Three little boys on the ocean

* First published in the T&T Guardian on December 2, 2020 and should be followed by a read of this Man Overboard!

There are some subjects best left to the poets and dramatists and musicians and visual artists whose deft touch can straddle emotion and the rigours of reason at the stroke of a single moment or line. Issues well out of the reach of the disciplines of law, politics and journalism. Equations that defy the arithmetic of known logic and the dicta of organised religion.

Since the events of last week, I have therefore been turning to Victor Edwards’ Takdir on the question of migrant journeys. To Wayne Brown on matters of the troubled ocean. And to Pablo Neruda on love and the sea.

To Victor I present the makings of a script that echoes Gurusammi’s fateful voyage. To Wayne, a child of the sea. To Pablo, the troubled strait that took its name from a genocidal European explorer.

For Victor I offer as opening scene three little boys set sail on the ocean – Aylan (3), Felipe (8) and let’s call the other one Hugo or Pablito.

Pablito, the landlubbing seafarer. We don’t know his age, but he wore a Spiderman t-shirt in the newspaper. We couldn’t see his face because he kept staring at the tears that reached the wet ground when he landed.

Sternward, in the growing and increasingly dark distance, can be seen the ruinous flames of a collective death – Joshua’s fabled Hazor, to those who this season sing of Baby Jesus and claim to know why.

To the bow, the tentative promise of life. Aylan’s parents raised $5,860 for the trip. His mother wears a life vest later found to be “ineffective.” She dreams not of shopping malls and romantic rendezvous with strangers speaking strange languages but yearns for peace and safety.

Little Aylan wears a red t-shirt and dark blue shorts. New suede shoes for the journey to a new life. His mother sings him lullabies through the stormy night.

Felipe has not stopped coughing since they left the soggy, wooded makeshift port. He has had the flu. He’d earlier been separated from his parents for “processing” and now he is running a high fever and shivers each time the rain comes down on the open vessel.

Then there’s Hugo. He’s hard to miss as the boat sways wildly in the wind and rain and Mr Spiderman casts imaginary webs to tame the wild ocean.

You put them all on an open pirogue under an angry sky, at which point all that went before and all that happens after pale into insignificance as counterbalances on perspective. Three little boys on a boat in the ocean.

You wonder if in freezing the moment and stripping it of context you reach the core, the raw elements of what adults describe as “rights.” At the very moment that the giant wave arrives there is little behind both horizons, since though there is a relativism attached to many rights, there is an absolutism that flows from all – the “fundamental” cast in law versus the universality and indivisibility of human rights.

The experts make the distinction far less clearly than the water colourist at her palette. Suddenly, “how dem reach there?” and “who put dem there?” become as irrelevant as the burning shore to the west and the three cloudy peaks to the east.

There is no “other take”. No “perspective” apart from the fact of three little boys on a boat on the ocean. Nicolás, in thick rubber boats had kicked the boat from its moorings and turned away while muttering insults at people who weren’t there.

On the other shore, faceless, leaderless “authorities”, regular folks, and friends of the sea shouting cusswords and waiting with steel-tips to kick the vessel back. No more room at the inn. No more space for any boarders. “Send dem back. Send dem back” – as elections slogan. As potent as the command to a firing-squad. As murderous as official confusion and cluelessness.

Anna Levi writes: “Pablito like an ornament in his birth blanket/Asleep with his angels/Fallen overboard/Tumbling with the tides/A moment of silence.”

Sometimes, you turn to poetry and music and art to explain and to help turn away from depravity. Sometimes, you think of three little boys on the ocean. And, suddenly, they are gone and there is nothing and no one else in the world.

Footnote: In memory of Aylan Kurdi of Syria and Felipe Gómez Alonzo of Guatemala. Thinking of “Pablito” of Venezuela.

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.