Tony Rakhal-Fras­er

The na­tion reached a high point of el­e­vat­ed feel­ings, wor­thy of be­ing amongst the world’s great na­tions of ath­let­ic achieve­ment, tak­en there by two young men who have spent all their lives seek­ing a place for them­selves and their civil­i­sa­tion in a world “that don’t need is­lands no more”.

It is im­por­tant to note that sons and daugh­ters of Trinidad and To­ba­go, such as Keshorn Wal­cott and Jereem “The Dream” Richards, when they ex­press their de­sire to make their na­tion feel proud, don’t dis­sect us in­to so­cial, eth­nic, and eco­nom­ic di­vi­sions.

I saw a won­der­ful col­league of mine, an in­ter­na­tion­al pho­tog­ra­ph­er, iden­ti­fy­ing with Keshorn at Pi­ar­co on his ar­rival. She will send pic­tures of the world cham­pi­on javelin throw­er to show his ar­rival back home af­ter his mas­ter­ful 88.16 throw at Japan’s Worlds. That is not on­ly in­creas­ing his achieve­ments but al­so say­ing to the world that we are a peo­ple of con­se­quence to be con­sid­ered.

A fab­ric sell­er and a gen­er­a­tional name in down­town busi­ness pulled out a pic­ture he took with Keshorn some­time be­fore his gold medal throw, proud to iden­ti­fy with the ath­let­ics hero. Right across the coun­try, women and men, boys and girls have put aside our eter­nal scram­ble to iden­ti­fy in a di­vi­sive man­ner as African, In­di­an, Chi­nese, or even Dou­glas–“nowhe­ri­ans” as Cle­tus Ali–the Mighty Dougla, who suf­fered the in­dig­ni­ty of be­ing kicked around in San Juan, that place of eth­nic, re­li­gious, po­lit­i­cal, and so­cial mix­ing for his eclec­tic be­ing: “I am nei­ther one nor de oth­er, six of one, half ah dozen of the oth­er.” And “poor Dougie had nowhere to go, so they have to spilt me in two”. Stat­ed dif­fer­ent­ly, rob him of his T&T iden­ti­ty, that “Tri­ni to de bone” thing picked up decades lat­er by two of his artis­tic sons.

To iden­ti­fy with our ath­letes, and it has been hap­pen­ing for decades, we are one peo­ple in all our dif­fer­en­ti­a­tion in this now glob­alised world, and in so do­ing, claim ac­cep­tance of be­ing wor­thy in­ter­na­tion­al cit­i­zens through the achieve­ments of our ath­letes and oth­er cat­e­gories of world-class na­tion­als. And that is in the face of those who like to pa­rade their self-de­feat­ing in­se­cu­ri­ty that we, “T&T is not a re­al place, coun­try”; a styl­ish sense of im­po­tence and non-per­son, which sat­is­fies the wound­ed self-ego.

I won­der, in this quest to have large num­bers of peo­ple take a first step to­wards co­her­ence in our sep­a­rate­ness in the in­ter­est of na­tion­al co­he­sion to­wards the ob­jec­tive of na­tion­hood, if the per­for­mances of Keshorn and Jereem can as­sist us through be­ing aware that there is val­ue in na­tion­al achieve­ment in which the whole shares, notwith­stand­ing which por­tion of the whole is di­rect­ly and im­me­di­ate­ly re­spon­si­ble for the achieve­ment?

The fact is that all of us, notwith­stand­ing the neg­a­tive pulling and tug­ging, even our cussed­ness, our at­tempt to be sim­plis­ti­cal­ly world­ly, and our de­sire to side with those who think so lit­tle of us as a means of be­lit­tling and keep­ing us in our place, are re­spon­si­ble for the Keshorns and Jereems be­ing the best we can de­liv­er to the world.

My prob­ing seeks an­swers to the is­sue as to whether the achieve­ments of these two young men, who have been sup­port­ed by the whole, can prize open that vista to our true selves. That the achieve­ments can cre­ate in us the ac­cep­tance of who we are in our orig­i­nal selves, and so be able to go for­ward from that po­si­tion to al­low that self to lead.

Recog­ni­tion must not be a fleet­ing, ephemer­al, pap­py show thing which we are good at. What of util­is­ing Keshorn and Jereem as rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the best of Trinidad and To­ba­go to in­flu­ence the young in Ca­roni and Laven­tille, to show that it is very pos­si­ble to achieve at the lev­el of the world games, and to make it known that it did not start last week in Japan.

We must be­come ful­ly aware of Rod­ney Wilkes, a weightlifter, 1948 and 1952, Sil­ver and Bronze, Lon­don and Helsin­ki Olympic Games. That Mani Ramjohn (1946) and Son­ny Ra­mad­hin (1950) put us on the world map. That Roger Gib­bon and Stephen Ames have tak­en us to the high­est lev­els of those sports.

That Vidya Naipaul and Sam Selvon told our sto­ries to the world. That Nicky P and Pol­lard have found each oth­er in the com­pa­ny of Bra­vo, Nar­ine, and Dougla Akeal from Suc­cess Vil­lage in Laven­tille to blend their tal­ents and eth­nic­i­ties to favour suc­cess for the coun­try.

Do we suf­fi­cient­ly recog­nise that Mun­gal Patasar has brought the sitar to the na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty and blend­ed it with the steel­pan?

I am us­ing the mo­ment to il­lus­trate what can be achieved by na­tion­als in the name of T&T and how all of us in all parts of the na­tion can recog­nise and cel­e­brate the achieve­ment of a peo­ple, yes, dif­fer­en­ti­at­ed by race, class, re­li­gion, pol­i­tics, and fi­nan­cial suc­cess of the ma­te­r­i­al kind, but with all claim­ing a vi­tal stake in the na­tion.

To be con­tin­ued.

Tony Rakhal-Fras­er is a free­lance jour­nal­ist, for­mer re­porter/cur­rent af­fairs pro­gramme host and news di­rec­tor at TTT, pro­gramme pro­duc­er/cur­rent af­fairs di­rec­tor at Ra­dio Trinidad, cor­re­spon­dent for the BBC Caribbean Ser­vice and the As­so­ci­at­ed Press, and grad­u­ate of UWI, CARI­MAC, Mona and the St Au­gus­tine In­sti­tute of In­ter­na­tion­al Re­la­tions.