The 'hognorance' of Trinis

Paolo Kernahan

“WHY YUH do go home and sleep!” That’s advice bellowed into my car from a young woman overtaking me on a terrible road. I was gingerly navigating muddy craters of unknown fathoms when the high-strung harpy in a towering four dubya D pulled up on me and flared her nostrils so broadly I could read her thoughts. Lady, you looked to be in your early 30s. If you’re already wound as taut as a piano string, you are cooked.

Everywhere, it seems Trinis are angrier and quicker to temper. Foreigners who come here often gush about the friendly nature of our people. Now, that’s, in part, true. We lay it on thick when showing visitors who we can be. More often than not, though, society as a whole has to reckon with who we actually are.

Many of us saw that video circulating online of the fight in a Digicel outlet. Two men were nose-to-nose, squaring off in a public place that wasn’t even crowded. From there, the argument degenerated into two grown men “wrassling” on the ground like drunk toddlers.

I wasn’t there to maco what sparked the episode, but it isn’t hard to imagine that those two went into the Digicel store already simmering with tensions ignited elsewhere and over time.

In another video making the rounds online this week, similarly explosive scenes were captured in gridlock traffic between two maxi taxi drivers. In this unsanctioned undercard bout, the pair swung wildly at each other before locking together in a furious embrace in the inches spared between vehicles.

"Jess so, boy! But look! Watch he nah!" It’s always a little frustrating that the folks recording these wild events don’t offer any context to what you’re seeing. If you’re going to take time out of your day to record a fight in the street and subsequently time out of my day having me watch it, the least you could do is sharpen up your description of the goings-on and the accompanying caption.

More and more, evidence of Trinis collapsing to the immense barometric pressures of life in this country offers a window into our deteriorating state. Not long ago, students recorded on their phones a fight between a teacher and a student who looked no more than 16. This was no ordinary scrap. It looked like a two-men-enter-one-man-leave scenario.

Of course, videos of fighting in our schools are neither new nor uncommon. With all that brawling in classrooms, you’d think we’d be better at it by the time citizens get to the middleweight division of the Digicel store, but that’s our education system for you.

All these signs of increased anger and decreased self-regulation echo what we see coming out of the US. The online world is replete with images from that country, which, if taken as a whole, inevitably herald the decline of that civilisation.

Across America, ordinary citizens are locked in bitter conflict – race, politics, petty neighbourhood squabbles, subway justice, department store vitriol and fast food and drive-thru customer meltdowns, just to name a few.

Entitlement is off the rails; impulse control is no more, and open raging is seen as just another right enshrined under freedom of expression. Add to that combustible mix the ubiquity of guns, and that produces tragedies in which motorists are often shot and killed for the apparently capital offence of giving someone a bad drive.

We’re not that far behind in TT, which has become a society of triggers. Citizens spend countless hours of their days imprisoned in traffic. Nothing works. Any encounter with public services takes years off your life. Costs of living are spiralling while wages remain stagnant. Politicians and the upper crust are living their best lives while many others are left to straddle the razor’s edge of life in "sweet TT."

All this enmity shouldn’t be, given the amount of effort and investment put towards decompression and coping. We spend months out of the year partying, leading up to Carnival Monday and Tuesday. Beyond those amusements, liming, public holidays, beach and river limes, and barely working when you’re at work just aren’t cutting it any more, it seems. As is the case with most drugs, the body and mind adapt, and the effect is lessened.

Apart from the natural beauty of this country – itself under threat – the unique charm and grace of our people are supposed to be defining characteristics of life here. When that’s gone, what’s left?