Preface
Colleagues and friends kept asking, “When will you write?” or saying
more insistently, “You must write.” I was finally convinced by those
many persons for whom I have respect and affection that the story of a
boy from rural Barbados who travelled far and wide, interacted with some
of the world’s leaders, and played a significant role in major regional and
international institutions was worth sharing. In telling the story now, I
have relived, sometimes with considerable excitement, the journey, and the
episodes and relationships that have formed me.
Unfortunately, I had not been so convinced from my earliest days that
I would be of some historical importance that I kept records of all I did or
said. As a young man, I looked askance at those who kept diaries or records
as bordering on the narcissistic or arrogant. Perhaps I have been influenced
by one of my early, very charismatic teachers – Professor Norman Millott,
professor of zoology. He would often refer to his lectures as elucidating
points that were not found in textbooks, but when he was asked why he
did not write a textbook, his response was, “Only second-rate chaps write
books.”
For two reasons, there are few pictures of my early years. The first is
that a camera was a luxury we could not afford, and the second is that our
family moved so often that many records were lost along the way.
On taking the decision to write, I had to choose whether to produce a
memoir that depended heavily on archival research and documentation to
substantiate the many judgements I had made and decisions I had taken. I
decided that I had neither the time nor temperament for such an approach.
Perhaps I am swayed by my visceral aversion to historical determinism, but
more important, I did not believe this would make for interesting reading.
There are enough Caribbean historians, and if there are not enough now
to chronicle the events that surround my life, surely there will be future
PhD students to fill these gaps. I decided on a more personal account of
my life and times, going beyond mere stories, and referring to sources and
references only when necessary.
This work is roughly chronological. The first part covers my early
upbringing and schooling. These were years in which my native Barbados
was awakening from its colonial past and passing through the same social
unrest and upheaval experienced throughout the Caribbean. I was a bright
boy, but still a boy, when I left home at age nineteen and entered upon the
next major and formative part of my life. That was spent in Jamaica in the
fledgling University College of the West Indies, from which I graduated
in medicine. I describe the rationale for my choosing what to many of my
parents’ friends and advisers represented an uncertain academic future.
But it was in the university and Jamaica that I became a West Indian man.
I learned to manage my time and balance competing social and academic
interests and responsibilities. And it was in Jamaica, too, that I found my
wife, or perhaps she found me.
Then came my further training in academic medicine, my exhilarating
days in research, where success often depended on overcoming the challenges
inherent in the status of developing world institutions. I entered the
world of international health timidly at first, but soon I acquired the professional
and political skills necessary for success. When I retired formally
from that sphere, I continued to be engaged in health in the Caribbean
and globally, emphasizing even more forcibly the role of health in national
development. In the many tributes paid to me in recent years, the role of
helping to promote the wider place of health has garnered most encomiums.
And then I returned emotionally if not physically to the university, which
I regard as my Capistrano in the Caribbean. I regard much of my previous
life and experience as the grooming I needed for the position of chancellor,
which I held for fourteen years.
Health in its many and varied dimensions is the theme that has dominated
my professional life. At first it was the health of individuals – learning
the healing craft. Then it was a search for those factors that perturb equilibrium
and lead to disease. I then taught elements of the craft, expanding the horizons of the young beyond the curative to embrace the social as
well, and by example teaching them how to help patients deal with death
and recognize the ineffable tragedy of the human condition. From there
I moved on to meld my technical with managerial skills and play a major
role in health policies requiring international action. In this phase, I would
argue and write about health as instrumental for human development, and
cooperation in health as crucial for the Caribbean.
Perhaps one important purpose of a memoir such as this is to transmit to
one’s grandchildren something of one’s life and times and provide another
tie that might bind them together. And I can hold up many mentors and
give credit to many relationships and individuals critical to this journey, but
there are none more important than my wife Sylvan, to whom I dedicate
this memoir.
But enough of procrastination! In Churchill’s words, “Come then, let
us to the task!”
