One of the things many foreign visitors find hard to understand is the juxtaposition of absolute wealth and absolute poverty in Malta.
I have heard many visitors liken being in Malta to a visit to a Third World country where this is the norm. The shame is they are understandably misinterpreting the reality. They see it as poverty. We don’t. And it isn’t really, because all these empty properties, not least the thousands of empty flats over shops are valuable assets which are being left to rot because people can afford to let it happen, as it has been a better investment than money in the bank for more years than I care to remember. Just look up in your drive along Gzira or up Tower Road and see hundreds of empty grime-filled flats over shops.
What foreigners actually see is pockets of well-looked-after areas immediately turning into slums round the next corner. So you wander around the Portomaso development, turn the corner and greasy Paceville awaits. So you wander around the beautiful Birgu Waterfront and come across very damaged empty buildings not far away. The experience of tat and ugliness just touching anywhere restored and beautiful or newly built and pristine is an inherent part of the Maltese experience.
It is in fact our landscape of choice, but should it be?
It is very hard to explain to them that the people are rich here and the government is poor. That governments are in fact only allowed to govern if they allow the status quo to continue. That the people hold the strings because they can bribe any government with their vote. That the people have the power and do not use it well. That we have a lot of organised religion but no sense of community. That we have a lot of useless pride in being Maltese, but do not translate that pride into a real pride in our towns and cities, our villages and our countryside, all our landscapes, in fact.
Malta looks terrible within a few seconds by car of driving away from anywhere nice. Naxxar is a pretty village. You start the downward drive to Mosta and you see no countryside, no attractive buildings no nothing. You go past huge roundabouts when you drive anywhere, the weirdest of schoolboy or schoolgirl sculptures, plaques of politicians and more unnecessary paraphernalia. It is reflected in the way many of us dress too. Dressed to kill is an understatement. Our glut of women parade around with their hair straightened and bleached, their eyebrows and lips tattooed, their thighs tingling with the latest slimming treatment, all set off with too tight clothes and dreadful bling. They are good looking but look gross. And of course they trail after macho Maltese men as if their lives depended on the approval of this surly creature who knows he has a lifetime to pick and choose women, from the ones who are abandoned, separated or all the desperate East European beauties out to nab their lifetime pay cheque?
As is Malta, good looking fundamentally but looking gross. That is why people are shrieking and holding on to our few pockets of beauty. The Verdala plains, the Golden Bay area, Ramla, Xaghra et al. Not everyone can afford to go away often. People have a sense of nostalgia; remember how pretty Malta used to look? Every time I go down to Marsaxlokk for example I feel this crushing sense of disappointment. I used to bring foreigners there years ago, I used to take my one-to-one TEFL students there and it was idyllic; now it is often dirty. Some of the restaurants with tables outside could do a lot more to make the place look pretty and everywhere there is a palpable sense that we only want to take, but do not intend to give anything back. The same disease that means our homes are pristine on the inside but not maintained outside.
Doesn’t this landscape depress you? It does me because I know it could be so much better and somehow the visual is not part of the Maltese psyche, or of those we elect locally and nationally to represent us. But we all know what we feel when we travel. How bowled over we are by the miles and miles of beauty, the well-maintained cities the pristine countryside. The feeling that there is government and that government is in control. The feeling that there is a sense not only of nationality, but far more importantly, of community.
Why can’t we have some uniformity and regularity? Why can’t streets have similar architectural features, similar coloured doors or windows, just anything to indicate some sense of discipline, some sense of common belonging, some pride in our landscape of choice?
This is an island where 3,000 people sometimes flock into St John’s in one day alone. This is an island where the buzz in Valletta even on a weekday morning, even in this heat, is amazing. This is an island which lifestyle-wise has so much going for it but we are insisting on throwing the baby out with the bathwater. The bathwater is getting dirtier and dirtier. Ghadira last Wednesday afternoon was so dirty it was untrue. Mostly dirty from mums who throw their baby wipes, dads who chuck their cigarettes, kids who throw their paper cups away.
We are filthy and we are choking on our filth. Sure you can sit at Birgu and think you’re in Cannes. Sure you can sip a café macchiato in Mdina and think you’re in Italy, but sadly all the good and hard work of so many people, both in government and in the private sector is washed away by our not-so-great unwashed. We are unwashed because we are not educated, at least not in the complete way we need to be. And still we go on bashing on about IT. More pay for IT teachers, scholarships so kids can go to IT colleges, concessions so you can do these degrees in private colleges without the need for Maltese which is keeping so many bright people out of our educational institutions or being sent abroad.
The IT vision is good but it isn’t enough. It’s like polishing your nails while the rest of you is dirty. We need to scrub up from head to toe and we need people to have this vision and the push and the drive to make it happen as well as a refusal to let this mad electorate let Malta and Gozo deteriorate any faster than it already is. Our landscape of choice cannot be what I am seeing around me.
Can we leave a legacy so our kids can see a better, less ugly Malta than we have created?
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