VOLANDO VOY — YOU’D NEVER UNDERSTAND

I had entered the motorway via the wrong access road, had opted to make a U-turn and was now grinning at the irritated, bad penny Civil Guard officer who had spotted me, stopped me and was threatening to issue me a fine. I was giving her my “I’m a foolish foreigner” grin, which I was about to garnish with a line found in every Spanish phrase book for tourists, albeit my version would be deliberately verb less. “No espa?ol,” I stuttered in the accent I had often heard English visitors use on the beaches and in the bars of Spain’s Mediterranean coast. And I kept grinning. She frowned, shook her head and her right index finger at me.

I realised though that she was wavering. I didn’t look like a Basque or 11M terrorist and she didn’t want to endure having to ask me for a driver’s permit and insurance in sign language. She would definitely decide that a moronic, linguistically inept tourist was not worth her time. The highway policewoman waved me on. I re-started the engine of the rented car and slipped my Camaron CD into the player. As I drove off, I cheekily saluted her and shouted “Gracias. Volando voy!” And I sped away. She’d have to catch this Trini today if she didn’t like the salute. I felt remorseless about both it and my language ruse. I loved to drive and now I was really driving. I had earned this vehicular delight, a sensation I had been craving, tasting, imagining for days, weeks, months, years. I was from Trinidad and Tobago where we no longer drove. What we did was get into our cars, switch on our engines, then bob, weave, jerk and creep. We did not drive.

I suddenly wished I had thought of bringing along photos of the roads in Trinidad and Tobago on this journey. All I’d have to do if stopped was show the Civil Guard what our roads looked like and they would take certain pity on me. That Spanish policewoman took her unbroken asphalt for granted. She  drove up and down her developed nation’s silky roadways and probably never once glanced at the pitch below her tyres. She certainly didn’t have to wait for election time or reside in a marginal constituency to get a smooth surface.  She could never have guessed that to me a real highway was like an Act of God and thus, it almost brought tears to my eyes and I wondered whether I should bow before it, make some sort of offering. That’s why I had deliberately chosen the Tuesday after a long weekend as the day for this joyride because I knew that the highways would be clear. I neither desired nor could imagine any other pleasure greater than the pleasure of driving again, really driving. I wanted to steer this car forever along the wide, even road that ran along Spain’s dusty red plains and wound its way through kilometres of olive and almond groves before it began its steep climb to the cup cake mountains of the Pyrenees.

“Soy Gitano,” one of my favourite songs on the Camaron CD, was blaring from the car’s powerful speakers.  I looked at the speedometer. I was speeding, really speeding and had been for a long while. That’s what happens when you give a Trini an open highway, I mused. She or he takes flight. I wondered if the frustration of traffic jams could be a significant cause of our accidents at home. Was it that when we got an unexpected chance, a rare shot at a piece of unblemished, decongested road, we became jet pilots? Perhaps we bore down on the accelerator with all our might because we hoped to open stress valves in our bodies and brains, release the tension of hours of bumper to bumper traffic and the constant potholes. We were like prisoners recently released from jail. And perhaps everyday we sped more when we came to these extraordinary clear, smooth stretches because we realised that annually, there were fewer and fewer patches of unbroken, open road. We had to “drive” while we could, even if it was for five minutes. We knew that it seemed as if there were thousands more cars on the road every month and though we had always heard that the government was going to introduce a proper public transport system, we greeted all transport announcements with considerable cynicism.

To date, years after we had become independent, there was not even a modern ferry service to Tobago. Wet leases for dry runs, that’s how you could describe our infinite inter-island transport initiatives. So too, when we were also informed that new highways would be built, we first had to see these to believe the promises and we could tell anyone that if or when new roads were built these too would soon be gridlocked and potholed. We knew we could only expect to feel increasing road rage and stress. I glanced at the vehicle’s speedometer again. Should I reduce my velocity? I felt so wonderfully carefree. When would I again get an opportunity to drive for kilometres without encountering another car? When would I next hold a steering wheel without having to jerk it left to avoid a new, unexpected pothole or right to miss an old, expanding one? Would I still be able to drive when I eventually did get the chance? All these questions raced through my mind. Then I remembered that at home they said God was a Trini. That’s when I knew I had to slow down. Hell, I thought, God couldn’t even build good roads in His own country or give His people decent public transport. No way I was taking my chances with His highway to Heaven.

suz@itrini.com