By Johnny Coomansingh
“No one is born a winner. No one is born a loser, but all of us are born choosers.” I recently viewed this meme on Facebook. I have a habit of storing such lines, aphorisms and statements because I see them as beneficial to my well-being. When I am in the doldrums of my ongoing lifestyle, I refer mentally to some of these sayings.
Such maxims have become a part of my mentality. I sought the assistance from my book titled: Sweet and Sour Trinidad and Tobago, and the constant memory of Stephen Covey’s book: The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People to pen this article. Don’t judge me too much about my use of the English language. Many of the lines will show the use of Trini dialect.8
As with everything else, some people are hogtied to their habits, hence the title of the article ‘Old habits die hard.’ In essence, “Yuh could take ah hog from out ah di mud, but yuh cyar take di mud from out ah di hog.” There is also this one, “Dog suckin’ egg, always suckin’ egg.” My godmother said: “Dog eating fowl too-too (lahee) does always eat dat!” She referred to such dogs as “caca mange.” She even gave that name to one of her pothounds. When I studied egg production while attending the Eastern Caribbean Institute of Agriculture and Forestry (ECIAF) in Centeno, Trinidad, the lecturer informed that a fowl that lays eggs on the ground would always be a ground layer…old habits die hard!
To digress a bit, please note that the Trinidad and Tobago (T&T) government did not give me any scholarship for studies at ECIAF. It was the South Caribbean Conference of Seventh Day Adventists that gave me a bursary to pursue a diploma in tropical agriculture. I used to work for ‘South Carib’ as a high school teacher. For that, I am very grateful. However, I served them with two years, two months and two days after I graduated, giving back more than 50% of the time they requested of me. I also liquidated the rest owed for that bursary. We are still quite irie. I left them alone because some people were just too arrogant in that place; once again, old habits die hard. They insulted me too much, and you know me by now…ah does just lef yuh right dey. The world is a big, big place brother, go some somewhere else and fix up.
Maybe they considered me as one of the “…hostile recalcitrant minorities,” as espoused by Dr. Eric E. Williams, a former prime minister of T&T. Maybe I was the type, an outlier having his own patent on his thoughts. In the Sweet and Sour T&T text you would read:
“One ah di elders in SDA church did tell mih dat ah couldn’t make it tuh be an elder because ah mih “mouth.” So ah ask him: “Mih mouth?” Ah din used tuh cuss. Ah use tuh sing and pray and do di “Lord’s work.” No guile emitted from mih mouth. He tun and tell mih dat we know dat “yuh wouldn’t have towed di line.” Yuh think it easy? Ah hear bout ah fella 2000 years ago who din tow di line and he tell di Pharisees dat dem was of dey fadder di devil. He cousin did tell dem dat dey were white-washed sepulchers. Yuh know wuh dey do them fellas? Dey kill dem! Dey chop off one ah dem head and dey crucify one. I eh no Salman Rusdie…dis eh no “Satanic Verses,” so doh put any kind ah price on mih head. Dis is di Lord’s truth. I am sorry…is so ah buy it, so is so ah go sell it.”
With respect to my steelpan research, I needed the history about every registered steel orchestra resident in Trinidad and Tobago. I did the GPS work and recorded the coordinates of all the steelpan orchestras and plotted a map with Arc/GIS, and wrote up my findings about the steelpan landscape of T&T, the Caribbean and the world. I wrote to PanTrinbago, but they failed, no word from them…zilch! I asked, rather begged, for pertinent information to plot the diffusion of the steelpan art form in the country. I wrote to them subsequently…no reply. I guess that they refused to reply because I wrote to them like ah true, true Trini, but what am I worrying about? People cyar give yuh something dat dey doh have!
Why did I have to beg my own people for what was rightfully mine and everybody else’s? The people in di PanTrinbago office doh have ah damn clue about public relations. They need much training. They lack class. Crassattitude is wuh dey know best. I guess the arrogance will remain; old habits die hard. The last vestiges from where the steelpan emerged are now present in the ‘hallowed halls’ of the PanTrinbago’s office. Dis is certainly part of my findings.
I asked for financial assistance from my government to help me with my research to study such an important element of the society but to no avail…zilch! I guess my file remaineth hidden amidst the dust and detritus of a million other documents in the crypt of the ministry of “culture” old habits die hard. Somehow, the time came when I was given a substantial governmental monetary refund, which assisted me with the completion of my doctoral dissertation. Whether you believe it or not, there is an ‘Invisible Hand!’ I was not as lucky as Vidia S. Naipaul to whom I have to pay ‘nuff respect to this scholarship winner. Sir Vidia Naipaul bequeathed to us some real points to ponder. Maybe that’s why calypsonian, the ‘Mighty Chalkdust’ (Hollis U. Liverpool, PhD) sang about Vidia S. Naipaul and his disrespect and utter disgust for T&T…“this area of darkness.”
Naipaul could be disgusted all he wants, but my love for T&T will not wane. This is my homeland. Knowing that long ago Indo-Trinidadians used water to wash their backsides in the latrine and knowing so well that Vidia is an Indo-Trinidadian, Chalkdust sang about Vidia’s repulsion of “a latrine and a bottle of water.” You know I am left to wonder if, in those days when Vidia was a little boy if he had toilet paper. It would seem that Vidia is too much of an English gentleman to use a bottle of water to wash his backside or possibly to even remember that there was such an act when he was living in T&T.
Chalkdust remarked that Vidia preferred to use the loo and toilet paper. I guess Chalkdust was there to maco Sir Vidia Naipaul. Macoing (minding people’s business) is a habit that’s very hard to obliterate. But Vidia wrote about some good sh*t in his book titled: The House of Mr. Biswas. Well done Vidia, well done! Yes, people even pelting tata through di window in dat book. When yuh have time, read dat book after reading dis one if yuh want tuh laff some more. The book shows clearly that old habits die hard. It’s possible that Naipaul had his reason for referring to T&T as an ‘area of darkness’ because of its dealings.
Does any T&T government know anything about patrimony? Now they are conversing about ‘brain drain’ and how all the good, well-trained, qualified people are leaving the country. What is the government doing to make working in T&T attractive when every God day is two-three, nah five, and six murders in the place? And more than that, I applied for a job in The University of the West Indies [UWI] to teach geography. With two degrees in geography and over ten years teaching at the university level in the United States, “ah still eh geh di wuk.” My agriculture colleague told me up in Mount Saint Benedict when I was visiting T&T that they gave the job to a young woman with a Masters in Crop Science. “Yuh think it easy? Imagine dat! Ah masters in crop science? Wuh di hell is dis boy? Dat woman should be wukking in di Centeno field station.” Nepotism is a kind ah crop that is probably cultivated in UWI, and the seeds of that crop disperses with the wind.
Again, I asked for a job in the University of Trinidad and Tobago (UTT). They wrote to me and told me how they will give me an interview…well wait! Ten years passed, and like the proverbial Alligator on the riverbank, I am still waiting. What a joke! Apparently, the big boy Professor did not want me there either. Who knows why? Politics perhaps? Once-upon-a-time, I told a certain Prime Minister on the T&T Mirror that he was “inept” to be a prime minister. The prophecy was fulfilled. Does anyone care about where he is now? People come, and people go. Although it might take another junnum (10,000 years) to fix T&T, I will write my experiences to create a better history.
I am clueless because I don’t know what I did to these people of mine. I once applied for a crop science assistant position at UWI in the Cocoa Research Unit. I failed to get the job, although I was the Express School Boy of the Week for Agriculture. My application with the government to study agriculture at ECIAF also failed. I did not succeed. Most likely, it was about my religious belief, as though agriculture is seriously dictated in T&T by religion.
I applied for the single scholarship to read for a post-graduate diploma in mass communications at CARIMAC/UWI Mona, Jamaica. I was refused, although I explained that I had already started the nine-month course of study and made the highest mark in the English language provisional course. As my mother used to tell me: “Whe horse ah reach jackass ah reach…only ah lil slower.” My history is so very colourful and the people who interviewed me are even more colourful…many of them are pushing up beautiful wild daisies.
I realised that it is quite likely I am a prodigal son. So leh mih wait fuh mih shoes, ring, robe and fatted calf. It’s okay though, allyuh could gih dem things and dat calf tuh somebody else. I eh want no gunman tuh stick mih up when ah sleeping in mih hammock or any bandit tuh stick ah knife in mih throat by the beach or when ah come tuh town tuh look fuh things on Frederick Street.
Despite the charades with personnel who ‘prevented’ me from achieving my goals in T&T, I did not become discouraged. I kept on swimming, facing each wave of despair and denigration; I did not drown! I knew that discouragement is an enemy of the soul, and having adopted that ‘old habit’ of trusting in a higher power, I became a force for good. Later down in life, I understood that ‘God adds by subtracting and multiplies by dividing.’ It’s an old habit that isn’t going to die.
