybody has a better plan.
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