Car­o­line C Rav­el­lo

Al­most 20 years ago, I was be­ing tu­tored in pol­i­tics by the re­spect­ed Kasala Ka­ma­ra, whose name I think means "good teacher," and if not, then I'd rec­om­mend that trans­la­tion. We were at his pri­vate school in San Fer­nan­do, when, in an in­tro­duc­to­ry ses­sion, he asked, "Is T&T a na­tion or a state?" Af­ter fum­bling through a few at­tempts at defin­ing and dif­fer­en­ti­at­ing na­tion from state, I re­signed­ly con­clud­ed, much to his amuse­ment, "We are a na­tion in a state!" It's not easy to amuse Ka­ma­ra, my teacher-friend and men­tor from the 70s at Cowen Hamil­ton Sec­ondary School, but with that rare, wry smile, which I can vi­su­alise even now, he said, "You are some­thing else yes, Miss!" I nev­er com­plet­ed that pro­gramme, which was in my start/ stop years when I was cer­tain an un­der­grad­u­ate de­gree in pol­i­tics and in­ter­na­tion­al re­la­tions would serve T&T well. (I'm a dream­er with the high­est hopes for my life here and for the fu­ture of my coun­try). The ques­tion, if it was an­swered, pro­vides me with the barest elu­ci­da­tion at this time and that has noth­ing to do with the schol­ar­ship of Emile Durkheim, Max We­ber, Lloyd Best, and all those who have gone be­fore, or to oth­ers who point me to the aes­thet­ics and dread of such a dis­course.

It speaks to my dis­sat­is­fac­tion with here, home. The aca­d­e­mics I leave to those in­tel­lec­tu­al gi­ants who can man­age such sub­jects. I'm among those who want to "feel" na­tion­hood. I want my chest swelling with red, white and black pride, my feet chip­ping with the rhyth­mic joy of pro­duc­tion, tol­er­ance and dis­ci­pline; I want to sing, "I'm a Tri­ni" and know ex­act­ly who I am by that de­f­i­n­i­tion, I want to take my pride in our lib­er­ty, stand­ing side by side with sis­ter, broth­er, leader, neigh­bour and friend, in an hon­est ven­er­a­tion of forg­ing some­thing. I'm not look­ing for utopia but a bet­ter qual­i­ty of life, which my coun­try by its eco­nom­ics and in­tel­lect should be able to es­tab­lish. I need to live where there isn't a fla­grant amount of dai­ly gutwrench­ing, in­fight­ing, mud­sling­ing, blam­ing and fin­ger-point­ing. I long for lead­ers to take the high road on moral­i­ty, eth­i­cal val­ues and spir­i­tu­al­i­ty; not the high­hand­ed­ness of con­stant­ly try­ing to con­vince a pop­u­la­tion that some­one did it "wronger" be­fore "we." This Au­gust, I wish it had not been, for me, so dif­fi­cult to put away the dis­con­tent of the times. I should have been cel­e­brat­ing some­thing grander. Even the word "cel­e­bra­tions" be­came a mired no­tion when with a glance at the na­tion­al land­scape any­one could gath­er that we're an im­prop­er frac­tion of the hope that was plant­ed with the fly­ing of our na­tion­al flag and the singing of our na­tion­al an­them. That day when we be­came an in­de­pen­dent state, we were en­dowed with the in­stru­ments to be­come a na­tion and, af­ter 50 years, po­lit­i­cal di­vi­sive­ness, drawn against deep eth­nic sus­pi­cions, so rife, con­tin­ues to sup­plant those ef­forts. Imag­ine cel­e­brat­ing such a sig­nif­i­cant num­ber with the Gov­ern­ment and the Op­po­si­tion hold­ing two sep­a­rate cer­e­monies!

That for me will al­ways be a heart­break­er and I can­not be­gin to imag­ine what those el­ders who wit­nessed 1962 and 2012 must feel. This mashup­ness haunts the soul of this na­tion. And while there are many who could have waved un­til next year morn­ing in the state­spon­sored par­ty, and a con­stituen­cy which now ac­cus­es dis­senters of "PNM ta­ban­ca," there's a great num­ber who share my anx­i­ety about our back­ward­ness. I'd rather be dis­cussing the men­tal ill­ness called dys­thymia than re­gur­gi­tat­ing na­tion­wide rest­less­ness but I un­der­stand both as de­bil­i­tat­ing men­tal cir­cum­stances. Yet as na­tions go, we're young and we've ac­com­plished much of which we ought to re­main proud. It is that we seem too pre­oc­cu­pied with triv­ial-mind­ed­ness to con­front is­sues that would force growth. For all that we have, there are, to me, a pover­ty of spir­it and a dis­ar­ray of af­fairs that make us ap­pear os­ten­ta­tious and poor. Our frac­tures in pol­i­tics are the most de­bil­i­tat­ing ones. There are many pow­er­ful forces that can cre­ate co­he­sion-pol­i­tics is not one of them-such as re­li­gion, sport, ed­u­ca­tion, and ac­cord­ing to Pres­i­dent George Maxwell Richards, Car­ni­val. In his poignant ad­dress, in the ear­ly hours of In­de­pen­dence Day, im­me­di­ate­ly pre­ced­ing the fete, His Ex­cel­len­cy said: "The to­geth­er­ness that we see dur­ing our Car­ni­val cel­e­bra­tions and at oth­er times of na­tion­al cel­e­bra­tion, should not be ephemer­al. It should be the sem­i­nal qual­i­ty that de­fines our char­ac­ter as a peo­ple. Na­tions be­come great be­cause their peo­ple are so con­fi­dent in them­selves that they see no in­sur­mount­able ob­struc­tion to their ac­com­plish­ments." I'm a pos­i­tive in­di­vid­ual, but I'm yet to feel that bol­ster­ing na­tion­al con­fi­dence as we run rafts of capri­cious­ness in every are­na. Why do we still have such frail na­tion­al self-es­teem?