15th October 2011
A Rally With Something to Celebrate

They milled around, jostling each other for space, filling completely - and even to overflowing - the vast open space where they had assembled. And they all wore tee-shirts ... one wondered whence came the funds to purchase and print so many tee-shirts. Some waved flags - thousands and thousands of flags fluttered above the heads of the multitude; and even more sported brightly - coloured “rags”, giving the throng the appearance of one gigantic, throbbing, single monstrous entity.
Music blared from mountains of stacked loudspeakers, belting out a variety of music styles, all fitting the occasion. There was reggae: “Don’t worry about a thing,” Bob Marley insisted, while Frank Sinatra’s throaty voice added a slow sentimental touch: “I’ve got you under my skin,” he crooned; and to liven the mood, Kitchener entreated, “Give me the boom-boom, Audrey”, while other artistes kept up the insistent encouragement to “Get on bad, whine it up, wuk it up,” etc.
All appropriate music, each edition greeted by cheers from the hundreds of thousands of throats ... of the countless HIV/AIDS viruses who had congregated here on this last Sunday before general elections.
“What a day, what a gathering!” exclaimed one tall, bald-headed virus (call him Vibert; these viruses all have names beginning with the letter “V” ... it’s a cultural thing) to his neighbour, a short, fat, potbellied fellow.
“What a campaign!” agreed Vittorio (this guy had Italian blood in him - he had come to St. Lucia via an Italian tourist). “It’s a pity that it’s lasted a mere three weeks; and that it only happens once every five years or so. These mass-hysteria happenings, which have people, especially young people, drinking and letting themselves go wild, are the very best times for us. It’s drink, sex; drink, sex; drink,, sex. The perfect breeding ground.”
“Yeah,” beamed an exultant Vibert, ‘but don’t worry; even if elections come along only once every five years, there are always other grand opportunities, like Carnival, Assou Square, Jounen kweyol ... this country never ceases to come up with occasions where the people can get bombed out of their skulls and grab any and every opportunity to have indiscriminate, unprotected sex.
“And you know where we’re most lucky? In the fact that, once the habit of “not worrying about a thing” has taken root, the fools don’t even have to wait for a special occasion to indulge ... it’s weekend after weekend, in some cases, day after day. Why do you think this region, the Caribbean, now ranks second only to Africa, in having the highest per capita rate of us in the world?”
“Dumb,” Vittorio raised his drink in a silent, thankful toast to the stupidity of an unheeding population, “St. Lucians are just so gloriously dumb. Why do you think I came to live here? Because in my native Italy, like in just about all the smarter, “more-developed’ countries, our kind seems to be on the way out. The rate of infection is steadily dropping. As a matter of fact, I fear there will soon be nobody over there for me to phone, or e- mail ... the family’s disappearing. Here however, in hardly any time at all, my wife and I have spawned a family of sixty million children, five hundred million grandkids, and we can’t even count the number of greatgrands. St. Lucia’s truly ‘simply the best’.”