Car­la Rauseo

Crick­et, foot­ball. Foot­ball, crick­et. Foot­ball, crick­et, maybe swim­ming. Crick­et, foot­ball, "A! A! horse-rac­ing!" You get the pic­ture! The dom­i­nance of crick­et and foot­ball in the sports news leaves lit­tle room for va­ri­ety. I "googled" the phrase, "typ­i­cal West In­di­an sports fan" and in­evitably a long list of web­sites per­tain­ing to crick­et filled my screen. I al­so "googled" the phrase "typ­i­cal Caribbean sports fan" and foot­ball-re­lat­ed web­sites then popped up. It is there­fore not sur­pris­ing that the Guardian on­line web­site has on­ly three cat­e­gories in the sports sec­tion... "Crick­et, Foot­ball and "Oth­er Sports".

Hash­ing un­doubt­ed­ly falls in­to that ob­scure group of some­what less pop­u­lar, not typ­i­cal­ly "West-In­di­an" or "Caribbean" sports. Hash­ing has noth­ing to do with "weed," nor is it com­put­er jar­gon in this case. It is a "mix­ture of ath­leti­cism and so­cia­bil­i­ty, he­do­nism and hard work." A re­fresh­ing es­cape from the tri­als of a long week of city life, it is an ex­hil­a­rat­ing run through, over, un­der and around land­scapes of any kind, chas­ing hares (not rab­bits, but the peo­ple in charge of set­ting the hash trail) who mark a maze of trails, or in search of the cor­rect trail that will ul­ti­mate­ly lead back to the start... and to the most im­por­tant, most de­sir­able ameni­ty, beloved by all hash­ers... the beer truck.

"On! On!" they shout! Through town and coun­try, brav­ing desert and rag­ing riv­er, over plains and moun­tains, plan­ta­tion and fowl pen, squeez­ing through al­leys and storm drains, over fences and walls, the hash­er's mo­ti­va­tion to com­plete the run is that beast­ly cold draft await­ing his sweaty, mud­dy ar­rival. The beer truck is a per­ma­nent fix­ture on the hash, an un­fail­ing pres­ence, and sym­bol of the sta­bil­i­ty and or­gan­i­sa­tion of the group. From the pump­ing jack sta­tions in Siparia to the beach­es of To­co, the beer truck is al­ways there. In fact, the hash nev­er fails to run... or for that mat­ter, to lime. It is an amaz­ing ex­am­ple of con­sis­ten­cy, ac­count­abil­i­ty and re­spon­si­bil­i­ty, al­though one may tend to think oth­er­wise at first glance. But delve deep­er. Em­bed­ded some­where deep with­in the bow­els of the rau­cous­ness, po­lit­i­cal in­cor­rect­ness, the clever name-call­ing and teas­ing is sur­pris­ing or­der.

To the hash "vir­gins" the hash "Mis-man­age­ment Com­mit­tee" seems loose­ly or­gan­ised, to say the least. Its on­ly vis­i­ble mem­ber is the "Hash Mat­tress"–I mean, Mis­tress–who stands on the largest rock or truck and shouts the lat­est no­tices and events to the group of bab­bling, cack­ling and row­dy hash­ers. How­ev­er, work­ing fever­ish­ly be­hind the scenes are the "Hash Cash," (the trea­sur­er) and the "Hash Soft­ie" (in charge of soft drinks) among many oth­er com­mit­tee mem­bers. Some­how, there is al­ways a run, every sec­ond Sat­ur­day, with­out fail. In fact, I have known hash­es to oc­cur even on Christ­mas Day and New Year's Day! By some means, at every hash, as it is with the beer, there is al­ways food.

It could be burg­ers and sand­wich­es made by our very own hash grill mas­ter and his portable grill. Oth­er­wise the hares seek out a lo­cal vil­lager and of­fer the job of food cater­er for the night. Ei­ther way, it takes or­ga­ni­za­tion and plan­ning... but the out­sider would nev­er re­alise this. These things just "seem to hap­pen" on the hash. In fact, the hash is much like Trin­bag­on­ian so­ci­ety. Apart from the rau­cous­ness, and dis­or­der­ly con­duct in the streets of Port-of-Spain and in Par­li­ment, and the he­do­nis­tic at­ti­tudes of the av­er­age Tri­ni, cer­tain things just "seem to hap­pen." Fun­ny that po­lice of­fi­cers "just hap­pen" to be look­ing in an­oth­er di­rec­tion when a red light is bro­ken. Co­in­ci­den­tal that Mrs Nunez-Tesheira "just hap­pened" to with­draw her mon­ey from Cli­co just be­fore the com­pa­ny col­lapsed. In­ter­est­ing that every­one "just hap­pens" to be sick when there is crick­et in the Oval.

Ex­tra­or­di­nary that CN­MG "hap­pened" to be "cut­ting back" at the time of Mr. Fazeer Mo­hammed's in­ter­view with Min­is­ter Ram­bachan. Like the hash, an out­sider would nev­er re­alise the amount of be­hind the scenes plan­ning that has gone in­to such ac­tiv­i­ties. On the oth­er hand, the hash is quite the op­po­site to Trin­bag­on­ian so­ci­ety and gov­ern­ment, and should serve as a valu­able ex­am­ple. There are con­se­quences to one's ac­tions. If there is no beer truck, there is no hash. If the hash trail run is poor­ly set, or if it is too short or too long, may di­vine in­ter­ven­tion help those hares from the wrath of the rest of the hash­ers.

Not on­ly will they be sub­ject to pub­lic "hash dis­grace" though the "poofter" award (the manda­to­ry wear­ing of a beer-soaked, soiled, ho­ley T-shirt), the poor "poofter" will bear the brunt of all the "fa­tigue," pro­gres­sive­ly of­fen­sive and de­te­ri­o­rat­ing jokes as the night wears on. Do fool­ish­ness on the hash, and you will most cer­tain­ly be nom­i­nat­ed for the "poofter" award. And don't even think of wear­ing new shoes to the hash, for they will soon be­come your new beer mug. But in all se­ri­ous­ness, if those re­spon­si­ble for ac­tiv­i­ties fail to per­form, then the hash los­es its ap­peal and en­joy­ment. The bot­tom line is ac­count­abil­i­ty. It is all well and good to have your fun, just make sure you get the job done. Maybe this is why hash­ing is not typ­i­cal­ly "West In­di­an."