Miss Hordatt’s pandemic lesson
January 12, 2022
Hopefully, most readers would know about whom I am speaking
when I mention the name ‘Evelyn Hordatt.’
It’s pandemic time and the eulogies continue to flow, so
names get jumbled and misplaced and forgotten in the midst of collective grief.
And since there can be no hierarchy of sorrow, there are names and faces that
mean nothing to many, even most – and everything to some.
So read ‘Evelyn Hordatt’ as the everywoman of our time,
representing so many things that can be good about us. On January 1, she would
have turned 103. The virus got her as she lay quiet and alone.
There are those who note the culling of the vulnerable and
propose some benefit from all of this for teetering, unviable societies
incapable of maintaining basic duties of care, much less love and compassion
for one another.
For, days short of 103, as Miss Hordatt breathed farewell
there were those denying that our time had come for retreating
‘unresponsibility’ – terminology excavated from antiquity by Lloyd Best to
describe the endemic absence of civic accountability.
All four-foot-something, umbrella and oversized handbag in
hand, proud silvery hair and tiptoeing to close the metal gate, off to
something called ‘Lifeline’ or to church to replace the flowers or to help keep
them fresh and alive.
“Where she going at this hour?” we sometimes asked as she
turned left, on foot, along Riverside Road in Curepe alone or in her 120Y. We
did not always hear when she returned but would awake to “good morning” when
she rose and greeted the sometimes-cantankerous neighbours.
Nobody probably keeps the morbid statistics, and the
protocols urge anonymity, but Miss Hordatt likely saved more lives on those
evenings (when she quietly closed the gate behind her and disappeared without
explanation) than anyone else I have met.
So even when my credentials appeared (at least to me) to
check out and meet the mark, I was reminded by the Lifeline respondent that my offer
to serve would join the queue as either material benefactor or as “listener.”
Not that fast. Not that fast, I surmised.
They were right. There are other roads to such service,
including a journalism that spends as much time “listening” as it does writing
and speaking.
So, what, in the life of a woman sworn to spinsterism, leads
to all of this? The church? Girl Guides? The classroom? The teaching of
teachers? The stern counselling of tenants unlearned in the ways of marriage? Donna,
who became the child she never had?
The accolades of 1995 as a Hummingbird Medal (Silver) alighted
on her tiny frame are today summarised as simply “retired teacher” – as if in
Miss Hordatt’s life anything but her death would bring an end to the numerous
tasks at hand.
Then, around that time (I cannot remember exactly when, and
I can’t find the document), I was asked to write something in tribute to
“someone by the name of Evelyn Hordatt … you may have heard of her.”
“What are you asking me? She is a hero of Trinidad and
Tobago! Of Grenada! Of Jamaica! Of the Caribbean! Of the world!”
So, what, in all of this, is Miss Hordatt’s pandemic
lesson? Her Mausica student, Joy Valdez, wrote in 2013 of her “compassionate
soul.”
For Ms Valdez, the burden of compassion has value in excess
of the gobbledygook of self-improvement texts and theology class. In Miss
Hordatt, she saw practical application of the principle of caring.
Today, I spend some time on this and put talk of policy and
official action and cynical indifference aside. It’s neither sermon nor
classroom instruction. It’s a simple lesson that’s passes us by so easily at
this time.
Had she lived and stayed strong, Miss Hordatt would have
stared us in the eye and urged love and compassion. That would be her cry. That
would be her pandemic lesson.
The seerman of 2022
January 5, 2022
I have noticed that, so far in the mainstream media, we have been mercifully spared the views of clairvoyants and mystics on the prospects for T&T in 2022. I might have (thankfully) missed them.
It could be that the usual suspects have chosen other private and public platforms to predict everything from the painfully inevitable to the outlandish designs of omens and dreams.
I have even noticed studious avoidance of satirical projections. This is perhaps out of fear that, at this time, nothing remains out of the realm of the eminently possible.
In the absence of the usual local contributions, and with due respect to our weatherman, Kalain Hosein (who is mostly accurate), I therefore wish to make one simple prediction of my own, having stared long and hard into a Grenadian conch shell:
On December 31, 2022, there will be firecrackers, “squibs”, bamboo bursting, and unauthorised use of fireworks almost everywhere in T&T. Animals will cower and some will die. A house or two will burn. A teenager will suffer injury to his/her hearing/vision. The police will not respond to complaints. A government official will promise yet another inquiry or legislative review.
This will end 12 months of pyrotechnics at sundry occasions when people decide that the plight of the ill, the aged, the disabled, animals (both wild and domesticated) and other vulnerable groups is not worthy of consideration.
I am almost certain I can take this to the bank because I have been keeping tabs on this issue for decades now. Not one prime minister, minister of national security, attorney general, police commissioner, business chamber or religious community has ever been serious about this.
This is the only available conclusion, following years and years of so-called “zero tolerance” and other forms of public mamaguy.
The parliament even went as far, in 2017/2018 as convening an “Inquiry into the adverse health effects of fireworks” by a Joint Select Committee.
This exercise focused almost entirely on human health, but at various stages in the proceedings captured expressions of concern about private and public property and the plight of animals.
Last week, one social media wag addressed the point about pets as something of an idle bourgeois concern – à la Chinese Cultural Revolution (when keeping pets was banned).
What could possibly be wrong with making noise in your neighbourhood? We did it back in the day. We turned out fine. Hard luck lady who is now unable to walk, boy who lost full vision, homeowner whose property was destroyed, pet owner in search of her lost dog, asthmatic who endured poor air quality for days and days.
This is the “tradition” argument against serious action and the need for an official blind eye turned to collective pathological pyromania in order to preserve “de culture.”
I have heard equally passionate defences of “tradition” from proponents of annual “baby throwing” in India, female genital mutilation in Egypt, and child marriage everywhere. Over here, we more routinely have the burning of houses, the wounding of children, and the harming of defenceless animals as part of our glorious traditions.
The 2017/2018 inquiry made 16 “short-term” recommendations including the identification of “public spaces (recreation grounds and parks) where residents may gather to discharge fireworks under proper supervision.”
There were also 20 “medium-term” proposals that spoke of promotion of “the proper care of animals especially those that are domesticated.” And two “long-term” recommendations addressing the subject of an Injury Surveillance System and an expanded mandate for the EMA’s Policing Unit.
There had been “public hearings” of the JSC on March 15, April 19, and December 15, 2017, before the 201-page Report was laid in both houses of parliament in March the following year.
Five years to the day, and prior to all of this, I used this identical space to script, as fiction, the deliberations of Cabinet on this very subject as key ministers emotionally called for decisive action.
When, earlier this week, I saw the AG promising “public consultation” on some draft Bill or the other as the houses burned and as the injuries were recorded, my seerman pores raised. Here we go again, I thought.
So, on this day, without the candles or the crystal ball, I sadly declare yet another year of mamaguy. I see property damage. I see injuries. I see the haze of smoke and the invasion of peace and quiet. I see animals, of all classes, lost or wounded. I see “tradition” prevailing over good sense, law, and humanity. Forget about this as some kind of prospective victory in 2022.
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