Tere­sa White

This lit­tle gem of a book land­ed in my hands just over a week ago. Not know­ing the writer (it has ob­vi­ous­ly been writ­ten un­der a wist­ful nom de plume), I was in­trigued. Clear­ly writ­ten and forth­right in struc­ture, I rapid­ly con­sumed it over the short flight from Pi­ar­co to An­tigua.

In T&T, we say true-true joke ain’t no joke at all. Yet, the sim­ply posit­ed truths had me laugh out loud at sev­er­al in­ter­vals, per­haps to the dis­com­fort of some of the oth­er pas­sen­gers who may have ques­tioned my san­i­ty.

I of­ten joke that we Tri­nis all have our lit­tle ac­cept­ed traf­fic trans­gres­sions, some of these breach­es be­ing more se­vere than oth­ers.

It could be turn­ing right at Curepe when head­ing east on the East­ern Main Road to get on­to the South­ern Main Road (that one is smooth­ly per­pe­trat­ed by a Ger­man friend who when in Ger­many would not dare cross an emp­ty street in the wee hours of the morn­ing if the pedes­tri­an light is not green). Or maybe some of us over­take on the left with im­puni­ty. You get my gist.

The Cheat Code sets out the ob­vi­ous wrong deeds: par­ty-po­lit­i­cal nepo­tism, tax eva­sion, and du­bi­ous in­sur­ance poli­cies.

But much like our views on break­able traf­fic laws, The Code in­cludes oth­er cheats that many peo­ple may not ques­tion: ma­lin­ger­ing in a job for life in the pub­lic ser­vice, play­ing ac­count­ing games to in­flate com­pa­ny prof­its for bonus pur­pos­es, ex­ploit­ing work­ers through job de­sign, fil­i­bus­ter­ing to main­tain a self-serv­ing sta­tus qu­os.

And like some of our traf­fic trans­gres­sions, The Code presents cheats that are idio­syn­crat­i­cal­ly Trin­bag­on­ian: oli­garchic union lead­ers who live op­u­lent­ly whilst the bal­ance (what­ev­er or who­ev­er that means) is dis­missed, usurp­ing funds from poor­ly-reg­u­lat­ed cred­it unions, and, ar­guably most heinous of all, the op­por­tunis­tic use of small church­es to en­gen­der hope and be­long­ing amongst the poor and alien­at­ed, re­liev­ing them of their hard-earned and lim­it­ed pen­nies.

The amus­ing ex­am­ples of as­pi­ra­tional church names and oth­er jok­ing aside, The Code is re­al­ly a lament on our lost po­ten­tial, our squan­der­ing of our is­lands’ beau­ty and rich­es, and our capri­cious dis­re­gard for hu­man­i­ty.

For all its at­tempts at brevi­ty and light­ness, we are left with the heft of cor­rup­tion and rot.

Our au­thor of­fers some pre­scrip­tions around ed­u­ca­tion and mak­ing a stand for what is right.

But maybe what The Code achieves most of all is a square nam­ing of all our dis­hon­est, in­equitable and un­de­sir­able deeds, some less­er and some greater, join­ing the dots on what is a bind­ing pat­tern of con­tin­u­ous de­cline.

And, per­haps, this goes some way to nam­ing the de­mon; for a de­mon named is the first step to­wards a de­mon mas­tered.

The Cheat Code, A Satir­i­cal “How to Get Ahead” Train­ing Guide, Trinidad & To­ba­go Edi­tion by Cud B Paradais

• 102 pages, Pa­per­back

• Pub­lished: Au­gust 25, 2023