Marcia Laurent

Six debutants from abroad and nobody in Roseau can afford the away ticket to see them.

Remember Barbados in 2021? Ceremony, fanfare, zero follow-through. This time it’s different. Watch.

Ох, конечно. Сначала пандусы в министерстве, потом “потом доделаем” на сайте, и через пять лет никто не вспомнит, кто это обещал.

Personal best of 18:57 in Jamaica and the federation’s congratulations, but where’s the funding, the track, the coaching? Who paid for the trip?

Shocker: young people showed up to a youth rally.

Official count 320k, organisers 500k. Who’s counting the rest?

Wow, a radio show airing on schedule. Breaking news, someone call the Pulitzer people.

Oh, wonderful. CARICOM “takes note.” Of course they do. Eight decades of the UN and the Caribbean’s job is to nod politely from the back row while the big chairs get passed around like a bottle of rum at a wedding nobody invited us to. We “note” things here. We’re very good at noting. Noting is practically a national sport, right after waiting for a bus that comes when it feels like it.

Oh, great, another PAHO press release telling us to “step up” mosquito control. Remember 2016, when Zika was going to be the end of us all and the fogging trucks barely left the depot? This time I’d like to see actual funding, not another round of warnings.

Progress in salary talks, payments “secured” for the bin men. So the rubbish gets collected only once someone threatens a strike. Congrats to the union for finally doing its job, I suppose.

Oh, another “400,000” headline, and we all know how this ends: a nice number, a shrug, and prices still climbing. This time it’s different, because the police count is nowhere near the union count, so everyone gets to pick their favourite fiction.

Nothing changes. Another vigil, another statement, then the next name goes in the same headline.

Фестиваль открылся, программа громкая, фото выложили. Скоро все забудут, кто на какой сцене стоял, а организаторы опять пообещают, что в следующем году будет “совсем другой уровень”.

Samples travel to Jamaica, results take months, and the body stays nameless in the meantime.

Who’s paying for this charming little roadshow?

Forty-eight years of independence and the diaspora now outnumbers the island. Wave the flag harder; maybe the ones who left will hear it.

I’ll believe this deployment when someone shows the basing orders, the cost, and who’s actually flying. Otherwise it’s a press release with wings.

It ends with paid-for Patriots rusting in a warehouse while Europe writes another cheque. Predictable, expensive, and nobody hangs.

Resilience is a lovely word for a bill nobody paid. Maria’s damage was pegged at 226 percent of GDP — more than two years of everything the island produced, gone in a night. Anniversary panels later, the same villages still wait on the same seawalls. “Preparedness” is what we call it when the money goes elsewhere. The season has weeks left. So does our patience.

Stage four before anyone admits it.