Insight

She creeps quietly into the room
She stands, silent, in the corner
Can you hear her?

She only ever whispers

She comes not with loud clomping footsteps,
Nor banging door
She comes quietly
She stands
She waits
She whispers


Be still
She will not shout
Be still
Keep silence
Be still
And hear, and know


She stands on the edge of your consciousness
Just there, just beyond what you can see
Waiting for you to be still
Be still!

She whispers
But when she speaks
Her words roll loud as the thunder

Corruption: victimless crime?

At the same time yesterday, as many Trinis were enjoying the thrill of Keshorn Walcott's success in the 2012 London Olympic games (javelin), the people of Diego Martin and points west were enduring a thrill ride of an entirely different kind: the Great Deluge of August 2012 was in progress. When the rains finally stopped pounding down, rivers had overflowed their banks, drainage systems had given up the ghost and water was everywhere....mostly in places we don't want it to be; 2 were dead and 2 more were missing.

We in Trinidad have something of an edifice complex. We like big house. We are also not afraid to be a little corrupt if necessary, to get said big house put up on some high hill. So we will pay whomever we must, to get what permits or permissions we must, to build what we must, where we must have it. The trouble with that is that when trouble comes, as it did yesterday, it's not just you in your big house that's at risk. Suddenly, the corruption that put you in your big house up in the heavens, puts me in my little house way down below, at significant risk too. And that's risk I didn't ask for and shouldn't have to assume.

Over the last many years, we have been blithely gouging great chunks out of the sides of hills. What exactly did we think would happen? Hills don't generally grow back, they can't regenerate, at least, not that I've seen. So we've gouged; slashed and burned (our subsistence farmers are famous for this); and the dry season has parched and burned lands and no attempts that I've seen, have been made to stop or redress any of these activities.

We go on telling ourselves, "Gawd iz ah Trini" (God is a Trini, ergo all shall be well) and do nothing to fix what we've broken. Well all isn't so 'well' this morning is it? There has been loss of life, along with some pretty significant property damage and losses. Even now, I am waiting with bated breath to hear about the state of my own house in the west and those of various friends in same affected neighborhood.

Corruption hurts. We may like to believe that corruption is a victimless crime but nothing could be further from the truth, as this weekend's flooding shows. We want to think that it's just a bribe so that we can get what we want, but I would suggest that the fact that you need to 'pass change' as we say in T&T, means that what you want is not in the best interests of the collective. And to be clear, let me say that subsistence farming on state lands by squatters is as harmful to the collective good as is privately funded construction of questionable legality or government-sanctioned hill-gouging practices.

As a people, we have committed numerous sins against the environment. Unfortunately, many of those who are today paying the price of those sins, may have committed none. Plenty of folk who don't dump; don't slash and burn; and maybe even try to recycle (a tough thing in Trinidad & Tobago) are this morning facing a mountain of mud and debris and stiff clean up bills for their homes. In some cases, they may have lost everything they own.

It is often said that the Earth is on loan to us from our children. We need to wake up to the fact that it is not a roll of toilet paper. There aren't 10 different varieties on store shelves nearby for when this one runs out. This is the only one we get. We really should treat it that way.

Going for Gold

We (Trinidad & Tobago) have sent 31 athletes to the London games. We won't get 31 golds but we don't need to. We'll win some (well ONE for sure), we'll medal in some, we'll fail to place or finish in others, but in all instances, they will have tried. What more could we ask?

I love my country. I curse it, its politicians, its laissez-faire attitudes, its 'make-the-fool-go-further' approach to business, its attitude to the environment and health and welfare, but I love my country. Still though, one of the things about the country that pains me most is that we don't seem to understand what it takes to be great. And we could so easily be great.

We don't seem to get that for every Keshorn Walcott, who today won a gold medal in men's javelin at the 2012 Olympics, there are hundreds of John Browns, who will win nothing. This does not for a moment mean that the John Browns are worth nothing, but rather that maybe they haven't yet figured out what they can win at. They haven't yet had the opportunity to find out. Keshorn Walcott found out. Hasely Crawford (100 m gold, 1976) found out. Wendell Mottley (100 m silver, 1964, Yale graduate, politician) found out. Ato Boldon found out (3 bronzes and a silver in 2 Olympics and now has a pretty great career as a broadcaster). What about the rest? The job of a good government, a good education system, a good social system, is to ensure that every John Brown, who might otherwise end his race with a DNF - did not finish - has the opportunity to find out where he/she fits and how he/she can add value to the country they love.

Keshorn and the other 30 Olympic hopefuls have found where they want to be and are doing what they want to be doing. They have found where they fit. If we as a nation, are really so worried about our crime situation and our future, we should be trying to find out where the lost boys and girls of POS and environs fit and give them the opportunities to explore the things they are drawn to.

Many years ago, when I was an elementary (primary) school teacher, I had two students whose stories have stayed with me, Johnny and Hakim. Johnny was a little boy whose background I heard was difficult. Johnny was though, one of my hardest working students. When I would give the class ten words with which they had to write sentences, Johnny would come to school the next day with astonishing work. First, this 9 year old boy had the penmanship of an old man taught by some colonial days teacher: beautiful; tidy (almost to a fault); careful. Second, he wrote the most delightful and thoughtful sentences I had ever seen. I don't know that he was trying to please me, but he certainly did. After I quit my teaching position in search of fame and fortune, I once saw Johnny on the street. I asked him whether he was still writing those beautiful sentences to which he replied sincerely, "Miss, we not bright again since you left." Not much has hurt me as those few words did, offered as they were, by an earnest little boy on a street corner. I cannot remember how I responded, I just know my heart hurt.

The second child whose story I think of often, is Hakim. Hakim whispered to me one day that he wanted to be a doctor. I wrote out for him on a piece of paper what the steps would be: high school; O' levels; A' levels; university and then medical school. It all would start with his high school entrance exam which was two years off. We folded the piece of paper and he put it in his pocket. I charged him to hold on to it tightly and look at it every day. It was to be a guide, a tool, a goal sheet.

About 4 years later, I saw Hakim again. Begging. "Hustling a bread" he called it. Where are they now, Johnny and Hakim? I have no idea. Hakim may still be 'hustling a bread' and Johnny may have continued to believe that he was somehow smart only because of me. Either way, that's two that may have been lost because their opportunities were limited at age 9.

Today as we celebrate our gold, bronzes and the years of effort of our athletes, I want to remember Johnny and Hakim. Why? Because on the flip side of every wonderful success are the children who lack even the simplest opportunity to become one tenth of who they should be. Keshorn's success may be our success but by the same token, so too is Hakim's failure our failure.

We have greatness in us. I know it. It is why my country makes me weep. We have greatness in us, but we choose to squander it, to pick and choose who will rise and who will fall. Perhaps these Olympics in which a fella from Toco has won a medal, we will finally begin to understand geographical/racial/gender/ability discrimination cheats us all. Just imagine if the boy from Toco had never picked up a stick to throw. Just imagine if he hadn't been encouraged to dream his dream. What would we be celebrating today?

Emancipate

Is there such a thing as a 'spiritual emetic' or perhaps an 'emotional emetic'? If there is, I need to know where it can be bought. I feel like I need to have some on hand, just in case I absorb anything unhealthy on any given day.

As I was going about my business the other day, I experienced something that made me think that each of us, at some point in our lives, needs to purge ourselves of some of the junk we've imbibed either emotionally or spiritually.

If for example, you have spent much of your life being fed a steady diet of 'you don't belong here', 'you are not worthy', there must - for your health's sake - come a time when you spit that up and out.

If you have spent much of your life being fed a steady diet of 'you are stupid and worthless', there should come a time when you spit that up and out. There should. Indeed, there must.

In Trinidad & Tobago (where I was when these thoughts first occurred to me), we just celebrated Emancipation (August 1st). May I suggest that we all need to emancipate ourselves from the various poisons in our guts and spirits? Get an emetic, a laxative, a counselor, a priest, a shaman. Whatever it takes. Get that garbage up and out and don't for the love of Heaven, go back for more.

As the late great Bob Marley once said, "Emancipate yourself from mental slavery. None but ourselves can free our minds." No time better than right now to set yourself free.