Deja View?

The phrase I coin, d?j? view, refers to the phenomenon of looking ahead at a disaster with which we are vaguely familiar, and plunging headlong into the maelstrom “irregardless (sic)”.

Truly we have no memory in this land. What we choose to remember are petty spites are trivia. We retain nothing in our memories to guide us, or to build upon. The miscellaneous minor stepping stones left by the British—Victorian laws and regulations, nonsensical Colonial textbooks to cement into our memories the rituals of Cutteridge, the atrocities (described as heroics) of British generals and admirals, and the names of trees and flowers important to us. Trees like oak and elm and beech and birch and flowers like rose and petunia and marigold. But you know what? At least we learned something, however alien to our lives, but something about our socalled Mother Country. I am not sure what our children are learning today, but I suspect that we still tend to use “outside” references and examples to teach our young. And while I would never suggest that we become isolationist and only learn about what we have, grow, build and write, I would like to know that we genuinely teach and learn about whom we are, and why we do what we do (or what our ancestors did).

An example of what I am trying to say lies in a “book list” given to me around the turn of the millennium by the principal of the newly-built Beetham Primary School. I was working with the local contractor who built the school, and upon completion we asked the incoming principal if we could provide a gift to the school at the handover ceremony. They asked for books for the new library. We requested a list of the books they would like.

The list contained all of Enid Blyton, and other books, all written in England, all illustrated with little blonde, blue-eyed children having English adventures and playing English games and eating English fruit and muffins. There was not a single local author or story in the list. You see we had long been indoctrinated against learning about our own Folk Tales and local characters and adventures.

We carry a kind of shame against developing our own stories and legends, and remain embedded in what we were taught by Queen Victoria and Colonel Cutteridge.

I heard on radio once, many years ago, our Merle Hodge speaking about how colonial children’s literature affected her. She said she did not want to play barefooted, so always wore her Bata buckled sandals.

Her dolls were blonde, blueeyed white babies. I wonder now, did she play “Mummy”, or did she play “Nanny” with her dolls? We need a truthful, even if painful history of our “Discovery”, Conquest, Slavery and Indentureship.

While confessing that I am not familiar with what the current history texts cover or how it is covered, I recall that the European plunderers were depicted as heroes and “civilizers” of these islands and the whole New World, blessing and beheading the indigenous and the imported slave populations. “How the West Was Won” (a movie title I borrow here) is a story which needs to be re-told, truthfully, painfully maybe, but necessary as the foundation for the civilizations imported into the New World. The crimes committed by Europeans against native peoples and imported slaves and indentured workers must be redefined as atrocities and not portrayed as heroism.

We need to become honest with ourselves throughout our society.

I consider Trinidad and Tobago the most backward of the Caribbean Islands I have visited in terms of building our foundations for the future. Maybe it was our oil wealth which set us as the ne’erdo- well wastrel of all the islands? That plus the charming veneer of being more multi-racial, multi-cultural and multi-religious than our neighbours? This wastrel element prevents us from being serious and building upon the tremendous, and still acknowledged, potential of talent and goodwill that we share.

Those in power, white and nonwhite, will tell us how “dangerous” it would be to share the truth about the conquest of these islands, the almost 400 years of slavery, indentureship, prejudice and injustice.

Dangerous for whom? Do we pretend that the children of the massacred, enslaved and indentured are not aware of these atrocities? We are currently on the brink of our destruction, and we are afraid to face the issues which, if healed, can rebuild a better society for all of us.