flooding

The sunset yesterday evening was intense, like the next 2 days of weather will be here in Trinidad and Tobago. The rains beat out their own rhythm, sometimes with the glancing blows of high wind, sometimes not, and in the Northwest of Trinidad it has been… unpredictable.

Before I left for an appointment today, it was raining one way, then another, bamboo nearby was sheared by the wind. I found it exhilarating. I always have enjoyed a good storm, but today it was only a few hours where I live, with a sunset as above. In South Trinidad, though, I imagine it was much worse, with people still having been flooded from past days.

It’s disappointing, really. The same problems keep coming back while the politicians point at each others for local elections. The flooding has been happening more frequently recently, but the Water and Sewage Company of Trinidad and Tobago somehow never seems to have enough water in the reservoir. There’s too many levels of bureaucracy, not enough accountability, and no effective change – but the government of course wants to bring back a property tax based on what someone guesstimates you can rent a property for.

Nature has no time for that.

There is brave talk about electric cars, and hybrids, but the state owned Trinidad and Tobago Electricity Commission has problems with the grid off and on, at least where I am. It’s hard to imagine the grid charging so many cars every night. I’ve heard the batteries for the cars cost sometimes more than the cars themselves to replace sometimes. All in the name of ‘saving the planet’ which will well be here long after we are not.

The reality is that if these islands, among all the other islands, went and did everything right, from renewable energy to carbon footprints, it wouldn’t have much of an effect on the global climate because these nations, while polluting, aren’t the core of it. For their trouble, they import everything they are told to at high costs, but the global situation’s problems are really in the larger nations that export these things to the smaller nations. “This is good for the climate!”

The woman with a hungry child on the corner has more immediate concerns.

Since Trinidad and Tobago refuses to believe it can produce it’s own technology solutions, hampered by the failed attempts by government to innovate. Big businesses thrive, small businesses die, and everyone wants to start a small business. Big businesses largely import things and sell them to people. Small businesses try to make local things. The bias, as it is, is evident.

The batteries for the cars will end up in the local dumps, likely. Poisoning ground water, like old cell phones and computers do. Politicians will vie to be elected while not actually doing anything, and the shell game of government corporations absolves all from blame.

It is, in it’s own right, a beautiful dystopia at certain hours, populated with a majority of good people who do not go out at night as much – partly economics, partly crime. The crime of the young has become more personal, more painful to the victims, symptoms of a deep economic divide that the government regularly excavates. It’s not an economic divide, really. It’s a moat.

It can be depressing to see on a daily basis. At busy intersections, we see women with children holding up signs with lists of what they need. There are too many for most to help. This was once a rich country. What happened?

I look toward the west, toward Venezuela, another nation which was rich – and could still be rich. I deal with Venezuelans fairly frequently, and while some call them a plague, I see the hard working immigrants that build countries given the right tools. This fresh blood could be an asset. There are intelligent people here, talented people, who in a land where titles mean more than merit, find no place here. They dream.

It’s not too much to ask for a better tomorrow, particularly if you’re willing to put in the sweat equity. I see it almost every day, contrasted against BMWs and Range Rovers while police escort Ministers through the traffic they are responsible for.

These contrasts are much like the sunset. At certain times, beautiful. The rains will come again tomorrow, properties will be flooded, government will posture yet again, and we’ll see what the sunset looks like tomorrow.

It is in it’s own way Groundhog day in a nation with no groundhogs.

The rains have come.

In the tropical island calendar, the rains mark ‘Wet Season’ – a time of traffic, accidents and water-filled potholes ranging in size and depth up to Olympic size swimming pool. A time of umbrellas, of inconveniently wet feet, and of replacing windshield wipers.

It was not always so. In Trinidad and Tobago, corporate attire so many attempt to use to forget the agrarian roots is something I often view as a pretentious veil. I did not grow up in an agricultural environment, despite my roots, despite the roots of anyone of East Indian or African descent in this country. I grew up in the “fix things” sector where weather meant either you worked dry or wet – but you worked.

The planet is 71% water. If you’re afraid of getting wet, it’s safe to assume you’re on the wrong planet.

Now, though, the rains mark the end of one part of my agricultural project and the beginning of another. There’s little in project management literature that talks about, “when it begins to rain”, but there should be.

It has been a race. Clearing bush, getting land brush-cut and plowed, clearing as much of the hill as I could and making my space on my land. Having the pond dug, then dealing with a suicidal hog plum tree. Getting the hill graded and moving stones. Finding things to plant from wherever I could find them and planting them.

The rain is soaking in. There will be some more things planted when the sun dries the top layers a bit. It makes no sense wandering through the field with five pounds of mud on each boot while sliding down the hill. I do not enjoy doing laundry that much.

Now comes the maintenance – keeping the crops in good health. Cutting grass. Spraying when absolutely necessary. The molding of trees, trees that I am happy to say I have planted more of than I have cut down. Before the land fasted, now the land is to be nourished so as to grow things.

Cassava. Eddoes. Corn. Peas. Sweet potato. And the longer term trees – where I plant at least one for each tree I have taken down, the stumps a memorial to that. Each tree I plant, I remove a stump, and so I keep track.

No one says I have to. I simply know I should.

Meanwhile, I visit places where people drive cars that they can barely afford, attempting to convince each other and themselves on how well they are doing, how successful they are. The latest fashions parade like price tags, the smiles gleam too white – unnaturally white – and all the while, they see the rain as a problem. An inconvenience.

Only a few have followed the business side far enough through to understand the importance of the rain – how it affects the crops, the food – how that in turn affects pricing, how that in turn affects the purchasing power of a currency, how that in turn allows for more disposable income to buy things.

It also means things that have not been maintained may flood. It means that the plastic bottles that Trinidad and Tobago so loves in drains present a problem, and while work has been done to clear them, it’s a matter of finding out the hard way. Unfortunately, flooded fields mean less to people than flooded parts of Port of Spain, where the imported goods sector will weep because of lack of foot traffic, etc. People forget where the food comes from.

The food comes partly from the rain – not the plastic bottles woven into the drains, discarded by humans who then complain about the effects of their presence. The food sustains the society.

Our agrarian ancestors understood those things. They kept drains clear. They did not throw things on the ground that would end up in drains. They had the cultural capital to understand poor habits in society can create great obstacles. They knew about these things.

Somewhere, that cultural capital seems to have divested itself. To progress? It would seem not.

That capital still exists, but it is being sold for a chance to act like an inconvenienced overseer on a plantation of plastics. Look at how many have jumped at this opportunity.

Perhaps they should be reaping what they sew; and yet, we all seem to have reaped what they sew.

RealityFragments.com

Personal scribblings of Taran.

The Contrasts.

The Rains of Cultural Change