El­sa Wrench

Would you like to help the less for­tu­nate and make a small con­tri­bu­tion to­wards fos­ter­ing world peace?

I am tak­ing up a col­lec­tion for a wor­thy cause which is like­ly to save the eye­balls and san­i­ty of thou­sands and thou­sands.

The project is called the "Cov­er it Up, Please Move­ment'' and the idea is to do­nate a mil­lion burqas to ho­tels and re­sorts through­out the Caribbean.

Ho­tels and re­sorts are el­i­gi­ble to re­ceive the gen­er­ous do­na­tions on­ly if they al­so host busi­ness con­fer­ences and meet­ings. If they are club-mem­bers on­ly get­aways, wel­com­ing va­ca­tion­ing Eu­ro­peans and North Amer­i­cans who have not seen a ray of sun­light in the last 18 months, then they do not need our as­sis­tance.

Their guests are free to romp burqa-less and any­thing else-less as much as they like. This project is de­signed to pro­tect the in­no­cent busi­ness trav­eller who is try­ing to save the world by launch­ing a cam­paign to stop child abuse or pro­mote dyslex­ia aware­ness, or some­thing ex­cru­ci­at­ing­ly soul-re­deem­ing like that. While such he­roes are en­cased in their pin­striped suits and Spanx, they do not need to be dis­tract­ed by bod­ies drip­ping surf and flap­ping up and down the cor­ri­dors, lob­bies and din­ing ar­eas.

Imag­ine be­ing trapped in an el­e­va­tor be­hind a re­tiree in a wet thong whose tow­el slides off his hips to the floor and eeewwww! he bends over, slow­ly, to PICK IT UP! But then he gets trapped by arthri­tis half-way up and re­mains frozen there in front of your un­pro­tect­ed corneas un­til the doors of the el­e­va­tor mer­ci­ful­ly open and you stag­ger mind­less­ly from the hell-hole.

The burqas will be made of light­weight bam­boo cot­ton, the kind revered for its abil­i­ty to keep the body cool even on the hottest, stick­i­est days. The cot­ton is earth-friend­ly and just so chic. One burqa will be giv­en to each ho­tel guest and the elec­tron­ic tag sewn in­to the hem will shriek a warn­ing any time the wear­er de-burqas when in the pub­lic ar­eas of the ho­tel.

The idea was born a few weeks ago when I was try­ing to make use of all those years spent in school at a meet­ing at a beach ho­tel in the Ba­hamas. With­out warn­ing, I was as­sault­ed by naked ac­cu­mu­la­tions of flesh and cel­lulite, some of which dan­gled dan­ger­ous­ly near my face when the own­ers leaned over the bread bas­kets to get their muffins.

I tried bleach­ing my eye­balls af­ter­wards but dis­cov­ered that is a very painful treat­ment.

The naked trav­ellers are not so much my con­cern as the rest of us who have to en­dure the wig­gling and wob­bling of un­re­strained body parts when we are try­ing to con­cen­trate on our tea, toast and moral­i­ty claus­es. For­eign­ers can af­ford to dan­gle their din­gles and bob­ble their bub­bles as much as they wish be­cause no one here knows their names or cares where they come from.

But peo­ple like me are nev­er so lucky. When we go for­eign, we rep­re­sent be­cause we know our kith and kin are spy­ing on us every­where. A Trinida­di­an could land in Papua New Guinea in the morn­ing and find his neigh­bour's cousin's hair­dress­er sell­ing roti by the third tree on the left af­ter the Red Cross tent.

When peo­ple Out There ask, "Where you guys from?'' and we say, "T&T,'' some­body will ex­claim, stu­pid­ly, "Oh, do you know Bri­an Lara?''

The pre­scribed an­swer is "Yes, of course!'' be­cause you are brag­ging and you can't brag prop­er­ly while your ex­posed parts are broad­cast­ing how many birds flew south for your win­ter.

Please, I have be­come very at­tached to my eye­balls, hav­ing owned them all my life. Help save them.

Send do­na­tions to wrenchel­sa@hot­mail.com

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