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By Walter Edey
Being self-sufficient can lead to financial freedom and control over one’s destiny.
In the early 1960s, the late Irvine King, a senior teacher at the Boys Foundation school, regularly told a mythical story about a mysterious island of rivers named Swambogie Land where every islander swam. Islanders in Swambogie Land grew large mangoes that they used creatively for foods, sail boats, and clothes. One mango often lasted a family one week. In Swambogie Land, self-sufficiency was the adopted way of life.
King valued a self-sufficient way of living. Often, he brought to the staffroom a farmer’s basket of seasonal home grown produce (carrots), which he grew at the Abbey, Christ Church, where he lived. King’s myth was a portrait of self-sufficiency; his vision of Barbados as an ecosystem; an abundance of a fond, cooperative relationship between Barbadians and the land on which they lived. King probably imagined that in 2020 Barbadians would be:
Investing in vegetable gardens and growing fruits and vegetables; doing home-repairs, maintenance, and other household needs; learning basic skills like sewing, carpentry, and welding to make instead of buy, researching how to make cleaning supplies and beauty products, composting to reduce waste and create nutrient-rich soil for future projects; recycling common household items to create something new.
Some 57 years or so ago, former Prime Minister of Barbados, Freundel Jerome Stuart, a student of King, publicly said, “We [Barbadians] do not eat what we grow, nor grow what we eat.” Maybe King’s teaching fell on a fertile ear. Prime Minister Stuart, grappling with Barbados’ foreign exchange dilemma, wondered aloud whether or not to borrow and whether to pay the price for borrowing on the open international financial markets, or pay the political price of leveraging home-grown solutions.
Prime Minister Stuart, in part, also said: “Unfortunately for us, foreign exchange does not grow on trees in Barbados… And according to very reliable data, whatever we do in Barbados has a foreign exchange cost: 70 per cent of every dollar we use to do anything is foreign exchange.”
Meanwhile, the former governor of the Central Bank, Dr. Delisle Worrell, put the same dilemma another way. “We need foreign exchange. It doesn’t matter how many local dollars we have, those dollars cannot purchase anything on the overseas market.” In a King’s mythical language, if foreign currency grew from trees, and fell from branches like fruit, you would hear birds chirping rupiahs, see the snap of twigs breaking beneath the weight of newly grown leaves of US dollars and euros. Indeed, in Swambogie Land, you would see foreign exchange sprouting like lettuce on the river banks.
Acquiring foreign exchange allows Barbados and other countries to trade goods and services with other countries. It is transactional and disciplined and planning ahead on purpose. Accept self-sufficiency as a purposeful way and as a first step to empowering family, community, and society; to resolving foreign exchange challenges and to refueling the momentum gained from education, independence, and others.
Irvine King showed new students the location of Swambogie land on a map by pointing to the Sierra Parima mountains of Venezuela and Brazil – following the Orinoco river as it flowed through rainforests, flooded forests, grassy areas, and a large delta before reaching the Atlantic Ocean. Students understood his geography lessons and wanted more of the mythology story. Each time Irvine King told that story, something remarkable appeared to happen.
Being self-sufficient is a big step. It means going to places you’ve never been before. And it helps your mind and body be free. You start living in a whole new way. Self-sufficiency means you can do things on your own. You can provide for yourself and be independent. You will have more power to do what you want and make things happen. You learn how to love yourself, which is something no one else can give you. This transformation will help you think about life in a new way.
Living a self-sufficient life is magical.
Walter Edey is a retired maths and science educator in Barbados and New York.
