By Tony Deyal
What devours all and can kill a king, destroy a town and crush mountains down? Time. According to the experts, it started in the past, keeps on going into the future, and never, ever stops. It keeps on keeping on and on. What makes it even more difficult is that if you’re not moving forward, you’re moving backwards.
As the great philosopher, Kirkregaard said: “Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.”
Unlike a balloon, I can’t be blown up and yet remain intact. Worse, if you’re hot then cold, a liquid then solid, flaky and wet at the same time, you might be waxing warm, but you’re still wax. And while it is warm, it opens your pores, but when it’s cold it can cause some bad burns.
In thinking about my days at University in Canada, working in the US, and moving around the Caribbean at different times with three different jobs, the one thing I know is that unlike a river which has a mouth but never talks, a head that never weeps, and a riverbed that never sleeps, I can run and also walk. This is why, as I head into my 80th birthday, I went back to Canada and Washington DC to spend some time with my wife and two sons before I returned home to Trinidad. In a way, the upping and downing, the going and coming, are very much like what is called a “palindrome” which is, like me, a word, phrase, or number that “runs back” on itself with words like “level”, “race car” and, most of all, the lady who brought me into the world, “MOM”.
I find palindromes very much my kind of thing, and strings like “Dennis and Edna sinned.” This is fun but nothing like the “biggies” which include “Red roses run no risk, sir, on Nurse’s order”; “A man, a plan, a canal, Panama”; “Sir, I demand, I am a maid named Iris”; “Was it a car or a cat I saw?” and my favourite, maybe because one of my friends said it was meant for me, “He lived as a devil, eh?”
My colleagues are not into palindromes as much as words that are “backwards” and “forwards.” I once told a friend not to say my name “Tony”. He asked, “y not”? Because I must have my coffee the first thing in the morning, another friend in Canada told me, “Coffee spelt backwards is ‘eeffoc’.” He then added: “And Tony, just like you, until I have my coffee I don’t give ‘eeffoc’.” I heard another one from a friend in DC who, I am sure, made this up, “Tony, one time a cop, thinking I was drunk, pulled me over and asked me to say the alphabet backwards. So, I said ‘tebahpla eht’ and I ended spending the whole night in jail!” Then there is the one who said his doctor told him, “Sir, I’m afraid your DNA is backwards”. Immediately, he asked the doc, “And?”
So, before I end up in jail in Trinidad or some other Caribbean country, I better put an Energiser bunny’s batteries backwards. This way he would keep on coming, and coming, and coming…
In my case, sitting with my wife in a plane with plenty of people heading to Trinidad, we were going and going… but this time, back home. There, for the first time in its history, one of the political parties made it clear that instead of having two groups of politicians, one of African and the other of Indian descent, every creed and race of the country would have an equal place. I am hoping that the other party, now that it has a new leader for whom I have the highest regard, will do the same.
More, regardless of race, every country in the Caribbean has two major political parties fighting each other to win the election and get rich or richer. But not by themselves alone. The money might not be the fruit of all evils, but it is the truth for winning elections. Some companies and rich individuals give the two major parties money. If their teams win, they’re set. It might not be for life but at the worst, five years of making big money and getting richer by the day.
Some even run the bread on both sides. That way, whoever wins must give them opportunities to make more money than they put in. Both parties, in and out of power, have a long-term link with the “road” companies. First, as the time is nigh and ready to fly for the election, the night is full of people working on the roads. That way, there is money, much of which finds its way into the election. After the election, money must pass to the “road” bosses because there will always be more elections at different levels and the worst thing to do is to have “road” worriers.
But what really blows the top of everything is what all the countries of the Caribbean have in common. Since it started in the 17th century when sugar cane became a by-product, and then very quickly a by-product, rum became synonymous with and a must in the Caribbean. From “Rum and Coca Cola” to “Rum Till I Die”, regardless of race and even class, rum eventually became the Caribbean’s best four-letter word.
According to Loop News: “It’s a super year for politics in the Caribbean region as General Elections will be called in several countries when constitutionally due.”
The first on the list, Trinidad and Tobago, just had its own election and this has made the other countries more concerned to the point of worry, and even fear. The party that had won the two previous elections and were the bosses of Trinidad and Tobago for ten years was beaten badly. Now, Jamaica, Guyana, Suriname, Bermuda, Turks and Caicos, Curacao, Anguilla, Belize, and St Vincent and the Grenadines are next. Unlike the long way to England and “Tipperary”, the Caribbean, especially for politicians, is more like stripping you of your power and giving you a jail or two.
What makes it worse is that the elections in Trinidad and those heading into the other countries come at a time when, according to the experts, “all the countries are grappling with economic recovery, crime and climate resilience.” In fact, unless you get all your people to vote, you will have no chance of winning and even if you do, the party in power will always have a few tricks to change or “lose” the votes. Instead of being seen, some of the votes will be in the sea, never to be seen again!
Having been for years in the region, first with the Pan American Health Organisation, then the World Bank/CARICOM, and finally as the corporate secretary and head of the cricket board’s corporate communications, I know that the Caribbean as a group is not going anywhere. Even though I keep saying that if we don’t hang together, we will hang alone, one by one, country after country, that is not as important as CARICOM and the time it spends and the people who spend and spend and spend some more…
*Tony Deyal was last seen asking what word is the same written forward, backwards and upside down? Not just a noon but a high noon of confrontation, which will decide the outcome of the Caribbean.
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