The Tribune

THIS is the National Heroes holiday weekend.

Parliament has decreed the second Monday in every October to be National Heroes Day and this Monday is the second one as prescribed by law, although we have been celebrating it for many years. Its just that the government has finally caught up with us.

Now ignorance is a damning thing and almost unpardonable, because there is no need for it. We have a “back-to-Egypt” mentality that has designated Monday October 13, 2014 as Discovery/Heroes Day.

Nonsense! Discovery Day is October 12, a non-holiday.

The country is cheated of the impact this newly-designated holiday is supposed to have. I opine, its the lack of education. Again, we have failed to put mechanisms in place so as to plan and execute. Last year I challenged our church to be a trailblazer in formulating plans for the celebration of our heroes.

This is virgin territory, an ideal time to trailblaze in plans to celebrate our home-grown nation builders. My advice went like water over a duck’s back; it gained no traction. This weekend is just going to be another day off to the beach, home comings or shopping overseas. No applicable importance given to its intended impact.

I would have hoped this Heroes Day would have been seized as a moment to advance us in things and people Bahamian. Its perfectly placed, at a time when schools are open and therefore the children are in place, as opposed to Independence, in July, when schools are closed.

The original intention is to have the whole of October proclaimed Bahamian history month and to use the opportunity - the entire month - to teach the Bahamian story.

The resources must be realised for essay/speech competitions, research, field trips, seminars, school assemblies and gatherings complete with marches to send home the point “I am proud to be Bahamian!” We must liberate the minds of our people.

The colonial lords have so steeped our mindsets, through the colonial holidays like Empire Day and the Queen’s Birthday, with all the trappings in which many Bahamians are still enmeshed and refuse to claim their emancipation. Until and unless we have the intestinal fortitude to emancipate the mind we will forever be in chains.

Subconsciously we still believe, “white is right, brown may hang around and black, stand back.”

We congratulate our government for the intervention of both the Majority Rule and National Heroes Day holidays. The job is incomplete. I urge our government to call into being a cultural commission to devise and institute appropriate celebrations. I urge the Church to be a trailblazer as it fires up imaginations for appropriate celebrations.

Too often the Church gets in the way. This Sunday can we raise the national temperature in our worship?

All Civic organisations must be called out and lead where others can follow. This weekend our bank employees everywhere should be adorned in national colours. Why can’t you adorn your walls with your heroes in your given context.

Celebrate one another. Uphold role models. For God’s sake, do something! Stop waiting to be told what to do.

However, we congratulate Bain and Grants Town for taking the lead in this month of celebrations. There is a banquet to honour their heroes on Saturday night. The Fox Hill community must be congratulated for celebrating the day since 2010. This Monday there is a service in Fox Hill to celebrate their heroes.

Well done!

Happy Heroes Day, Bahamas!