The St.Kitts Nevis Divide

One of my friends (as I am) is a writer. Oh, and by the way, I place Caribbean/ Kittitian Writer as my occupation on immigration forms, visa applications and any other document of any significance. When the time comes to renew my passport, I am going to define myself there too as a writer. There is no occupation called "retired". Just as I say to children whenever I get an opportunity to speak with groups of them about their future, I ask "What do you want to be when you grow up?" Some say, "I don't know." I usually ask in such cases, "What does an ‘I don't know’ do?"

There is no occupation known as retired, and there is no place of employment known as "I don't know." I advise young people to choose an occupation to aspire to, even if they change it every two seconds, I really do not care. Just choose something you like at that moment, for all I care. Do not tell me "I don't know."
So let's get back to this friend and his article about his experience.
It was a long article to which persons were moved to respond. One of the responses began with the statement: "I don't usually read long articles..."
Frankly I was alerted. I think, had I been a dog, my ears would have immediately stood erect.
Our people simple do not read, and if there is an article that tells us exactly what date the world is going to end, and it is in a long article, half or more of our population would not know it is there, because the article is too long. We are a lazy, ill disciplined, stunted attention span set of people, many of whom are parents who prod our children to read entirety of books when we cannot complete an article that is more than four paragraphs long. We get bored just as easily as the children do, and yet we complain that it is the television and computer that have them unable to sit down and complete the reading of an article or a book.
Some argue that it is time to put everything on video, but adults who did not grow up in the era of their children think that a 500 word article is too long to read all of it. We are in a big, stinking mess, and it is adults who are leading their little boys and girls right into this knowledge retardation sludge.
When people look at me in shock because I am a writer of books, and ask me if I think I can actually make a living off writing, I struggle to prevent myself from telling them two things: there are still millions of people worldwide who love books-usually to the disbelief of the hearer who simply cannot imagine people loving to read- and that pool is not going to dry up in our lifetime. I also struggle to prevent myself from telling them that there are millions in the world who think of the Caribbean as an exotic place and they are hungry for the writings, paintings, poetry and other aspects of Caribbean people’s creativity. We simply do not know what we have. The Caribbean literary and artistic market is a multimillion dollar industry.
The third thing I feel like telling them is that I am fortunate to have been born on a twin island federation, and on one of these twin islands people still love to read. I am hoping this would not change, and I am going to do my best, as a writer, to see how I can stimulate the interest in reading of both long and short article; or long and short anything in writing ,on both islands,because much of the attitude and behavior of people is influenced by how much they know. On top of this, it is far more convenient to gain knowledge from books and articles on paper than it is from a computer in any of its forms. All one has to do is open a book. Simple. There is no need for plugins or electricity anywhere, and knowledge would flow right to our brains from the books in the palms of our hands.