When the lights went out

The lights went out last Wednesday and everything became so clear.

Paraphrased as a “catastrophic (engineering) failure” by the general manager of T&TEC, Kelvin Ramsook, the perils we confronted bore all the hallmarks of crisis bordering on disaster.

At sessions involving Caribbean and Pacific journalists, my friend and colleague, Steve Maximay, has been cautioning against casual conflating of hazards, crises, and disasters when, in fact, these phenomena occur at distinct stages of a process culminating in mortal harm and distress but emerging from a variety of latent perils – the hazards.

It is clear from last week’s experience that “catastrophic failure” along the engineering chain that links power generation and transmission, telecommunications services, and the provision of water, had the relatively unrestrained potential to become a health, security, economic, environmental, and public liability disaster.

From the reports so far, all except the latter featured rather insignificantly. But it could have been a lot worse. We appeared to have dodged a lethal bullet.

Based on the general principle that formulating a suitable response should never be left for when a crisis arises, it is important to note the multi-faceted dimensions of the required actions. They are not all technical/engineering in nature.

The logistics to address them include vital features of public communication, especially since social behaviour becomes important for purposes of mitigating the impacts of both human and non-human system failure.

So, yes, the independent power producers (IPPs) and T&TEC had disaster recovery protocols to address the knock-on impacts of serial technical faults. There was failure at this level. There are different hypotheses by experts – a community to which I do not belong.

Likewise, some of this is not new to WASA. The folks there had surely contemplated the prospect of a complete shutdown of power. Ditto the hapless telecoms service providers. Ditto state security and the main disaster and emergency agency, ODPM.

While there are investigating teams to deliver technical verdicts, claims of shameful failure are difficult to dispute.

There was no power, no water, limited mobile call service, no data, and a pervasive feeling of uncertainty and insecurity. Can you imagine the plight of homecare COVID patients to cite one scenario? This entire situation, to me, represented both discrete and collective dysfunctionality at several levels.

But even more than this, and this is the gist of my contention today, there was no evidence that the relevant state and private agencies had at any time convened, as part of a pre-arranged protocol, to implement a well-formulated crisis communication strategy. This was particularly urgent, given the fact of a pandemic.

I know enough about this to conclude that we are not instinctually predisposed to integrate communication functions with the technical. The composition of the current investigating team and their TORs clearly establish this.

In fact, the guidebooks (and actual practice in many jurisdictions) place public communication – as a feature of crisis policy and planning - at the top of the agenda, alongside the work of security experts, engineers, disaster recovery specialists, politicians, and others.

There is no evidence that anything of the kind occurred last Wednesday. There was no prompt assembling of institutional assets at the level of local government, state and private media, and numerous other partners to achieve such an objective.

There was also no pre-arranged, authoritative spokesperson/s to carry the required messages to inform and to provide comfort and confidence. Only ad hoc reliance on T&TEC professionals addressing just one dimension of the challenge. In this respect, the prime minister needed to be heard.

Meanwhile, the mandatory “golden hour” of crisis communication was lost. As far as I am aware, the first official dispatch came three hours into the crisis via T&TEC.

By that time, the haze created by social media misinformation had already led to traffic jams, talk of militant union action, crime sprees, and other rumours that won’t be repeated here.

Street corner windshield cleaners directing traffic provided an irresistible metaphorical statement on what actually happened last Wednesday. The day the lights went out and we saw so much.

 

The true measure of pan

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We always knew it, but the COVID-19 era is now proving beyond any reasonable doubt that pan as a unique percussive instrument for solo and orchestral music; as intellectual property; and as a platform for social mobilisation, has value way in excess of the roles Pan Trinbago and Panorama play in providing performance platforms, bureaucratic guidance, and money.

It is true that the governing body needs to get its act together and that the constant quarrelling must someday end. But if we did not know it before, we now understand there is much more to the question of pan than state support for competitions and events, channelled through an NGO.

And while judicial edict regarding Pan Trinbago may help clarify some matters, it won’t resolve the dysfunctionality that follows state patronage and cabalistic influence.

The fact is, despite an official hiatus spanning many months; music, innovation, and creativity have prevailed in ways that challenge hierarchical claims based on geography, resources, and large numbers.

In a real sense, the pandemic has levelled the steelband playing field. “North band” chauvinism, “big band” braggadocio and “big sponsor” advantage have come to mean almost nothing.

If you spent last weekend following the gruelling proceedings involving 50 small and single pan bands, and looked beyond near organisational farce, you would have found the key ingredients that render pan, in all is manifestations, the greatest thing we do in this country.

Yet, the masochism of 50 performances over two days and nights, as the Pan Trinbago team moved from band to band, was almost as cruel as the Medium/Large Band Semi-Finals of 2017 that began at 9.00 a.m. and ended at 3.45 the following morning – 58 bands later. Yes, I sat through all of it.

However, between 2020 and today, we ought to have learnt that more does not mean better and that in some respects a schedule of non-competitive performances spanning months is far more respectful than a weekend blitz of “auditions.”

Meanwhile, though needlessly competitive by design, in 2020 and 2021, PanoGrama employed online platforms to bring together some of the best pan talent in the world. Duvone Stewart launched Pan Chronicles online and mustered a global following of thousands.

In 2020, a group of youngsters staged De Coalition – a virtual, international pan collaboration. Wack Radio also hosted a series of ‘Live Stream’ concerts and individual players and stage side bands have been performing and producing and, when not on the road, composing and arranging.

There are numerous activities that have employed new, creative platforms outside of the normal channels of pan expression. I cannot name them all here.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I think Panorama is the one event deserving of the title of Greatest (Musical) Show on Earth at Carnival time. But it has to and will change.

But I have been able to see Duvone, Boogsie, Dane Gulston, Chuma Akil Jahi Watson, Triston Marcano, Andre White, Hammond Mitchell, Stefon West, Zahra Lake, Natasha Joseph, Mikhail Salcedo, and Aviel Scanterbury in action.

There are many, many more players, bands, and events that have managed the capsizing of the steelpan order. Not easily. Not painlessly. But they have proven the resilience of the instrument, its music, and its people.

I have never quite subscribed to the late Merchant’s 1985 assertion of a pan crisis. It is not that pan has been in any “danger.” It has been the traditional infrastructure and social order under attack by technology, changing demographics, youthful enterprise, and the globalised nature of pan.

Even as we focused on jingoistically hogging the specifications of the panstick rubber, we were losing intellectual property (IP) advantage in the area of pan innovation.

What, for example, has been the fate of Jomo Wahtuse’s “Xylopan” or, more recently, his ‘JW Hydroforming Press’ for which he obtained a patent in 2020, shortly before his death?

Innovators such as Anthony Williams, Ellie Mannette, Neville Jules, Bertie Marshall, Brian Copeland, and Wahtuse have made valuable contributions to the instrument. To me, the spirit of their contributions is even as relevant as sustaining traditional events.

I have heard some of the conversations about pan in the context of the ‘Taste of Carnival’ experiment with Pan in De Sancoche and Musical Showdown in De Big Yard. They do not leave me convinced that people understand a return to the past is unlikely even as the prospects for dogged insistence on the old formulae for pan success remain dim.

In any event, the true measure of pan is much more than that.

Death and the Laughing Face Emoji

It wasn’t minutes after the incorrect online report that a Venezuelan baby was killed, following an “exchange of gunfire” between the Coast Guard and a boatful of “illegal immigrants”, that the laughing face emoji of social media appeared.

The “exchange of gunfire” bit has since disappeared from official reporting, but there is noteworthy, continued insistence on describing people as being as “illegal” as the process employed to take them from one country to another.

Ritually deployed as gratuitous mockery of human distress and suffering, the little yellow grinning, squinting face was initially intended to signify empathic joy or laughter. This is still largely the case, but it has metamorphosed on some platforms.

In 2015, its equally popular variant, the face with tears of joy, became Oxford Dictionary’s first-ever pictograph ‘Word of the Year’.

These two emojis, in particular, have now ironically grown to be the pandemic favourites of COVID-deniers-turned-anti-vaxxers and are currently deployed to signify callous indifference each time official statistics are announced.

Look it up next time you’re on social media. Then click on the culprits and follow a trail virtually guaranteed to find faux religiosity, racism, xenophobia, conspiracies, and pseudo-science.

Meanwhile, in the other world, gloating on human suffering and mocking associated emotions is typically on display through declarations such as “bursting out in laughter” at the tearful announcement of a spike in the number of pandemic deaths by public health officials.

It’s there in the narrative disingenuously distinguishing the anti-mandate campaign from anti-vax advocacy, even on the part of those who are vaccinated “just in case” - in the way agnostics sometimes pray.

So it was that some folks were sniggering and laughing, via emoji, at the death of Ya Elvis Santoyo last Sunday, even as news of a mass return was being absorbed. “They looked for it” would essentially summarise one collective sentiment. “Who tell them come here?”

By the way, it is now confirmed that there was no shootout – contrary to the hair-trigger police template of preliminary press responses.

The Coast Guard media dispatch confirms this, even as it raises technical questions regarding SOPs under such conditions. Hopefully an investigation does not take months or years.

Much of this comes as the focus has turned from the combined impacts of enlightened policy, recognition of international conventions, and rigorous policing of applicable laws, to dogged, exclusive reliance on the latter obligation.

To its credit, the current administration in 2019 introduced the stopgap measure of temporary registration for Venezuelan migrants who had arrived “whether legally or not.” For the most part, this has become one of those permanently temporary interventions born of political paralysis.

The “close the borders” crowd had stood by to jeer and mock and curse prospective beneficiaries when they assembled. It was June 2019. I cannot forget it. I noted who remained silent. Who fanned the flames.

Here was the laughing face emoji on full human display as frightened men, women and children lined up in light rain at night while, on the other side of the road stood the “close the borders” bunch - now more frequently seen at anti-mandate/anti-vax demonstrations mocking the threatened and the dead. Today, they drag empty black coffins past those filled with corpses and draped with real tears.

What the hell have we come to?

And, yes, human emotion is capable of limitless accommodation. We can grieve for Christian Liverpool and Keithisha Cudjoe at the same time as we mourn Ya Elvis. It is possible to lament a lack of water and dangerous pot-holed roads while bemoaning the lack of official diligence on immigration policy and action.

So, a baby is shot by adults with big guns and the laughing face emoji appears. Who remains to say: “Don’t do it!” Whose press conference, full of self-righteous indignation and outrage will address this? Who is there thinking that compassion can buy me votes?

Not those who confer unequal status on “de small islanders and dem”, “de chinee”, “de wonpasent”, “de venes”, “de Ns and the Cs”, “Laventille” and “Caroni” and other racist code worthy of emoji deployment.

Little Ya Elvis was shot and killed. The laughing faces appeared. There are times when civilisations sink beneath the sea and disappear.

The CCJ’s long, hard road

It seems that almost every time the subject of the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ) comes up, the people responsible for sharing details on its history, design and functioning have to retrace steps executed a million times before.

This would have been much less painful had our legal communities, and those in associated disciplines including journalism, paid greater attention to the vast compendia of data and information disseminated on a consistent basis since the first signing of the CCJ agreement almost 21 years ago.

Much like current pandemic struggles, the real issue has not been a paucity of hard information but of near wilful ignorance, misinformation, and simply not paying attention.

Deep down, it also appears Caribbean people are yet to cross the colonial Rubicon. It’s there, right now, with the transition to republican status in Barbados. It has also been the challenge of countries such as Jamaica and The Bahamas that have publicly kept their Caricom options open.

There’s also the curse of political hypocrisy excused as rational pragmatism. One prime minister signed the agreement to set up the Court then, having lost office, declared a “lack of confidence” in something that was yet to be properly tested.

Another pointed to an absence of “Indian” judges in 2005, in 2012 described it as indispensable in “furtherance of our national sovereignty”, then eventually reverted to dismissing its equal applicability across civil and criminal jurisdictions.

It is thus conceivable that the host country could persist in refusing to sign up to the Court's Appellate Jurisdiction as a final court of appeal, even as it remains by default a signatory to its Original Jurisdiction to settle CSME issues. 

I added this last bit of information since it is not true to assert, as I heard out of Saint Lucia last week and all the time right here in T&T, that there are Caricom countries that are “not part of the CCJ.” It is the kind of ignorance people, even in legal practice, utter too often without contestation.

It is perhaps for this reason, CCJ President Adrian Saunders took pains to relate some simple facts about the CCJ to a Special Sitting of the Joint Houses of Assembly of Saint Lucia on January 20.

Like every other member of Caricom and participant in the CSME, for instance, T&T is automatically a part of the Original Jurisdiction. In fact, there have been several cases defended by this country at the CCJ. So, stop saying T&T “does not use the CCJ.”

Further, T&T does not “fund the Court and doh use it.” Outside of several routine obligations as host country, the CCJ is funded from the proceeds of a US$100 million trust fund. The “proceeds” of the fund, not the initial capital which someone in Saint Lucia speculated was probably already all spent.

The judges and staff of the Court are selected by a Regional Judicial and Legal Services Commission and not by Caricom leaders. The President is selected by the Commission and appointed or rejected by the votes of at least three-quarters of the Heads of Caricom States who are not entitled to propose candidates of their own.

I have spent some time checking the number of cases settled at the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council - so vigorously defended by millionaire attorneys and politicians in T&T - and found that, in 2021, there were just nine such matters. In 2020 there were another nine and, in 2019, 16, and 11 in 2018.

So, let’s get this straight. All this talk about the ethnic makeup of the CCJ bench, the lack of confidence in the quality of judges, and sundry nonsenses are all about a miniscule share of all matters that pass through this country’s magisterial and judicial channels.

Had the passion of objections to the CCJ been applied to fixing broken lower court systems, life could have been a lot different for us.

There have been failed attempts via referenda in St Vincent and the Grenadines, Grenada and Antigua and Barbuda for some of the same reasons of domestic politics, money, interest (low turnouts at referenda), and a lack of paying attention.

Barbados, Belize, Dominica, and Guyana have made the move. Today, the SLP in Saint Lucia possesses the required two-thirds majority to make the constitutional changes in order to usher in the CCJ. They will get there soon.

Over here, bipartisan support is required. To cut a long story short, this is going to be one long, hard road for the CCJ, even in its own hometown.

 

Dear Comrades

Comrades, it is absolutely understandable that media performance in the pandemic should come under intense internal and public scrutiny. At times like these, people legitimately consider the media’s role to be pivotal in either empowering societies to come to terms with extremely difficult circumstances, or to play a hand in failure.

Rest assured, this is the same in every other democracy in the world and is characterised by remarkably similar benchmarks – both informed and uninformed.

Everywhere, it seems to me, the discussion centres on a variety of metrics associated with objective professional journalistic standards, industry-focused dynamics - including profits and viability – academic research (the paucity of which is tragic in our case), scepticism and cynicism, and political preference/disfavour.

It is useful for us who have stayed the course to know precisely what we are dealing with in order to ensure we remain focused on delivering news, analysis, entertainment, and information capable of contributing to enlightened decision-making and sound behaviour-change/reinforcement.

Commentary emerging from chronic cynicism and sheer political preference are easily recognisable. Do not ignore them though. Read and listen carefully. They are useless for any serious re-framing of professional approaches and are never wholly beneficial for purposes of serious introspection. But they should not escape your critical attention, however insidiously cloaked as expert commentary of one kind or the other.

One tip would be to note the minute you witness monolithic reference to “the (amorphous) media.” It does not matter the purported credentials of the messenger, including tangential and even past (typically unremarkable) engagements in the profession. I have heard, for instance, of deals between “the media” and “the government.” What deals? To save lives?

Be aware, though, that at the same time ours is not a perfect professional discipline. Do not be touchy and defensive. There are indeed some from among us who cannot contain our enthusiasm for people and interests, others whose malpractice is indefensible, and those who enter the industry with eyes exclusively set on a variety of other goals.

Yet, most of us start our day every day with only the thought of diligently and competently doing our jobs. For example, poll any newsroom for views on the role people see for themselves in the financial fortunes of their newspaper or broadcast station, and the vast majority would tell you that’s not what’s constantly on their minds on assignment or at their workstations.

The thing is, we are in the middle of a crisis in which the foundations of our professional practice are being tested at every level, even as there is an undeniable reliance on mainstream “legacy” media to validate the outputs of Wild West social media frontiers.

Sadly, some deem it a losing battle in the face not only of contentious virtual content, but of wilful vandalism. Lift the lid and you will find a teeming nest of vapid, busy under-achievers – many of whom have transacted the woefully low entry requirements of the social media space, but even some of whom employ this other territory we call our own.

However, this is an old set of circumstances on a new field of play. The practice of politics and the agendas of preference/disfavour have always challenged the value of facts. Media submission is also a longstanding passion of both the powerful and their unwitting subordinates.

The media industry here, and almost everywhere else, has tried to play a leading role in promoting awareness of pandemic realities. Our industry bodies – the TTPBA and MATT – have engaged in addressing the destructive impacts of COVID denial and the incomprehensible designs of increasingly active anti-vaxxers.

Media houses have routinely interrogated the integrity of pandemic management measures and now openly, and correctly, support the programme of national vaccination.

It has been said that the presumed “power” of the media has two razor-sharp blades on either side. The truth (or the pursuit of truth) can indeed undermine and defeat as much as it can satisfy the public interest. But urgency is not panic, and caution is not fear.

Dear comrades, there are many things we can do better, but there are numerous positives to claim. Good journalism may yet save the day again.

Are we there yet?

Today was meant to be that day when, on this page, we were all to embark on a long maxi taxi ride to an undetermined destination. It was going to be one of those bigger minibuses packed to capacity with a rowdy bunch all wishing to choose radio stations or take turns at the wheel – including those without driving permits or knowledge of how stick shift works.

There are some who, upon recognising they are probably on the wrong bus, and with a bell that does not work, end up shouting at the top of their voice: “Bus stop, Drive!!!”

The first time, about half mile away from the desired destination, the instruction is followed by a hiss and a cranking and a screeching before the bus stops, the back door opens “clatacks” and two or three passengers disembark in the middle of nowhere.

The second time it happens, a now more keyed-in driver hits the brakes hard and those at the back are transferred like missiles to the front of the bus, and two front seat passengers suffer chipped teeth and busted lips on the windscreen.

One guy, in khaki shorts, sandals and socks, threatens to sue. The lady with the broad straw hat and North American accent is on her phone: “Come and get me now! And, no, I don’t know ‘exactly’ where I am!”

“And, by the way, where am I???!!!”

The guy who wants to sue, eventually pulls the driver away from the wheel and takes control. There is loud applause. But the hard right the new driver takes leads to inappropriate contact involving a fat guy and a young lady in short shorts across the aisle with eyes fixed for hours on her phone. “Sorry. Sorry,” the man lies. The fight does not last long.

On more than one occasion, when we stop, we have to reverse as some poor soul has merely come off to pee before rejoining the cacophonous rhythm section at the back of the bus. Then, when he returns, the arguments resume about who needs the windows open and who prefers them closed with air conditioning.

About two hours into the trip, while the maxi is at full pelt, a child sticks her head outside and a bug flies in her eye. One guy (who everybody knew got on without paying) encourages the mother to bend the child’s head backward, keep the eyelid open between index finger and thumb … and blow hard. Then comes a loud yelp, followed by the screams of a child with a bug stuck, away from non-surgical human access, beneath her eyelid. “Pour water! Pour water!” comes smug front seat advice.

Then, during one rare moment of relative silence: “Mister, Mister,” a tiny child across the aisle turns tearily to me, “are we there yet?”

There is no truthful answer to the question. The maxi taxi, now on driver number six, is hurtling, brakeless, through a crowded market street. “Bus stop, Drive! Oh Lord! Bus stop!!!”

Yes, today, was the day to write about that fateful maxi taxi trip to nowhere in particular. Perhaps it was the occasion when we finally answer the little boy’s question, or at least have our bearings right and know where, on the journey, we have reached.

I wrestled sleeplessly with the metaphors. The storyline. How would it all end? Whose turn was it at the steering wheel. All of that.

But then, on Sunday, came the news that Desmond Tutu had died. For sure, on the imagined maxi taxi, I had more than once flicked to the “Library” folder on my Kindle to find The Book of Joy – author Douglas Abrams’ reflections on a weeklong joint conversation with the Dalai Lama and Archbishop Tutu. It’s not my regular kind of reading, but there it is between Baldwin and Neruda.

“He is much more cerebral,” Abrams remembers Tutu saying of the Dalai Lama. “I am more instinctual.”

“I guess,” Abrams surmises, “even great spiritual leaders get nervous when they are journeying into the unknown.”

Hmm. “Journeying into the unknown.” There’s our maxi taxi!

In the book, the Dalai Lama speaks of the “destination(s) of life.” Tutu notes: “Nothing beautiful in the end comes without a measure of some pain, some frustration, some suffering. This is the nature of things. This is how our universe has been made up.”

In a sense, lesser mortals on the maxi taxi reflect the same tensions. Are we there yet? Maybe that’s not the question. Maybe the real question has to do with destination. Not here, in the middle of nowhere.

Boofs and licks like peas

There used to be a photograph making the rounds on social media of a woman in full-fledged delivery of a non-verbal boof/bouf/bouffe to a child in the midst of a church service.

It reminded me of my mother because my mother was a boss at this. She would tilt her head downward then look up and sideways at you with her eyes open wide … unblinking. Her lips stuck to each other, the sides curved upward and wrinkled as with a fake smile.

It was the kind of lip position that catered for a through-the-lip steups if required. If she shook her head just once, fully expect prompt delivery of charge, verdict, and punishment back home.

There were occasions, not in public, she would reach for her slippers and learn the sprint of children. Sometimes it would be a quick open palmed slap across the shoulder.

As an 11 or 12-year-old child of people who had children young, you also realise sooner rather than later that your father – who played competitive sport and claimed to have hit the QRC tower with a six, five years before he got married - can still outrun you. I remember that one time the chase involved a leather belt.

The preferred punishment was Mom’s boofs or an assignment from Dad to count cars as they passed along the Eastern Main Road in St Augustine. If the sentence involved more than one child, the car tally had to be individually ratified or you were sent back to the gallery. Sometimes, a traitorous sister would refuse to cooperate, and the numbers would not square.

The point here is that the boof was what counted most in the Gibbings household. Now, if the sub-editor touches my use of “boof” I will not be happy. Even the experts agree that a final form remains unfinished business.

Lise Winer’s ‘Dictionary of the English/Creole of Trinidad & Tobago’, for example, offers four versions – buff, boof, bouf and bouffe. Its etymology is vast. I however prefer the use of “boof” which carries greatest onomatopoeic value and evades the threat of linguistic gentrification.

Use “bouf” or “bouffe” and the pronunciation would tend to be more reminiscent of the “Côte de Boeuf” at a fancy restaurant than the “boof” delivered by Aunt Harriet at the party.

In relatively well-adjusted families, boofs come before the licks, (if licks are at all to be administered). In some households, there are prompt, stinging, open-palm, fingertip slaps on the arm or shoulder or a “tap” at the back of the head.

There are others who prefer different chronologies. There would be the initial verbal admonition or guidance (“do NOT touch that”), the beg (“don’t do that nuh”), a boof (“what I tell you”), a withdrawal of benefits, an offer of reward, more boofs, and then licks like peas … in that order. Mind you, my son (who at 26 is a model citizen and ethical to a fault) was never subjected to corporal punishment at home.

Proposed speedier transitions usually come from those who consider themselves to be out of the line of fire (such as a big brother or sister) and who believe “bouffs/bouffes” are a soft sell before an audience of lesser mortals. “Lash dey (not my) tail!”

“I (whap) told (whap) you (whap) to (whaddap) take (whoop) the (whap) vaccine!!!”

If you think about it, this is the authoritarian SOE approach. This is despite early counsel that “an SOE cannot get you to wash your hands” – an admonition dismissed by “PR” hustlers and people clueless about some basic elements of behaviour change.

In fact, there has since been much boofing about the boofing. “You (boof) are (boof) NOT (boof) to boof!”

It is in the manner of paternalistic authoritarian cultures to skip the queue of moral suasion, and non-verbal and verbal “boofing” to head straight for the guava tree. (“Dey too harden. Cut dey tail”).

This is not to suggest that, eventually, licks are always an implausible option, but that a good example, appeals to reason, and boofs properly come first. Between the SOE (“you not getting to go to the party”) and the mandate (“messy room = no party”) there is likely to be much more begging and many boofs to come.

Stuck at 46% (my initial uneducated guess was 40%), the gap between suasion, begging, boofing, and outright licks is narrowing.

Some say the time has come. They might be right. The room is messy alright while, and yes, some feel we need to party.