Archive for April 17th, 2014

Cayman story time flows over airwaves

(CNS): Sponsored by the Cayman National Cultural Foundation Caymanian Stories is a Saturday morning radio show on Saturday mornings featuring the work of local writers, read by local people who bring Caymanian tales to life. Radio Cayman is now recording a host of new stories, poems and historical accounts from contributors such as Roy Bodden, Chris Gourzong, Joy Merren and many more. Reverend Alson Ebanks, Marcia Muttoo and Virginia Foster will be reading a special Easter meditation on 19 April and later this month new material from Nasaria Suckoo Chollette and Twyla Vargas will be broadcast.

Anyone who would like to record a story can contact cayfest@candw.ky

To listen tune into Radio Cayman Saturdays at 9am on 89.9FM and to hear a clip of what is coming up, click here.
 

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Batabano opens with masked ball

(CNS): Organisers of the Batabano carnival will be opening the coulourful event next month at the Le Masque & World Fete on Thursday 1 May at Royal Palms. Guests will be hiding behind masks however, to get them into the carnival spirit during the Caribbean themed evening with a buffet and live music from Trinidad Oscar B and soca artist of Destra Garcia. The street party and parade will take place on saturday starting at 3pm. The 31st anniversary of the carnival celebration, stilt walkers, acrobats, and limbo dancers will lead a colorful parade of masqueraders as they ravel along West Bay Road to Harbour Drive for the street party with live music by local and visiting entertainers.

Over 20 local vendors, alongside some of Cayman’s premiere restaurants will also be dishing up traditional island fare. The Cayman Carnival Junior Batabano and Family Fun Day takes place on 10 May.

For more details log onto www.caymancarnival.com

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Charity needs furniture for half-way house

(CNS): Volunteers attempting to open a new and much needed half-way house to help women dealing with addiction are in desperate need of furniture for the new premises, which the Bridge Foundation charity hopes will be in use by those in need next month. The new women’s residence for recovering addicts in West Bay is scheduled to be formally opened by the governor on 29 May but before that happens the home needs beds, kitchen equipment, office supplies, as well as help towards installing air-conditioning and constructing the bathrooms. The charity already runs a halfway house for six men, which is being expanded and with the help of donations the founders said they can provide places for six women at a time as well.

Charles Jennings, one of the founders and directors along with Lem Hurlston, Terry Delaney and Bud Volinsky, said the foundation has further expansion plans as the men's facility has already become an important part of the process in supporting those in the community trying to change their lives.

"We like to think we are making a difference in turning people’s lives around and in the process having a positive impact on crime in the islands," said Jennings. "Judging by the support we’re getting from the courts and several government agencies, they think so too," Jennings stated.

Securing the women's facility alongside expansions to the existing men's facility from six places to eleven is likely to have an even greater impact on the lives of people trying in difficult circumstances to make a change. However, the facility can't open without furniture.

"Our immediate need is to furnish the new women’s residence," said Jennings, as he asked for anyone who may have unwanted or second-hand furniture that they can spare. 

A list is attached below of the things needed. Those marked with a red cross have been acquired already, but the charity is still in need of many more items and help from the community.

Anyone who can help is asked to call 525 5546 or email charles@jennings.ky 

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Sea search on for men missing from troubled boat

(CNS): The police helicopter and marine unit are currently involved in a sea search some 30 miles off the south east coast of Grand Cayman for two men believed lost at sea after searching for a distress parcel dropped by a plane late last night. A spokesperson for the RCIPS said Thursday morning that the local Air Traffic Control tower had received a message from a US Coast Guard aircraft which had spotted distress flares from a boat in the area at around 10:40pm last night (Wednesday 16 April). The Marine Unit and the police chopper responded and found the vessel with two foreign nationals aboard, who reported that two other men were missing in the water.

Police did not state where the men were from or if they were fishing, travelling or engaged in the illicit trafficking of drugs, guns or people.  The missing men were believed to have got into the sea in order to try and retrieve the life-saving package dropped by the US Coast Guard plane but then disappeared. The two men on the damaged boat were rescued and taken aboard the Niven D and the search is continuing for two the other men.

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Cubans on run as centre struggles with security

(CNS): Authorities are on the hunt once again as another group of Cuban refugees being detained by immigration left the insecure detention centre in the Fairbanks area of George Town. Officials said some 13 migrants escaped Wednesday afternoon and while ten were rounded up three are still on the run along with at least one other man who escaped last month when 33 refugees escaped by crawling under a perimeter fence. Last week another three men left the centre. Immigration officers said it is an offence to help the refugees who have escaped.

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Brackers protest ‘devil’ art

(CNS): A rotting goat’s head nailed to a cross on top of a heap of garbage and old bones may be art to its creator but to a group of Cayman Brac residents it is simply offensive. Local businessman Elvis McKeever, who organised a peaceful protest at the location of the controversial sculpture on the south side of the island Wednesday lunchtime, said it looked like devil worship or the practice of Obeah, “like something you would see in Haiti”. It was built by the artist known as Foots, who also created the underwater sculpture “The Lost City of Atlantis”, which lies off the north coast. But his latest creation, which includesa fake gravestone with three 6’s engraved on a bloody cross, has stirred deep resentment in the small, largely Christian community. 

The goat’s head and cross had been removed before the protest but the 30 or so Brac residents who turned up to demonstrate their objection to Foots’ artwork wanted officials to make sure they were not put back up. 

But in any case, they said, the rest of Foots’ handiwork was also offensive and would depreciate the value of surrounding properties, as well as being a health hazard, and they want the whole thing removed.

McKeever said that when he first started talking publicly about his objections to the sculpture, Foots took down the decaying goat’s head and the cross for about two weeks, but on Palm Sunday he put it up again. He said that Foots had removed them again last night. “He thought that that was going to stop us from doing the protest and then in a week’s time he will have it up there again,” he said.

Under Cayman Islands law anything above four feet is supposed to have planning approval, noted McKeever, who owns a construction company. “I want planning to show me the approval,” he said. Claiming Foots had about 15 old toilets on the property behind the sculpture, McKeever, who owns adjacent land, said he wants the politicians and the Department of Environmental Health and the district commissioner to do something about it.

McKeever also noted that the land it is built on, which is 32 feet wide stretching to the Bluff, is part of an LPP (Land for Public Purpose). “You're not allowed it to build on it,” he said.

“And where are the church people and why are they allowing this in the country?” he asked, noting that House Speaker and Brac MLA Juliana O’Connor-Connolly had been invited to join them. “The practice of Obeah, which is a religion, is illegal in the Cayman Islands. I know that for sure because I know people who have got arrested for practising Obeah,” McKeever said, although there is no evidence that Foots is actually a devotee of any religion.

Scattered around the mound of dirt and bones, with what looks like a small skull, are rocks with engraved messages of peace and snippets of John Lennon lyrics. “Love is the answer” it says next to the “The Apocalypse Now Revelation” gravestone. However, McKeever remained adamant that the structure was morally wrong and that was why so many had turned out for the protest.

“I don't know who I'm more annoyed at – Foots for building it or the government for not doing anything about it,” said Dalkeith Ebanks, one of Wednesday’s protestors.

Bridgette Manville, who lives nearby, said, “Mr Foots has been displaying unacceptable so-called art in my neighbourhood.” It started, she said, with a display of plants inside the toilet bowls but after she complained about it to District Commissioner Ernie Scott, this was removed.

“Next it was the car with the head through in the windscreen with blood and everything else. Before I could get to complain, that was moved. Then he came back with the coffin and the head again on top of it. I looked at it and thought, ‘Leave him be.’ But then the most disturbing and upsetting display he had was the cross with a dead goat’s head on top of it like it was crucified on the cross with a 666. And that I found that very offensive and I felt like he was trying to insult the people of Cayman Brac.”

The protesters had police permission for the demonstration, and Chief Inspector FrankOwens and another officer were there keeping the peace and stopping anyone from going onto Foots’ land – at least until his estranged wife and co-owner of the land, Elsie Keynes, arrived to join the protest and said it was okay.

Owens confirmed that the police had received several complaints about the sculpture. These had been passed onto the legal department to see if any laws had been broken, he said.

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