Ras Bushman; “Only By Planting a Tree can we Save St Maarten”

There are few people on the island who live in complete communion with their Natural Environment as Ras Bushman does. His is the complete rootsman lifestyle; complete communion with his natural environment, a complete subsistence on the soil of the earth for existence, and a lifestyle both spiritually and physically connected with the earth. “We need the trees and the forests on this island as much as they need us. We need trees to live and vive versa. In order for us as St Maarteners to uphold our culture, we need Agriculture,” the Rastafarian elder states with a wry smile as he sat down with me one day to discuss his activities in the agricultural and environmental sector. His statement is a very pertinent one. Increasingly, both globally and locally, humans are causing rapid destruction of trees and forests in the name of development. Especially on the island, where many aspects of our natural environment have been destroyed or disregarded, there is a need for conservation efforts to be put in place which will ensure that the future generation will continue to live on a green island. Buildings are being built which in no way reflect a communion with neither nature nor a respect for our natural environment. Bushman makes this painfully clear when he told me that many of our old and stately trees have either been cut down or have died due to neglect and pollution. “In the last fifteen to twenty years the island has been build up to a crazy level,” Bushman stated, “If we don’t be careful there will only be rats, cats, and dogs running around, everyone will leave. We need to focus on planting and agriculture. Imagine something happens in Europe or America or here on the island and our tourist economy dies, we will then need to rely on the soil.”
Bushman has been a popular activist on the island, calling for a return to the soil and a conscious development amongst especially the youth of the island. He connects the disturbing trend of crime plaguing the island to the declining values experienced by the youth, and the disconnection they have to nature. “The youth are too hyped up. The main problem is that they need patience. Everything they want they want to get fast. Fast money, fast cars, fast fame. Plant a seed! In order to plant a seed one needs patience; patience to see it grow, patience to see it mature, and patience to see it bear fruit. Civilization was founded when man began to plant. Everything stems from agriculture. All society came when man planted a seed. People nowadays are to idle, so they have time to come up with other things which keep them busy. Young people especially need to become conscious of the environment and need to stop living fantasy lives. They need a love for nature, for creation, for culture. They need to learn to be themselves. If we don’t have a healthy country we will never have a healthy people. Everything nowadays is money, vanity. But this means nothing; it has nothing to do with life”
“People are crazy”, he continues, “The culture of St. Maarten was founded on the Great salt Pond for example, and look at it now. It is a scar, dead, useless. We merely continued the mistake our grandfathers have made. When we had the midges plague hit, we had to send to Bonaire for salt, imagine, to Bonaire. Back in the days we had more salt than Bonaire ever had!”
Also, the rootsman sees the development on the island as a disturbing trend; our continuous disregard for nature will ultimately come to hurt us; “many people are here on the island merely to make money. They buy the land and build on it just long enough for them to make money, and as soon as the money is made they are gone, leaving the land exhausted and dead. Faming and handling plants is a spiritual as well as a physical activity for me. All plants have a spirit and have a life, and I don’t understand how someone can choose the living over dead. Dead buildings are everywhere, they posses no life. We locals don’t have anything but our island, our soil. When things get hot on the island and people leave what will happen? We will be here stuck on the island with the deep scars people have left here.”
The Rasta man falls silent, contemplating his thoughts in his house. Bushman is a self made man, running a popular vegan restaurant at his home on the Bushroad, which serves dishes and beverages made using products he himself grew and cultivated. The sweet syncopated rhythms of reggae dance on the breeze, made by his musically gifted son, and his wife is preparing Ital (vegetarian cuisine) on a traditional coalpot, It is Saturday, Bushman’s day of rest, and he chooses his music for his radio program which will air that same evening on pearl FM.
“You know, I do all of these things because I love to”, he states, “I get no funding from government and I have to buy my own tools. I don’t know why, maybe they are prejudiced and small minded, thinking I will use the money for negative things, all the time the government official in charge of agriculture lives in ST. Kitts on a government payroll,” he laughs.
“I am a farmer because that is my spirit that is my freedom. I love the plants and trees because they are free. In this world even the animals on land and in the sea aren’t free anymore. They want to take Jah’s creatures and put them in dolphinariums while sewage flowing down the street is creating new diseases. There is no peace on the island anymore. St Maarten doesn’t feel it yet, but there are serious things happening to the island which will negatively affect us in the long run. Our only solution is to protect and farm our land or else the island will soon become a ghost town. We should plant fruit trees and crops which can feed us. I mean why plant those palm trees in Philipsburg instead of coconut trees or a mango tree. Do people want St Maarten to look like a little Las Vegas?”
Rain clouds gather in the distance, and with the promise of rain this deeply spiritual man becomes happy; “Jah is giving us blessing today, the plays will be happy”. However, he does mention how rain has come to mean something very different on the island; “You remember that big flood. It didn’t even rain hard, but the pond is filled up and the gauts are filled so the rain doesn’t have anywhere to go. People died that day! It’s a shame.”
When I asked him what he thought about the future, he simply shook his head; “All we can do is wait and see and let time tell. Sometimes I feel it is too late already. People now have the wrong mentality. The island is suffering. Already people are starting to leave. All over the Caribbean people partake in agriculture. This is the type of culture the tourists want to see. They don’t want to leave New York and meet New York. Me, I will continue my work, I will continue to tend my farm and try to make a change. In the end everyone will have to answer in front of Jah’s Court, especially those who build rejoice at the destruction of the island. They will all answer in front of the creator. We should stop selling our land to strangers and keep it for ourselves and plant on it. Many organizations just exist for their own benefit, they make trips abroad and all of those things, yet nothing is available for the planting of the tree.”
The interview is finished. Lunch is ready and preparations have to be made for tonight’s program. I leave Bushman feeling as if the island is doomed. On my way home I see lying in the middle of LB Scott road a seedling, some plant I cannot recognize. I bring it home and plant it in my garden. Days later I found out it is a guinep tree and I remember Bushman’s words “only by planting a tree can we save St Maarten.” I hope that I have contributed by planting my own little part of ‘agri'culture. Jah! Rastafari.