Man overboard!

Media colleague and friend, George Leacock, beat me to it in a social media post on Sunday, by quoting GML Tobago Correspondent Elizabeth Gonzales’ report on Friday’s dramatic ocean rescue of a man off the northwestern tip of Trinidad in choppy, open waters.

Passengers on board the Buccoo Reef inter-island vessel had spotted a lone swimmer who was waving desperately out at sea as he tread water and fought for his life. The ferry crew responded quickly enough to launch a lifeboat and to execute a dramatic rescue – the first ever under such circumstances, according to NIDCO.

This was when the story got even more interesting, prompting George to quote just one sentence from Elizabeth’s dispatch: “While some passengers were happy to help,” the reporter wrote, “others were irritated over the extended time the voyage to Tobago took.”

The swimmer was one of three people eventually saved after a boat left T&T, bound for Venezuela in darkness, but overturning in rough waters. I do not suppose routine maritime regulations were stringently observed or that immigration and customs authorities played a role in ensuring other lawful guidelines were observed.

And, for a change some might contend, with human cargo on board, the bow was conspicuously due west and, from the stern, could have been seen the north coast shore of Las Cuevas. How bothersome! They are both coming and going!

It could have been much like a similar journey three years ago when, forcibly turned back at sea for Venezuela by “the authorities,” a missing vessel was purported to have taken two dozen people to their death. This prompted sombre reflections on this very page entitled: Three Little Boys.

I metaphorically enjoined the fates of three little boys from three separate migrant tragedies - Aylan Kurdi of Syria, Felipe Gómez Alonzo of Guatemala and a boy called “Pablito” of Venezuela on whom writer, Anna Levi, reflected:

“Pablito like an ornament in his birth blanket/Asleep with his angels/Fallen overboard/Tumbling with the tides.”

I had at the time lamented the role of the “turn them back” and “close de borders” (coming and going?) crew – willfully ignorant of non-refoulement obligations under international law - who have, since then, never been able to publicly and regretfully reflect on a tragedy that saw some people branding authorities, politicians, and regular folks this side of the border near savages.

“Turn them back” (refoulement) had by then become the stuff of political slogan and even official doctrine – more so as a fallback position had “close de borders” failed.

Now, don’t get me wrong, none of this is meant to advocate disorder or unlawful behaviour. I am taking aim at the psycho-social pre-disposition that considers a rescue at sea an annoyance – a needless disruption. Experts on communal mental illness and sick societies probably have a name for this.

This can also be fertile metaphor for a state of collective being – the lost and drifting encountering the reluctant and uncommitted, themselves afloat but hopelessly lost.

All of this, even as we ourselves flounder in a vast global ocean of cognitive challenges. Only Monday, International Migration Day, UN Secretary-General António Guterres put a brave and healthy spin on this: “If managed well, mobility can be a cornerstone of sustainable development, prosperity and progress.”

“If managed well” – much easier said than done. We also don’t appear to be keeping an eye on this particular requirement of the migration challenge – even when it comes to what could well have been an attempt at voluntary repatriation … perhaps.

It is also true that recent experiences have turned our attention more inward than it is currently devoted to exogenous challenges, however urgent. The discomfort is evident. Witness the partisan confusion over Guyana/Venezuela when viewed as fuel for sectional posturing.

On stark display has been the absence of sound, independent countervailing values at a time when national decisiveness on the basis of rational discourse is required. While the official response has been consistent and clear, even if at times incorrect or contestable, nothing much has emerged that appears to be from vantage points untouched by simplistic partisan gamesmanship.

It seems so many times that we are all overboard and grasping at the turbulent tide. The lifeboats and vests we dispense for our own benefit and survival.