News — Carribean

Gustavia is the capital and main seaport of the island of Saint Barthélemy, also known as “St. Bart’s.” The Caribbean island is said to have been discovered by explorer Christopher Columbus in 1493, who named it after his brother Bartolomeo. The Taino Indians were the indigenous residents of the island.

The island was first claimed by French colonists in 1648 who arrived with enslaved Africans from the island of St. Kitts. In 1651, the island was sold to the Knights of Malta, an 11th-century Italian religious order. Despite European claims of discovery and ownership, the Taino Indians destroyed both the French and Italian settlements. The Taino placed the heads of their victims on poles lining the beach to warn any further intruders, a tactic that worked for several decades.

French mariners were the next invaders. They successfully settled on the island in 1763. French buccaneers, commonly known as pirates, boosted the economy by trading their plunder of gold from Spanish Galleons for food, liquor, and enslaved Indians and Africans held captive on the island. There was a brief British military takeover of the island in 1758, but it quickly returned to the French until 1784 when they sold it to Sweden in exchange for trading rights in the Swedish port of Gothenburg.

Island traders and local dwellers flourished under Swedish rule. As a free port, one could trade and sell wares and people, purchase supplies for the next voyage, all while avoiding any punishment for otherwise illegal activities. Gustavia first appears in archival records in December 1786, named after the Swedish King Gustav III. The capital city currently takes up about 1.3 square miles of the nine-square-mile island. France repurchased the island in 1878.

Gustavia sits on the Oscar (formerly Gustav Adolf) harbor. Its landmarks include the Gustav Adolf Harbor lighthouse, the Saint Bartholomew Anglican Church, built in 1855, a Royal Swedish Consulate, and numerous shops, boutiques, upscale hotels, and restaurants.

All citizens and residents of Gustavia and Saint Barthélemy as well as the islands of Guadeloupe and Martinique, regardless of race, were given legal status by the Department of France in 1946. The status meant all island residents are French citizens and French is the official language.

In 2007 Saint Barthélemy became an Overseas Collectivity of France which meant local residents could elect a nineteen-member territorial council. That council in turn elected Bruno Magras as its first president. Gustavia remains the capital of this island of approximately 10,000 permanent residents.

Colleagues of a Ghanaian medical student in Cuba who passed away on Friday say they believe his death “could have been prevented”.

Erasmus Klutse, a second-year student at the Escuela Latinoamericana de Medicina (ELAM) in Cuba, died on May 7 in the Caribbean country’s capital, Havana, after joining his friends to play his most-liked sport, basketball.

Klutse was a medical student on Ghana National Petroleum Corporation (GNPC) scholarship, and his colleagues say the harsh living conditions in Cuba led to his death.

The Ghanaian medical students in Cuba have since called on their government back home to come to their rescue, saying that the GNPC and the Ghana Scholarships Secretariat have delayed in sending their stipends for months now.

Eugene Oko Richman, a member of the National Union of Ghana Students (NUGS) executive committee in Cuba, said in an interview with Ghanaian media Class FM that Klutse lost his life because the Cuban government failed to send an ambulance during a medical emergency.

“Just this last Friday, we lost a student of ours, a brother, Erasmus Klutse and one of the reasons why we lost him was because of the poor health treatment that we’ve been receiving,” Richman said. “And the issue that we have is that the mission here has made it very easy for the Cubans not to make us a priority when it comes to our health because if they had sent an ambulance to him, we feel that his death could have been prevented.”

“So, that’s the reason why we are agitated and we are calling that there should be measures put in place to that things like this could be prevented”, he added.

A statement by the student body said Klutse “was a joy to all who knew him”. Stressing that his death was “preventable”, the statement outlined key issues that have reportedly been overlooked by the stakeholders in charge of the welfare of the Ghanaian students in Cuba.

Meanwhile, the GNPC Foundation says stipends to the medical students in Cuba have delayed because there is a disagreement over the mode of payment. It said students want to be paid cash in hand, which is against financial protocols.

The remains of Klutse will be flown back to Ghana after an autopsy is done.

Bob Marley‘s career after he broke out as a young Jamaican musical sensation spanned just ten years yet his global fame was apparent before he turned 30. Marley, via Bob Marley & The Wailers, was already known to many in the Caribbean, the United States and the United Kingdom before an attempt was made on his life in Jamaica in 1976.

By the late 1970s, he was playing in Africa, a continent he espoused so much love for. He was in Kenya and in Ethiopia in 1978. Of course, Ethiopia, the home of the Rastafarian saint Haile Selassie, was always going to be on Marley’s list of destinations. He was also in Zimbabwe where he was the special musical guest to mark that country’s independence in 1980.

However, it was in Gabon that year that Marley found love in the embodiment of Pascaline Mferri Bongo Ondimba, the daughter of El Hadj Omar Bongo Ondimba, born Albert-Bernard Bongo. The Bongo name has been synonymous with Gabon for so long because Omar ruled that country from 1967 to 2009, only to be succeeded by his son, Ali.

Marley became intimately close to Pascaline but according to the latter’s own version of events, their actual first meeting was in 1979 in the US, making the meeting in 1980 a reunion of a sort.

“The first time I met him was in America in 1979 and when we went backstage when he saw me, he said “Gosh you’re ugly”,” Stephanie said in the Ken MacDonald-directed documentary Marley (2012). Stephanie was in the States with her father and went to see Marley perform in Los Angeles. She managed to secure a backstage pass to meet the musician who was unfortunately not impressed by her looks.

However, according to Bob Marley and the Dictator’s Daughter written by Anne-Sophie Jahn, it was Pascaline who invited Marley to perform in Gabon. It would seem even after Marley’s rude remark, the 23-year-old’s spirit had not been broken on that night. Her invitation was welcomed by some members of The Wailers who had never seen the motherland they sang of.

Marley and his crew were not received by Omar, the head of state who also went by the unofficial title of “king”. Omar sent future president Ali to meet Marley and his company. This snub was not lost on The Wailers since they were essentially on a state visit to play at Omar’s birthday party. It later also dawned on them that Omar was a dictator who developed the parts of Gabon that mattered to him while the rest of the country laid in abject poverty.

However, according to Pascaline, Marley was not personally offended by Omar because “he [Marley] told me that my father had been the only one to suggest that Haile Selassie move to Gabon after he was dethroned. And that the Rastafarians felt that this was a strong act that deserved their respect and admiration”.

Perhaps, Marley’s ability to transcend the immediacy of the disappointment that confronted him in Gabon, to give Omar the benefit of doubt, endeared the musician to the “king’s daughter”. In MacDonald’s film, Pascaline did present Marley as a deeply thoughtful and philosophical man. They were in love, she revealed. It was known among The Wailers and many others yet it was not everyone’s to know.

Marley had many lovers, including 1976 Miss World Cindy Breakspeare, mother of singer Damian Marley. He married Rita in 1966 but by his own account, it was possible some of his children were unknown to him. He knew he had fathered eleven by seven women.

Pascaline reveals that knowing who Marley was, she was on the pill. She liked him and wanted to be around him but “[h]e was a Rasta and his philosophy was to share everything. And it wasn’t his fault that the girls jumped on him. They all knew he was married… but he was a superstar.”

The president’s daughter was in Marley’s life even until the latter days when Marley’s skin cancer gave doctors a hint that the reggae legend did not have much time to live.