Boobys for vim, vigour and vitality

Daniel Thwaites, Contributor

AGAINST BETTER advice, I travelled to Denbigh with my father last week. It was ridiculously hot and many displays weren't encouraging. However, the whole trip was worth it because we had no sooner begun to walk around than a very pretty young lady approached earnestly and in good faith to introduce herself to someone she clearly recognised as a politician:

"Good day, Comrade Audley Shaw!" she said sweetly.

Ah yes! These are the moments I live for.

I am not sure if this is because the political parties have become indistinguishable, or because all high-colour people look alike. Remember that Mr Holness has declared the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) to be part-time socialist, which I am sure was an interesting revelation for many Labourites, including my uncle David. I can't wait for him to explain that one to me. Well, regarding environmental regulation and enforcement, the parties are, indeed, indistinguishable and uniformly horrible. We'll see if carving out a specific Cabinet portfolio will have an appreciable effect.

At Denbigh, I made my way to the Forestry Department's booth to converse with one of the officers. One would imagine that the Forestry Department is absorbed with the ongoing crisis caused by coal production, for which the forests are being systematically destroyed. Not really. The very nice lady told me that they have been meeting with community organisations, sensitising the public, working with NGO's. Translation: nutten nah gwaan. Or certainly nutten much nah gwaan.

To put it mildly, the meetings aren't working. There is no enforcement even worth mentioning, and the most casual glance at Jamaica's environmental situation shows a complete crisis of governance. The woodland of Hellshire Hills and other dry coastal forests will soon be as empty and dead as the coastal waters and reefs surrounding the island. As the Office of Utilities Regulation nits and picks and takes its time, the country is returning to Stone Age energy production.

All of this connects with another idea. Recently, I've heard multiple suggestions for spiking the water supply for various purposes. One friend thought we could level out the aggression and violence through some chemical compound, probably synthetic estrogen. Another felt that population growth should be arrested with saltpeter, reputed to suppress carnal urges. I think they're going in the wrong direction. I've already argued that if we laced the drinking water with Viagra it could solve the traffic problem. People will finally go home after work.

Well now, I've learned another reason to put Viagra in the water supply. Let's save the turtles. Apparently, one reason the species is being destroyed is because we natives keep raiding the nests, as we think turtle eggs put lead in the pencil.

This concern with vim, vigour and vitality is a national obsession. A few decades ago, the booby egg was thought to set you straight, so there was, naturally, a massive trade in booby eggs. The Cays surrounding Jamaica were mined extensively and the bird almost went extinct.

Booby eggs

Charles Hyatt describes buying booby eggs in When Mi Was a Bwoy:

"A booby egg was about the size of a small fowl egg an the shell did have freckles pon it an come from one a them likkle islands roun Jamaica that them call 'key' that fishermen always stop when them go to sea. One special set a key them that the bird choose fi mek them nes' pon is 'Booby Keys' an it get its name from the booby bird that live there certain times a the year. Them days nuhbody nah stop yuh from tek few hundred dozen fresh eggs from outa the nes' them when the season come for is nuff birds."

What Charlie doesn't record is that the booby egg was considered 'man-food', which is why the fishermen would gather a 'few hundred dozen'. He does record that the Government had to intervene, but by then the booby population was pretty much wiped out.

Christopher Tufton is a smart guy. But all this business about dressing up like a chef and cooking lionfish - none of that would have been necessary if he had just announced that lionfish was 'good fi nature' and people must leave it to breed in peace. JamaicaMan woulda learn fi swim and fish-out every single last lionfish outa de ocean. Right now we would be importing lionfish.

The ingenuity and imagination of mankind, if not his temperance, restraint, or respect for other life forms, is on full display once one begins to have a look at aphrodisiacs. Of course, various 'roots' have never lost popularity. Nowadays, ginseng and gingko biloba are famous. Then there are raw oysters, which Cassanova himself used for help. In Jamaica goats and cows have their male parts harvested based on the belief that they confer magical powers.

We're not alone. Many Asians also think eating the pizzle of a strong animal will transfer its powers. Hence, one reason tigers are near extinct is that their nozzles are cured and used for soup. Across the world, things as various as cobra's blood, lizard flesh, rhinoceros horn, monkey brains, birds' nests, and embryonic ducks have all been used as aphrodisiacs.

Nowadays in Jamaica, the 'turkey hegg' is all the rage, and men are raiding the turtle nests to concoct 'punches' and then wreak havoc.

Of course, there is minimal to no enforcement of the regulations banning their harvesting. So instead of the miracle of natural regeneration of the turtle, we get the private miracle of Mas Joe raising de dead. Incidentally, our fellow countrymen are developing a taste for crocodile meat, so we can wave goodbye to those as well.

Mightn't it be simpler to just spike Mona and Hermitage and give the 'turkeys' a chance? Otherwise, the turtles will be today's boobys.

The National Honours system

The National Honours system is obviously in need of reform. I'm looking at the list and it's evident that, in time, David Smith will be nominated and approved for services to the financial industry, and Kartel for contributions to social ethics.

For starters, the business of automatically handing honours to parliamentarians for long service is unnecessary and misses the point. Having kotched sufficiently long somewhere is a recommendation for nothing. The problem is equally about the 'mini-politicians' in every sector of society who enlist their friends and family to lobby for their inclusion. So I don't mean to single out Comrade Audley or Minister Ferguson, both of whom are recipients this year.

The mere numbers speak for themselves. Are things going so swimmingly that hundreds of honours need to be flung out annually? I don't think so.

Daniel Thwaites is a partner of Thwaites Law Firm in Jamaica, and Thwaites, Lundgren & D'Arcy in New York. Email feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com.