By Johnny Coomansingh
On Saturday, August 31, 2024, Trinidad and Tobago celebrated its 62 year as an independent state. Note carefully that August 31, 1962 was a Friday. I was just eight years old, a tot in primary school when the news about our independence broke. We learnt and repeated the watchwords of our country ‘Discipline, Production and Tolerance” and sincerely believed that all of us would follow what these words stood for.
Our motto: ‘Together We Aspire. Together We Achieve’ gave us a guide for the unification of a people. We sang a kind of Independence folk song with the some of the lyrics that I remember to this day:
‘Come, come away, hail to the day
This is our land’s great morning
Birds in the trees waft to the breeze
Sounds of our nation’s dawning.
Humming bird bright lend your delight
Ibis your scarlet feathers
Keskidee call, summon them all
This is a day of wonders.’
The chorus went like this: ‘O land of fairest beauty. We pledge our lives to duty. And vow this day! And vow this day! To serve thee.’ As children we believed. I was so proud and happy, so full of childhood imaginations and wonder!
Our little hearts were excited about our future and we stood at attention and sang the national anthem with gusto and earnestness: ‘Forged from the love of liberty. In the fires of hope and prayer. With boundless faith in our destiny, we solemnly declare. Side by side we stand, islands of the blue Caribbean Sea. This our native land, we pledge our lives to thee. Here every creed and race find an equal place and may God bless our nation.’ We felt great!
Although I didn’t understand what Independence meant, the event brings to mind the nursery rhyme I learnt in primary school titled: ‘Solomon Grundy,’ that I also did not understand. It could be that my teacher was trying desperately to teach me the ‘Days of the Week.’ Who knows? Here are the words: ‘Solomon Grundy, born on a Monday, Christened on a Tuesday, Married on a Wednesday, Took ill on a Thursday, Grew worse on a Friday, Died on a Saturday, buried on a Sunday. That was the end of Solomon Grundy.’
‘Grew worse on Friday’ is what strikes me at the heart here. Our first ‘Independence Day’ was on a Friday. Friday is used here as a metaphor. We had hoped that our Independence would have brought better Fridays, but our Fridays grew severely worse as the years flew by. This year Independence was celebrated on Saturday. Apparently ‘Independence,’ like Solomon Grundy, having suffered all the diseases and malfunctions over the years, died this last Saturday, August 31, 2024.
A disease; a plague more severe than COVID-19 destroyed ‘Discipline.’ I am of the view, regarding discipline, that Trinidad and Tobago has lost its way. Discipline and order, as I have learnt in my study of educational theory and class management, are complementary. They work in tandem. Right now in Trinidad, we are facing a serious discipline problem in our schools. Everything seems to be out of order. Some high schools exhibit more serious instances of indiscipline. It seems that schools controlled by religious boards tend to do better than government-controlled ones. I will quote from my article: “We Free” and “We Like It So” published in Caribbean News Global (CNG) (February 28, 2024):
“So what have we now? We are on this journey; all of us began that journey of “independence” in 1962. Quite a few of my friends and colleagues are now “pushing up daisies.” In terms of the political rancor in our society the racial tension is appalling, not to mention the exponential growth of violent crimes in Trinidad. Young men and women have turned to gun slinging, banditry and terrible home invasions as though they have been graduated and certified to harass, rob, maim and sometimes kill their victims. Is this freedom? Is this the independence that we worked so hard to obtain?
Do we still believe that we were “Forged from the love of liberty” as the first line in our national anthem conveys? The crime, violence and illicit drug running in our country are extremely elevated to the point where we are considered to be one of the most violent of countries in the entire world. Some reports indicate that we are number six in the world for crime; number six!”
My good friend, Reverend Sanya Beharry in her sermon on September 01, 2024, at the Morton Memorial Presbyterian Church in Sangre Grande mentioned our euphoric celebration of Independence. People were out on the streets of Port of Spain celebrating! Nevertheless, she reminded us that independence is wonderful, but alas, the next day we have murders in the land. When she met with me after the service, she intimated that it was time for us to move towards interdependence.
Achieving interdependence is tough but achievable. However, this achievement requires people to treat each other as equals, to forget racism, to extend the helping hand, to eliminate the ‘great man’ attitude and foster ‘knee to knee’ communication. That too, will not be realized too soon. The murders are continuing.
The home invasions are becoming an everyday activity like nobody’s business. Solomon Grundy will soon be buried. It was only earlier today that I saw that my good friend and sister was murdered in Arima. I don’t know how to accept this event. She was so kind, so jovial, and full of laughter. According to Ian Alleyne’s program Crime Watch, I noticed that we already have 428 murders as of September 03, 2024. The prognosis is that there would be around 606 murders by the end of the year; almost two murders per day! What a mess!
Anna Ramdass in her article ‘Don’t blame me for crime,’ published in the Trinidad Express, August 29, 2024, articulated: “Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley has said he is not to be blamed for crime in this country, as he lamented there are ‘devils’ in society who would look at a five-year-old child and kill her.” The ‘Chicken and the Egg’ scenario is still extant on this political landscape. Passing the buck is customary. Many activities and events are too hot to handle for many a minister.
An ailment so virulent destroyed ‘Production’ in every sector including petroleum, asphalt, fuel oils, natural gas, milk, beef, pork and pork products, sugar, cocoa, coffee, citrus fruit, rice, coconut, banana, fresh fruit, root crops and vegetables. Imagine the prices per pound of the following: tomato at $25, yam $10-$15, dasheen $10, eddoes $16 and green cooking bananas $6. The closure of the Petrotrin Refinery signaled the importation of fuel for vast population of vehicles in the state.
We are now a net importer of sugar, rice, fats, oils, meat, wheat, peanuts, corn, soya bean, and practically everything else. I will always state, ‘If you don’t know where you are going, any road will take you there.’ Trinidad and Tobago is an extremely dependent state. It is my opinion that if the country goes on at the current rate we would be dependent for a very, very long time. Self-sufficiency is a distant dream; a very distant dream.
In the same vein, the calypso titled: Progress, written by Winsford Devines and sung by Austin Lewis (sobriquet King Austin) enlightened us as to what is truly happening in the world, and more specifically, Trinidad. In his music he advised:
“This land is not as bountiful as it was; Simply because, in his quest for success; Nothing stands in man’s way
Old rivers run dry, soon the birds won’t fly
The mountains will be no longer high
And when I really think of it
I does wonder why, oh why?”
As the song says, “Nothing stands in man’s way,” gives voice to the way we treat our fragile landscapes. Our mountains are being denuded. Squatting, illegal mining, slash and burn agriculture, and building developments are taking a severe toll on the northern hillsides.
After it rains, silt-laden, brown-colored water creates floods, which from time to time, overpower roadways in Port of Spain and the East-West corridor. A verse from my poem titled Departure, published in the Delaware Bards Poetry Review (2019) gives some clarity:
“And in Trinidad, the Land of Steelpan and Calypso, I must cry out! I must declare,
That I did sit and stare at the rape of the forest in Valencia; it was oh so clear,
Virgin forest, so verdant, so pristine, so lush, lost! Receded a mile from the road,
Soil, sand, rock, gravel, mud; removed load, after load, after load
To build another black topped road somewhere down below you see
Kill the mangrove! Chase the birds! Block the crabs from crossing to the sea!
Move the mountain! Fill up the swamp! We don’t need that in the South…
Create nasty lakes in Valencia; close your eye and shut your mouth!”
With ‘Tolerance,’ a raging racial cancer now severely affects the people. In my article titled: The Calypso Artform: a Weapon Against Afro-Indo Unity in Trinidad and Tobago, published by the Journal of Development Alternatives and Area Studies (Vol. 29 No 1& 2, March-June 2010), Annmarie Bissessar declared, “…electoral outcomes have reflected ethnic cleavages. King Austin did not omit the question about the divisions involved with race, color, creed, and class and how we treat each other in his calypso:
“I see consciousness abate,
As today we live recklessly
Money makes egos inflate
And thereby creates a turbulent state.
I see a struggle between the sexes
New hang-ups and old complexes
Now the question is right in context
”What shall be next?”
I’ve already seen
The world has come divided
Between race, colour, creed and class
And some of the things the scriptures predict
Truthfully come to pass
Soil that wouldn’t bear,
Children making children
To be part of this growing mass
And I ask, “If this is progress, how long will it last?”
Today, we have a situation in the country where we are missing $3.3 billion. What a travesty! Many have declared that the country’s motto should now read: ‘Together We Conspire. Together We are Thieves.’ Maybe the ghost of Desmond Cartey is hanging around. In an editorial published in the Newsday newspaper, Raymond S. Hackett (8/02/2019) stated:
“Many do not know the deceased sociologist Desmond Cartey. However, I do. He was the Peoples National Movement (PNM) cabinet minister who in 1986 blurted out on a campaign platform, “All ah we thief!” At the time I did not grasp the sociological significance of his faux pas. Now I do. Dr Cartey was suggesting that our culture is not as innocent as we would like to believe it is. For decades before and after independence, TT has been identified as a citadel of corruption – be it by way of informal contacts, nepotism, or cronyism.”
With the rate of the development of underdevelopment in Trinidad and Tobago, Solomon Grundy who got worse on Friday, died on Saturday, will soon be buried on Sunday. Without any doubt, he will ultimately be forgotten.
