One Caribbean – To my ‘buy’ Zubin
IWAS 19 years old when I made my first trip, in 1964, by plane to Tobago. My first flight in a jet plane came after the song about leaving on one. I was 26 when, in 1971, I left to take up a journalism scholarship at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada. But contrary to the song, I did come back again. It was not until I was 30 that I went to Barbados, and 35 when I went to Jamaica. In those days, 1980, the Jamaican dollar was worth more than the US dollar. It took a while before I went to Guyana. Skip some years, and by the time my two youngest children, Jasmine and Zubin, born in 1997 and 1998, were nine and eight years old, respectively, they had already lived in four Caribbean countries (Barbados, Trinidad, Belize and Antigua) and, as what Trinis call a “lagniappe”, and Jamaicans as well as Belizeans call a “brawta”, they also went to their mother’s homeland, Guyana.
In the past 26 years since I started with the Pan American Health Organisation, in 1992, I have been everywhere in the region and have become truly First Caribbean with my love for the region bigger than the bank of that name. This weekly column ran in Guyana, Trinidad, Barbados and Jamaica and, after 25 years, is still in the Gleaner and Nation as well as some diaspora newspapers, including the Toronto Independent. While One Caribbean is a media business which, under Ken Gordon, Harold Hoyte and Sir Fred Gollop, expanded into the wider region, for me, One Caribbean is a dream and a reality, my home and my happy hunting ground.
I once told a meeting of regional information people that I can’t sell something called “Caribbean Single Market and Economy” even when I shorten it to “CESME” but I can sell “One Caribbean.” In fact, I don’t have to sell it. It has been here for years, long before CARICOM. It was the spirit that moved our cricketing success and a dream that bound us together. So when one of the many feeders at the CARICOM trough tells me about “CESME”, I pointedly ask, “Says who?”
SURREALISTIC ENCOUNTER
This was my reaction when, early in my regional travels, I had an almost surrealistic encounter in Guyana that so typifies our region and makes every trip, visit and voyage anywhere in the Caribbean, an experience to savour. As I walked through Georgetown, a little street urchin, to whom I had earlier given some money, followed me, his intelligent eyes, shy smile and sturdy gait contrasting with his torn clothing and bare feet. I walked into one of the department stores and, seeing a shirt I liked at a good price, bought it. As I picked up my package, one of the ubiquitous, uniformed security guards walked up angrily demanding, “Who buy dah?” Astonished, I said calmly, “Me. I buy it.” “Not you,” he said, pointing at the urchin. “He.” I strove to correct him. “That is certainly not the case,” I said sharply. “This is mine. I buy it.”
The burly guard was getting angry and raised his voice harshly, “Not you. I not talking to you. I want to know is who buy dah?” The little boy had become frightened and was hiding behind my right leg. A crowd had started gathering. I took out my receipt and showed the guard. “Listen,” I said, speaking slowly as to one mentally deficient, “This is mine. You see the receipt, that is mine. Is me buy this.” The guard shrugged, satisfied or content to fight again another day. “Well, if was me buy dah, I wouldn’t dress up so pretty, pretty and my buy look so nasty,” he said. Two women in the crowd chorused their approval of his observation. Another woman said, “But the buy don’t look like him, maybe is somebody else own. He get blow.” Fearing further conflict, I waved my receipt again for all to see. “Look this,” I said. “This is mine. I buy it. I pay for it. Whether it nasty or not, is mine.”
The crowd dispersed, still unbelieving, still murmuring about how I foolish to think is my buy. I left mystified, the urchin following me to the hotel entrance, until the doorman chased him away saying, “Look buy, don’t trouble the guests you hear.” He then shouted to a female vendor across the street, “Mabel, look call you buy and tell him to stop bothering the guests, you hear.” It is then realisation hit me like Hooper’s lofted straight drive and I realised that once more I had become an unwitting victim of Caribbean culture.
Those who talk about the glorious uncertainties of cricket should travel the Caribbean and experience the glorious uncertainties of Caribbean culture. Outsiders will never understand how each island, each village, in fact, has its own way of defining reality, its own argot and pronunciation, its own ambience and ethos, and glories in it. It is both our strength and weakness. In our almost dizzying diversity lie the seeds of discord and disharmony as much as our edge, our niche in the global village. These little bits of sand and rock which have so influenced the culture of the world with music, carnival, cricket, literature, art and sheer talent, and all the other achievements of their gifted sons and daughters, are so blinded by the minor differences that divide them that they cannot appreciate the many commonalities that define them.
My son, Zubin, just won the Rhodes Scholarship offered annually to one Caribbean student. He is interested in adding his time, talent and skills to the sustainable development of the Caribbean. He has a long way to go, but so have we, the people of the region. And if anyone questions this and asks, “Says who?” it is then and only then I will respond, “Says Me!”