EDITORIAL

Our Success Story Resumes

Wednesday,  November 3, 2004

As cruise ships reappear in the harbour this week, there have been several, often conflicting, points of view expressed concerning the advisability of allowing large numbers of visitors to return to Grand Cayman so quickly after Hurricane Ivan.

Some of our overseas readers have been pleading for cruise ships to be allowed back and promising to make a point of spending money on the Island to assist our economic recovery. Other prospective visitors say that they will bring relief supplies with them to help out.

On the other hand, some people say we should be focusing on the full and complete restoration of utilities and infrastructure before even thinking about reopening to cruise ship passengers and other tourists.

Others ask how are the shops and other service establishments to be properly staffed when some employees no longer have a home, possessions or transportation.

However, what a lot of people fail to appreciate is the Caymanian tradition of righting the ship, while we work hard at the oars to reach our longer-term goal. For example, it is still fairly common to see would-be homeowners complete just one or two rooms to live in while they finish the rest of the dwelling.

Many Caymanians have started their houses buying block by block as and when they could afford them until the value of the land and completed structure became a bankable proposition, allowing them to get a mortgage to finish the entire thing.

If these hard-working people had waited until everything was in place before starting they would probably never have achieved their ambitions.
We therefore believe that the Leader of Government Business and Minister of Tourism, the Hon. McKeeva Bush along with everyone else involved in pushing for the return of cruise ship visitors, are to be congratulated on following the well-travelled path of our traditional way of getting things done.

Anyone that was able to spend time downtown on Monday could not have failed to notice the positive and uplifting atmosphere engendered by the familiar sight of cruise ships in the harbour and throngs of visitors in town.

Not only was this another welcome sign of a return to normalcy for the Island as a whole, but the revival of ‘business as usual’ for the country can only improve the lot of those whose livelihood depends upon the daily retail trade and commerce represented by the many thousands of cruise ship passengers visiting our shores.

The Downtown Merchants Association is also to be congratulated on its members’ efforts to restore and repair the harbour-front areas of George Town in time for the arrival of the cruise ships once again. Indeed, they were so successful that one visitor was heard to remark that, if the passengers had not been informed on board that Grand Cayman had recently been devastated by a category five hurricane, no one would ever have known.

Also noticeable were a number of small but significant improvements and innovations installed with a view to minimizing damage from future storms.

This also reinforces our belief that our own people have the intelligence, resources and inventiveness to manage our own disaster recovery, without being told what we have to do by foreign consultants, who undoubtedly have no clue about the traditions, resourcefulness and experience of the Cayman people.

Although we have been labeled as ‘a nation of shopkeepers’, the resilience of the Government of the day, must be recorded as a positive step in the right direction, so that the Cayman Islands and all of the people who call here home, can be proud that we are well on our way to continue writing another chapter of our success story.

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