Pao­lo Ker­na­han

Part 2

Last week I did what I have done count­less times be­fore, though on the most re­cent oc­ca­sion for a per­cep­ti­bly in­dif­fer­ent au­di­ence. (No of­fence to my com­mit­ted read­ers who trou­ble them­selves to write.) Back in the day my friends and I would com­mune at the end of the week over a bot­tle of cheap rum that was re­al­ly just sol­vent. Every­one want­ed to hear my sto­ries. In my ca­reer I was on the fast track to crush­ing pover­ty but my peers were al­ways keen to hear the sto­ry be­hind the sto­ry. At the time, that was re­ward enough.

In as much as I've shared some old war sto­ries-anec­dotes from the days when be­ing a tele­vi­sion jour­nal­ist was much more than just act­ing as a mic stand for some jumped-up politi­cian-there was an­oth­er equal­ly im­por­tant di­men­sion. As much dra­ma as there was in the field, there was the cu­ri­ous or­gan­ism called a "news­room."

I was giv­en a sharp re­minder of this when I'd come full cir­cle, end­ing up right back at TTT. I re­turned as the pro­duc­er of the morn­ing show, a pro­gramme on life sup­port and no health in­sur­ance. My role would be more pathol­o­gist than sur­geon. In­deed, the sta­tion was just one year away from be­ing moth­balled even as work­ers naive­ly clung to the hope that the Gov­ern­ment would change tack and jobs would be saved.

En­ter­ing the news de­part­ment, I was im­me­di­ate­ly struck at how lit­tle the place had changed. If any­thing, it had re­gressed, de­te­ri­o­rat­ed even. It was very ear­ly in the morn­ing so I was alone in the news­room. There was naught but the soft clack­ety clack of the key­board as I mi­cro-waved the news from the pre­vi­ous night for the morn­ing "up­date."

Some­thing caught my at­ten­tion. Out of the cor­ner of my eye there was move­ment. It couldn't be any­thing more than the cur­tain be­ing blown by the one sad fan meant to stand in for the long wheez­ing cen­tral air-con­di­tion­ing sys­tem. I fo­cused my gaze in the di­rec­tion of the dis­trac­tion un­til fi­nal­ly it re­vealed it­self. It was a huge brown, greasy rat, big enough to have been mis­tak­en for nu­tria. That fat street hus­tler was gam­bolling in the news­room like ah skir­rel in the hol­lows.

It pranced gai­ly on the car­pet, even stop­ping to stare me straight in the face with its dark, soul­less eyes. In that in­stant I was tak­en back to my first day on the job, part of a new crop of re­porters herd­ed in an old house con­vert­ed in­to a news­room. The fur­ni­ture was aes­thet­i­cal­ly of­fen­sive and the of­fice equip­ment was, in a word, "col­lectible."

Plunk­ing down in front of what had to have been Sylvia Plath's type­writer, I be­gan to ap­pre­ci­ate why she killed her­self. In­deed, on many oc­ca­sions I fan­ta­sised about hang­ing my­self with the hell-sent rib­bon which would snarl with each sen­tence com­mit­ted to pa­per. Se­nior re­porters had the "priv­i­lege" of elec­tron­ic type­writ­ers. Some­one had to re­sign or die on the type­writer be­fore it could be be­queathed.

I know what you are think­ing, Pao­lo is an an­cient arte­fact. Well Trinidad has al­ways been slow to adopt new tech­nolo­gies; this sloth is ex­ag­ger­at­ed in state en­ti­ties. I am talk­ing about 1991 here folks. Hard as it may be to di­gest, it would be eight years be­fore com­put­ers would be net­worked in the news­room.

So re­porters fi­nal­ly got the com­put­ers they had been grum­bling for; they were how­ev­er prim­i­tive. Archiv­ing was al­so non-ex­is­tent. If there was need to ver­i­fy in­for­ma­tion from a pre­vi­ous re­port, this is how it was done: "Vah­stee, you re­mem­ber when it is dey kill dat fel­la?"

Of all my mem­o­ries about TTT, I re­call the cam­era­men most eas­i­ly. It is quite pos­si­bly the most un­der-ap­pre­ci­at­ed vo­ca­tion in the coun­try. One no­table in­di­vid­ual was the sin­gu­lar­ly iras­ci­ble "Ram," one of the most gift­ed and in­tu­itive cam­era­men in the pro­fes­sion. He could al­so be the most dif­fi­cult to work with.

Ram had el­e­vat­ed the art of "telling it like it is" to the realm of the patho­log­i­cal. He cer­tain­ly did not suf­fer the di­aphanous plat­i­tudes of mealy-mouthed CEOs with their "How you go­ing Ram? You al­right?" "I dere... still over­worked and un­der­paid."

Oth­er man­agers, care­less with ca­su­al en­gage­ment, would be kneecapped with what I al­ways thought to be his gold stan­dard: "Man­agers come, man­agers go...is de work­ers who will al­ways be here..." State­ments likes these would usu­al­ly be in­ter­spersed with ste­ups­ing of such force it could strip the plaque right off of his own teeth.

Ram was noth­ing if not gen­er­ous with his dis­dain, but I sup­pose the qual­i­ty which I found most en­dear­ing was his re­fusal to take s--t from any­one. Many of you will re­call the no­to­ri­ous­ly ir­re­spon­si­ble edict from Bas­deo Pan­day at a po­lit­i­cal meet­ing to "do them be­fore they do you."

Well Ram was on du­ty at that meet­ing. The crowd re­ac­tion was im­me­di­ate, one bleary-eyed drunk, piv­ot­ing wild­ly on his an­kles, be­gan men­ac­ing Ram. The at­mos­phere flashed over and there was some bot­tle-throw­ing among the crowd. Some men di­rect­ly be­hind Ram ap­peared poised to fol­low suit, that was be­fore Ram de­tached the bat­tery from the cam­era.

Those men would have been asked one ques­tion by their wives when they got home that night. "Who is An­ton Bauer?" Well An­ton Bauer is the two-three pound cam­era bat­tery. The let­ter­ing is em­bossed on the bat­tery and would cer­tain­ly have left an un­mis­tak­able stamp on the fore­head of the jack--- who de­cid­ed to test Ram's re­solve that night.

Such haz­ards are part of the job and they are eas­i­er to deal with than oth­er, seem­ing­ly in­nocu­ous dis­com­forts. For many years I'd re­sist­ed over­seas as­sign­ments (by over­seas I mean Bar­ba­dos and such­like). While I don't de­mand the sep­a­ra­tion of the brown M&M's from the green ones in my rid­er, there is one sim­ple re­quire­ment that is non-ne­go­tiable: I am not shar­ing a ho­tel room with any­one (un­less 'twas Isha Sesay from CNN and that was nev­er on the ta­ble).

Af­ter a lengthy pe­ri­od of coax­ing by my boss, I agreed to go to Bar­ba­dos to cov­er some use­less con­fer­ence. When I was check­ing in I con­firmed with the front desk that I would in­deed be alone in my room, "Yes Mr Koorm­ing­ham!" En­ter­ing the room, I went di­rect­ly in­to the bath­room to use the Ar­mitage Shanks.

I washed my hands and face, reached for a tow­el and, lo and be­hold, hang­ing from the cur­tain rod was a bur­gundy jock­ey shorts drip-dry­ing on the show­er cur­tain. Just round the cor­ner and right there on one of the beds was the own­er of the ole-skool draw­ers, wear­ing on­ly a red one (he must have bought them three to a pack).

Mr Sexy was a jour­nal­ist from Guyana there to cov­er the same con­fer­ence. Well I chilled out in the lob­by un­til the ho­tel cor­rect­ed that mis­take, which I sub­se­quent­ly dis­cov­ered orig­i­nat­ed in TTT with the fool who made the arrange­ments; no sur­prise there.

The life of a jour­nal­ist is a vow of pover­ty, re­crim­i­na­tion and ridicule but it is al­ways fas­ci­nat­ing, and that, af­ter all, is some­thing of tremen­dous val­ue.