NOW THE FESTIVAL OVER....................” 

It is February 8. It is a new day in Grenada. It is the proverbial “first day” in the rest of our individual and collectives lives. The Independence festival over and it is time to get back to the bruising job of building our country. We are now 37- years- old; yes, we have travelled this far since we pioneered the march of the Caribbean’s smallest states to political independence and nationhood. On that fateful day- February 7, 1974, the Statehood flag was lowered and in its stead we hoisted the radiant gold, red and green with the nutmeg on a red disc in the middle. 

Nation-building is an endlessly laborious undertaking. It is therefore no surprise that we do not have, after 37 years,” a fully-formed national architecture. But how have we done since 1974? And are we poised to do better in the years immediately ahead of us? 

Only a few weeks ago, a 10 year-old Grenadian boy by the name of Jelen Thomas demonstrated an uncanny understanding of the vicissitudes of nation building in his winning theme for this year’s independence celebrations: “Celebrating 37 years Through Challenging Times with Optimism and Resilience”. 

Wise beyond his tender years, young Jalen, a fifth standard student at the Telescope Primary School, summoned us to wear an optimistic outlook even in the jaws of challenging times: He called for an optimistic outlook, knowing that ours is a country with a boundless capacity to “rise again”, a note which Dennison George sounded in the dispiriting wake of Hurricane Ivan in 2004.  Like Dennison in his uplifting lyrics to a song entitled “Grenada Will Rise Again”, Jalen understands that we are standing on the broad and sturdy shoulders of illustrious ancestors, notably William Galway Donovan (1856-1929) and Theophilius Albert Marryshow (1887-1958).  

We must remain steadfastly optimistic even in the face of grugru times. It was in difficult times that Donovan challenged the colonial regime, beginning in the 1880s; the times were no less difficult when Marryshow demanded representative government, a call he issued in the foreday mornin’ of the twentieth century.  

We must remain sedulously optimistic. Eric Gairy (1922-1997) conducted the drive for independence in a self-made ecology of optimism: our physical smallness, our abject lack of financial and economic resources did nothing to smother his faith in the Grenadian capacity “to go it alone” 

So we resolve to go bravely forward into our 38^th year. We are counting on all Grenadians at home and away in the Diaspora to come together to build a better country. And we are optimistic about the yield  that will accrue from our cooperative work, for we well know what magnificent contributions Grenadians-  writers, cultural workers, athletes and artists and others- have made and continue to make to the record of human achievement;  these contributions being vastly out of proportion to our country’s physical size. 

 Beginning in its 38^th year, the Grenadian Diaspora must be a key instrument in the country’s public diplomacy: Grenadian public diplomacy should see exponential growth as the drivers of globalization increase the size and the political, commercial and economic clout of cities. More than half the world’s people currently live in cities; this number increases by the hour. The Grenadian dispersals are located in some of the most influential metropolises, including New York, London, Washington, and Toronto. Under the pressures of new communications technology and more creative popular assertions, diplomacy has seen phenomenal changes since the birth of our nation almost four decades ago. In those years, classic diplomacy has been diversified has been forced to part with its exclusivity. Diplomatic activity has ceased to be a theatre for the modern-day Metternichs.    

Grenada’s diplomatic currency is very heavily invested, correctly, in Caricom and also in the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS).  In fact, Grenada currently holds the chairmanship of both the Caricom and the AOSIS. Are we using our leadership capital to ensure that Caricom’s many Declarations are not opiates for an unsuspecting population? And are we practicing at home the environmental lessons that we preach at the AOSIS and other international forums?  

Finally the question of national culture: It is a matter which preoccupies us given our mandate. Our culture is quite literally the environment in which we pursue our ambitions; it is the lens through which we make sense of what is happening at home and abroad. What we do about our culture is a measure of our sense of self-worth.... a self –hating people cannot countenance itself as the driver of its own destiny. The nation is a mental construct. It is born, reared and sustained in the mind. The nation ceases to exist when it loses its tenure in the collective imagination. It takes a viable national culture to impregnate the national imagination. 

The Editors 

February 8, 2011