ERNIE ROSS

The world has lit­er­al­ly gone silent.

As the glob­al pop­u­la­tion on every con­ti­nent has been forced to with­draw in­to the safe­ty of their homes, it is sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly re­port­ed that the earth is ac­tu­al­ly vi­brat­ing less with the re­moval of cars, trains, bus­es and peo­ple across the world.

On­ly those who are con­sid­ered es­sen­tial ser­vices emerge at great risk to keep life go­ing, in the case of med­ical staff, quite lit­er­al­ly. These peo­ple have be­come known as the front­line he­roes. They in­clude a long list com­prised of every hu­man be­ing re­quired to be out there in sup­port of the rest of us who are forced to hud­dle in our homes in a des­per­ate ef­fort to avoid con­tract­ing the dead­ly COVID-19.

Amidst the si­lence of this mas­sive hu­man with­draw­al of so­cial dis­tanc­ing emerged an iron­ic per­spec­tive: the pro­found un­der­stand­ing of how in­ter­con­nect­ed we are across the plan­et. Just as eas­i­ly as the way one per­son can neg­a­tive­ly in­fect an en­tire coun­try through vi­ral spread so too can we pos­i­tive­ly af­fect each oth­er through com­pas­sion and kind­ness and acts of un­selfish­ness.

While there have been ug­ly scenes of in­dis­crim­i­nate be­hav­iour, greed and ig­no­rance, we have al­so wit­nessed the ev­i­dence of hero­ism and hu­man­i­ty. It is as though the world ac­knowl­edged that our very sur­vival de­pends up­on work­ing to­geth­er in sup­port of each oth­er.

It is against this back­drop that in the City of Wuhan in which COVID-19 was first iden­ti­fied that the phe­nom­e­non of peo­ple cheer­ing in the evenings be­gan. The act of ap­plaud­ing quick­ly spread to oth­er coun­tries and cities.

It was as though the whole world was cheer­ing each oth­er on and ac­knowl­edg­ing the coura­geous he­roes of the bat­tle for our very lives. In Spain, In­dia, France, Turkey, Lebanon, Pe­ru, Cos­ta Ri­ca and in the cities of Paris, Lon­don, in every con­ti­nent around the world the out­pour­ing of grat­i­tude was dis­played with peo­ple com­ing out on bal­conies and out­side their homes to break the si­lence of so­cial dis­tanc­ing with loud ap­plause and cheers.

But on the tiny is­land of T&T the ex­pe­ri­ence was record­ed as a huge his­toric mo­ment marked in the most dra­mat­ic fash­ion pos­si­ble. That the un­fold­ing scenes on the twin is­land were not part of an of­fi­cial cer­e­mo­ny or di­rec­tive made the col­lec­tive events that much more re­mark­able and demon­strat­ed the char­ac­ter and spir­it of Trin­bag­o­ni­ans.

To un­der­score the unique­ness and sig­nif­i­cance of the event it is nec­es­sary to re­late how it all oc­curred and the her­culean vol­un­teer ef­fort be­hind what helped cre­ate the his­toric mo­ment.

The ini­tia­tive brought to­geth­er three main groups ANSA McAL led by An­tho­ny Sab­ga III, the ISOS (I Sup­port Our Ser­vices) es­tab­lished and led by Nicole Dy­er-Grif­fith and Re­Think as the event ini­tia­tors pro­vid­ing strat­e­gy and cre­ative. Emerg­ing from these or­gan­i­sa­tions of plan­ning and ex­e­cu­tion were scores of peo­ple in teams com­prised of the Guardian Me­dia net­work, Ansa McAL cor­po­rate com­mu­ni­ca­tions, the TTPS as the co­or­di­na­tor of dis­ci­plined ser­vices through the ISOS and Re­Think.

This in­te­grat­ed group then in turn sought the sup­port and par­tic­i­pa­tion of oth­ers such as bmo­bile and Dig­i­cel to send mes­sages with Dig­i­cel even of­fer­ing free posts on so­cial me­dia to the pub­lic on the day of the event.

Every me­dia house agreed to par­tic­i­pate in the out­pour­ing of gen­eros­i­ty. Var­i­ous groups and well know per­son­al­i­ties threw down chal­lenges to each oth­er to pro­mote the na­tion­al ap­plause ini­tia­tive.

Hema Ramkissoon of CNC3 chal­lenged the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Gary Grif­fith who, in turn, ac­cept­ed it and passed on the chal­lenge. Sports icons such as Dwayne Bra­vo be­came in­volved. Anya Ay­oung Chee en­joined to bring on board the group of mu­si­cians of her col­lab­o­ra­tive piece of in­spir­ing mu­sic, No Greater

Time to be gift­ed as the sig­na­ture theme. It seemed as though every­one raised their hands in sup­port of mak­ing this a mo­ment when the en­tire na­tion would be uni­fied in cel­e­brat­ing life and ac­knowl­edg­ing the front­line he­roes for their of­ten un­her­ald­ed acts of courage and sup­port of oth­ers.

Yes, there were crit­ics and naysay­ers as there will al­ways be but that on­ly served the pur­pose of cre­at­ing the re­al­i­sa­tion among the or­gan­is­ers that we had to push hard­er to move be­yond pock­ets of re­sis­tance to make this ini­tia­tive work and be his­toric.

With­out a pen­ny be­ing spent but huge re­sources, time, tal­ent and en­er­gy freely ex­pend­ed, at pre­cise­ly 10 am on April 9 the re­sults of all the ef­forts be­gan to un­fold in a demon­stra­tion of such a col­lec­tive out­pour­ing of cel­e­bra­tion of life and grat­i­tude that it brought thou­sands wit­ness­ing it live lo­cal­ly and around the world to tears.

Tiny T&T mount­ed the most co­or­di­nat­ed, or­gan­ised ex­pres­sion of ac­knowl­edge­ment and ap­pre­ci­a­tion for those who are serv­ing us dur­ing one of the most chal­leng­ing times in hu­man his­to­ry. If this were any in­di­ca­tion of our abil­i­ty to come to­geth­er in the way we did then we have shown both our­selves and the world that we have what it takes to over­come it all.

A fun­da­men­tal shift has been made in our per­spec­tive and na­tion­al psy­che. The val­ue of look­ing out for each oth­er, the keen ap­pre­ci­a­tion of things we once took for grant­ed, the un­der­stand­ing of the fragili­ty and tran­sience of life, the del­i­cate bal­ance of na­ture in a con­nect­ed world, the val­ue of im­pact of a sin­gle per­son rip­pling through an en­tire com­mu­ni­ty, coun­try and world, our ac­knowl­edg­ment that our time here on this pre­cious plan­et is a gift to al­ways cher­ish and re­spect and for which we must be for­ev­er deeply grate­ful.

April 9, 10 am

Trinidad and To­ba­go

A se­ries of ac­tiv­i­ties swept across the twin is­land like a tidal wave of emo­tion. There was no es­cap­ing it.

The re­mark­able fea­ture was that no of­fi­cial cel­e­bra­tion ig­nit­ed it, there was no sports vic­to­ry such as when we his­tor­i­cal­ly and proud­ly qual­i­fied for the FI­FA World Cup, there was no Car­ni­val pa­rade, it was a well pro­mot­ed, metic­u­lous­ly or­gan­ised nudge of emo­tion which grew or­gan­i­cal­ly to record the great­est out­pour­ing of na­tion­al sen­ti­ment ever seen in T&T and one which showed the world this is how a small ef­fort of ap­pre­ci­a­tion and gen­eros­i­ty can grow in­to a large ex­pres­sion of the hu­man spir­it and ex­pand to em­brace an en­tire na­tion.

From the heights of the spir­i­tu­al sanc­tu­ary of Mount St Bene­dict where church bells pealed to the streets where mem­bers of the dis­ci­plined ser­vices, The TTPS, The Reg­i­ment, The Fire Ser­vice, The Prison Ser­vice, The Coast Guard, all gath­ered in salute at var­i­ous points across the na­tion.

Peo­ple gath­ered in their yards and on their bal­conies, po­lice and fire sirens wailed, coast guards ships sound­ed their horns on the coast­line as all front line he­roes from doc­tors and nurs­es to sani­ti­sa­tion and fac­to­ry work­ers to su­per­mar­ket em­ploy­ees who are re­quired to be out there in sup­port were all ho­n­oured by a na­tion ap­plaud­ing their hero­ic bat­tle against the coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic.

The im­ages of lit­tle chil­dren wav­ing flags and cheer­ing, of peo­ple from all walks of life com­ing out safe­ly in their yards and look­ing on in their homes via live broad­casts and stream­ing, all went vi­ral.

The event it­self will be in­deli­bly record­ed and ap­plaud­ed in our his­to­ry as a mo­ment we all came to­geth­er in sup­port of each oth­er when our na­tion need­ed it most.