Surely my time and energy would be better spent trying to figure out how to migrate to the kind of fantasy world populated by T&T’s people of means and influence. Only there could a person be so invested in maintaining business (and traffic) as usual that they’d completely ignore the fact that we just spent two years proving that a national work-from-home policy is possible.
I feel fortunate to be a Trinbagonian. Our culture is rich and varied; our music is pure joy, our cuisine is undefeated and our history is inspirational. Our islands are gorgeous and blessed with abundance in ways other nations can only dream of. Our people—when we’re at our best—are mind-bogglingly creative and brilliant.
The fact is, school is the axle on which our Capitalist societies turn. There are a lot of parents out there who need childcare in order to work full-time. When those parents disappear because they’re at home with the kids, things get sticky in a lot of places.
The public sector not-a-mandate seems to have quietly fizzled at the same time that the Ministry of Education has reaffirmed its commitment to bringing the lower Forms and Standard 5s back out to school early next month.
In a society in which people cared about each other, preparing to live with a deadly virus would mean doing what’s necessary to protect each other from it. A society founded in common sense would recognise that individuals can’t prosper if society collapses.
It’s revealing that a person responsible for representing a community’s interests would feel comfortable excusing themselves with the fact that that community’s infrastructure is approximately as old as the nation itself.
The truth we conveniently ignore as we roll up our windows and roll down the Beetham Highway — the truth we use our addresses, degrees, job titles and, if we’re lucky, assets to hide from — is that the gap between us and the people we like to look down on is A LOT smaller than the gap between us and the people who are supposed to be serving us.
In the wake of an abrupt end to the State of Emergency, prominent figures in this country are comparing the implementation of ‘safe zones’ to South African apartheid even as we record our deadliest day yet with 28 deaths, including the first child to die from this virus.
We talk endlessly about being cosmopolitan but we rarely take stock of what that means, of the whole that is made up of so many parts blended together in a way you won’t find anywhere else.
I have to ask what it is Trinbagonians really want at this point of the neverending shitshow. The hard truth that our big, hardback, 59-year-old nation needs to fully face is that this is a PANdemic and it is not over.