The power went about an hour ago, so here in the depths of the Diego Martin valley we’re experiencing a rare moment of utter darkness. A fellow Twitter user asked me the other day how much of the southern sky we were able to see from Trinidad. The answer is quite a lot of it, though it occurred me then that, for some odd reason, I rarely look south.

Tonight I did, though. The image below is the view looking south. The one above is looking north-west.

First it was just the hot water, when my water heater sprung a leak which the technicians took three days to come and repair. Then it was running water period, when the electric pump that drives water from the storage tanks into the house (a necessity in these parts when your house is on a hill) was taken away for servicing for a 24-hour period that morphed into five days.

As desperate as the situation felt at the time, I always knew I’d eventually get my running water back, so it would be churlish of me to compare myself with the thousands in this country who don’t ever have running water in their homes, not to mention the 1.1 billion across the world who lack access to water that’s even clean. I also had a number of options, including borrowing showers at friends’ homes and forgoing personal hygiene altogether (which, for the record, I did not do).

But filling buckets from a storage tank is tedious work, and a bucket full of water is heavy, especially for a weakling like me. In many parts of the world, of course, it’s women and girls who ensure that their families and communities are supplied with water, often walking great distances to and from water sources carrying vessels filled with the precious commodity (which is why developments that improve the water supply in communities–for example, the roundabout play-pump–often improve the lives of women and girls as well).

The reason I have water on the brain today is that yesterday was World Water Day. No doubt netizens throughout the world would have been quoting World Bank VP Ismail Serageldin’s famous statement that the wars “of the next century [meaning this century, of course] will be over water”, linking to websites like 1h2o.org and wishing films like Sanjeev Chatterjee’s “One Water” and Shalini Kantayya’s “A Drop of Life” were available for viewing at their local cineplex (Sanjeev’s film will be in a few weeks, if you happen to live in Miami or New York City). Or maybe even that other great film about water-related conflict, “Chinatown“.

It had to happen sooner or later. A band of “Carnival stakeholders” putting forward the suggestion that Trinidad and Tobago’s age-old pre-lenten Carnival be moved to a more “convenient” date, in this case, “a fixed date in April”. At this point it’s simply an idea that was tabled at a meeting yesterday, and they say it will be debated at a symposium which is supposed to take place after this year’s Carnival. But they should save their symposium-organising money and use it for something else, because the idea is just plain absurd. Here’s why:

1. Messing with history is a bad idea. While the people who came up with this idea might not be aware of this, the thing that ultimately gives out Carnival its uniqueness and value and meaning are its historical roots, which also has to do with the time of year it’s celebrated. Without that we’d be indistinguishable from any other of the other latter-day Carnivals. (Also see Reason #4 below).

2. Whose decision is this to make, anyway? While the “stakeholders” who attended the meeting might represent some of the key players in the festival (ie Pan Trinbago, the National Carnival Bands Association, National Carnival Development Committee), and while the idea is allegedly to be debated, they couldn’t possibly believe they could ever be in a position to make a decision like this. Who owns Carnival? Whose festival is this to move? Who has a bigger stake in Carnival than the people of Trinidad & Tobago? That debate had better be thorough, genuine and completely transparent.

3. The newer aspects of Carnival that this proposal would benefit are of dubious benefit to the nation. I do feel sorry for the steelband movement. The leadership of Pan Trinbago (the organising body for T&T steelband movement) seems to be behind the idea, but they should know that they’re far less likely to benefit from the moving of Carnival than the people behind the numerous Carnival fetes, all-inclusive and otherwise, the leaders of the 6,000-person, $4,000-costume Carnival bands and the producers and performers of cookie-cutter soca music. Carnival in its present incarnation has given us a disposable music form, cheap, overpriced costumes, segregated Carnival bands, encourages misplaced financial priorities and very likely lowers the overall productivity of the nation during the first quarter of every year. And it will continue to do that whether it remains on the two days before Ash Wednesday or is moved to “a fixed date in April”? Short Carnival seasons like this year’s are probably very, very good for this country, as they give us the opportunity to spend a greater portion of the year focused on developing, thinking about and exercising our creativity in other areas (eg creating an education system that actually educates, reducing crime etc).

4. We already own the Carnival niche, it would be extremely foolish to throw it away. With a couple of exceptions, like between 1942 and 1945 (because of World War Two) and 1972, when it was postponed to May because of a polio epidemic, Trinidad and Tobago’s Carnival has always taken place on the two days before Ash Wednesday. A pre-lenten Carnival in T&T is an entrenched idea that Carnival visitors keep on their calendars. (I’ll also point Pan Trinbago president Patrick Arnold, quoted in the Trinidad Express article as saying that “the shifting date often created problems for fixtures and other organisational headaches”, to the numerous web sites that list the date of Ash Wednesday for the next million years. He could also ask any religious minister). Now what’s to stop some other country from organising a competing festival on the proposed “fixed date in April”? Moving Carnival would be comparable to an airline giving up a valuable berth at Heathrow airport and a lucrative flight route. And that makes no sense at all.

5. Other places manage their pre-lenten Carnivals just fine. Are we so much dumber than people in New Orleans, Brazil, Venice etc that we can’t figure out a way to make this work?

*For a definition of “dotish”, see The Trini Dictionary.

Technorati Tags: trinidad, carnival, caribbean

Brainy and dirty-minded is a lethal combination, as I (being able to lay claim only to the latter) discovered when my friend Judy pounced on the quite innocent Facebook status message I posted yesterday (see image above) and accused me (publicly!) of autodermaphilia.

I truly and honestly believe the body’s largest organ to be a beautiful and marvelous thing, and I’m not alone. The BBC agrees with me, as does the US News and World Report’s Health Editor, who says, perhaps a bit gender-insensitively, that “man has never made anything better as sensor, shield, and communicator.” 

This morning, my appreciation for skin is further vindicated by a post from Ethan, who’s liveblogging up a storm from the Pop!Tech 2007 conference in Camden, Maine (here’s the full list of livebloggers):

Anthropologist Nina Jablonski praises us as an audience for being, “an exceptional and alert group of primates.” (I will be more exceptional and alert with a bit more coffee.) She invites us to begin her talk by being quite primate and spend twenty seconds touching the skin of someone else in the room. She’s unsurprised when many people don’t participate in this activity - we’ve moved away from this behavior in human society, but it’s incredibly important to our primate ancestors.

“We gather an enormous amount of information about our environment from our skin,” especially the skin of our hands. Hands are equipped with an amazing range of nerve endings that interpret pain, deep touch, temperature.

So there you have it, Judy. Science says I’m not a pervert, but merely a self-decorating ape.

- That American Airlines (AA) does not suck on every, single level. After delaying my flight out of JFK on Monday (fuel leaking into the a/c of the original aircraft, (unionised?) crew claiming illness as a result) and causing me to miss my connection out of Miami, I received an e-mail this morning from AA customer service apologising abjectly for the screw-up and offering me 5,000 bonus miles. This doesn’t quite make up for the fact that the meal vouchers they gave me could only be used at the hotel where they put me up, and where US$15 covers the cost of a cheeseburger and a cup of coffee, but it’s better than nothing. Now that I have enough miles for a reward ticket, I guess I’ll be forced to break my vow of never flying AA again.

- That my college friend, Lisa Cooper, has won a MacArthur “genius” award!

- That there’s another pilgrimage to Mecca besides the Hajj. (Thanks to Amira for this one, or rather to Amira’s mother, who’s Umrah-ing in Mecca as we speak).

I’m back in Trinidad and still haven’t reported properly on BlogHer even after all sorts of cool people have written about meeting me (thanks, cool people! At least I took lots of photos). Putting me particularly and rather dramatically to shame (and not just for blogging about BlogHer) is Beth Kanter, an old Global Voices colleague whom I first met at the second GV summit in 2005, and who has been conducting a very successful fundraising campaign for a bloggers’ conference in Cambodia.

I’m hoping the fact that American Airlines left my luggage in Miami last night will net me some sympathy. And be thankful that your dog is probably not the Fake Steve Jobs either.

Most of you will probably never have cause ever to drive in Scarborough, Tobago’s capital. Be thankful.

After this appeared, a few of my crueller friends suggested I should have Delphine’s tongue removed. I had to remind them that she’s just a pothound, after all, and you shouldn’t read too much into her expressions (not to mention, of course, that removing an animal’s tongue is just plain barbarous.)

Looking at the image above, however — the glint in the eyes, the expression of utter disdain — especially in the context of her Garbo-like attitude towards being photographed lately, you do begin to wonder. . . .

Woman: Hi, I’m trying to reach Georgia Popplewell.

GP: This is she.

Woman: I’m calling about an e-mail sent to you by Jane Doe [who, for the record, thinks GP is a bit of an upstart]. Will you be attending X event on Tuesday?

GP: Sorry, but I never received an e-mail from Ms. Doe.

Woman (with considerable attitude): Well, she sent it.

GP (not without a bit of ‘tude herself): Well, that is one of the problems with e-mail, isn’t it. Just because something is sent doesn’t mean it was received. I’m checking my mail now….

GP types “Jane Doe” into the search window of her e-mail client.

GP: Nope. Nothing. In fact, I haven’t received any mail from Ms. Doe in ages.

Woman: Well, it’s on Wednesday. Can you attend?

GP: What’s this event again?

Woman: The official opening of X [the same X that’s been in operation for over a year now].

GP: Could you e-mail me the information again? I’ll give you another address.

On the other end of the line GP can discern what she’s almost certain is the sound of pins piercing the fabric skin of the GP-shaped voodoo doll (loaned to the woman by Jane Doe) she’s convinced the woman has on her desk.

GP: Are you still there?

Woman: Er, yes. Let me get a pen.

GP: Why don’t you simply use one of the pins and carve it into the surface of your desk?

Woman: I beg your pardon?

GP: Sorry? Did I say something?

Embellished a bit, perhaps. I’ll leave you to guess which parts are genuine.

Pictured above is one of two (or three, if you count the orange shawl someone handed to me, just like that, in a restaurant last night) delightful gifts I received yesterday.

Nikipedia picked up this figurine of Dr. José Gregorio Hernández on his travels in Venezuela. A physician who, during his lifetime, ministered to the poor, Dr. Hernandez is “commonly invoked as “José Gregorio” by both doctors and patients for healing purposes. He is also called upon for protection during overland journeys.” The Vatican granted him the status of Venerable in 1985, and he’s also a lesser deity in the pantheon of the syncretic cult of María Lionza.

José Gregorio joins Babe the Blue Ox and others in one of my own personal pantheons — that comprising lovely and unusual gifts given to me by close friends.

Jonathan and I didn’t end up going bobolee-hunting as planned on Good Friday, but during a drive out to Tamana this afternoon I came across the remains of this Good Friday bobolee hanging on a lampost along the main road in Cumuto. The bobolee is an effigy of Jesus’ disciple Judas Iscariot, and its role in life is to have the crap beaten out of it with a stick, hence the reason this one has only his trousers left. This is both to punish Judas for what he did to poor Jesus and also because bobolees are usually also stand-ins for local miscreants (e.g. politicians). As this bobolee has lost his shirt–and as so many people (still) wear cargo pants–it’s difficult to tell whom he was supposed to represent.

In searching for information about bobolees after I mentioned the word on Twitter, my Twitter contact Coty Rosenblath found this 2006 post by Guanaguanare: the laughing gull. And earlier this week, over at the Rights Action Group T&T blog, the Dread posted her own bobolee pic and put out this call:

This Good Friday we’re inviting all communities to dedicate their bobolee to one of the traitors of our national environment. Take your pick and send us a pic of your portrayal of any of the Judas Iscariots who’ve sold out our country for thirty pieces of aluminum.

UPDATE: And this just in via e-mail from Nikipedia, who’s been travelling in Venezuela: “In Venezuela they burn Judas effigies instead of beating them. We saw a big one being constructed on the outskirts of Santa Elena but we missed the burning.” Next time, we hope.

A FURTHER UPDATE: Left on my Flickr page by Luis Carlos from Venezuela: “We burn a Judas too. Always it’s a politic. This year was the minister who prohibited the alcohol for three days.”

And here’s a Judas being burned in Chile.

This is the sort of thing Vernon would know. What’s the name of the tree the object in the photo was once attached to? It’s a long, flattish pod, possibly green when it’s young, but dark brown when it ages and falls off the tree and dries and curls into this lovely coil. I cannot for the life of me remember what it’s called.

I took this photo last Sunday in Cumuto, with the new camera that Delphine’s not so crazy about. Next time I’ll take a picture of the tree as well. (See more Cumuto photos here).

As I write this, there’s a bush bug* on my desk. A few minutes ago (as the photo above attests) it was performing calisthenics on the rim of a drinking glass; now it’s burrowing under an envelope. I don’t like having bush bugs around, but as I tend to keep the windows open, I expect that, from time to time, insects will land on my desk. Some of them will stay only a few moments, like the moth that alighted on my credit card statement a while ago, then flew off within seconds, perhaps appalled by my credit card balance (or, more likely, in search of better lighting). Others, like this bush bug, will stick around for a while. This fella (gal?) has been here since this afternoon.

As I said, I’d prefer if there weren’t a bush bug on my desk. Nothing against bush bugs personally: it’s just that I like to reserve the space on my desk for things like MacBooks; bottles of Vitamin B12 tablets; bank statements; cordless phones; notebooks; cans of canned air; stray dollar bills; flash card readers; blocks of Post-It notes; trade paperbacks; grey sleep masks from some airline (still in their plastic wrapper; what the hell are those doing there?); camera-battery chargers; letters from newly re-branded airlines with frequent flyer cards glued to them; glue sticks; iPods; glasses cases; nest-like tangles of computer cables; small, elegant-but-sensible-looking Swiss watches; whirring external hard drives (one in the process of cloning the other); ceramic pencil holders; and, of course, microphones and mixers (how else is a podcaster supposed to practise her craft?). And let us not forget wine glasses.

But about my having nothing against bush bugs: I said that to be politically correct, of course. I actually dislike bush bugs quite intensely. The problem with bush bugs, however, is that once you disturb them, they emit a strong, Durian-grade odour which most people (myself included) find very unpleasant. An odour that takes hours to go away.

I look at my bush bug now, at rest on the sleep mask’s plastic wrapper, its antennae no longer making the frantic waving motions of a few minutes ago. So perhaps it is sleeping. Perhaps it is even dying (as there was no entry for “bush bug” in Wikipedia, and since I don’t know the scientific name, I have no idea what kind of lifespan these creatures have, and even if I knew–how old is this one? How close to the end of its natural life?).

While the bush bug rests, however, I continue to compose this post, undisturbed but for those moments when I glance over at the bush bug to check out its latest antics. And the only reason I’m even looking at the bush bug is because it’s the subject of this post. I’m 99% sure that by tomorrow it will be gone, either to bush bug Valhalla or back out the window to a more suitable habitat (like, say, the bush). And besides, it is only a tiny thing.

*a kind of beetle brown marmorated stink bug (Halymorpha halys) (thanks, Vernon)

54-46 may or may not have been Toots Hibbert’s actual prisoner ID number, but I’m sticking by mine: C92. My prison is only metaphorical, of course: the CWC World Cup ticket office at the Hasely Crawford Stadium, where I sit now on a concrete staircase waiting for the ticket office people to open the door again so the 40 or 50 of us gathered here can start screaming at them once more. Well, not really screaming. More like clamouring for information that should have been given to us long ago, or at least posted on a wall somewhere, and for one of those squares of paper with a number hand-written on it. (Too bad I don’t have a Sharpie in my bag — I could have done a roaring trade in bootleg number-papers.)

Problem is, nobody knows what the numbers mean. “What time will C92 be called?” I asked the security guard. She shrugged and gave a non-answer about the tickets not having yet arrived. The saleswoman who handed out the first batch of number-papers did so with the speed and furtiveness of a drug pusher distributing gram-bags on a street corner. The next tranch was delivered by the security guard, who simply stuck a hand holding a stack of them through the grille. A man whom I’d seen slink into the ticketing area only minutes before was on hand to grab them. “Hey you!” I shouted. “I was was here long before you!” “Hold strain, hold strain,” he said, struggling to separate the tiny squares, which were loosely held together with a bent paper clip. When C92 finally reached me, the clip was still attached. I think I’ll keep it as a souvenir.

It’s now 11:16 am, which means I’ve been here nearly 45 minutes. The big orange sign on the door (still closed) says that opening hours are 8am to 4pm. I can’t say I blame the salespeople for shutting the door and hiding out. Nothing they can tell the crowd will make the us happy. They don’t seem to have either the information, or our tickets, and the supervisor is AWOL, as supervisors tend to be at times like these. Some of the people waiting here ordered their tickets online since November, which makes me feel only a little less peeved (I ordered mine–for the warm-up match between South Africa and Pakistan–two days ago).

As usual, there’s an apologist in the crowd, a self-righteous woman with permanently pursed lips who, in spite of the fact that she arrived here even earlier than me, keeps telling everybody to behave and to “use their common sense”. “It’s an international tournament,” she tells a man, a shortish middle-management type in shirt-and-tie and boots with heels just a little too high. “What do people expect?” I decide to ignore her, as earlier, in response to my comment about the lack of information, she’d pointed to a sign on the wall and retorted, “But all the information is there.” I decided that pointing out to her that the sign was the standard one posted in all the ticket offices since last year, bearing the standard info, and that we wouldn’t all be standing here bitching had things been working according to plan, would have been a colossal waste of time.

A nuts man* has entered the area, doing a brisk trade as it’s nearly lunch time. A couple of men sitting on the steps in front of me are saying, in that classic Trini style, that it’s a good thing we got “only the brown** matches”. “Look, the construction at the Oval ain’t even finish,” one says. They guffaw.

They’ve just opened the door, and I was about to pack up and join the knot of people in front of it, if only to find out what being number C92 means. But a man in a plaid shirt tells me it’s only for those purchasing tickets, not collectors of online orders. So seems I won’t be budging for a while. But the concrete’s getting a little hard now.

*peanut vendor
**early round

The single binding aspect of all the magazines subsequently mentioned in this issue, and this will seem obvious, but far too many editors ignore it, is that for a publication to succeed it has to have a point. It can’t just come into being because the owner wants to impress his friends. Or because market studies have shown an opening in a certain line of interest.

Graydon Carter, writing in GOOD Magazine about The 51 Best* Magazines Ever, and echoing my own grouse with many of the titles I see cropping up in these parts. I’ll be the first to admit that the glee I experienced on reading this is due (partly) to sour grapes: selling ads for our baby The Ticket (which had a point) was like pulling teeth, while other publications with less of a point seemed able to bamboozle advertisers into supporting them. Please note that I say this in full awareness of the fact that the grass is always greener, etc.: maybe these other publications just tried harder and complained less.

Other publications with a point: Caribbean Beat and The Caribbean Review of Books. (And yes, I am associated in all sorts of ways with both of these publications — which, somehow, never seemed to affect their quality).

Hat-tip to Prufrock’s Page.

“. . . and their cat actually likes me,” my friend writes the day before yesterday from a B&B in Middle America. He also writes that the B&B’s owners “keep leaving little snacks for me all over the place,” though has never said where the trail of snacks leads, which leads me to suspect his hosts may be swingers, though that is beside the point. I’m more concerned about his views on the cat, which he says has “the soul of a dog.”

Now, this bothers me. Why couldn’t he have said: “Wow — a cat that likes me! Hmmm. Maybe cats are more diverse in character and temperament than the two cats I’ve ever bothered to take the time to get to know. In light of this encounter, let me adjust my views on cats“? Did he have to divest the cat of its cat-ness?

I guess if the well-meaning white American friends who told you they “didn’t consider you black” could do it, what’s to stop my friend from short-changing a poor animal he’d only just met? I kid you not, folks, people did say this, if not specifically to me (they may have, but that’s the sort of memory I might have erased to make room for a more worthwhile one), to many a Caribbean person going to school or living in the US. And they’d say it to Caribbean people who, regardless of the nuanced colour continuum they existed on in their countries of origin, as far as the laws and perceptions of the 50 states were concerned, were just plain black; but who seemed different enough from the (often very few) normative black Americans of the well-meaning friends’ acquaintance to deserve a separate category. I’m willing to bet money, for instance, that at least two people have said this to Barack Obama at some point in his life (Jeremy finds Obama’s books “slippery”, by the way).

While I’m sure there are Caribbean people out there who wouldn’t be uncomfortable with such a statement, I’m hoping it was just some sort of 80s fad and has gone out of style. I’m also thankful I never heard anybody say: “you have the soul of a white person”.

Which brings us back to cats, with or without the souls of dogs. For those who may be wondering at the sudden burst of feline advocacy, it’s actually not sudden at all. I was a cat lover long before Delphine appeared on the scene. By age four I was already the owner of Norman and Wilson, named, respectively, after a character on Peyton Place and I would like to say the Goanese manager of the Diggi Palace hotel in Jaipur, except that I met that Wilson only last month. (And speaking of which, for those of you who’ve been secretly thinking our Diggi-related rhapsodies were a little overheated, please read this. We rest our case). In fact, I’d go out and get another cat right now, except that it’s after 1am and I have no idea how Delphine would receive it — not everyone’s as tolerant as Maizy, you know.

Today is also the second day of a nationwide shut-down here in Trinidad and Tobago that some people seem to be observing, some not, so who knows if the T&TSPCA will even be open.