Xmas vs politics

On Wednesday morning, I set out on my bike, with my notebook, to document conversations at random with people on the street.

My first (and only) interviewee that day was a 72-year-old male pedestrian.

One of the hot topics – if not the hottest topic – in Tobago right now is the exodus of "Farley and friends" from the PDP. While I chose to not interview on that subject, the elderly gent still managed to stick politics into our conversation on Christmas in "his day."

“In my time, I do not know how much money my father used to give my mother, but all now she would be making her way from Glamorgan to Scarborough to shop. She would come back with a whole lot of items. Nowadays you give a woman $500 and it buying nothing! She don’t even come back with no meat!

“Politics and food so different now! Them politicians today do not know what they want! Them is a set of crab in barrel!”

Then, returning just as abruptly to the subject at hand: “My mother used to buy black ham, also known as tar ham, and throw it in a biscuit tin and boil it. You smelling that ham quite up the road! On Saturday morning it was boiled ham, homemade bread baked in our oven and chocolate tea with real chocolate, that you pong and grate with goat milk. Or cassava bread, a flat bread, with two piece of fish.

“That was then. But today...I ent smell no ham yet! Ah ent even see a man fall down drunk yet! Long time, men falling down drunk on the street all now!”

I asked him what kinds of things they gave or received as gifts in "his day."

"Marbles, tops, cap guns – not real gun like now...and sweetie,” he said. “Boys and girls used to lime together – not like now, when young girl down the road looking for man!"

"I won’t be celebrating this year. How you go buy a gift now for $400? What you go have left to spend on yourself?”

I asked him what gift he would want if he could have anything.

“Health and strength,” he said without hesitation, before we parted ways and he wished me “Sis – have a nice day and God bless you.”

Just as randomly as the elderly gent inserted a comment on politics, I want to mention Jose Mujica, former Uruguayan president. When referred to as the world’s “poorest” president, he would say his life was not one of poverty, but of simplicity.

As president, he lived an austere lifestyle, driving an old blue Volkswagen Beetle, donating much of his meagre monthly salary to charity, living in an old house on a farm owned by his wife, and spending much of his time with what he referred to as the best and most loyal member of his government – his three-year-old "pothound"-looking dog, Manuela, who died at the grand age of 20 and was buried on the farm.

In an article in the Observer, Mujica is quoted as saying: “I slept for many years on a prison floor, and the nights I got a mattress, I was happy. I survived with barely nothing.

"So I started giving great importance to the small things in life and to the limits of things. If I dedicate myself to having a lot of things, I will have to spend a great part of my life taking care of them. And I won’t have time left to spend it on the things I like – in my case, politics.”

Mujica’s simplicity is heartwarming. He rightfully considers himself richer on account of it. He considers those who were "poor" to be those who want "more, more, more."

Google and read about Mujica. You might find yourself wishing that TT’s politicians of today could be of that calibre.

You might also find yourself wishing that even the Christmas of today could be as simple – like "the good old days."