GREAT BAY, St. Martin (June 16, 2003) — The new pioneerseries booklet has just been published here and it profiles the legendary Saban road builder Josephus Lambert “Lambee” Hassell.
Lambee & The Road That Couldn’t Be Built is the fourth junior scholastic reader from House of Nehesi Publishers since 1999. The main writer/researcher on the new publication commissioned by the publisher is Gerard van Veen. “The Lambee booklet is a motivational reader that gets young people interested in reading about non-traditional nation builders of the Caribbean, especially from St. Martin, Saba, and St. Eustatius; and we are glad to be working with Mr. Van Veen again,” said Jacqueline Sample of House of Nehesi Publishers (the foundation published Van Veen’s Colorful Religion in 1999).
Born in Windwardside, Saba in 1906, going abroad before reaching adulthood and with little continuous formal education, Lambee would not return to his mountainous homeland until the 1940s. Up to that time, Sabans had known “hundreds of years of excruciatingly narrow dirt roads and rocky paths that perennially washed away with each heavy rainfall. Many had come to believe that no proper road system could ever be built on the breathtakingly steep slopes and crags of the five-square-mile island,” according to a House of Nehesi bio-brief about the early nation builder.
In Lambee & The Road That Couldn’t Be Built the story is told in almost video-paced fashion about how Hassell went from becoming a hotel worker and boat builder to musical instrument maker and land surveyor. In addition to outlines about his family life, there are intriguing bytes about the challenges he received from politicians, accidents during the building, creative financing and how rain washed away a section of the road, causing design changes that have lasted to this day.
The booklet was funded mainly by the Dutch government office of the Ministerie van Binnenlandse Zaken en Koninkrijksrelaties in the Windward Islands and by proceeds from the book St. Martin Massive! A Snapshot of Popular Artists. “As with all of our publications, we encourage the general public to pick up a copy,” said Sample. “But because of the booklet’s focus we are also looking to distribute Lambee in the schools of St. Martin, Saba, and St. Eustatius to encourage reading, writing and varied interest in the study of the history, culture and pioneer personalities of the islands,and to build self-esteem and inspire positive life and career choices among our young people.”
Lambee & The Road That Couldn’t Be Built is currently at Van Dorp, Arnia, Shipwreck and other bookstores and libraries.