Mahogany CoConut Blog

One Caribbean Nation. by William Skinner Recently in a submission to the Barbados Underground Blog(BU), I mentioned a story appearing in the local press about a six-year-old citizen, selling her first piece of art. In the interview, her mother said that she was conflicted, in exposing her daughter to such activity at a very tender age. She did not want to send the message that everything is about money. However, she concluded that her daughter’s passion, came at the cost of some expensive art supplies. In the end common “cents’ became the reality. We stupidly believed that the world would have waited on us, to embrace the emerging technologies. While we waited, teens in other countries, were already becoming millionaires by creating and selling computer programs /apps. We wasted almost twenty years boasting about “punching above our weight”. Our children were therefore denied the excellent opportunity of mastering basic computer skills, and many have left school lacking the compe...

One Caribbean Nation. Close Them Down  It is not the policy of the Mahogany Coconut Group to highlight any one Caribbean country. However, we must once more, turn our attention, to the country of Barbados and the horrendous cases of child abuse occurring there. Recently, we commented on the inhumane treatment of a youth, at the Fun Ranch, in the parish of St. Andrew. We note that the perpetrators of those atrocities, were brought before the country’s law courts. Today, we are shocked to report, another act of horrific treatment, of a young woman who was in the custodial care of the state-run Government Industrial School (GIS) where wayward youth are supposed to be rehabilitated. On this occasion, the young resident was placed naked in a cold cell. We now call on the government of Barbados, to close both the Fun Ranch and the Government Industrial School and to immediately carry out a full, independent, and transparent investigation, into their operations. Close them d...