I visited Marie Stella on Thursday, to look at a project on director Flora De Bie’s wish list. She wants to have a Living Kitchen for her thirty-three clients who suffer from dementia, a place they can come and hang out at while food is being prepared. Ordinarily, food is cooked in a central kitchen. And by the time it gets to the dining room it has cooled off. By creating a Living Kitchen, a cross between a dining room and a kitchen Flora’s clients could sit around while the pancakes fry; they can smell the bacon and the coffee and their food will reach them while still warm. Great idea. But where will she get the money to make it happen?
I promise to call some people to see where I can get help. “Crown” for a stove?! Arugas already said “yes” to a free gas installation. “Kooyman” for kitchen cabinets? If you have any ideas, they are welcome, I really want to make it happen for the SABA home in Savaneta.
While there I met Filomena Wong. Yes, the poet, who lives in one of the casitas on the property. “Don’t you think,” she asked, “we are crossing the line a bit with these over the top 18th of March celebrations?” I had to agree with her. “It was never like that before,” said Filomena. “It is now taking a turn to the show off and the bombastic,” she stated. “Even as a school teacher I said NO when the kids in my class had to go outside and salute the flag. I said No. Our job is the teach them, reading, writing and math and not waste their time standing in the school parking lot, looking at a flag pole.”
“You are a rebel,” I said to Filomena. Once a rebel, always a rebel, and Flora agreed, Filomena is the rebel of Marie Stella, she admitted.
At home I opened the dictionary checking Patriotism, the good guy, vs Nationalism, the bad guy and read the following:
Patriotism: The passion which inspires one to serve one’s country
Nationalism: The political doctrine that your national culture and interests are superior to any other OR an exaggerated or excessive form of patriotism
So wave your flag, but don’t wave it too much. Know there is a flip side to waving flags all over the place.
At Fort Zoutman, during the ADT, Aruba Dushi Tera recording handover ceremony with the Island’s musicians and the Governor, I got an earful from two of my favorite musicians, Etty Toppenberg, a troubadour and folk artist and Antoni Gario, a wonderful band leader and a part-time politician, full time trouble maker. Both told me I will not see flags in San Nicholas, where Gario is from, because they did not belong to “the process.” Having been born with a shade darker skin, as children of immigrants, they were never raised Aruban, and were not “accepted” as Arubans, having suffered discrimination all along, they do not “feel” March 18th as their holiday. I call bullshit on that. In my world, no one is more Aruban than Etty and Gario. The fact that there are no flags in San Nicholas is because flags are expensive and the residents of Chocolate City have no money to spare on decorative frills. True, if the government decided to overrun Oranjestad with flags, San Nicholas should also get some. But that bullshit of not being accepted is ridiculous. If you live here, will walk a mile for a pastechi, and you get teary eyed every time A Bo So is being played, AND you are capable of spending a full night gluing Swarovski to your carnival costume, you are Aruban, and March 18th is your national holiday, and no person can possibly make you feel differently about how you feel and who you are!
P.S. Gario your new girlfriend is shockingly young!
