THE MORE THINGS CHANGE

“It’s First World!” the woman shouted into her cell phone. I was impressed by the perfection of her shrill declaration. She’d hit the  proverbial nail squarely on its head. That’s exactly what The Cat was: First World. There was no better description for this fast ferry that was modern,  comfortable, spacious and spotless, whose crew was competent and which had left Scarborough on time. It was indeed, First World.

The cadence of her assertion was as striking as its descriptive precision, for her voice conveyed flawlessly the very sentiment I imagined all maiden  passengers — and I was one of these — were experiencing on this morning: absolute disbelief. This ferry was too good for Trinidad and Tobago to be  true. We, the people of this twin-island state, were not accustomed to  luxury and efficiency; rather we had long resigned ourselves to being Third World.   We’d been raised on a strict diet of empty promises, poor service and squandered millions so we had grown up to be a nation of cynics.

And since nowadays, our nutritional regime seemed ever more unpalatable, I could only wonder how soon we’d drift from cynicism to hopelessness. The reaction  of the first time traveller on The Cat was proof perfect that generally, we  lived with the least of expectations. As we raced toward Port-of-Spain, I wondered if the Government had the slightest idea  of how pessimistic many of its citizens felt and if it cared to  know.

The PNM was telling us to look toward 2020, that this was our collective horizon. Yet many of us held a different perspective. What we  were seeing was a country of so many contradictions we were unsure whether  it was sailing backwards, towards the nineteen seventies, or whether  Trinidad and Tobago was dry-docked, going nowhere. We had a Pitch Lake but our roads were potholed; we possessed gas and oil fields, but we were not  guaranteed a reliable supply of electricity. We had money for so to blow on  International Women’s Day celebrations, but not a cent for a Laventille  woman living under a tree for a month because her house had collapsed. We spoke loftily of notions such as sustainable development, but the hills  around us were being razed by wealthy “developers.” 

We were fighting tooth and nail for a Caribbean Court of Justice, when at home, we couldn’t define  the word justice if we tried. For those of us who lived in Trinidad, this 2020 horizon was still harder to  detect because we had too much blood in our eyes. Day in, day out, there was  a murder and since the killers were getting bolder, taking out their targets  wherever and at any hour, no one was safe. The entire landscape was a hotspot. Quite a few people were suggesting that by year end, the number of  murders would be 300. Other Trinis were of the opinion that 300 was a  conservative estimate, that murders could overtake the calendar in 2005. “Just now we will get like Jamaica,” was their refrain. Yet others tried to calculate, “judging from the way we were going” how many  murders there would be by 2020. The lowest guess I’d heard to date was 500.

Kidnappers too, were making it difficult for many Trinidadians to abandon  our cynicism. When vets were being snatched at their workplace and women grabbed while jogging, well the future looked less than rosy for all of us. When kidnappers started demanding low ransoms and this was precisely the  case in many of the recent abductions, we knew more “ordinary” people would be snatched. We also wondered, not if, but when the number of kidnappings would be on a par with the murder toll. “Listen, we are nearly in Trinidad,” I could hear the woman excitedly say to whoever was at the other end of the mobile connection. “I’m gone. See you soon.”

I looked out the rear window of The Cat. There in plain sight was the  Chaguaramas coastline. I felt so close to my home in Diego Martin, it  occurred to me that I might tell the captain, “Driver, I’ll take it here.” “You are hopelessly Third World, Suzanne,” I thought. “Even when on a First World vessel.” I wondered how the captain would respond to my silly Trini  request, particularly since he was a foreigner. I could tell that the Cat’s engines were slowing down, so I expected the  captain would soon be announcing that we were in Port-of-Spain. I began gathering my bags. At that very moment, the captain’s voice filtered through  the ship’s intercom. “Ladies and gentlemen,” the captain began, “I’m sorry to tell you that there will be a delay of about ten minutes. I’m afraid there is no berth for the Cat. The Sonia hasn’t left.” Passengers who had once been merry were now steupsing. This was the most upsetting of ends for a smooth sailing.

“What’s the point of having a fast ferry and then you have nowhere to park it?” the woman with the cell phone asked no one in particular. This time  there was no disbelief in her tone, just annoyance. “This is Trinidad,” someone replied acidly. Ten minutes became thirty as the Cat first idled near the port, going  nowhere. Then it started to reverse. Passengers wondered if they were on  their way back to Tobago. I was busy regretting not telling the captain to  let me off at Chaguaramas. Fifteen minutes later, the captain at long last announced that there was a berth available. The “fast” ferry started to move forward again. Forty-five minutes after it was due to dock, the country’s First World Cat crept into Trinidad’s Third World harbour. I felt truly at  home.
suz@itrini.com