From Belfast with love
By Dr Janet Mifsud de Gray
Why it that we only start to really appreciate what we have, when it is out of sight and afar? I have only just started to value the beauty of the Maltese Islands and the versatility of the Maltese people since I have been away from the Island for most of these last five years. I have realised that I want my daughter to know all about long, hot, sunny summer days, clear blue Mediterranean seas, the importance of the family and close kindred, the amazing hopscotch of culture and buildings dotted all over the Maltese Islands; I want her to grow up proud of being Maltese.
We, Maltese, have an inborn conviction that Malta is the centre of the world, if not the universe (well, it would be if you had to look at any traditionally oriented world map). Yet, paradoxically, we do have a slight inferiority complex (anything Made in Malta is considered second grade). Most towns in Europe with our population would not even be termed a city, let alone have its own official language and fund a University that caters for some 5000 students. Still we tend to do quite well for an island without any natural resources, not even fresh water, except our acumen, aptitude and religious faith.
The concentration of history and culture in such a small place, just 100 square miles, is amazing. We have something to attract tourists from all over the world: the Anglo-Saxon sun lovers can lie for hours idly in the summer sun, ignoring all the skin cancer warnings; the intellectuals have plenty of churches, palaces and prehistoric sites to analyse and browse over. Those wanting to get way from it all, can just go to Gozo for a couple of days and enjoy the peace and quiet of the tiny villages.
Sociologists have a field day analysing some of our more peculiar social eccentricities. Malta has some of the most densely populated areas in Europe - a few areas in the Three Cities have a population of over 3000 people per quarter of a square mile; our incessant hand gesturing was the key to Desmond Morris's theories on the 'human animal' as a 'naked ape'. Historians have plenty to ponder on - the symmetrical carvings on the huge dolmens found at the Tarxien and Ggantija Temples are mirrored in similar sites all over mainland Europe and in Ireland. The Knights of Malta, all the way back in the sixteenth century, pioneered an embryonic European Community and created towns "built by gentlemen for gentlemen". So perhaps it is no wonder that despite our minute size, the Maltese emigrant (whether by choice or necessity) tends to do very well, world wide, wherever they are, in whatever profession they decide to pursue: academically or in business.
Is the new affluent Maltese generation taking all this for granted? Malta has changed drastically in the last ten years. Social poverty and homelessness are unheard of; new buildings have cropped up everywhere; the population doubles in the summer months and the environment is paying for it. Is this going to be another case of realising what we are missing, when it is too late? When are the local authorities and new- fangled town councils going to get their priorities right and not just grasp at any vote-pulling exercises? Will our obstinacy and perpetual internal disputes: the village festa feuds, persistent political divisions, bird hunting contentions, red taped bureaucracy, appalling car driving and our search for more material possessions, do away with what is really Maltese and succeed where centuries of foreign domination have failed?
Perhaps it should be made compulsory that each Maltese should live away from the Island for a while, to appreciate and take stock of what is uniquely ours. This Merhba Malta Home Page should certainly provide an excellent medium for Maltese expatriates to communicate to those 'surfing' the Internet, yet constrained by the geographical boundaries of our Islands, their appreciation for all things Maltese, even our idiosyncrasies.
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Janet Mifsud de Gray is a final year Ph.D. candidate at the School of Pharmacy Queen's University of Belfast, N. Ireland. Her thesis discusses the 'Pharmacological Properties of Chiral Anti-Epileptic Drugs'. Her studies are sponsored by the University of Malta, where she lectures in the Department of Pharmacy. Her e-mail address in N. Ireland is janmif@qub.ac.uk; whilst that in Malta is janmif@unimt.mt. She welcomes any comments on her ftit hsibijiet.
E-mail to Dr Janet Mifsud.
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