When Debe went quiet

THE EDITOR: On Thursday I drove down to the Debe Market and the usual hustle and bustle were nowhere to be seen. It seems that nature had taken its toll at this time of joy and merriment, people driven to despair in losing what would have been the means such joy and now enmeshed in the drudgery of cleaning and sanitising when normally the bells would be jingling in the wind and the lights flickering in the dark country night. I feel especially for the children whose natural propensity for fun and games would have been replaced by the loneliness of a cold corner and the sweet aroma of black cake and ponce de crème by the rancid smell of still lingering floodwaters.

I don’t know why this is their lot while others could be clinking glasses in a better place with their tuxedos and long dresses amidst the polish and glitter in stark contrast to the guy wading through the dirty water up to his waist in his living room or the water making a mockery of another’s tall boots now filled to the brim and overflowing as he sits on a chair in his kitchen with a fatally resigned look. I can’t explain their fate. Maybe for many in this part of the country it is perhaps a matter of karmic destiny stemming from their own religious ideology for some wrong committed somewhere, somehow, or perhaps they are the unhappy victims of the abuse of the land out of their own indifference or negligence or by state agencies not performing their roles, or are on the receiving end of the ire of nature itself wreaking havoc because of mankind’s perennial abuse, I cannot tell.

Of those on the opposite side of the fence in official circles who are able to wine and dine oblivious to the contradiction of the suffering of those whom they are expected to serve, I won’t really begrudge them. Maybe it is the domain of the politician to be so privileged, to feel vindicated that it is for national pride even as a huge sum is lavished on something that will only be used minimally, if at all, while others go hungry with the crumbs meted out to them.

Where is that “even handed justice" that Shakespeare spoke about in Macbeth that temporarily dissuaded a would-be murderer from his intent? Maybe such is for the books and not for the way in the real world.

DR ERROL BENJAMIN

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