Pao­lo Ker­na­han

Last week's col­umn ex­am­ined the mi­gra­tion of jour­nal­ists from the sparse grass­es of their cher­ished pro­fes­sion to the ver­dant land­scape of gov­ern­ment wuk. It fo­ment­ed a con­sid­er­able amount of an­i­mus in some on­line con­ver­sa­tion. It was a spir­it­ed de­bate, fu­elled in large part by dogged ig­no­rance and blind­ing, psy­chosis-dri­ven ego. The one thing I re­gret that was lost in the col­umn and the en­su­ing analy­sis is an ap­pre­ci­a­tion for what the me­dia in­dus­try has to of­fer. One may have come away with the im­pres­sion of Pao­lo Ker­na­han as the re­porter wear­ing a coalmin­er's lamp-lit hat, swing­ing a pick axe in the tox­ic bel­ly of a beast that de­vours na�ve me­dia as­pi­rants. For all of the neg­a­tiv­i­ty that the me­dia belch forth, it is on­ly fair that I pay homage to the won­der­ful things that work­ing in a news­room rep­re­sent­ed for me and I am sure many oth­ers. I re­mem­ber walk­ing in­to the TTT news­room, an old colo­nial-style house, wear­ing my first sorf pants and a poly­ester tie that could stand on its own in a cor­ner.

Afzal Khan was the head of news; his look was a hy­brid of Elvis Pres­ley and Pan­cho Vil­la. His of­fice was as smoky as a pool hall (in the ear­ly 90s smok­ing in­doors was not yet po­lit­i­cal­ly gauche. Afzal pulled on his cig­a­rette with such in­ten­si­ty that it looked like cock­set in fast for­ward. I was am­ply pre­pared for this though; my ini­tial in­ter­view was con­duct­ed by Afzal and the hu­man re­source man­ag­er, the de­part­ed Court­ney Dot­tin (an­oth­er smok­er.) I need­ed fog lamps in that of­fice to see where the ques­tions were com­ing from. I got a short brief from Afzal, who was, in­ci­den­tal­ly, the epit­o­me of brevi­ty. (Some belly­ach­ing from one of the re­porters: "We work so hard in here and go above and be­yond the call of du­ty, and we do not even get so much as a thank you!" Afzal's re­sponse comes on a cloud of smoke, "You get your thanks at the end of every month... phooooooo.") I then sur­veyed the news­room, which by mod­ern stan­dards was quite large. I was not quite sure what I was see­ing.

Is that a ...type­writer? There were ac­tu­al­ly type­writ­ers on each desk. The one on mine I am sure was around long enough to have been used by the trag­ic po­et Sylvia Plath; it would cer­tain­ly ex­plain her sui­cide.

It was right there how­ev­er that I learned to type (still on­ly with two fin­gers, just much faster). Cov­er­ing news con­fer­ences or meet­ings at the Hilton was ab­solute­ly hor­rid, but I learned some im­por­tant things along the way. My rid­ing part­ner was a cam­era­man known on­ly as Ram. He was as skilled as he was caus­tic. He warned me not ever to eat when of­fered food on as­sign­ment. My re­sponse to that was, "Daiz you! I eatin!" Now even though event or­gan­is­ers bend over back­wards to cater for the me­dia, there is a com­mon per­cep­tion that many would ridicule me­dia work­ers as a hun­gry bunch of hye­nas who could be sum­moned to any event once the of­fer of free food or drink was put in­to the wind.

Not too long af­ter I got a con­crete rea­son why you should nev­er eat food on as­sign­ment. A Ro­tary func­tion at the then Hol­i­day Inn of­fered a sump­tu­ous meal be­fore the main ac­tiv­i­ty, which was an an­nu­al gen­er­al meet­ing or some­thing like that. Af­ter hav­ing had my fill and set­ting aside my bib, I was called to the phone at the front desk (no cell phones yet). Afzal Khan bel­lows on the phone, "Pack up and leave there now, I need you to go on a mur­der!" I white-knuck­led the phone as my gar­licky breath (from the amaz­ing jum­bo shrimp) bounced off the re­ceiv­er, "I jess fin­ish eat­ing all de peo­ple food and you want me to leave!?" Of course that had noth­ing to do with him. As you can imag­ine, this elicit­ed peals of laugh­ter from Ram: "And that is why I doh eat at dese func­tions!" The most at­trac­tive el­e­ment of this pro­fes­sion is the lim­it­ed amount of time spent in an of­fice. Ram and I were al­ways out on the road, cov­er­ing flood­ing in Green Acres in San Fer­nan­do, a rob­bery in Cunu­pia, il­le­gal rice farm­ing in the Nar­i­va Swamp. It was my time on the road that in­spired the "Tri­ni Dic­tio­nary" seg­ment in Skews.

While cov­er­ing flood­ing in Bam­boo Set­tle­ment No 3, we stum­bled on­to a farmer who had lost all of his ducks in the del­uge. "All my duck drong! De gu­va­ment ha' to gi we somekin­da...as­sis­ments!" It took me a few days to de­con­struct the et­y­mol­o­gy of that word, which to this day I main­tain is a com­bi­na­tion of as­sis­tance and pay­ment. On an­oth­er ad­ven­ture, cam­era­man Wahid Baksh and I were head­ing to what was sure to be a so­porif­ic as­sign­ment in south when a po­lice car swerved in front of us with the muz­zles of the guns of the po­lice­men in­side stick­ing out of the win­dows.

Nat­u­ral­ly, we fol­lowed them... right in­to a gun bat­tle which was al­ready well un­der­way in Savonet­ta in cen­tral Trinidad. The po­lice were stag­ing a raid at the fortress of the no­to­ri­ous King broth­ers, one of the well known drug op­er­a­tions at the time. So there was a line of of­fi­cers in the road with there au­to­mat­ic ri­fles trained on the house; the ghet­to birds buzzed over­head to see if any­one was try­ing to es­cape through the cane field at the back of the house. A pa­trolling of­fi­cer on a mo­tor­bike saw the ac­tion un­fold­ing and could not re­sist jump­ing in­to the fray.

He put down his kick­stand and took his po­si­tion along­side his col­leagues be­hind a ve­hi­cle. The in­tre­pid, hel­met­ed of­fi­cer then pulled out his lit­tle pea shoot­er and pre­pared for the vol­ley from the for­ti­fied house. Here it is all of these of­fi­cers with their high-pow­ered ri­fles go­ing up against God alone knows what, and this pa­trol­man pulls the pis­tol that John Wilkes Booth shot Pres­i­dent Abra­ham Lin­coln with. Apart from the fas­ci­nat­ing sto­ries that I have cov­ered that have an un­lim­it­ed shelf life, jour­nal­ism gave me a hu­man­i­ty that I dare­say would nev­er have de­vel­oped oth­er­wise: Sit­ting with a moth­er whose on­ly son was killed in an ac­ci­dent; be­ing present for grief so pro­found that it could per­me­ate the most cal­ci­fied soul con­ceiv­able; see­ing how tru­ly poor peo­ple shuf­fle off to the par­lour every day to buy not a jar of peanut but­ter but a pat of peanut but­ter.

I was giv­en the gift of hu­man un­der­stand­ing. These peo­ple shared with me their lives and in so do­ing en­riched mine. The Road Less Trav­elled and Bush Di­ary would not ex­ist to­day were it not for my ex­pe­ri­ences in the me­dia. The rich­es earned in the youth of my ca­reer are im­mea­sur­able and long last­ing. Jour­nal­ism is an ho­n­ourable call­ing; mon­ey will even­tu­al­ly come. Jour­nal­ism has a way of show­ing you the path to hon­est for­tune, with a sol­id foun­da­tion in a di­ver­si­ty of ex­pe­ri­ences.