**BY: Dr Lester Simon**

In Defense of Ambassador Dorbrene O’Marde1. My granny used to say I would get in trouble because I talked too much. My granny, the same maternal granny, used to say I should open my mouth and talk. I suppose she meant I should know when to keep my mouth shut and when to open it.2. The first time I heard about the Ambassador was when I was in the sixth form. The grapevine of the Antigua Grammar School had broadcast the news that he and his compatriot at UWI were arrested in Barbados for demonstrating in public on the street. Schoolchildren said the Prime Minister of Barbados had their names on a list. A list? What kind of list? A list where? Right on his desk, right in front of him. Almost in consonant harmony, a group of us grammar schoolboys sang out that we wanted to be just like them when we grew up.3. All of us learn lessons growing up. Some good. Some bad. Some of us have hard head. Hard head is worse than hard ears. With hard ears, sounds can still enter the auditory brain system through the bones of your skull. With hard head, you can figuratively break open a dry coconut. Some are so badly deaf, we say they are diff. Diff is worse than deaf. When you are deaf, talking loudly will help. When you are diff, save your breath. No one will even bother to write out what they want to say to you. You diff.4. There is a vitriolic local gang with an overseas instigator comprising the hard head, the deaf, and the diff that is constantly attacking the Ambassador on Observer Radio. The attackers carried out an appalling ambush on the Ambassador recently, whilst he was preparing for the recognition of our Emancipation Day, with the arrival of Dr. Julius Garvey. Their dreadful attack in a sortie and sally in tone and substance tried to encircle him in trenches laced with electronic barbed wire and digital bullbud. It brought tears to my eyes, wax to my ears, attention to my hair, cold sweat to my pores and peristalsis to my abdomen. It forced me to hark back to lessons I learned the hard way growing up.5. My granny used to send me out often to the shop and all over the village to carry messages and sell all kinds and manner of things, including figs in a tray. Silly me, I used to think she did that to me more than to the other grandchildren because she loved me more than them. It took me a long time to realize it was my effectiveness and efficiency that made her choose me…and, I still think, her choice was in addition to her preferential love for me.6. As I was becoming a young man, I tried to put away childish things. I wanted to tell my granny to send out someone else. Anyone can sell fig. At the time, we called bananas fig. I tried very hard with no success to imagine myself telling my granny to send out someone else to sell fig, or banana.7. In this state of youthful complexity, you can imagine the effect it had on me when I saw a play called Dream on Monkey Mountain by Derek Walcott at the University Centre. The memorable line from the play was … a figment of the imagination, a banana of the mind! Thank heavens I had been of sound mind not to annoy my granny to have had her alter my mind, or box it off to some far-off hidden place, never to be seen or found again.8. Before he became Ambassador, his contribution to this country was legendary. So legendary that when one of his friends was called and told that he, the friend, was up for a national award, the first thing the friend asked the official caller was if the years-later-to-be Ambassador had received a similar call before they had called the friend.9. Should the Ambassador be attacked? Of course. Yes. He would be the first person to tell you to attack him. Moreover, he knew he was setting himself up for attack when he accepted the ambassadorship.10. There is one cardinal rule of life that many or all of his attackers fail to accept or to live by. In life, we face choices. The choices we make have consequences. Choices have penalties. The penalty of life itself is death. We have to weigh choices in the balance and decide which is the right one for self and family and country, especially in the context of history. History of personal struggles. History of the country and people we love. It’s all about leaving this earthly place a little better than we found it.11. The great irony is that after you have made your choice, the attackers attack you primarily because you didn’t make the choice (with known, acceptable consequences) that they wanted you to make. It gets worse. With all the ammunition you laid bare and left for them to take up arms and attack just one or even two of the walls of injustice you used to attack; walls that are now weakened, the venomous attackers stand at attention begging bytes of attention and want you to attack singlehandedly every single possible wall and corner of injustice, while they attack you! Murder! Jericho!12. Some of the attackers claim that the Ambassador has cheese in his mouth, ignoring the huge stack of cheeseburgers lodged in their choking, voluminous gullet.13. Sometimes you have to allow the banana of the mind to slip and tell granny that enough is enough, even doing so, because of your broughtupsy, with quiet dignity and respect, under your breath lest she hears. Your silent words and those of your noisy, chatterbox neighbours will bear wings and be carried like ambassadors on waves of air. Sadly, some will not hear. They are tiff tone diff.