Go

Go with fear, Go with trembling. Go with that sick to your stomach feeling. Go with tears in your eyes. Go with that pain in your heart. BUT BY ALL MEANS____________________GO! ____________________________GO for the ancestors, go for the children who are yet to be born. Go for the Middle Passage. Go for Faith. Go for courage, and even go because those who are good and well meaning deserve to stand up to those causing the pain........so GO because they have no strength. GO for God and Go for country.

I am seeing revolution and I shine

Last week there was a situation that occured in a meeting broadcast on You-Tube. The young Senator had had enough and the dam broke. He called out the steady diet of racist comments, but moreso, the actions that are encouraging an underclass. In America an Asian man thought that a young black boy was stealing a bottle of water and shot and killed him. African Americans decided finally to stop buying from Chinese stores...their salons, their groceries, their restaurants. This happened when an asian man took to Tik Tok and dared black people to boycott asian stores. He was confident that they could never do it, and so, his dare was met. The stores are now empty, and black Americans are going further by making certain that other black people KNOW who, what, where the black businesses are. WHen the George Floyd situation happened, I began looking at that very question and I found a great list of African American businesses in America. In my country, I have a much smaller list, I do my part, but I do not discriminate against anyone who may have a product that I need. However, it hurts today to think that some people who take the money of people of color call them cockroaches and worse. It is time to draw the line that has to be drawn.

gonna make a change

There is Michael Jackson mania for months based on the film of the same name where his nephew plays him. I have not gone to see it because to me, no one can play him. I bring this up today because I want to theme my musings as ...gonna make a change and of course his song comes to mind. As I get older, I know now that making shifts and corrections is never ending. One subtle move does not mean in every instance a big splash. Some things are also learned again and again and sometimes to my dismay, hit different as the slang goes. What has my bee in my bonnet is how clear it is to me that I am about to move. I don't know what it shall yield, I just know that it is time.

Protesting on a scale never seen before

 The situation with the government is at an all time boiling over point. Today the Maxi taxi association has made good on their promise to strike - or as they termed it, rest and reflect on the status of their jobs. What they are asking for to me, is so basic...better working conditions. A more comprehensive way to settle their drivers permits as commercial drivers....come on, couldn't the Minister of Transport met with them over the weekend to resolve these things? Instead what the nation saw was our Prime Minister enjoyed reenacting Indian Arrival Day by going to a nearby river with a few unnamed people for a photo op, where she and everyone else were waving the Indian flag. She then let it be known....our Prime Minister does not do taped or real addresses to the nation this time around. She let it be known that she plans to change the indigenous name of our airport to that of our first Indian Prime Minister, Basdeo Panday.

I have not been writing much about what is going on in Trinidad and Tobago because it is a blow by blow, hour by hour situation here. Something is happening all the time! I cannot keep up and I am concerned about my own mental state in all of this, absorbing the foolishness we deal with!

It is so weird! She won the unexpected election. She had campaigned for 'all of the people of the island.' She claimed to love all the citizens and would be fair and honest, supportive and listen to our needs.

None of this has happened.

The maxi-taxi association plan to protest for two more days and they say that they may do even more if the minister does not meet with them and resolve their issues. Then on Friday, the group of people who have stepped aside for a moment for this protest, was also dealing with a 19 days for nineteen bullets....the unlawful killing of Joshua Samaroo. His common law wife, Kaia Sealy who was paralyzed because of the police shooting into their vehicle while Joshua had surrendered by placing his arms outside of the car and raised...she was accused of manslaughter. This enraged the public to activate a response.

Then before that, a little two year old in Tobago was murdered and we still have no idea what happened to his body. People want answers for that.

Nine influencers found lucrative jobs with no real resumes at our Water and Sewerage Authority.

The Housing Development Corporation (HDC) is involved in a questionable procurement plan where the government is telling the nation that two contracts, both billion dollar ones, do not require state funds. However it is state lands. Why give state lands to multi-million dollar developers?

I Show Speed an international Blogger came to Trinidad on a worldwide Caribbean tour and after he left, the Minister of Tourism did an AI poster acting as though he had invited him to the island.

The Ministry of Health may alledgedly be facing a small pox and tuberculosis outbreak! But no one is saying anything to the public.

The Minister of Finance is never available to speak about still outstanding money's owed to many public servants. 

The Minister of National Security is blaze about anything he must answer when the desperate media try to catch them going into parliament. This includes blowing into a plastic bag and walking off.

When the television stations and radio stations tell us the daily news, no minister is ever able to be reached. No one answers the questions that are asked!

The Minister of Energy keeps telling us that the government shall be meeting with Venezuela's interim?! President, Delcy Rodriguez - this after the Prime Minister went out of her way to insult Ms Rodriguez many very public times. The Prime Minister also has rubbished CARICOM, the body that happily accepts a large quantity of our local products and keeps our economy in the non oil sector, stable.

That's what I can remember off the top of my head for today.

It has been a lot and they have only been in power for one year and a few days! 

navel gazing

 Last weekend I actually said aloud what I have sometimes felt about aging to a friend of mine who brought up his own observations. I said that I sometimes find that I look like a very faint photocopy of myself. It is a statement that makes me smirk as much as it makes me wonder where all the time went? He was saying the usual thing that we used to hear older people saying, which is, I don't feel a day over 30. Lol. 

Bringing this up comes out of nowhere, it is just one of many thoughts that swim through the mind. I feel for this moment like I have stopped and observed the world moving in all of its ways, and I have this moment to test what may be coming next...the subtle ripples that make up what the future is becoming at every nano second. 

It is a miracle to be on the Earth. Suddenly the vision of the entire atlas and the varying peoples and historical moments, architecture...they all vye for attention as I give this thought.

You can look back and consider my family and wonder what they thought and felt as I do the same.

Just wistful.

 There are days that the word that comes to me and stays with purpose is confidence. When I watch a documentary about an Artist or Writer or whomever, when people are having issues that word springs up. It is a message to me too. The world can wring it out of you. So many things distract. So much promise is lost in following down the wrong path. Yet, to dispare is not an option. 

 The weirdness of life sometimes just makes me shake my head. In my efforts to just do my best and to support others, sometimes, despite this, things just go wrong. It is unfair that people focus only on what you didn't do or didn't work out over the thousand of times that things did. Things just turn on a dime. You never really know where you are standing. I am having a birthday in two months and I still don't feel that I have it all together or have great success. However, I am always wistful and the drive is there.