Holiday in Kariwak Village

I must tell you about the extraordinary vacation I had in February. For openers, it was extraordinary because I did something I said I would never do, go to the Caribbean. Why I never wanted to go there is because I am not a sun worshipper or one to sit around the pool. Anyway, I went to the island of Tobago.

English friends who have been going there for years finally persuaded my wife and I to holiday there. We first arrived in Trinidad and then had a four-hour layover before we continued on our journey to Tobago. I arrived grumpy at our final destination because of the long journey, the lack of sleep and our having to wait for our room. However, the grumpiness soon went as I became acclimatized to the place.

While on vacation I happened to read something about Karl Marx. I tend to search for connections between the things I experience simultaneously. In this case I was searching for a connection between Marx and the surroundings I was in. The connections I made made my vacation more extraordinary and memorable.

Marx was a utopian. The setting I was in seemed utopian to me. Marx believed that the recognition and emancipation of the proletarian - the common workingman, would lead to a utopia. According to Marx, the proletariat's struggle with its opposite, the bourgeoisie, for better pay and working conditions, would lead to a utopia. My feeling was that this vacation spot, Kariwak Village, was populated by the proletarians Marx believed one day would be liberated and become equal to the bourgeoisie. In fact, the proletariat bad become like the bourgeoisie, now also having the money to afford extended vacations in far away places.

The day before we arrived Freddy Laker had died. I read his obituary in The Times, which our friends brought from London. Almost instantly I made a connection between him and this holiday retreat, and also between him and Marx. He was deeply connected with this time and place. Moreover, perhaps he was the one most responsible for the sustainability of this place. You see, he is the one who really made air travel affordable to the masses and the proletariat so they could vacation in such places.

Laker convinced governments to deregulate the airline industry, thus bringing about lower airfares. Lower air fares to such destinations as Tobago also had its Marxist liberating effect on the people that lived in them. It helped bring employment and opportunities to the local people who otherwise wouldn't have them. As The Times put it, Laker saw himself as the champion of the 'forgotten man'. In that thinking he was not only a capitalist but also a true Marxist. Marx would have applauded his helping to emancipate the proletarians and his treating them better and as equals to the bourgeoisie.

Besides there being a connection between Laker and Kariwak there is also a coincidence. Laker's low priced airline, the first in the world, started in 1977. Kariwak Village was started in 1977. It's as though something was in the air; as if they anticipated each other. It's as though the founders of Kariwak sensed a growing need for destinations like theirs. It's as though Laker sensed a growing need for ordinary people to get to vacation spots like Kariwak. Both enterprises were preparing for a growing travel surge, from a public that had more leisure time and money to spend. Both needed the other to succeed. Laker supplied the low airfares and the Kariwaks of the world supplied the destinations.

Kariwak Village considers itself a holistic center. I am one who thinks in holistic terms about the world. Marx was a holistic thinker also, thinking of the world as one. He anticipated globalization and proletarians around the world thinking alike. The tourism that sustains the Tobagos and the Kariwaks of this world is truly a phenomenon of globalization

Our hostess and one of Kariwak's cofounders, Cynthia, is not only gracious but is also a holistic person. If she wasn't I don't think she could or would have envisioned such an enterprise, which require holistic thinking and many different components to succeed. When I mention the connections I had made she looked at me in puzzlement. However, I think I convinced her that all three players I have mentioned are connected, that all are part of the larger scheme of the world, one of globalization and interconnectedness. All have helped facilitate this holistic process.