Sounding the alarm

One sunny afternoon, some years ago, I witnessed raw, sadistic cruelty being delivered upon a small boy of 12 or 13 – about the age of my son at the time. I was in my car, parked and waiting for a friend who was making a delivery in the house opposite.

When I heard the first doleful howl, I thought that a child had fallen from a swing or tree or had been stung by jack spaniards while throwing stones at a ripe mango. The screaming persisted and grew in intensity, so I got out of the car and looked to see what was happening.

I saw a large shirtless man dragging a little boy onto the balcony of a two-storey house delivering heavy blows with a thick leather belt on the head, back, hands and backside of the child.

“Kneel down! Kneel down!” I heard. Then the most alarming instruction as the blows continued: “Now pray! Lemme see you pray!”

At this point, there appeared little for me to do than to shout: “Hey!” at the top of my voice. The startled man looked at me for a split second, then turned quietly and left the child, sobbing and kneeling, hands clasped in fake prayer. I don’t know what transpired after I left.

In that moment, I realised I was teaching myself the lesson of sounding a critical alarm. True, this appeared to be a violent, criminal assault. But which police officer at which police station would have acted on this?

Caning, tapping, giving licks, pinching, and squeezing have long been normalised in the delivery of lessons on “discipline”. My adult son, now an exemplary citizen, never experienced any of this.

No, we have not all turned out right because of licks. We are today a sick, depraved, violent society in part, but not wholly, because of this.

“I got licks and I turned out alright,” we so often hear. Then you look at the speaker and you understand why violence and force are so heavily routinised in everyday human behaviour here. No, sir/madam, you did not turn out “okay”. We have not, as a society, turned out “okay”.

Maybe Prof. Deosaran et al have done the research to find how many current prison inmates routinely received “licks” as children. I strongly suspect that the vast majority have themselves been the victims of such torture and violence.

In fact, much like the Tunapuna child some years ago, I am almost certain that both “licks” and coercive religious practice were standard practice in the households and schools from which these criminals emerged.

Relatedly, I am aware of a current effort to deliver “values training” at a selection of denominational schools, as a complement to “religious” education. Hopefully, the former completely replaces the latter. More of this as the project unfolds. But the developers of this programme appear to be on to something.

But back to the most common form of domestic violence and its contribution to criminal conduct. Nobody has been sounding alarms of any kind because almost everybody is certain nothing wrong is taking place. But no. We have not all turned out “okay” despite the fact that there has been no shortage of licks, church, temple, and mosque.

There are politicians today, who have received licks and pray every day, advocating more violence to counter violence. There are holy folks delivering verdicts of death upon people whose gender identity is not in compliance with their belief systems. Death, metaphorically or not, as an ultimate consequence.

This, of course, is not to say that we line up like sitting ducks. We are individually and collectively entitled to defend ourselves – though we are these days witnessing from close and afar a version of “self-defence” that is disproportionately deadly.

Through all of this, we find children – victims of every conceivable form of human wrongdoing. Wars. Combative politics. Forced displacement. Cultural norms, some of which are glorified as ancient cultural practice – child marriage, female genital mutilation, sexual initiation, human trafficking, and other forms of exploitative violence.

I read journalist, Janelle De Souza’s fine piece on child sexual abuse in last Sunday’s Newsday and wondered about the official records contrasted against silent realities. Those times when nobody sounded an alarm. When people knew … but chose to keep silent.

I also saw the reports about the two east Trinidad toddlers, disheveled and alone. Who paid meaningful attention? Who thought this could have been “okay” under any set of circumstances? Who has been measuring the parlous state of our humanity? Who has been sounding the alarm?

 

What "digital agenda"?

You can also listen to this here:

(Though meant for a Trinidad and Tobago audience via the T&T Guardian of October 11, 2023. It is my experience and knowledge that most of the Caribbean confronts lagging digitalisation ambitions.)

Not that I have been doing word counts over recent years, but I cannot recall a national budget statement with as many mentions of the words ‘digital’ and ‘digitalisation’ as the one we endured last week.

When it comes to such matters, I am probably overdoing it now. But I think it is necessary to keep tabs on where our country is or is not going when it comes to belatedly grasping opportunities before our very eyes that have the potential to dramatically improve the quality of our lives.

Today, we hear elaborate words and stated intentions – both within private enterprise and in the state sector. What are otherwise simple, routine exercises arranged at private levels within minutes on a laptop or handheld device are made to sound revolutionary and trendsetting.

For example, there are 16-year-olds capable of setting up secure online payment systems in the blink of an eye. True, there aren’t the legislative/regulatory bars of a state agency, but if there is this grand design and intent at a supposedly bipartisan level, what really are the real obstacles to getting such things done?

HTML forms are also hardly a mind-blowing innovation anymore. They are much more user-friendly than the PDF forms currently being touted as some kind of epochal, modern marvel by state agencies, but which greatly challenge users who neither have appropriate software for textual inserts and digital signatures or printers/scanners to undertake the arduous task of printing, signing, scanning, and emailing.

There is also the phenomenon that takes us one step forward (online appointments, for example) but two steps backward, such as “proof of residence” requirements that have been causing so many regrets among those of us who opted for online billing for utilities such as telecoms, electricity, and water.

So, yes, print that online bill, travel down to the utility to get it “stamped” and there you go! At WASA, they don’t “stamp”, you pay $11.25 at one window, then sit and wait for a “copy” at another window.

True, there is the convenience of an orderly online appointment system to renew your drivers’ licence (confirmation of which you are encouraged to print!). You download the PDF, print it, and walk with it. There goes the advantage of an online portal with the potential to minimise inconvenience and save paper.

The end product is at least the same amount of paper as before, but now the added inconvenience of the trip to the utility office, together with downloading, printing, and scanning of completed application forms.

Now, don’t get me wrong. As the finance minister suggested while presenting some startling statistics on the number of people and businesses without bank accounts, digital payment systems, or engage in online banking, the financial services sector has simply not done enough to foster sufficient confidence in such conveniences.

Framed as “the financial inclusion landscape”, minister Imbert dropped many jaws when he revealed: “72 percent of businesses do not have a business bank account, 88 percent of businesses do not accept digital payments, and 55 percent of individuals do not now have the knowledge to use mobile or web online banking.”

It is very easy to blame the victims aka prospective customers here. But it is also necessary to calculate underlying causes behind this apparent estrangement between people and the banking sector, in this instance.

It’s a deception, for example, that mechanisation of transactions to replace human contact at the counter, is now reflected in higher fees. For, much like telecoms assets, the initial capital costs are eventually offset by savings on wages, security and other recurrent cost centres.

The implicit message, therefore, is that mechanisation/digitalisation has net negative impacts on customers. Which service provider has reduced its fees because of digitalisation? Why are minister Imbert’s statistics so outrageously accurate?

It irritates many of us whenever we hear talk of a digital transition. One more example: The Environmental Management Authority (EMA) will soon be able to accept online payments (the same process the 16-year-old has now mastered), but what happens with the numerous copies of the same voluminous documents required for submission for transactions such as EIAs and the like?

When such anomalies disappear, only then you can talk boastfully about any “digital agenda.” Until then, people will continue not to trust such talk either from politicians or business leaders. Go find that bristol board vaccine certificate. Download the latest T&TEC bill. Lift that mattress. Find evidence of progress on any of this!

Pan as renewable resource

So, Budget Day and recent stormy winds have passed (for now), and the clean-up has presumably begun. To be sure, we’re not yet in the clear; as if we ever can be – small, exogenously vulnerable, and partially incapacitated by an instinct for self-destruction.

It therefore seems apt at this time to return to the steelpan – a singularly valuable yet elusive route out of current ruts. Pan, not only as music, but as a model for social organisation, prospective route to new forms of economic value, and as national metaphor for the triumph of ingenuity over despair.

To be sure, there is nothing else like it in our space. Such an assertion is beyond rational contestation, notwithstanding prevailing nonsenses in the public space.

For, whatever the vague details of early years and related cultural antecedents, the not disassociated emergence of pan remains an achievement of greater durability than even Walter Darwent’s bold excavations that struck the non-renewable resource of oil in the 1860s.

The steelpan and the official, informal, and other institutions it has produced, find in their human interface, vast value beyond even the beauty of music, steelbands, and industry, which have proven to be renewable assets at each epochal pass.

Others have recorded development and innovation emerging from disciplines such as pan manufacturing, tuning/blending, composing, arranging, performing, and the unmatched social influence of steelbands. Today, however, the prospects for capturing value have grown but are yet to be realised.

I stood in wait of a bake and shark at the Exodus Pan Theatre last Saturday and through the oppressive heat was able to witness young pan students rehearse a closing flourish.

In that moment, there was a promise of tomorrow that’s too easily missed, belying the myth of youth disinterest – measured by too many in measures of mere ticket sales.

Then, on Sunday, at the Birdsong Academy in celebration of his national award, Prof. Clem Imbert stood before a small, invited gathering and testified to his own development as a practitioner of science and engineering and the value such intellectual assets brought and bring to the steelpan as national instrument.

It was the kind of exposition from which books can be composed, and hope may be found amidst compendia of fear about the future.

On Sunday, there was also Birdsong director/manager, Dennis Phillip proposing a time when the music arranger in China would score orchestral parts for pan among the numerous other instruments. Not Bach or Handel or Beethoven in pan, but pan in Tan Dun, Chen Yi, and Qigang Chen, I suppose. Steelpan as a universal instrument.

And why not? Look up the duet of Josanne Francis and Chao Tian – pan and the Chinese dulcimer live from the Mansion Concert Series in 2020. There are folks reading this who can also cite, from memory, any other number of instances where pan occurs in the music of Asia, Europe, and the Americas.

Not that any of this is required validation. What appears needed, at this time, is for tangible expression – official edict or not – of the national status of this remarkable instrument.

It is often mistakenly identified as “the only musical instrument created in the 20^th Century”, but which was actually (and even more significantly, I believe) the only new “percussive” instrument developed during that period.

Let the musicologists argue the fine points and also discuss innovations in traditional instruments that benefited from new technologies that amplified and modified the sounds produced.

Among the current, important challenges of pan remains its untapped intellectual property (IP) value. This is not a unique task, since people everywhere exploring creative industries as a viable economic sector, are engaged in dissecting the potential for “value capture.”

This goes way beyond the instinct to grasp for state largesse or coercive, regulated preference – a contention that resides so heavily behind lobbying for official proclamation.

Ask what is really meant when many rally around the call for official, codified “recognition” and you will find the heavy suggestion of regulated taste and even greater gratuitous official financial flows.

To follow such a path would be to ignore what pan can mean as a renewable, national resource, and how it contains virtually everything needed to transition us from where we are to a new reality led by digital technologies that are increasingly defining parameters between social and economic success and failure.

There was more than a hint of this when Imbert and Phillip spoke on Sunday. They are not the only ones, but they are on to something big here.

When you see the rain coming (2019)

Take it from me. There is never a dull moment in these here West Indies. Most of it the wonders of a new people from different places in an old land. Some of it unwashed self-destructive chupidness, and a lot of it improvised survival measures – fidgety fingers in the dyke.

In order to survive, you need to keep your eyes wide open, so you can tell the vital differences. So you can see the rain that is coming.

I swear though, you only really appreciate this small place teeming with creativity and resilience, when you consider it as a single space; knowing that the breath you take at the Marché en Fer in Port-au-Prince has the scent (and sometimes stench) of Tunapuna and Stabroek in Guyana and Coronation in downtown Kingston on a Saturday morning.

All of this comes to light around this time every year when, for instance, a TS Karen sails through, sweeping T&T and delivering glancing blows on her way en route to oblivion in the Western Atlantic. Or worse, a Hurricane Dorian that early on hurried the journeys of small craft off our own coasts, as it prepped for a single-minded campaign of destruction in The Bahamas.

But there are other storms that hover like dark, low-hanging clouds and hang before us at eye level. No alerts. No warnings. No official dicta to ease pain and suffering. They are storms of our own doing, you see.

There are storm clouds, for instance, when you apply quintessentially racist values to restrict access to education to our children and jobs for adults. Few things like this to establish a penchant for self-destruction.

Even as we debate the point in T&T, there are ludicrous “grooming guidelines” for school children in Jamaica which, in my view, credit some hairstyles and punish the manner in which certain hair-types grow naturally.

In Barbados, teachers are known to blow the cover on boys who “pat down” their natural hair to what is considered to be an “acceptable” height. I am not sure what is correspondingly done to measure and to remediate the length of other hair types which run in a different direction.

Here, in T&T we have had more recent examples of such racist official behaviour in the form of acceptable and unacceptable “hairstyles” in our schools. Has it occurred to anyone that this is discriminatory to the extent that the “hairstyles” ritualistically under examination are not available as a stylistic option for people with other hair types? That school officials are implicitly drawn in the direction of only one group of people to extend censure and punishment?

Self-hating chupidness is what it is. Self-hate as a companion emotion to racism can be as destructive as the real ting self.

Take, as well, the so-called dress codes at public institutions. What is this issue with people’s shoulders? Why, in 38 degree heat, people cannot use comfortable clothes and footwear? Isn’t this some kind of self-hate? How can this be explained? What kind of collective pathological condition does this reflect?

During my brief assignment in Fiji some years ago, I joined in the sandal, sulu-wearing bunch around town and at public functions and wondered when we in the Caribbean would ever join the club of tropical island people who have learned to love their natural environment … and by extension, themselves.

Then comes one of the darkest clouds around – the looming storm of the theocratic state. The reality that so many of us would prefer personal religious conviction become coercive policy, rule and law. The dominance of supposedly sacred rites over otherwise acknowledged human rights.

This is not delinked from the self-hatred and lack of self-esteem and confidence witnessed with so many other issues. How could it be that one of the most oppressive instruments of our history as an under-class could arise as a singularly influential indicator of our value as humans?

Through this, discriminatory hate agendas are normalised and coercion becomes the norm. Put my name down in the book where it is recorded that some people here resisted racism, the theocracy and the self-hate. Put my name down among those who saw the dark clouds and shouted “Rain is coming!” The rain is coming.

 (First Published in the T&T Guardian on October 2, 2019)

Joining the 15%

So, it was my birthday 11 days ago and I became eligible for a “Senior Citizens Pension” - provided I met set poverty criteria expressed as monthly incomes of between $2,500 and $5,500.

I however know that even if I didn’t receive a pension, there are colleagues on these pages who would describe me as a “pensioner” anyway. “Such and such ‘pensioner’ was found wandering aimlessly on Frederick Street …”

It nevertheless helps that in a socialist society there is no real shortage of options to provide most of the basics. Mt Hope is not far away, CDAP can take you pretty far in some, not all, instances, and there are numerous social support grants and other services.

The “elderly” now account for around 13 -15 percent of the national population, shrinking perhaps on account of migration and other factors. There were commentators at the height of the pandemic who were suggesting we were entirely dispensable.

Anyway, it was my birthday, and everybody was suddenly offering advice on diet, exercise, and stress minimisation. Even the UK Guardian chimed in last Saturday with recommendations on staying active and cutting down on protein intake via a “mostly vegan” diet!!! Hmm.

That I was unable to pass the “back scratch” test, proposed by the article, was also devastating. “One arm is placed as if giving yourself a pat on the back, while the other elbow is bent low behind you, the aim being to clasp at least the middle fingers of the opposite hands.”

Who the hell can do that??!!! I almost got my son, Mikhail, to try it, but he already thinks there is a measure of mental diminution, and I might have been given “the look”.

Of course, he has now forgotten my knock between innings two weeks ago. I hit them everywhere and they couldn’t get me out. “Uncle can bat!” I heard from the bleachers. “CPL!!!” I shouted back.

Then I had to explain that I could not play in the match because running on what was a hard tennis court would hurt troublesome ankles and knees. The cardio isn’t bad though. I do the treadmill from time to time.

Outside my house is a hill that takes you up Mt Everest. These days the temperature averages 40 degrees in the shade. Night walk? No. I might be forced to run from dogs or muggers on the hard asphalt road that will hurt those joints.

Speaking of which, ganja tea is now acceptable as evening fare to level off feelings from a day spent scanning news from everywhere it is being told or having to deal with bungling service providers of all varieties.

Yet, there have been several comforts. I no longer get calls from agents offering life and medical insurance. “Caring”, in such an industry, ends at fixed markers.

Nobody from the company checks up on you, and phone calls are rarely returned. The lady at the pharmacy can testify to frantic calls about contractual deductions from the bill.

On the other hand, while insurance agents have lost all interest, religious zealots now turn the manuals to the part on the inevitability of death. “I have a tattoo” is my stock response to any such strategy. That makes absolutely no sense, you say. But so is much of what they have to offer anyway.

The other day, while feeding the chickens (there are now two chickens in our yard, and, yes, yes, I called around to find out whether their owners were missing them), I thought about lifespans.

These cute, but increasingly meaty creatures are more likely than not to expire before I go – maybe even at my hands. Ditto the squirrels that gnaw at my coconuts, the cats that come to steal Oreo’s food, and the magnificent macaws that liven up our evenings on their way home.

Perhaps, I have been told, these stories are ideally suited for my “memoir(s).” Some of my favourite writers never quite put it that way, because the stories they tell and the poems they compose provide adequate testimonies and evidence of the time slots they have occupied.

More than 24 years ago, I wrote about growing “dependency ratios” in the Caribbean as a function of rising life expectancy – people living longer, but increasingly adding to costly support systems to keep them alive and healthy.

In an interview with me many years ago, the late diplomat/man of wisdom James O’Neil “Scottie” Lewis described the elderly as the socially “forgotten.” Now, let’s see. Was he right or was he wrong?

Transparency and SDG business

By now, the few of us with an interest in the development game and all its associated intrigues, would have closely monitored the contributions of world leaders (those who cared to turn up) at the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) Summit on Monday and Tuesday and come to a variety of conclusions.

Official lobbying of media to integrate SDG aspirations into our news agendas has been extensive. Almost everywhere, governments and inter-governmental institutions have kept asking: “What are you doing to report on the SDGs?” I hope they know what they are asking for.

The global bodies with which I am associated – the Global Forum for Media Development (GFMD) and International Freedom of Expression Exchange (now known simply as IFEX) – have long included the subject as part of our programmes of work, and media everywhere have, to varying degrees, kept the subject alive.

To the human rights community, this has been the case since early lobbying by members of these organisations on provisions of the SDGs focused heavily on some important dynamics associated with rights – freedom of expression and access to information among them.

The SDG Summit was thus keenly followed by many of us, not only as part of our monitoring of the 17 goals, but as people with a special interest in  progress with SDG 16.

This goal speaks about the need to “promote peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development, provide access to justice for all and build effective, accountable and inclusive institutions at all levels.”

This is fancy language on which some organisations lobbied for specific “indicators” to empirically assess progress. Governments habitually bypass extensive reporting on this goal, if only because accompanying indicators tend to be unimpressive.

There were protracted tensions related to the indicators that measure SDG 16. Current measurements, for example, had to be negotiated and we were left with three specific “targets” that, on reflection, could have been more adequately elaborated.  

SDG Target 16.10, for instance, sets as a discrete aspiration, national conditions to “ensure public access to information and protect fundamental freedoms, in accordance with national legislation and international agreements.”

In the Caribbean, this is a specific shortcoming. This is so despite the adoption of the long-forgotten 1997 Caricom Charter of Civil Society – Article VIII of which speaks about Freedom of Expression and Access to Information.

Twenty-six years later, under half of the countries of Caricom have access to information laws (in the case of T&T, the Freedom of Information Act). And even where such laws exist there are identifiable shortcomings. For such a reason, the Media Institute of the Caribbean (MIC) operates an Access to Information (ATI) Help Desk and has developed an accompanying Advocacy Toolkit for journalists and civil society activists.

Under SDG 16.10.1, there is also a requirement to monitor and report on the “number of verified cases of killing, kidnapping, enforced disappearance, arbitrary detention and torture of journalists, associated media personnel, trade unionists and human rights advocates in the previous 12 months.”

Article 19, a leading global free expression organisation, has registered concern that while 16.10.1 is important it does not capture the full range of attacks on journalists and activists including strategic litigation, online harassment, and other forms of abuse. Neither does it seek to record impunity when such violations occur.

So, while within Caricom (with the exception of Haiti), murder, kidnapping and torture involving journalists are uncommon, there has been a growing tendency by states and other players to resort to other forms of attacks on journalists and journalism.

This is just one sidebar to the SDG story within Caricom. It is now eight years since its adoption at the United Nations “to end poverty, protect the planet, and ensure that by 2030 all people enjoy peace and prosperity.”

On Monday, UN Secretary-General, António Guterres, solemnly declared that “only 15 per cent of the targets are on track and many are going in reverse.” But while he reported positively on a US$500 billion “SDG Stimulus” to have some programmes executed, there is much that has been left undone my almost all of us.

The question of accountability and openness in the conduct of state business requires no considerable financial stimulus. Sadly, it’s not an area of achievement Caribbean countries were able to impressively report on in New York earlier this week. 

True, there are other urgent priorities that will be fully elaborated at the UN General Assembly this week, but transparency in the conduct of state business remains a persistent challenge. World leaders, including ours, promised much more.

 

A flag at the CPL

Many of us have been paying close attention to the progress of cricket franchises over the past few weeks in the Caribbean Premier League (CPL). The contest moves to Guyana today.

Friends who know my obstinate views on this have been quick to point out that what is important is who “hosts” the respective cricketing business enterprises and not who comprises the various teams. Good point.

This, they say, is the important factor to bear in mind. Fine, because it supports my point. This is not like other major sporting franchises where cities (and not countries) act as hosts – IPL, Big Bash, NFL, La Liga, EPL etc.

So, how did “national pride” and “patriotism” come into this?

The trouble is, since I raised this in the early years, such irrational passions have intensified. For example, when I switched allegiance from the “T&T Amazon Warriors” (my joke) to TKR this season (btw, there’s no country anywhere in the world named “Trinbago”), my friends and colleagues in the oil-rich South American republic were quick to brand the transition as treasonous.

It’s just that when Pakistani-American Ali Khan bowled Barbadian batsman Shai Hope during last week’s encounter at Queen’s Park Oval, I found it hard to visualise a vigorously waved T&T flag as a naturally occurring, sensible part of the picture.

Correspondingly, I cannot recall anything of the sort during the West Indies Rising Stars Under 15s Championship earlier this year. This event featured national teams. Neither were there wildly waved national flags at the Brian Lara Stadium in March when the real T&T cricket team was beaten to a frazzle by an authentic Guyanese outfit.

So, this CPL thing really has nothing to do with “patriotism” or faux jingoistic pride. But, as I advised right here six years ago “if you use a national flag in the branding of any product, you can convert support into passion, affection into love, and a simple contest into a war.”

This came into pathetic view in 2018 when our T&T national flag was trampled on the ground at Providence Stadium by “patriotic” Guyanese fans on whose CPL team then resided the likes of Rayad Emrit and Jason Mohammed.

This year, local content ambitions conspired to omit even a solitary T&T presence on the GAW team and there has been accompanying social media dialogue. Yet can anyone say where Odean Smith gets his pepperpot? Or identify Azam Khan’s favourite fruit stand at Bourda Market?

Likewise, the lady with the JA flag on Saturday should have asked Amir Jangoo which pan jerk vendor around Kingston was his favourite or whether Chris Green preferred Papine Market over Coronation.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I think the CPL has done more to excite interest among West Indians in the game of cricket than any other current platform. It is also a very well organised series.

Even so, this is about the game of cricket and not “West Indies Cricket” which is a virtual irrelevance in at least the four Caricom countries whose populations have zero interest in the game. The regional movement’s contribution of time and resources toward the sport – in its manifestation as “West Indies Cricket” - has probably (and quite justifiably) led to questions about the allocation of membership dues.

But anywhere national flags are being waved, it is difficult to apply rigour and reason. The fact is, (and I revisit my 2018 call to reason) “West Indies Cricket” (not the game of cricket) - as an expression of a coherent Caribbean ethos - has not existed in a very long time. There is no educational force-feeding or social engineering capable of reversing the process among the millennials.” It’s long over.

Indeed, imprisoned swindler, Allen Stanford, was on to something long before anybody else when he launched his 20/20 tournament in 2006 – in that instance with real flags representing actual countries.

I have a good friend who is one of the greatest post-facto (seconds after the game has ended) supporters of sports teams. So, today it’s St Lucia Kings, but he can easily pivot to whoever beats them on any given day.

But even he is often quick to point out that a win for SLK is not necessarily a win for Saint Lucia since the CPL is not a contest to identify “the best national cricket team in the Caribbean.”

To claim otherwise would be almost as foolish as concluding that a country is the best in the world at something when the rest of the world is not considered part of the equation. The CPL does not determine the best country at cricket in the Caribbean. It is great fun and excellent skills are on display. Why can’t it just be that?