Where East is not in the east

THE EDITOR: Achieving First World status by 2020 or any other future time does not entirely lie in the hands of the Government. We, the people also have a major role to play and one of the aspects that must change is our mentality towards certain facets of everyday life. Today I wish to highlight a blatant misconception that has been with us for ages and involves the location of places in Trinidad with relation to the cardinal points.

If you live in Barataria, Arima, Sangre Grande or Manzanilla you are considered to be living “in the East.” In fact, for many of us, anywhere east of the Light House in Port-of-Spain is labelled East. In reality, nothing could be farther from the truth, and so one can only guess how this mindset came about. Some day when the term “In the East” is used the thinking is, east of Port-of-Spain. Others argue that the phrase means any place on the East/West corridor, which may not necessarily be located on the eastern side of the island. In any event, looking at a map of Trinidad and telling a San Juan resident that he lives in the east seems ludicrous. The fact is that not even Arima is in the east, as a more accurate statement would place the Borough as North Central.

Immediately we realise that if Manzanilla was the capital of TT it would not be inconceivable to imagine the East/West corridor called the West/East corridor. This means that Sangre Grande could have been considered a western town by virtue of it being on the West/East corridor and west of the capital, Manzanilla. With the situation reversed we see how ridiculous the concept is. Other inaccuracies would include the fact that we say Diego Martin is in the west when it’s really north west. Waterloo and Carapichaima are almost dead west but we call them central. Moreover, when we speak of living in the east or west we’re really referring to only north Trinidad and it’s as if the southern half of the island doesn’t exist. The fact that the “north” is more populated than the “south” doesn’t appear to justify the cause.

In my estimation, south is too broadly defined by most Trinis as any place south of Pointe-a-Pierre. Running a straight line across the island at Pointe-a-Pierre, South would include San Fernando and Mayaro in the minds of many — places on opposite coastlines. We can go on and on as more examples exist. So maybe now it is easy to envision a lost tourist trying to find St Joseph on a map and recalling the taxi driver saying, “It in the east.” His conclusion would seem inevitable. Trinis can’t tell east from west or right from left — so Third World. We really need to work on this.

DEXTER J RIGSBY
Mt Lambert