Too much…

…fatty, foreign foods
One of the things that struck your Eyewitness as he looked around his country on its 55th anniversary of “Independence” was the number of people who were clearly obese. Let’s call a spade a spade! Was this progress, he wondered? After all, at Independence we were told how exploited we’d been, with the implication being that we didn’t get to enjoy the good life as those white British imperialists did!
And the good life, to us, meant copious amounts of food and drink, which we imagined were consumed in the palatial quarters of the segregated housing of the Brits. Even the type of food we envied. The freshly-grown vegetables and ground provisions that we were allowed to grow and eat since the days of slavery were disparaged. We envied, and longed for, the foreign foods that were imported by the overlords to load their tables. Much of those foods were canned or pickled to preserve them; hence our craving for sardines, corned beef and corned mutton, condensed milk, corn and other vegetables – all out of cans!
Did you know that Burnham asked for, received, and consumed an entire can of condensed milk just hours before he died? Ironically, condensed milk had been banned by him! Anyhow, fifty-five years after Independence, we’re importing humungous quantities of vegetables and canned foods from up North. We still consider those foods as superior to our local fare. Can you imagine sitting down at the Marriott and wolfing down some tripe? Nah…it’s salmon and peas or linguine, or whatever.
For the masses, we’re being overrun with fast-food joints from the “developed world” that we emulate as the lodestone of our “sophistication”. To be independent is to eat “foreign”! Ain’t it wonderful? Well, not really! Cause we’re all getting fat! Trinidad is ahead of us in this area because of their oil wealth since the 1970s. Can you believe they’ve knocked off the US from their pedestal as the fattest set of people in the Western Hemisphere?
Yup…that’s true. And even without our oil revenues kicking in, we’re following closely in their tracks. Have you sat in one of those open eating areas in the shopping malls and looked at the people around you? Yup…they’re massive, aren’t they? But the problem is that the same developed countries we admire and emulate have discovered that eating all this fancy fried food and getting fat isn’t good for you. You become prime candidates for cardiac complications – already the number 1 cause of deaths here.
So, c’mon people…if you really want to enjoy being independent, being unhealthy and obese ain’t the way to do it.
So, it’s time we get physical and eat healthy!

…connectivity?
As your Eyewitness has been counterintuitively pointing out, there are some silver linings behind this COVID-19 dark cloud. It just goes to prove that the old saw “necessity is the mother of invention” is a fundamental axiom. What did the COVID-19 pandemic force us to do? Sequester ourselves from each other, that’s what! So only “essential services” are allowed.
But what about us making a living even when our services aren’t “essential” – like what your Eyewitness does! Well, come the need, comes the solution – the internet. Seen up to now as just connecting folks for fun, we now see it can connect us for work. How many of us are now working out of our homes?! It’s a Revolution, that’s what it is. And it doesn’t stop there.
Think of classrooms – whether for the schools or universities. They’re all plugged in to their students via smart rooms or smart phones etc via the internet. And there’s no going back to the past.
Welcome to the brave new world!

…BOGOs
You know the Buy-One-Get-One- Free ploy, don’t you? It’s a basic switch-and-bait move that makes you think you’re getting a bargain when you’re just parting with your money.
It’s also standard in politics!