Si­mon Lee

"Mek it fun­ny nah," urged Mr Ma­ga, one of the le­gion of oc­ca­sion­al read­ers who dou­ble as my writ­ing coach­es. They're all firm­ly con­vinced that if they could on­ly spare a few mo­ments off from the bot­tle, the babe or the Berry in hand, that they would have this col­umn pulitzer­ing from town to To­ba­go.

Every man Jack and Jill among them would, by East­er for the lat­est and with on­ly a few of flour­ish­es of the mighty pen, have halt­ed the mur­der rate along with the 1990 Coup En­quiry; ini­ti­at­ed a na­tion­wide de­fen­sive walk­ing cam­paign de­signed to pro­tect pedes­tri­ans from the depre­da­tions of those over-en­thu­si­as­tic in con­flat­ing two of the na­tion­al pas­times: drunk­en­ness and dri­ving (be­cause ap­par­ent­ly peo­ple who are stu­pid or poor enough to go on foot just don't re­alise they're ex­pend­able); checked the cre­den­tials, cer­tifi­cates, ex­pe­ri­ence, ex­per­tise and suit­abil­i­ty of every syco­phant and sinecurist swing­ing from the pet­ti­coats, half slips and XXXL box­ers of the pow­ers in their glee.

Who knows, since there's wide­spread agree­ment that He Who Must be Obeyed is a Tri­ni and Chin­i­mad is blessed–with a whole con­clave of pon­tif­i­ca­tors–they could in­stall a Tri­ni pon­tiff and re­coup all dem Car­ni­val dol­lars by in­au­gu­rat­ing a pa­pal pap­pyshow, Pan in Yuh Vat­i­can. The port­fo­lio of these zom­bie writ­ers is fat­ter than a lawyer's wal­let and their lo­g­or­rhoea would make even poor Mar­cel Proust weep at his pa­thet­ic word count and aban­don the search for Temps Per­du, if he were still alive.

But for se­ri­ous hu­morists and time wasters alike, there is al­ways some­thing verg­ing on the hys­ter­i­cal­ly hi­lar­i­ous afoot in this Land of Fi­as­co, I mean Ca­lyp­so, and on­ly the most mean spir­it­ed mis­an­thrope would be mis­guid­ed enough to con­tra­dict a Tri­ni fact of life. Dra­ma, es­pe­cial­ly the The­atre of the Ab­surd flour­ish­es here in the rich soil of farce, fre­quent­ly cross­ing gen­res in­to melo­dra­ma, tra­gi-com­e­dy and the longest run­ning show on earth (along with the great­est of course)–a peren­ni­al com­e­dy of er­rors. Boy ah tellin yuh if yuh doh larf, yuh dead, oui.

You've re­al­ly have to laugh in a place where when it's flood­ing, you can't get wa­ter from the tap; where when you re­al­ly need an am­bu­lance it doesn't ar­rive un­til you've al­ready left; where con­sti­tu­tion­al amend­ment seems as mal­leable as rob­bery with vi­o­lence, rape, mur­der are as for­get­table as the saga of cor­rup­tion; where a squad that nev­er ex­ist­ed (apart from pa­per trails, press dis­clo­sures, de­nials) flew from Arou­ca right over the cuck­oo's nest; where sky­scrap­ers are built at enor­mous pub­lic ex­pense (and enor­mous prof­it for some) on­ly to be left emp­ty for years, while some cit­i­zens live in refugee camp con­di­tions and old­er struc­tures like the Red House, ir­re­place­able icons of na­tion­al her­itage are aban­doned for "restora­tion".

Whether you laugh or cry, like most things, is down to your po­si­tion. If you're a Beetham res­i­dent you now have a cer­tifi­cate to bawl but not ri­ot, un­less the wall of shame, an­oth­er for­ward-think­ing item of so­cial pol­i­cy moot­ed for Oba­ma's vis­it, fi­nal­ly gets un­der way along with com­ple­tion at Tarou­ba, clo­sure on Cli­co and Calder Hart.

Talk­ing of en­light­ened so­cial poli­cies, I won­der if there's any sub­stance to the ru­mour that the Min­istry of De­vel­op­ment and So­cial In­te­gra­tion is plan­ning to li­cence obeah­men as so­ci­etal ther­a­pists. Does this mean free bush baths for all?

Will this staunch the blood­shed, re­duce the rage and cur­tail crime sta­tis­tics? At least this sug­ges­tion shows some sign of imag­i­na­tion, where­as the des­per­ate mea­sure of lock­ing up those caught with a spliff, while con­tain­ers of coke pass un­touched, seems as lu­di­crous as the spec­tre of the bridge to To­ba­go, the To­co fer­ry, the mono rail and the transin­su­lar high­way.

But if you're blessed with the col­lec­tive am­ne­sia with which WASA treats its in­ter­mit­tent sup­ply, you can in­deed laugh your way through life in this blessed la Tri­nite. As the old Yid­dish proverb goes: Ain­er iz a ligen, tz­vai iz ligens, drei iz poli­tik (one is a lie, two is a lie, three is pol­i­tics). So prob­a­bly we are all to blame for the mess we're in.

As every­one from the Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al In­se­cu­ri­ty to rev­erend church fa­thers keep telling us: we shouldn't ex­pect the pro­tec­tive ser­vices to come to our aid when we can't dis­ci­pline our kids, when fam­i­ly and com­mu­ni­ty val­ues have long im­plod­ed. In truth we shouldn't ex­pect any­thing.

De­spite all the sac­ri­fices our elect­ed lead­ers make for us on a dai­ly ba­sis, we're no more than a mis­er­able bunch of neemakarams who de­serve all the chaos we get. Doh dig no hor­rors; doh tek it on, dous­man ale lwan, as the long-suf­fer­ing Haitians say–take your time.

If you re­mem­ber how to for­get, both re­cent hor­rors and the more dis­tant past, then there's noth­ing to pre­vent you from mov­ing on, ent? And by way of con­clu­sive con­so­la­tion–if you can't make it in this life, who knows? You might get lucky in the next. Dous­man konpe, Dous­man.