There is something about Malta in summer which makes me fall in love with the island all over again. Perhaps it is how the intense heat makes me drive up to the beaches and there, I can kick my flip-flops off and let my bare feet sink in the sand. And perhaps that, coupled with the vast blue sea ahead of me, makes me feel free and liberated from the chains that a tiny island can impose.

The sound of the waves thumping gently on the shoreline; the sound of children’s laughter in the background; eating fresh cold watermelon on the sloping strip of sand where it meets the sea; the taste of salt on the skin, that is what makes me feel grounded, feel home. It is the one thing that since my childhood has never changed and it is what I treasure despite all the increasing mayhem around us.

When I started writing this column 14 years ago, the world was quite a different place. You will recall that Facebook was this new thing on the block, with bemused news anchors saying something about it at the end-bit of the news, with a raised eyebrow and a little chuckle.

Touchscreen phones had just made a grand entry with Steve Jobs launching the iPhone. There was no phone e-mail, no Instagram, no WhatsApp, no TikTok, no 5G. We still used to watch television, with no on-demand, no Netflix.

In 2008, Satoshi Nakamoto published a paper entitled Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System and we all ignored it. Spain won the Euros which ensured that my then two-year-old daughter became a lifelong supporter. Lewis Hamilton became the first black driver to win a Formula One World Championship; Barak Obama was elected the first US black president; Vladimir Putin was Russia’s prime minister (he was still figuring out how to stay president forever); Russia won the Eurovision; and the only thing we knew about Ukraine was that sexy Ruslana had won it in 2004. Yes, there was a worrying financial crisis but, somehow, there was an air of “this too will pass”.

Or was there? It could just have been me. The last half of that year we were in shock, grieving my father, and I remember my mother and I could only bear to watch Scrubs (to which I attribute the expanse of my medical knowledge) and any news seemed irrelevant next to our family sorrow.

But I know for a fact that democratic countries in the west still behaved like

actual democratic countries in 2008. Unlike now: more and more western democracies are a guise for authoritarian rule and for corruption. Who would have told us in 2008 that the World Cup of 2022 would be played at Christmas time so that the football world could be injected some dosh from Qatari oil tycoons? Who would have told us 14 years ago that it would be played in stadia with luxury outdoor air-condition and seats with a cooling system and they’ll be built by slaves and we’ll all be okay with that? This year’s World Cup is a typical symptom of the diseased world of 2022. And that includes Malta.

The year 2008 was a crossroads for Malta. It’s the year Malta waved goodbye to the lira and said hello to the euro; the year anti-EU Alfred Sant was finally made to resign (and look at him now, an MEP in Brussels); the year when we thought Maltese politics was getting a true makeover, when prime minister Lawrence Gonzi opted for his friend from the opposite camp, George Abela, to become president.

I worry what kind of country we’re leaving our children- Kristina Chetcuti

There was hope; there was freedom to say whatever you wanted to say; that was the year Daphne Caruana Galizia set up her Running Commentary blog. It was the year you could still buy a three-bedroomed apartment in, say, Mosta, for €120,000 – you now need triple the amount even though salaries haven’t budged. Who would have told us that, 14 years on, we still would have no (safe) cycling lanes and no alternative mode of public transport? Or that there would be way less trees but way more cranes, more roads, more concrete blocks, more ugliness? Or that men would still be in top-most positions in the country and that women would still be overlooked for key decision-making positions and mostly considered as walking-wombs?

What if Sant had won that fateful 2008 election? Would he have ‘frozen’ the EU membership? Would the criminally-linked, disgraced Joseph Muscat have risen to power? Would Malta have fallen in the corrupt rot it is in now? Would Daphne still have been assassinated as a “business as usual deal” (the regret of her hired killer: “I should have asked for €10 million not €150,000”)? Would we be drowning in a culture of impunity? Would Malta be a better place?

I don’t know. I worry what kind of country we’re leaving our children.

My daughter had just started playschool in 2008; two weeks ago, we had her end of secondary graduation. Of course, I cried a teeny bit in my heart.

Being a parent is the hardest job in the world: you must raise children to be independent, to show them how to be able to sift right from wrong and how to stand up to their principles and values… and then let them go. 

My hope lies only in her generation. We must urge them to open their minds, to get off their phones, to travel, to soak in the different cultures of the world, to spend time away from Malta in order to understand it more. Then, when the time comes, one winter, the Class of ’22 will head back and sweep clean the rot that has taken over and, come summer, they’ll walk barefoot on the beach and feel they’re home.

Life has a habit of taking different, unexpected, directions. Sand will certainly not feature in my new direction, in fact, it will be rather wet, but when love beckons, you follow.

Dear readers, it’s been a pleasure.