Every day we are swamped with bad news. Against an international background of natural disasters, religious mania, hypocriti- cal wars, national strikes, political instability, stock-market losses, austerity budgets and soaring unemployment, we have our own local failures: political corruption, a drug epidemic, rising crime, credit union mismanagement, the continuing Clico debacle, the destruction of the environment, child abuse etc. To make matters worse, much of this news hits home-affecting our personal and financial well- being. It is no wonder that despair is not just creeping in but overwhelming us. What are we to do? Indeed. What are we to do? How can we keep despair at bay and keep hope alive? I remember the first time I saw a child in a wheelchair laughing. It was Carnival Saturday morning in front of Memorial Park, Children's Parade of the Bands, the Lady Hochoy Home band passing. She was being pushed by one of those marvellous young women who work with disabled children for almost nothing, but become closer to the children than many of their family members and who are the unrecognised heroines in the uncomfortable saga of organisations for the disabled.
Her face was distorted, pulled to one side in glee as her little body twisted in time to the music. It was also the first time I had ever seen a disabled child or adult dance in a wheelchair and I had already been a paediatrician for five years in the USA. I had never seen anybody look happy in a wheelchair, far less dance in one. It took coming back to T&T to teach me about the power of music and that disabled people are people too. I could not believe what I was seeing because she was not the only one. All around me fathers and mothers were dancing with their disabled children, some of them grotesque-looking, but all delighting in in the beat and rhythm of our music. Where else? Last Saturday there was a Music Festival for the Disabled at NAPA in front of Memorial Park. That's what it was called by the disabled themselves: Music Festival for the Disabled 2012. Its theme was "We're Trini Too." It took the format of a choir contest in two categories, under-18 and over-18, among the members of several of the NGOs that cater for the needs of disabled Trinidadians and Tobagonians, adults and children, with the caveat that all songs had to be local: Trini to the Bone; God Bless Our Nation; Our Nation's Dawning; Trini by Benjai; Rudder's The Ganges and the Nile and Portrait of Trinidad. It doesn't really matter who won. But for the record, the Prin-cess Elizabeth School won the under-18 category and the Immortelle Vocational Centre the over-18, and it's good that there were winners and losers, because that is real, that is life and that is what people with disabilities want. Five Lady Hochoy Centres (Penal, Cocorite, Gasparillo, the Lady Hochoy Boys and Girls Chorale and their vocational centre), the National Centre for Persons with Disabilities, the Memisa Centre, Goodwill Industries, the Immortelle Vocational Centre and the Immortelle Children's Centre also took part.
I suggest that anyone who is in despair of life in T&T or who is becoming depressed at the constant barrage of bad news go to see the next musical festival that the organisations for disabled people put on. It will blow your mind to see children who cannot walk, pretty little girls with deformed bodies and feet, short little men with grotesque faces and vacant eyes, awkward autistic young men with no social skills beating pan, eight-year-olds who can barely manage to make themselves understood, but all singing and dancing in time in a choir of affected individuals and not only making themselves heard, but taking delight in their performances. The festival is an annual event, organised by the Consortium of Disability Organisations in partnership with Glen Ramadarsingh's Ministry of the People and Social Development and the University of Trinidad and Tobago. UTT's faculty and staff musicians and UTT student-teaching artistes played a key role in organising the event and accompanying the choirs musically and if there is nothing else that UTT does for the community this year, this is enough. Viktor Frankl, in his classic work Man's Search for Meaning, came to the conclusion that the key to psychological survival is the ability to find meaning in one's life, and to hang on to that meaning no matter what. In fact, he is convinced that "the striving to find a meaning in one's life is the primary motivational force in [humanity]." Frankl observed that in that most hopeless of environments, the concentration camp, "What alone remains is 'the last of human freedoms'-the ability to choose one's attitude in a given set of circumstance." Some chose hope. And they did so by hanging on to some lingering source of meaning for their lives: a love for their family, memories of better times. My memory is clear.