Two-gether but not together
Happy St. Martin Day! This year, however, the celebration should not be business as usual. After all, we’ve been doing this for decades now without any major accomplishments. Our unity is not only sacrosanct - birthed in the blood sweat and tears of our ancestors - it is also something we must reevaluate in light of today’s existential reality.
Looking at how the island is structured, it is obvious that we have two of everything. We have two administrations with two capitals- Great Bay and Marigot. In terms of infrastructure, we have two airports, two ports, two electricity companies and two waste management systems.
Similarly, we have two educational systems, two healthcare systems, two official currencies and two judicial systems. We also have two political systems and even two carnivals.
We are in effect a two-gether island, duplicating every facet of our lives. The question then arises: are we really together?
To answer this, we should also ask why did the colonial powers - The Kingdom of the Netherlands and the Republic of France who divided the island among themselves - maintain the partition for all these centuries? Did they (and do they still) believe that holding on to two tiny territories is the most efficient way to administer this 37 square miles of ondulating hills and turquoise waters?
Slavery and colonialism sowed the seeds of ineffective governance structures which persist until this day and embedded the malignant germ of dependency that continues to infest our thinking up till today. And as it is at governmental level so it has become at the social level. The colonial chains remain firmly entrenched in the way we live our daily lives. We live back to back not belly to belly. In other words, we look away from each other rather than come together as one.
We are family, yes, but we are not really friends. We meet only at funerals but not at dinner tables. We don’t even pray together to stay together. Our “national” day of prayer is meant for only one side of the island. We have no physical borders but the real borders have been deeply etched into our minds. This is reflected in the language we use. Each time we talk of the “French side,” and the “Dutch side,” we are literally surrendering the island to our European colonizers. Besides, which is the St. Martin side?
Our children grow up without knowing where Hameau du Pont is and many of them can’t tell you where to find Garden of Eden. The younger generation is drifting further and further apart through no fault of theirs. So, what unity are we actually celebrating if we’re not really together? If we no longer do things together; if we do not claim the whole 37 square miles of this land as ours?
On a day like today, we must resolve to translate that motto: “one island, one people, one destiny” - which Lino Hughes sang so beautifully about - into a Credo: a belief system, an act of faith in ourselves and in our island. On November 11th, there should be no “French St. Martin” no “Dutch Sint Maarten,” only Sweet St. Martin. And this should be the case from January 1st to December 31st every year.
Happy St. Martin Day!!