Between the lines

About forty minutes before two o’clock in the morning and I am obsessing over my homous and just in case you’re wondering why during the hours of pre dawn I am preoccupied with one of my arm bones you’re mistaking homous with humerus. My post midnight preoccupation is not with a body part, but with a mouth watering Mediterranean/ Arabic chick pea dip, usually served with pita bread and which I prefer to spread on Crix.

I was first invited to try this most delectable of appetisers two decades ago by a Lebanese friend and I have been an addict to it since. After that first lime, whenever she’d ring up to suggest another gathering at her house, before I accepted her invitation, I’d warn her, “Lisa, I hope you’ve made homous.”

But why am I bothering about homous at one something a.m? My homous (mine because I bought it, not because I made it) is at the moment lying wasting away in my fridge, this now a defrosting black box, testimony to an electrical crash — the second in 12 hours. This new blackout is now three hours old and if you know your homous you know that homous, — yours, mine or any other — doesn’t have a long shelf life. Damn TTEC. Twenty hours earlier, I took a detour on my way to work to get the homous and I spent quite a few of my dollars to get just a bit of it. Now during this second blackout, when sleep is impossible in this hot and sticky air, untamed by neither fan nor AC unit, I have a serious decision to make: am I going to risk acute indigestion by fetching the homous and some Crix or am I leaving the homous to spoil?

Life has a knack of packaging itself in the oddest of forms; at this precise moment, living in Trinidad and Tobago is a container of crushed, seasoned channa in peril of going bad. I am not as upset about the rest of the food I’m going to have to toss thanks to TTEC, food which is well expensive in this country, food I’ve purchased no more than two days ago. And I know I should be annoyed because this isn’t the first time that TTEC has spoiled more than one more meal nor will it be the last.

I know I should be vexed that perhaps yet again some electronic item might be ruined by the unending surges and I should be frustrated by my inability to sleep after a long demanding day, yet I am neither. The fish in the freezer can haw, the radio can fail, I can boil, but God please preserve the homous. God preserve the homous and bring back the power.

Are many of my fellow citizens much like I am, lying in the heat and darkness, counting sheep and losses, pondering the joys they forfeit and the stresses they endure everyday in TT, the time they lose thanks to the inadequacies in the national infrastructure?

This is what the guys and gals in power don’t seem to get: most of us down here don’t care who is suspended from the UNC today, who is cursed tomorrow or who kisses and makes up with whom next week. Nor do we need highfaluting speeches about constitutional reform or do we believe an executive president necessary, not unless we have something tangible to gain by all this political manoeuvring or by this inadequately unexplained desire to tinker with the Constitution. We want instead the most basic of services. Services like constant power, running water, public transport, access to decent health care, modern schools and suitable education.

We’re also in need of an end to the large number of power outages, scheduled and unscheduled, in this the year 2006 when Trinidad and Tobago is supposed to be on its way to attaining First World status. How can a country with tonnes of natural gas and oil and billions to throw around make its citizens suffer for a reliable supply of electricity? Will blackouts increase as we build, build and build again? Maybe the moment is here to privatise the sector so consumers can have a choice between “B-Mobile” power and “Digicel” current.

It’s after two o’clock in the morning and the lights have just come back on. I switch on the AC unit fast, and I pray that TTEC isn’t teasing, that it won’t take back its electricity before the room can cool down. No more surges and outages please. Perhaps, I’ll be able to catch forty winks, though more likely I’ll get only 20, because dawn is nearly here. But I can’t sleep. My homous is still on my mind. I’ve got to check its condition.

I grab the lantern in the event the current goes again and to the kitchen I head and directly for the fridge. The homous looks and smells okay, but I still wonder if I shouldn’t toss it. I reluctantly opt for discretion not for valour and throw the container of homous into the bin. There, I’ve committed “homouscide.” And though TTEC neither knows it nor probably cares, I’m angry at the electricity company. What next? Blackouts during June, World Cup month? Ah, so now you understand how critical this outage thing is! What? You really thought this was all about my homous? Be serious now.

suz@itrini.com