A Progenitorial Tribute:

On the 30th November 2014 Barbados celebrates 48 years as a durably stable, democratic, immensely well-educated – the country has a truly impressive 100% adult literacy rate, which is recurrently confirmed by UNESCO and, as a result, proudly puts it among the top five nations globally in this educational stratosphere of the truly excellent.

Education in Barbados is statutorily but welcomingly by all Bajans compulsorily universal as well as absolutely and legally free – namely that it’s fully state funded at all levels from all pre-school stages, including kindergarten, to higher educational and postgraduate university studies by consensual parliamentary agreement as well as every Barbadian government that assumes power – regardless of its general and overall political ideology - to all those who are of Barbadian heritage and residing on the island, irrespective of where in the world they were born or actually grew up.

Significantly, too, with a phenomenal and comprehensively universal health care system that’s likewise funded by the state at the behest of the government in office and completely free to all those in need of its services at the point of entry and throughout their lifetime, Barbados is truly blessed with an enormously healthy population across the board of its inhabitants, and along with Japan proudly boasts among its physically fit and mentally active populace the encouraging and noble distinction of having in its midst the greatest living and ongoing number of centenarians anywhere in the world. Crucially as well the average life expectancy relative to Barbadians of both genders is an impressive 77 years.

And quite interestingly for a country that’s only 21 miles long and 14 and a half miles wide and with a domestic population of 280,000 souls residing there, Barbados in terms of its national GDP measurement ranks among the top 50 wealthiest nations in the world.

Characteristically a nation of very prudent, economic-wise and exceptionally thrifty people who continue, as they’ve always historically done, to live well within their financial means, Barbados’ exalted and global economic status doesn’t in the least surprise any Bajan of either gender or, for that matter, the equally enlightened outsider who is fully cognisant of Barbados’ overall history.

For it was Barbados’ money derived from sugar, molasses and rum created by enslaved Black Barbadian labour and of which England – there was no United Kingdom then as the union with Scotland hadn’t even been conceived let alone brought to fruition – had an absolute global monopoly that made England the prominent country it became and put the Great in Britain. Since Barbados was its most valuable colony that funded the English Industrial Revolution as well as other significant financial, political and social developments in this previously off-shore European backwater called England.

A state of affairs that remarkably catapulted England, and subsequently what would become the United Kingdom, into the global superpower and empire that both jointly became, and remained so until their demise in the middle and latter halves of the 20th Century. A period of time, too, at the outset when Barbados wasn’t only England and the UK’s most prized asset but also their wealthiest colony!

And therefore against that enthralling and memorable backdrop, and additionally for all the many other wonderful things that you’ve done over the years and still carry on doing for your eternally grateful sons and daughters, this immensely proud and hugely thankful Bajan son of yours most wholeheartedly wish you the heartiest of congratulations on the attainment and commemoration of the 48th anniversary year of your independence concomitant with your richly deserved status as a sovereign state, attendant with all the conceivable best wishes, in every regard, for your future. Most steadfastly, perpetually and loyally yours Stanley V. Collymore.

#Inspirational