Bajan Lions & 4-H Club volunteers clean beach. That’s EXACTLY what this rock needs!

There might be hope yet!

by passin thru

Talk, talk, talk is mostly all you get ’bout this place. I’ve been guilty of it too. “Why doesn’t somebody do something about (fill in problem here)?”

Part of the problem is an attitude of “Guvment do it”, and truth be known Bajans have been told for generations that government is a solution to everything. Didn’t bother to have insurance for that house of yours that burned down? No problem – guvment repair it. Woman has four children by seven different men and can’t find a place to live? No problem – guvment find you a place.

That kind of thing nurtures an expectation of cradle to grave service and problem solving by the government, but we’ve run out of money, and in truth sometimes guvment isn’t much good for anything practical.

Now look here in the Advocate and there’s some children cleaning up Silver Sands Beach – for Bajans and for the tourists. Lions Club prey on unsightly seaweed, issue rally cry

Wonderful, wonderful, wonderful. Thank you to Ranica Worrell, Akera Walcott, Denico Trotman and Bryan Haynes!

Could we do this every three months country wide?

Think about that. Our beaches could once again be the best in the world.

Leaders, please step forward. I’ll give four mornings a year on a national clean-up.

How about you?

(Thanks to the Barbados Advocate for the picture.)

Time for the Barbados Revegetation and Restoration Act

by Born B’badian

Bajans used to have big mouths, and gossip would spread faster than lightning.  It worked to help keep people straight, cause nobody wanted to be known as a crook or a thief. But reputations dont matter anymore in Bim. Furthermore, Bajans so busy buying and building bigass houses they can’t afford to furnish properly, and bussing their behinds to pay for, that they do not pay attention to what is going on in the country.

Bajans were never victims like I see now. They were always quick to open they mouth and cuss you out or land somebody a blow longside their head for doing them wrong. But now, the process has changed where people putting well known fall down drunks to run the country and crooked lawyers to handle the money matters of the country. The old people who sweat in the canefields to make Barbados a good place to live must be ready to jump out the grave with a fresh tamarind rod to beat everybody behind.

The people in Bim who still living sweet, are the ones who fix their little house good, and still have money in their pocket. They still planting a little kitchen garden and some fruit trees, instead of wasting precious land with front lawn. It is a sin to be importing vegetables and fruit, even seasonings from other islands while only grass growing on a big patch of land, taking up water, and keeping the place hotter than the devil’s hell.

Bajan’s got to stop letting foreigners buy their land, its the only thing we really own. People can’t go to Singapore and do this. Errol Barrow, God rest his soul, tried to base Barbados off of Singapore, but the current corrupt in power let toutmebackIlah samcouche and the duppy, get citizenship, buy land and do whatever they want on the island. Of course, bajan’s vote them in like loyal beggars blinded by cornbeef politics.  Ain’t no community spirit anymore, cause everybody lockup in their big house hiding that they eating saltfish and breadfruit and can’t pay the bills, or thiefing and whoring to pay them bills.

Bridgetown Careenage and Harbour beautiful… but deadly to Sea Turtles

Honey Bea III refuses to answer accusation of fishing for turtles

Contributed by BFP reader CJB

The Careenage and Harbour used to be a garbage strewn muddy dump. They have spent years cleaning it up and landscaping the surrounds. They have even restored the lift bridge to working order. However now that the area has been cleaned up and the water is far less murky (polluted?) turtles have started to appear, largely attracted by the free food from the deep-sea fishing boats moored there.

Unfortunately some of the deep-sea fishing vessels are now also trying to catch the turtles with rod, line and hook. The boat we saw was Honey Bee III. (Editor’s note: I think he means Honey Bea III)

They had a rope over the side with what looked like the entrails of a large fish at the end of it – two Hawksbill turtles were attempting to get bits off it. One was an adult, another a juvenile. However there was another conventional fishing rod and line with hook also dangling in the water. It was baited with fish – quite why it was there is a moot point. It was this that the adult turtle got caught on – obviously attracted to the bait on the hook. There was quite a struggle by one of the guys to ‘land’ it and the rod bent right down. Eventually the turtle surfaced and its head broke the water – my photo in hi-res clearly shows the line from the rod to the hook in its beak.

Then the line snapped and the turtles (both) swam off. The two staff carried on gutting a barracuda as though nothing had happened. The whole incident also witnessed by a number of tourists. 

Daughters of the Niger Delta “The oil has spoiled everything for us…”

BFP has been invited to see this documentary on Saturday March 8th. We’ll let you know what we think. Here is a description from the film’s website:

Daughters of the Niger Delta
Documentary (55:30 min)

Daughters of the Niger Delta is an intimate film portrait of three everyday heroines who manage to make ends meet against all odds. As their personal stories unfold, we come to see that the widely ignored environmental pollution in their backyard is not the only human rights issue affecting their lives.

The Stories

The film radically differs from the usual media reports about oil outputs, conflict, and kidnapping. It gives a taste of everyday life in the Niger Delta through the eyes of three ordinary women: Hannah, Naomi & Rebecca. Their struggle to survive in the delta’s beautiful but pollution-marred wetlands confronts us with the human impact of corporate irresponsibility, gender injustice, and failing government service delivery.

The stories of Hannah, Naomi, and Rebecca are sobering as well as uplifting. They shed light on day-to-day injustices that we rarely hear about in the news. But they also highlight women’s strength and resilience. Despite the hardship affecting their lives, the filmed women are determined to give their children a better future. Women may be the best captains to navigate the Niger Delta out of its troubled waters – if only they were given the chance.

Women’s Voices

It’s time to listen to women’s voices. Their priorities are relevant not only for the Niger Delta, but also for other parts of Nigeria that currently are marred by violence and social unrest. Women’s experiences can enrich the policy discourse – if only we are willing to listen.

Film website: Daughters of the Niger Delta

Bajan Dreamers heading for the Antarctic! (with a little help from their friends)

Bajan 17 year-olds Mickell Als and Shanice Holder have a dream: visit the Antarctic in 2015 while working to protect the environment.

Both have already been hard at work for years with various environmental and community projects on the rock – and now that they have been selected to be team members on the International Antarctic Expedition (IAE) 2015, all they need is a little help along the way. Cash, that is.

World Electronics in the Bridge Street Mall signed on as their first corporate sponsor, but Mickell and Shanice know it’s going to take more work to raise their mission profile and convince fellow Bajans that theirs is a worthwhile project. We at BFP are convinced that the project will benefit the environment, Barbados and the two young people so we’re on board to help them as we can.

BFP pledges to do regular stories about their project and progress and we’ll also publish some articles from their BajanDreamers blog. And yes, we’ll also do what we can to publicize their other sponsors like World Electronics (who are selling the new BlackBerrys Q10 & Z10 unlocked, for the lowest price we could find.)

Good luck to these two fine young people and… Keep working hard at your goal!

Barbadians should shake and fold!

The popular adoption of small ideas can lead to big changes. Here’s one from the TED Talks.

Free market and science drive Apes Hill Club’s choice of grass

Barbados Free Press has been kicking ’bout hey for over seven years and that is a long time in the blog world to post every day and build credibility with the search engines like Google and Yahoo!. Readership goes up and down with the news stories and when a big event happens we receive tens of thousands of visitors a day. Our best day ever was 44,087 visitors and just last week we did alright when some discussion about Harlequin was flying and 33,669 visitors stopped by.

Those numbers aren’t much compared with the big blogs that drive that kind of traffic and better every day, but we still do 3 million visitors a year at BFP and that’s not bad for a little nothing blog run by a bunch of drunks and the occasional unemployed aircraft riveter. (Anybody want to buy the world’s best set of bucking bars and dimplers – give me a shout! And when I say “the world’s best set” I mean it. It includes some wildly customized bucking bars and cutters that you didn’t even know you needed until you use them. I shoulda patented them a long time ago but it’s too late now.)

Some press release agents think Barbados Free Press is a real newspaper. Huh?

Some people mistake us for a real newspaper (or maybe they don’t) and we receive a couple of dozen press releases a week about anything and everything. Most are boring product announcements but today we see one about a type of grass that does exceptionally well in the Barbados and similar climes. I never considered it before but the press release has me thinking about how a good drought-resistant grass could save big money for a golf course over a few years. Water is scarce and expensive in Bim, so the choice of grass for any type of space should be a carefully considered decision.

Apes Hill Club Nursery is the licensed producer of this Zoysia sod in Barbados. That probably means it’s expensive… but how much water will you save over the years by using this type?

Robert

BARBADOS — Bladerunner Farms, the world’s largest privately owned zoysiagrass research and development facility, is proud to announce that Apes Hill Club Nursery, a licensed producer of JaMur Zoysia on the Caribbean Island of Barbados, now has this environmentally friendly turfgrass available for harvest.

The wholesale Apes Hill Club Nursery grows 15-acres of JaMur Zoysia for harvest as sod, along with some 50,000 plants, that are sold to commercial landscapers, land developers and homeowners on the island of Barbados. Ed Paskins, CGCS, is the golf course superintendent at the neighboring Apes Hill Club golf club and was instrumental in developing the Apes Hill Club Nursery.

Before planting the sod farm at Apes Hill Club Nursery, Paskins visited the Poteet, Texas, research facility of Bladerunner Farms to see JaMur Zoysiagrass in a real-world situation. That visit helped him decide to license JaMur Zoysia for use in Barbados.

“You need to know that you’re getting quality and that the person is going to stand beside it. I think that because Bladerunner Farms is a family business and the owner, David Doguet, was willing to put his reputation on the line for the grass was extremely important,” Paskins said.

…continue reading this article at WorldGolf