The story of How Sierra Leone Collapsed after Independence

By SARETA ASHRAPH

This series looks at how Sierra Leone, once known as the ‘Athens of West Africa’ and blessed with mineral resources, fell into a brutal civil war a mere 30 years after independence in 1961. The series looks at what happened in the war as well as the roots of the conflict and,
finally, asks the question: are there lessons that Trinidad and Tobago can learn from Sierra Leone?

On the shelves of the library of the School of African and Oriental Studies in London rests a picture book of Sierra Leone, published in 1986. In one of the book’s photographs, children run along Tokeh beach, a 45-minute drive from the capital, Freetown, along the pitted coastal road.  Green foliage stretches into the background. The newly opened Club Med resort, the Africana, is just out of shot.
The Africana, like many villages in Sierra Leone, had been burnt during the country’s 11-year civil war. In late 2003, I visited Tokeh and walked through its ruins. Reduced to a collection of roofless structures, the Africana’s remaining walls were blackened; its concrete walkways cracked with weeds. Brightly coloured lizards contemplated me as I wandered. In the sea, a large flat rock appeared and disappeared with the roll of the waves: it was once the hotel’s helipad.
Sierra Leone, a former British colony, became independent on 27th April 1961, 15 months before Trinidad and Tobago. It is a country of approximately six million people, bordered by Guinea and Liberia. It has over ten tribes, each with their own language and history, but the most significant groups, numerically and politically, are the Mende from the south and the Temne and Limba who inhabit the northern provinces. The Krios – descendants of returned slaves – are based in the Western Area, which was the original British colony and which is far more industralised than other areas of the country. Though many outside of the Western Area do not speak it, the lingua franca is Krio, which, like the Trinidad dialect, is an English-based creole language though with less input from English.
Like many other West African countries, Sierra Leone is blessed with natural resources and minerals. Sierra Leone has gold, iron, bauxite and diamonds. Oil has just been discovered off its coast. It was – prior to the war – most famous for being a nation to which freed slaves were returned; thus the name of its capital, Freetown.
Today, the international image of Sierra Leone is that of a country with drugged child soldiers, amputees and blood diamonds: the conflict that consumed the country now defines it. The war started in March 1991 when the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) – made up at the time of approximately 400 Sierra Leoneans and 1600 fighters from the National Patriotic Front of Liberia (NPFL) – crossed from Liberia into the south eastern districts of Kailahun and Pujehun in Sierra Leone. The RUF’s charismatic leader was a short, stout man called Foday Sankoh, a former army officer who had been imprisoned for treason in the early 1970s. Particularly in the early years of the war, however, many felt that Charles Taylor, the then head of the NPFL and the man who would become Liberia’s 22nd President, exerted strong influence on the RUF. The relationship between Charles Taylor and the RUF is currently being litigated in the Hague, where the former President stands charged with war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Trained in Libya, Sankoh espoused a socialist ideology popular in West Africa at the time. Though his genuine commitment to the ideology remains a matter of debate, Sankoh spoke convincingly of the need for free education, free healthcare and campaigned for the benefit of the country’s mineral resources to be returned to Sierra Leoneans, not to foreign companies. These ideas were popular with the residents of Kailahun and Pujehun who lived in dire poverty—without electricity and running water- in a place where the life expectancy hovered around 36 years and one in three children died before their fifth birthday, from largely preventable diseases.
Democratic change was impossible: by 1991 Sierra Leone had been a one-party state for 13 years and opposition to the government was violently suppressed. For those who felt abandoned by their government and their chiefs, armed revolution was a clear option.

In the decade which followed the RUF’s crossing over from Liberia, Sierra Leone saw 2 military coups, the retention of South African mercenaries by the government, the rise of the civilian militias (which eventually consolidated as the Civil Defence Forces (CDF)) and the basing of Nigerian-led West African forces (ECOMOG) who interceded on behalf of the government.
Foday Sankoh would be twice hailed as a peace-maker and twice arrested and imprisoned. He would eventually die in custody. Thousands of civilians would be killed by members of all the combatant groups; more would be raped, some taken as ‘wives’ of the combatants. Over 10,000 people would have their hands, arms, feet or tongues amputated before being sent to populated areas as a warning against supporting the government. Only a quarter of those would survive the blood loss and infection. In the war crimes trials that followed the end of the war, the RUF, CDF and AFRC were all found to have used fighters under the age of 15 years. Members of ECOMOG or the Sierra Leone Army fighting on behalf of the government have never been tried by any court.
War did not descend without warning on Sierra Leone. Indeed, the nation had been moving towards war by increments for many years: a repressive one-party state, endemic corruption and gross financial mismanagement meant by the late 1980s that armed conflict in Sierra Leone was all but inevitable. When the RUF crossed the border in 1991, it was marching into a failed state and, in the days and months before the atrocities started to occur, many hoped that the revolution would change Sierra Leone and their lives for the better.
Over the next few months, this series will explore not only what happened during the war but how Sierra Leone – a country of such material riches and such promise - fell into such disrepair and ultimately into one of the world’s most brutal civil wars. If Sierra Leone can find the key to a different future, then perhaps the photographs in that library book might no longer seem so cruel when judged against reality.

By Michael West

The Montreal Congress of Black Writers was among the first, if not the first, international Black Power gathering, attracting some of the most notable Black Power and related personalities from North America, the Caribbean, and the Caribbean diaspora in Britain. 

Bukka Rennie

The Sir George Williams blowup came hard on the heels of the Congress of Black Writers, and the two were closely related.  Some of the organizers of the congress, along with many who attended it, were among the leading actors in the blowup at Sir George, which resulted in the destruction of the university’s Computer Centre.  In an era of rebellion on university campuses worldwide, the incident at Sir George was among the most dramatic, and certainly the most destructive in terms of material damage.
The events in Canada had immediate and far-reaching consequences in the Caribbean, nowhere more so than in Trinidad.  Students on the St. Augustine campus quickly mobilised to demand the release of the Caribbean students, many of them from Trinidad, who were arrested by the Canadian police after the Sir George blowup.  From St. Augustine, the demonstrations spilled out into the streets of Port of Spain and other towns, eventually becoming a popular uprising against the whole post-colonial dispensation in Trinidad and Tobago.  The government of Eric Williams, who had ridden a wave of anti-colonial agitation to power in 1956 before leading the country to independence in 1962, teetered on the brink.  Williams’ underlings reportedly had a plane on standby, ready to whisk him out of the country.  In desperation, Williams played his last card: he declared a state of emergency, placed the whole population under lockdown, and jailed the leaders of the uprising. 
He also called out the army to help the police enforce the emergency.  But then a group of soldiers, influenced by the Black Power ideology of the popular uprising, rebelled against the government.  The powers of the Atlantic world, the great along with the not so great ones, rapidly mobilized to defend the Williams regime.  American, British and Venezuelan naval and air forces menacingly appeared in and over Trinidad territorial waters, while other Caribbean governments readied soldiers to intervene.  In the face of the gathering international armada, and with the streets now quiet and the voices of Black Power still, the rebellious soldiers surrendered. 
Williams, who initially made his political reputation partly on the strength of his opposition to the American military base at Chaguaramas, had survived the greatest challenge to be mounted against an Anglophone Caribbean government in this era.
Bukka Rennie, who was a student at Sir George Williams University (1967-1970), literally had a front-row seat on two of the central events that helped to form the backdrop to the uprising in Trinidad, having participated in the Congress of Black Writers and, more centrally, in the blowup at Sir George Williams  University (now Concordia University), which he attended. 

West:  Can we begin with the Congress of Black Writers?

Rennie:  Yes, that was in October ’68.

West:  That’s correct.  Were you part of the planning?

Rennie:  Yeah.  I went to Montreal in September ’67.  I was still like a freshwater guy on campus finding my way around and what not.  But very early, when I landed on campus at Sir George, there were one or two issues I immediately got involved with.  The thing that eventually exploded in ’69 was an issue with a professor called Perry Anderson, who seemed to have had a particular kind of relationship with black students.  A number of them who were in his lectures were writing letters about this guy, and about the problems they were having with him, and asking that he be removed.  So I met that going on.

West:  So in 1967 the charge against Perry Anderson was already an issue?

Rennie:  Yeah, yeah, yeah.  It was already building up at the time.

Johnson:  Which Perry Anderson is this?  [Johnson has in mind the New Left historian Perry Anderson]

West:  No, no, no.  That’s a different Perry Anderson.  This was a biology lecturer.

Rennie:  This was a biology lecturer at Sir George at the time.  So that was one of the things I remember when I landed in ’67; they told me is if you come to do pre-med, don’t sign up for any lectures from Perry Anderson.  I was told that, I mean, within the second day that I was on campus.

West:  By other West Indian students?

Rennie:  By other West Indians—by older West Indian students.  My reaction was, well, why?  What is happening with this guy?  They say, well, this guy is a racist and he has this thing with black students.  I say, “what all yuh doing ’bout it?”  [Laughter]  My reaction was always oriented in such a way that if there is a problem you deal with it.  You don’t just sit down and hope that it will go away.  I was never like that. At the same time, a number of guys came across from London into Montreal.  There was a wave of migration that was taking place when I landed in Montreal, for some reason.  I don’t know what was happening in London at the time; at least, I guess maybe the economy was probably in some difficulty.

Goddard:  Enoch Powell.  [Powell was an MP who became notorious for opposing the immigration of black and brown people to Britain]

Rennie:  And the Enoch Powell campaign; he wanted to keep British culture white, and a lot of Black People were trying to get out of Britain.  So a number of guys came from London to Montreal.

West:  Who are some of these people?

Rennie:  Guys like Raymond Watts.  Wally Look-Lai, I think, was one of those who came across and was studying on the campus.  Yes, Walton Look-Lai came from London too.

West:  Was he in Montreal?

Rennie:  Yes, he was in Montreal just around that time. 

West: Who else? 

Rennie: A number of other guys whose names I can’t recall right now, but these were guys who were basically working-class, had a working-class orientation, used to hang around the Students Council in London and listen to the African ideologues arguing and debating colonial issues.  So they came across.  The Black Writers Congress was an idea, was the baby of Raymond Watts.  He was the one who was saying, “Look man, you know what we should do in Montreal, we should organize a conference.” And he effectively sold the idea. 
And he got together with a number of Haitian professionals.  A lot of Haitian professionals, doctors and lawyers, were in Montreal.  Coming from a francophone situation, you will find that there is a tendency for a lot of the professionals from Haiti to make their way to Montreal because of the French connection.  You know, they speak the language.  They were the ones, together with Raymond Watts and Walton Look-Lai, that formed a committee and started to organise this Black Writers Congress. 
They wrote to a number of the leading lights throughout North America, the Caribbean and Europe, and almost everybody they contacted did, in fact, come.  I think Alvin Poussaint was one of the guys who did not come [Poussaint did, in fact, go.]  Two guys, I think one from Cuba and one from Haiti, didn’t come.

West: Réne Dépestre, the Haitian poet.

Rennie: Yes, Réne Dépestre.  And C.L.R. [James] handled their topics at the drop of a hat.  But that was CLR!  I remember the contingent that came from London was Michael X and Darcus Howe….

…  There were two people, I think, that had the biggest impact at that congress, but I will address that later.  Now, my role was to deal with the foreign press.

West:  Foreign press meaning what?

Rennie:  Well, all the foreign press reporters coming in.  I helped with the accreditation.

West:  Meaning they’re not Canadian?

Rennie:  Yes.  The foreign press that were coming from around the world: Der Speigel and all these news agencies.  This little black guy sitting down dealing with all these guys.  I remember some of them looking at me and when I asked certain questions and tried to get certain verification, whether they had done certain things — because we had a procedure — a lot of them were offended.  Well, you know, I remember the guy from Der Speigel in particular, the German guy, was really, really upset at being put through the ringer of the procedure by this little nigger from Trinidad.  But I had fun with that, I must say.  I had my own little office overlooking the auditorium where most of the lectures were delivered, so I had a sort of a real nice view of the thing.  I could see and hear perfectly all that was happening, and judge all the reactions and what not.

West:  I want to ask you to finish a thought you started.  You said there were two persons who had the most impact.

Rennie:  Stokely Carmichael and Walter Rodney.
 
West:  How so?

Rennie:  Well, in the sense that Walter chaired a number of very touchy situations, and the finesse with which that fella was able to calm situations was amazing.  I mean, I talking ’bout situations where people were almost up to blows, and Walter will very coolly assimilate all that was being said, put it in a perspective and in a context that could, you know, get everybody to sit down and say, okay, let’s go again.  He was a master.  I mean, I had never seen anybody with such ability. Stokely—the power of oratory.  Stokely used some techniques of oratory at that conference that were new to me.   I had never heard him live before.  This was my first time hearing him, and there was a Trinidadianness about him.  If you’ve been around Trinidadians you’d know: there is a style—there is a way in which we, as we say, gambage.  You see that with carnival, how we play mas, we talk about “playing mas”.  It’s an attitude. It’s psychological. You play yuhself.

West:  But why Trinidadian?  Stokely left Trinidad at the age of 11.
 
Rennie:  [Laughing] Yeah, but that is a Trini thing.  When a Trinidadian say, “wha’ you playing?”  You know, meaning where is that attitude coming from?  That is what they mean, when you say “wha’ you playing?”.  It is a particular cultural spirit.  Well, Stokely played himself on that platform.  I mean, I remember him talking about “the heart has a mind of its own.”  In other words, that emotionalism and passion have a lot to do with how far we take this struggle.  It’s not only a question of being intellectual and  reasonable.  Of course, he had gotten a note from C.L.R James saying that you need to seat your lectures in a more historical context that would give them more depth and more rationality.  Something to that effect; I don’t remember the exact words.  He was in a way kind of responding to C.L.R’s quest to be more intellectual in approach to communicating.  So he came up with this thing about Pascal [Blaise Pascal – French philosopher and physicist]. Pascal says the heart has a mind of its own.  In fact, he started his speech with that, which was brilliant.  He dealt with that, seating his whole speech, predicating it on the fact that we must be passionate.  He made a statement coming down to the end where he said, “we must get guns, get guns, get guns, get guns.”  And he kept repeating that, like an alliteration, to end off that sentence.  It was a technique that he used regularly throughout his speech and it worked well at the time because people went crazy applauding.  Of course, the next day that was the front line of the Montreal Star: “Get guns, get guns, get guns”—which was just a minor part of the speech.  But the point is the way in which he did this, the rhythm and intonation.
Lloyd Best got up at one point.  And again that is where Rodney—again I tell you how good Rodney was.  It was a point where the situation again was getting kinda dicey, and the chair was indicating, well listen, people must come and ask questions.  People seem to be getting up and making long statements.  I mean, if you have a question to ask the person who has just delivered a lecture, ask a question, and try and keep your question short.  The man who was in line right after that pronouncement was made was Lloyd Best.  When he was handed the mike, he said, “I have no intention to be short.  I have a statement to make.”  [Loud laughter]  And he started: “It seems to me that people are prepared here to divide the world into Cowboys and Indians.”  [Uproarious laughter]  Oh, my God.  In other words, there is no analysis here.

Johnson:  So Walter was in the chair?

Rennie:  Yes, Walter was in the chair, and Walter had to deal with that, because at that point people were screaming.  People wanted to—I remember some young Haitians wanting to dig out Best’s eyes.

Johnson:  What was the Cowboy and Indian reference to?

Rennie:  Cowboys and Indians- that there is no analysis.  You want to divide the world into—you know, you’re demonizing people.  It is either white people are all devils or black people are all good.  That kind of thinking.

West:  Who was Best referring to specifically?

Rennie:  Well, he was talking about what was taking place generally at the time in the conference.  I think at that point Darcus and Michael X and all of them had been talking just before.  At the same time, there was a demand for a Black Caucus; there was a demand to put white people out.  [Laughter]  There was a set of guys outside who were anti-CLR, talking about CLR is a revisionist, that CLR is a Trotskyite, never mind CLR had broken with Trotskyism since 1948.  They were Maoist types, Hardial Baines and his crew, a well-known Pakistani radical based in London, who turned up everywhere spouting his uncompromising rhetoric.

Goddard:  It was hot!

Rennie: Heated times.  At every turn, something different and shocking was happening.  What I’m saying is that if it weren’t for Rodney, that Congress would probably have ended up in total chaos.

West:  What was the reaction to Best’s intervention?

Rennie:  Well, the reaction was hostility, total hostility.  People kept shouting him down and shouting him down, and Rodney did in fact eventually cool the crowd and allowed him ten minutes to voice his opinion, and his view of the world.  We knew Best.  His New World Group enjoyed a sizeable following in Montreal  - people like Kari Levit, Edwin Carrington and so on.
The other thing that was interesting is that Darcus and they came with this story.  Darcus spoke about the West Indies Federation or the mash up of the Federation [which lasted from 1958-1962].  He talked about how he was a member of an institution that was born in Trinidad that outlasted the Federation.  He was talking about Renegades—Renegades Steel Band.  [Laughter]

Goddard:  So it had a touch of everything?

Rennie:  A touch of everything.  But I must say it did have an impact.  I saw white people in the audience cry long tears.  I saw at the end of the day people hugging them, and sat with them and consoled them.  A lot of the whites were being told, well listen, why you want to work among us?  The work is also needed in your community.  Why you always want to come where it’s easy and not where it’s difficult and tough?  So we did, in fact, work out a sort of common programme in terms of where we were—where the struggle was at, and how we were to open up the students’ struggle.  Basically, this was a campus-oriented thing that was having an over-spill into the communities.  As a result of that, we were able to start a lot of programmes in the black community in Montreal.  When we went there, for instance, on campus in Sir George there were only one or two black Canadians.  I mean, everybody else was from somewhere, either Africa, from the Caribbean—mostly from the Caribbean.
West:  Do you recall who the black Canadians were?

Rennie:  Paris—a girl by the name of Paris.  What Paris was she, boy?  Glenda Paris—and the other one was Lynn Bynoe.  … They were born Canadians.  Out of the programme we ran in the black community, we did a survey that indicated that most of the young Black Canadian kids in Montreal then would leave high school and they would either go into Eaton’s or Morgan’s, working in those big distribution stores, or they ended up on the streets, either as pimps or prostitutes.  We were able to salvage some of them and get them into college.  In fact, I went back to Montreal just this year, after 40 years, and I had a very pleasurable hang out with some of them who now have their Master’s and are now educators in their own right.  So that was really a sort of a satisfying thing for me.  We started a newspaper in the community called Uhuru that I edited before I came back home.
 
West:  So these were for community people, like the domestics and so forth?

Rennie:  Yeah, yeah.  Not so much the domestics.  I am talking about young Black Canadian kids who were then in high school and thinking about what to do with their lives.  We were able to run classes for them—tutorials.  Remember, when we were arrested after Sir George and we came out of jail, we had time to do that.

West:  Let me ask you about two others in respect of the organization of the Congress of Black Writers: one is Alfie Roberts and the other is Rosie Douglas.

Rennie:  Okay.  Rosie had a role, yes.  Rosie played the role in getting McGill University [located near to Sir George] to give the auditoriums for the conference.  Rosie was key in that. Raymond Watts tactically made Rosie chairman of the Congress Committee.  Alfie was a different case. CLR started coming and delivering lectures throughout the circuit, what we call the North American circuit, around ’66, ’67, ’68.  CLR was doing a lot of that: going around to all the campuses.  

West:  So you got there in ’67 and there were complaints about Professor Anderson?

Rennie:  Yes.

West:  But things didn’t come to a head until ’68, when a complaint was filed.

Rennie:  The whole thing blew up largely because of the attitude of the administration.  They took the position that they will do nothing about it; that we were just some fly-by-night little guys from the islands who wanted to cause trouble.  They didn’t want to investigate the matter seriously, or look at it as though it was a serious complaint.   The thing just kept building up and building up and boiling up and boiling up, until the people decided to occupy the Computer Centre and get this thing on the road—to get this inquiry on the road.

West:  What impact did the Congress of Black Writers have on events at Sir George?

Rennie:  Oh, yeah, boy, of course.  That was ’68.  I mean, everybody became hyper after the congress.  Martin Luther King got killed in what year, ’68?

West:  April ’68.

Rennie:  April ’68.  That was another major event that had a great impact on the activists in Montreal.  That was before the congress.  The Martin Luther King march in Montreal was a big thing—big thing.  I remember distinctly, myself and Cheddi Jagan’s son were in that march after King got killed with a picture of Malcolm X—one huge poster of Malcolm X.

West:  Where did you march to?  Where did you march from?

Rennie:  We marched from downtown Montreal to a cemetery in Montreal.  I can’t remember which cemetery it was.  But in that cemetery there is a cenotaph dedicated to all those who fell in the war, and we went and put this big poster of Malcolm X on that cenotaph.  That caused a big stink on all the call-in programmes on the radio.  They were demanding that these two young hooligans from the Caribbean be sent back for desecrating the cenotaph.

Goddard:  Wasn’t that the year of the Olympics?

Rennie:  Yes.  When those boys—when the two brothers in Mexico put up their hands.  [At the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City, which began the same week that the Congress of Black Writers ended, two African Americans, Tommie Smith and John Carlos, placed first and third respectively in the men’s 200 meters.  Then, on the victory stand, they defiantly raised their fists in the Black Power salute to protest racism in the USA.]  In fact, that guy who was their coach, Harry Edwards, was at the conference—at the Black Writers Congress.  He talked about the whole psychology of sports.  So that is another interesting point- that Harry Edwards was at the Congress of Black Writers…..  So you could understand then that the tempo in Montreal was building, and the Black Writers Congress just put the finishing touches on it.  With that we moved straight into ’69.  But this is October you’re talking about, and by February ’69 the thing blew up.  Something that was there all along simmering just blew up two, three months after the Black Writers Congress.

West:  Can you talk about the leadership and organization of the Sir George Williams situation?

Rennie:  There was one leader, a guy by the name of Kelvin Robinson.  We used to call him Akintola Shaka.  He had taken that name, “he who brings the light.”  Akintola means he who brings the light, and Shaka was a renowned fighter.

West:  Kelvin Robinson was the man?

Rennie:  Kelvin Robinson was the man.  I will relate you a little experience that I had, and you will understand what I’m talking about.  When I went up there to Montreal in ’67, Rap Brown was in jail.  He went on a fast.  He wasn’t eating.  Kelvin Robinson decided we must march on the U.S. Embassy and demand the release of Rap Brown.  So we started to make placards, because in those days if Kevin Robinson say we marching on the U.S. Embassy, we marching.

West:  Were you going to Ottawa?

Rennie:  No, no, no; the consulate in Montreal.  He had ten people.  I remember Guy—Ato Boldon’s father was in that.  Hugo Ford, myself, Shaka, Leroi Butcher whom we called Luanga Basheri then.  Incidentally, I was known then as Odinga.

Johnson:  Where is Shaka from?

Rennie:  Shaka was from San Fernando.  He died about three or four years ago.  He had a kind of air about him.

Johnson:  You mean Kelvin Robinson?

Rennie:  Yes.  

Goddard:  Charisma?

Rennie:  Well, it’s more than charisma.  There was a certain seriousness.  There are some people you know you can’t fool around with.  Now, I have never seen him do anything physical, but there was something about that fella that nobody would think about harassing him or getting on his wrong side.  He never had to do anything because he had that kind of thing that people just used to stand in awe of him.  I remember we were in this little room that they had given to the West Indian student body on campus.  It was the smallest room.  We were the biggest contingent on campus.  The winter carnival that used to meet just a couple times a year had the biggest and carpeted office.  We just had this little cubbyhole.  We were in there and we were making up placards to go on this march on the U.S. Consulate to demand the release of Rap Brown.  Whilst we making up this thing, this big guy walked in.  This is the first time I am going to see this guy.  I didn’t know who he was.  He just walked in, and he started questioning Robinson.  He say, “all you inform the press that all you having this march?”  You do this, you do that?  Kelvin say, “No, no, no.  We ain’t get round to that, but Rosie, if you want to do it, go ahead and do it.”

West:  So this is Rosie?

Rennie:  Rosie Douglas [later Prime Minister of Dominica].  This is first time I met him. 

West:  And he is asking about the press? 

Rennie:  He is asking about the press.  So Kelvin tell him, okay, you go ahead, nah, Rosie, and do that.  I am there.  Kelvin left.  All the other guys left, and I am there making up posters.  I am a little small-fry now come in the thing, so that is my work.  [Laughter]  I paying my dues.  You understand?  This guy is on the telephone.  He called Montreal Star.  He called all the press, and I could hear when they ask him, well, who is speaking?   “Rosie Douglas, Rosie Douglas, Rosie Douglas.”  He called the Seventh Precinct, that is the police.  When they ask him who he is, he say he is Kelvin Robinson.  [Uproarious laughter]

West:  That sound like Rosie.

Johnson: Yes, that sound like Rosie.

Rennie:  At that point, I looked up and I say, oh!  I say, “so that is wha’ you do?”  He say, “so what?”  I say, “well, let me tell you something, I don’t know you, but my name is Bukka Rennie.  I am around here now.  And you see you, have nothing to do with me, and stay far from me.”  I threaten him!

West:  You took an instant dislike to him?

Rennie:  Not only took a dislike to him, I threaten him one time, and I had cause to beat him up in his bed later on down the road, but that is a next story.  But it all stemmed from that.  I never told Shaka what Rosie did then.  I told other people years after about that, but I didn’t tell Shaka.  We went to the march on the consulate, boy, just about the 10 or 11 of us; and I never forgot how these photographers came and took everybody’s picture individually.

Goddard:  That is to go on file.

Rennie:  So all through the Black Writers Congress, Rosie and I stayed far from each other.

Johnson:  Rosie was on that march?

Rennie:  Yes, he was on that march.  But that was before.  That was sometime in ’68.

West:  By the march you mean the King march?

Johnson:  No, no, the Rap Brown march.

Rennie:  Yes, yes, Rosie came, he came, he was there.  I was just relating that little story to show you the kind of person Kelvin was; the kind of person Rosie was and why, although some people who don’t know will assume Rosie was the leader, Rosie wasn’t the leader of the Sir George matter.  The leader of the thing was Kelvin Robinson.  Poor fella, you know, he had an insight.  He wasn’t that ideologically strong.  In fact, that was his problem.  He never moved beyond the black/white context.  He always used to tell me; “Bukka, this Marxist thing you talking,”  [Laughter]  every time I try to engage him with a bigger view of the world.  And we always argued about the Indian population in T&T; he could never put the race and class issues in proper perspective. For him it was racial solidarity first, and everything and everybody else second.  I used to say, “Shaka, come on! These people are citizens of Trinidad and Tobago and they are entitled just as you or me.”
But you see again, there was a kind of role played by some Indians from the Caribbean on the Sir George campus that infuriated Shaka and others.  All through that Sir George struggle there was this small group of Indians from Guyana and Trinidad who did everything possible to distance themselves from us.  They were supportive of the Sir George administration and voiced the opinion that we were not to be taken seriously; that we were criticising white people in Canada for racism but did the same thing to them back in Trinidad and Guyana.  It was kinda galling to have anyone associate us with the atrocities that occurred in Guyana, for instance.

Goddard:  But Bukka, what they were saying is true too, you know.  If we go back—if we go back.  We talking about the Indians in them early days. They were the lowest of the low, you know.  We used to really treat them terribly.

Rennie:  Of course.  But you have to put that in the context of the whole colonial development and how they were used against the black working class and vice-versa.  And despite all of that—despite all that the colonial masters did, at every stage there was unity at the grassroots level, whenever there was a need for it.  You understand?  In passive times you will find all kind of divisive actions, but the moment action begins….

Goddard:  Against the colonials?

Rennie:  Against the colonials.

Goddard:  Indians and Africans got together.  That’s correct.

Rennie:  Of course!  I mean, history is replete with that.  And me, having taught history in Trinidad — West Indian history — before I went up to Sir George, I am having this colleague who I regard as my leader….

Goddard:  Bring this racist talk?

Rennie:  Yes, bringing that to me.  I say, boy, you need to open your eyes.  So we always had that ongoing argument.

West:  So you were a schoolteacher before you went up to Canada?

Rennie:  Yeah, yeah, yeah.  I was a schoolteacher and a customs officer.  I gave Kelvin the respect as the leader of that struggle.  He started it; he initiated it.  I remember he used to be on the Sir George campus, on the mezzanine.  He would take the bull horn.  There was a department called Instructional Media.  We would go and borrow a bull horn—I and him.  He always called me, “Bukka, let’s go for a bull horn.”  The moment we walked in, all the white people in the department used to run out.  [Laughter]  So he would just choose the best bull horn.  Kelvin Robinson used to have a regular, everyday lunchtime meeting on the mezzanine where he addressed all the students on campus about the problems we were having. That was when he was at his best.   Of course, the usual engineering white student will pass and say, “Why all yuh don’t go back to the Caribbean?”
The mezzanine was like a kind of home away from home for us.  We used to be on the mezzanine, and you would always have someone like Guy Boldon, what you would call a typical sh*t-talker in Trinidad, having everybody just rolling with laughter.  So people used to be amazed.  One minute they’ll be passing by the mezzanine, and we’re all gathered there, and the next thing you know we rolling all on the floor, laughing at somebody.  The next minute a serious meeting is going on with the bull horn and the atmosphere is entirely different.  So that duplicity used to have the Canadians quite confused.  They say, “Look at them, one minute they’re so jolly and laughing and the next minute they’re so angry.”  [Laughter]
Guy was the kind of fella who would come on campus and go to no class—just stand up on the mezzanine for the entire day and talk sh*t, pounding them smaller island fellas, as he used to call them.  “Look all yuh.  You from Union Island [part of St. Vincent and the Grenadines].  I went dey.  I stand up, I pee right round the island.”  [Laughter]  He say when you go to those small islands, you cyah drive more than 15 miles per hour, otherwise, you run into the sea.  And all that kind of stupidness.

West:  I thought only the Jamaicans talked like that.  [Laughter]

Rennie:  No, no, no.  Guy heckled everybody.

—Continues next month

ROMAIN PITT continues his focus on issues in Test cricket
      

Fidel Edwards

I doubt that there are many authentic students of the game of cricket who will take issue with the assertion that that the “Test” product needs improving. Urgently. Even before the advent of Twenty20, cricket in its oldest form was not so slowly becoming less and less attractive to the paying public. Unless and until something is done to burnish the image of the game’s oldest format, the active support for it is likely to continue to dwindle. Which is where we as West Indian supporters come in. Since the West Indies have been a dominant force in international cricket for so long, we should all be more active, perhaps even proactive in the debate to improve the “Test” product. I wish here to make a few suggestions.
Umpire Review Decision System: Much as I respect Joel Garner and Chris Gayle and their opinions, I take a different view on the review system.  I would recommend unlimited reviews with a run penalty for every decision upheld on review.  All demonstrably helpful technological aids should be used.
The statistics have already demonstrated that the system has produced a significant improvement in the percentage of correct decisions.  By itself, that circumstance should tilt the scale strongly in favour of its use.
What is more, on-the-field umpires will likely be much more careful in their decision making; and finally, once the third umpire is from a third country, it will become acceptable again to have local standing umpires, thereby increasing the number of umpires eligible for Tests.
With respect to the aids to be used, either in the first or second Test (Australia vs West Indies 2009), the dean of Australian broadcasters expressed his special love for the “Hot Spot”.  He gave the clear impression that he regarded it as the most reliable technology.  I heard, indeed no one heard any dissent from the all-Australian broadcasting crew.  When we got to the last morning of the Third Test at the WACA, Kemar Roach and Gavin Tonge were looking dangerous, if not threatening, in a last-wicket stand that seemed capable with a little luck of getting the 50-odd runs required for what would have been a remarkable victory.  In the review of the caught-at-the-wicket decision against Roach, the evidence of Hot Spot was disregarded;  there was not a murmur of dissent or disapproval from the same all-Australian crew. 
It is not the review system that fits Joel Garner’s apt description of gimmick; it is the use to which the system is put that can properly be so described.  Michael Holding has said as much.
Uniformity in penalties: Anyone used to watching football or hockey (high speed sport) would be familiar with the scenario in which the referee does not see the original infraction and then penalises the player who responds to the infraction, often with more force than was applied in the original infraction.
In the Benn vs Johnson and Haddin case, that was not the issue.  The unlawful initiating act was clearly visible; it was Brad Haddin’s threatening gesture with his bat.  The next unambiguous unlawful gesture was that of Mitchell Johnson pushing Sulieman Benn as a measure designed to defend or protect his teammate Haddin.  While television viewers do not normally hear the actual language in sledging, it was notable that the microphone was turned up loud enough for television viewers to hear Benn’s use of a “foul” word.  In giving some explanation for the disparity in penalties between Johnson and Haddin on the one hand and Benn on the other, the match referee left the impression that Benn’s language was part of the problem; since the microphone was turned up loud enough for viewers to hear Ben’s language, they would have known exactly what language the match referee meant.  I was disappointed that the West Indies did not appeal.  However, I am encouraged by the formal protest to the ICC since it must relate to the serious issue of possible bias.
Ball changes:  The ball change is in the nature of an “event,” to use David Lloyd’s description of each ball in a Twenty20 match.  By taking a new ball every 60, 65 or 70 overs rather than every 80 overs, the frequency of “events” is increased, as is the fan involvement.
Slow over rates: The penalty for bowling less than 30 overs in any one period should be more severe.  It should not be monetary but much more closely related to what is happening on the field.  My suggestion is that a team should be penalized with, say, two runs for each over less than 30. One might even countenance a sliding scale so that the penalty will be greater, the larger the number of overs a teams falls shy of the required target. For instance, a team that bowls only 24 overs in a two-hour session will cause not 12 but 15 runs to be added to the batting team’s total, 10 for the first five overs deducted and five for the sixth.
While those general remarks may become hopefully of some use, our immediate concern should be having all our players fit and ready for the next encounter. Shivnarine Chanderpaul and Chris Gayle are the latest pair to be sidelined by injury, to be added to the threesome of Fidel Edwards, Jerome Taylor and Benn.  We have heard nothing about the health of Edwards and Taylor for the longest while and we now know that in Taylor’s case there are some legal issues involved.  These players need support and that does not necessarily involve money.  Someone should be designated immediately to liaise with Taylor’s legal counsel with a view to helping with, among other things, potential immigration issues.

By CHRIS CHRISTO

Participating in the 26th edition of the Trinidad and Tobago International Marathon was an ordinary man with extraordinary drive. Dr. Richard Holmes, retired, of North Carolina USA, is living the dream of many who wish to run the world 26.2 miles at a time.

Richard Holmes, centre, flanked by local MarathonManiacs.

Last year, Dr. Holmes (a 3:18 marathoner back in his 30s), set his sights on achieving the Ten Star MarathonManiac challenge of 30 marathons in 30 countries/US states/Canadian provinces in 365 days.
After this Trinidad run, he will be three marathons away from the highest echelon on the MarathonManiacs rankings.
Dr. Holmes humbly describes himself as a “slow runner who never knew when to quit” ;but his feats speaks volumes. He twice ran the 50 states and DC and is on his second round of the Canadian provinces and seven continents.
On completion of this second round of Canada and the continents he will be part of an elite group of seven to have done so.
Interestingly, he is only the 12th person in the world to have completed a marathon in every US state, Canadian province and continent and only the 7th to have run a second marathon in every US state.
It was not always like that.
From his first marathon in 1978 he only did 2 to 4 marathons annually to stay in shape because he was an active duty soldier.
In 1986 he had an enforced 3-year absence from any form of running due to a ruptured knee that had to be rebuilt (ACL - anterior cruciate ligament - reconstruction).
Following surgery, both his doctor and physiotherapist were convinced that he would never be capable of marathon running. He did not believe them.
In 1989 he started a running streak that lasted 2,490 consecutive days- over 20,000 miles. That sequence ended in 2005 when he undertook foot surgery to remove an inflamed nerve. He had a smaller streak subsequently, a mere 942 days, which ended when he broke his heel in a marathon.
He now avoids streaks because “it completely dominates one’s life”. Notwithstanding, he has run every day since November 7, 2009.

Through the welcomed shade in Prada St

It was back in 1997 that it first dawned on him that he could run a marathon in every US state.  So he set some new goals and the number of marathons increased dramatically, averaging 13 per annum up to 2008.
With the MM Ten Star challenge on his plate, he ran 34 marathons in 2009, though not all were in separate countries/states/provinces, as required by the Ten Star challenge.

Despite his protestations, he was bestowed the Humanitarian Award 2010 by the 50 States & D.C. Marathon Group for giving his time and energies in helping a five year-old, who had developed a rare form of cancer, to raise funds and awareness.
Over the past three weekends he has run in steadily increasing temperatures from below freezing 4ºF in Iowa to 45ºF in California and a hot 85ºF here in Trinidad.
Since the ACL rehabilitation he has crossed over 200 marathon/ultramarathon finish lines; Trinidad is his 231st. He always finishes every race started.
Best wishes to Dr Richard Holmes on the remaining three marathons to complete the MM Ten Star achievement - Marrakech, Morocco (Jan. 31), Valencia, Spain (Feb 21) and Antartica (Mar. 7).
Running the world indeed!

Carving Out A Real Role For Caricom In Haiti

By SUNITY MAHARAJ
 
Sadly but predictably, Caricom’s response to the Haitian earthquake disaster was comprehensively bungled. But we’re in good company. Global sophisticates in the art of emergency diplomacy are daily showing that they are no less gifted at tragic-comedy. In the end, the real rescue mission has been mounted by the people of Haitian themselves.
Long accustomed to a world out-of-step with their interests, needs and values, Haitians did what Haitians have been doing for centuries: they picked themselves up, surveyed the damage, wept, prayed, gathered their resources and soldiered on. To lighten their loads, they beat their drums and sang their songs of poetry and prayer. And with much of the international security forces trapped behind barricades of boulders, Haitians invoked their tribal codes of honour and established a workable form of order: Communal justice for thieves; communal sharing of means.
The Haitian culture and attitude to life have not been lost on the world’s media. Overnight, it seems, the close-up encounter has transformed the “poorest country in the hemisphere” into the “most resilient people” in the hemisphere.  In the face of daily miracles of body, mind and soul, the world is beginning to sense that there is much about Haiti that just does not fit the stereotype; that the real story might not be about why Haiti is such a basket case, but about how, despite being such a basket case, it succeeds in surviving and enduring and giving itself the chance of living to fight another day.  Haitians may be poor, but as the world is discovering, they are far from impotent.  Which, as improbable as it may seem, helps to define the critical role that Caricom must play in the reconstruction of Haiti..
Already relegated to observer status in Haiti, Caricom can choose either to throw a few dollars at the Haitian disaster and return to business as usual or rise to the responsibility of  representing a member in a time of great human need and geo-political risk. What muscle it can flex should be brought to bear on the side of the sovereignty of the Haitian people and their government as they face the task of reconstructing their country along the lines of a more viable republic.
For too long, international aid has substituted for governance in Haiti in ways that satisfy the needs of both foreign donors and Haitian governors. In the process, Haiti has become everybody’s favourite charity in an insidious arrangement that persistently undermines the country’s ability to develop indigenous capabilities and infrastructure required for moving forward on its own steam. Well-meaning NGOs and churches proliferate throughout the country, operating outside -and often  even working against- any coherent national framework for development.
 What the January 12 earthquake has done is to escalate this reality to its illogical extreme. Haiti has been reduced to being a country without sovereignty; where the entire world and its sister can descend at will and assume duty and responsibility without consultation with any agency of Haitian authority.
Whatever else may be said of Rene Preval, he is the duly elected leader of Haiti and Caricom has to raise its voice in support of the urgent reconstitution of the Haitian government as a pre-condition for developing the architecture for national reconstruction towards a more viable and democratic Republic of Haiti.

Caricom’s message to the UN, the US, France and others should be unambiguous: In addition to the humanitarian effort, high priority should be given to getting the Haitian government up and running to look after the business of the Haitian people. On no account should Caricom take its  cue from anyone else, including the UN.
For too long, governments in Haiti have been allowed to surrender the responsibility of governing to all and sundry. The result is a well-meaning but incoherent hodge-podge of development initiatives, many of them working against each other and very few of which fit into anything resembling national policy.
For a people accustomed to taking up their beds and walking  and whose lives  are largely alienated and insulated from central government, the road to effective representation might seem elusive. But the very elements of communal succour and self-sufficiency that Haitians have evolved over the years as protection against abuses from the Port-au-Prince Palais may actually offer a template for decentralized government on which democratic representation could be anchored.
Strategic reconstruction as opposed to mere re-building may now be possible in post-earthquake Haiti . Deployment of resources in a more decentralized manner will do more than just ease congestion in the capital; it will resource outlying communities and strengthen the connections between government and the people. 
As Haiti’s partner in the reconstruction effort, Caricom must lobby for domestic input quotas to ensure that reconstruction does not become a trough for contractors from donor countries. The money being brought into Haiti must be encouraged to stay in Haiti as an economic stimulus to kick start its long-stalled economy. There should also be quota commitments regarding the use of Haitian labour and operational agreements for transfer of technology.
If Caricom could help bolster Haiti’s shell-shocked government into taking charge and setting parameters for engagement with the rest of the world, it would have achieved far more than money could buy.

By Willi Chen

Derek Walcott’s exhibition of eighteen paintings at the Campus Principals’ office, UWI , could have been a formidable show if his other numerous pieces were included to further reveal evidence of his selective approach as an artist with an architectural flair for design. For the spirit of architecture is the requisite for all forms of art: for painting, drama, sculpture, music, dance, whatever, since it is a vital element.
A competent draughtsman, Walcott has glorified our Carib­bean landscape with pure colour washes in which the pristine effect of light makes his passages sing. He recognizes that for the oeuvre to survive he must have control of tone, shape, texture, weight and size of his washes correctly juxtaposed for maximum clarity. A genuine water colorist-artist aims for the instant effect and success of his first impulsive brush strokes ,which can only emanate from long practice. Mistakes may not be corrected as in work done in oils.
A water colour painting is likened to a poem, or a short story. Like novels, some large oil paintings can be stretched jour­neys into episodic grandeur of history and life experiences.
It is the duty of the poet to spout instant phrases of truths, unusual, startling, coined words (“The starved eye” “the melancholy of sundays”) culled out of absorbed and digested information, where ideas, emotions and memory form the basic compendium for artistic expression.
But in this exhibition predominantly of water colours, two oil paintings take centre stage.
Though not professionally framed they present interesting aspects of the painter’s choice of subjects, people as actors and horses (maybe exercising on the Port of Spain savannah green).
“Country Fete 2001” is sheer dramatic theatre. Here is the playwright’s open air stage. The main-hero character is prudently placed off-centre in an attractive red shirt with his violin. Here is action and the supporting cast with visuals. The drummer amidst standing native bele dancers, dresses exquisitely designed with an assortment of head ties, shoulder wraps, and petticoats. The landscape setting is appropriately relevant. But the mid ground and background could have been better resolved where a more acute tonal perspective would have made the figures more pronounced. The impact is vibrant, placement of the player-actors form a cohesive pattern even though minor parts could have been omitted.
“Horses at Sunrise” shows up Walcott’s strategy of focus again by his use of warm red foliage to serve as anchor for the viewer’s attention. Part of the left of this painting could be left out with no detrimental loss to the work.
The smaller water colours, insufficiently lit in this room, are panels of delight of country scenes. “At the Gate, Petit Valley” stands out for its geometrical white fence that gives strong contrast to the fields. White objects are the poet’s favorite ele­ments.
The catalogue cover deserves comment. Though visually delightful in part, the flaws in the painting are obvious. The left half of the picture represents a good botanical illustration but they are too heavy, to complement the right half of the painting which did not get the same attention. More open space, more light on the left would have added more balance, more relief and more interest. The convent girl on the extreme right edge serving as a vertical prop should have been placed more inside. So too, the six-legged animal (from outer space?) should have been higher up the picture plane, both adding life to the pastoral scene. But the ba­nana tree divides the painting in half; the lowest leaf is disturbingly wrong-angled and wrongly attached to the tree trunk. These may be inconsequential comments but valid on cursory observation.
As Nobel Laureate of Literature (1992) can Walcott now at eighty, draw on his corner strings of creative power to add universal meaning to his paintings in which aesthetic value could be entwined with contemporary significance coupled with originality of vision, to fortify his statements uniquely sin­gular of a superior order? To germinate an unusual magnetism to make him a master painter as well?
Walcott wants no praise for his style nor does he believe in heroes, but to succeed here, means he has to reject deja-vu, avoid honey-toned pastiche and familiar sun and sand seascapes, easily imagined within the common man’s experience and sensitivity in favour of probing into his own memorabilia, to create new images out of the unknown world of mystery, magic, and excitement waiting to be discovered with his unbridled passion.
Let us salute the ‘Crocus of the stars’, develop ‘Soul Cul­ture’. Be not the Scholar of One Candle,’. Let ‘The Wild Winds Coldly Blow’. But do not do what has been done before.

From The Journal of GEORGIA POPPLEWELL

On Mission with Global Voices
www.caribbeanfreeradio.com/blog/

DATELINE: PORT-au-PRINCE Monday January 25th 2010, 2:24 pm

DAY 1

We arrived in Port-au-Prince on Saturday afternoon, after a long but uneventful drive from Santo Domingo. As we approached Jimani, on the Dominican border, we began seeing probable evidence of the situation on the other third of the island: makeshift roadside stalls selling gallon bottles of gasoline, heavy trucks carrying cargo, a motorcycle passenger with his leg bandaged to the thigh. The area near the border gate was swarming with vehicles and people, and we fully expected border formalities to take some time. But after a mysterious confab between our driver and the two associates who’d come along on the trip and a man in a purple cap, we drove through the border gates just like that, with nary a nod from the guards or a request to see a passport, through the few yards of tierra de nadie between the two borders, and into Haiti.
Later I noticed that the man in the purple cap had joined us and was sitting in the tray of the pickup among our luggage-turns out he was our Haitian navigator.
It was some time before we saw any earthquake damage-the epicentre was south-west of the city of Port-au-Prince, and we were approaching from the east. Then, here and there, the odd ill-starred building with a collapsed balcony, in parking lots and clearings, clusters of makeshift tents. Then both sights became more frequent: residences with collapsed upper storeys, framed pictures still hanging off the walls, crushed sofas; the clusters turned into tent cities. But still not anything like the images from the news.

Tent city at Place St Pierre, Pétionville. —Photo: Georgia Popplewell

I think that part of me has come to Haiti wanting to believe that the images I’d been seeing in the media were somehow exaggerated. In largely middle-class Delmas, where our journey from Santo Domingo ends on Saturday, a number of commercial buildings and residences along the Route de Delmas have collapsed, either entirely or partially, and walls everywhere show cracks and fissures. From one building, a large pane of glass leans precariously out over the sidewalk, and a pale yellow three-story residence has caved in on itself like a fallen cake, the ground floor flattened beneath the weight of the floors above. The arbitrariness of the damage was striking-why this building and not that one? But the Canadian Embassy is perfectly intact, and a reporter is recording a stand-up on one of the parapets above the road. Businesses, including gas stations, are operating. People carrying five-gallon water bottles are lined up in orderly fashion in front of a water distribution shop. Traffic is flowing, and in spite of the damage it appears that things have returned almost to normal in Delmas.

Queueing for
water in Delmas
The offices of the National Democratic Institute, which the Internews team has commandeered for its use while in Haiti, are buzzing with activity. A young Haitian hanging out in front of the building helps us take our luggage up the stairs. “Ça va [How's it going?]?” he says. “Ça va bien,” I reply. The stock response, but it displeases him. “Ca va pas bien [It's not going well]”, he says. “J’ai perdu ma maison, mon beau-frère. Je suis sans-abri [I've lost my house, my brother-in-law is dead. I'm homeless].”
We’ve arrived just at the moment when the Internews team is rushing to get their daily information programme on air, so nobody pays us much heed. The place is crammed with suitcases, air mattresses, cases of water, laptops, emergency radios. Towels are slung over chair backs, and one shelf of a stationery cupboard is loaded with canned food. It doesn’t look like there’ll be room for us. We issue tweets saying we’re looking for accommodation and Alice gets on the phone and starts working her family contacts. Within 45 minutes Alice’s friends L and B have arrived to collect us, and we head back out onto the Route de Delmas, now in darkness except for the headlights of cars and —the fires and flambeaux on street vendors’ stalls.

Queuing for water in Delmas. —Photo: Georgia Popplewell

On our way up to L and B’s house in Laboule we pass through well-heeled Pétionville, which is reported to have been largely unaffected by the quake. Two of its gracious squares, Place Boyer and Place St. Pierre, have nevertheless been transformed into teeming tent cities, filled with the newly homeless from other parts of this divided city. The luckier people are settling down for the night under the canopies of camionettes parked at the side of the road. In spite of the people milling around in the darkness, it is quiet. Parked across from the Hotel Kinam on Place St. Pierre is a MINUSTAH truck.

Tent city at Place
 St. Pierre, Pétionville
It’s odd to wake up the next morning in Laboule and look out upon a stunning mountain view. None of the houses in the area appears to have sustained much damage, though L and B have lost a retaining wall. The absence of running water and electricity probably has less to do with the earthquake than the fact that we’re in Haiti. At L and B’s house there are a few hairline cracks in the mortar that L, an engineer, has marked with black crayon, so he’ll know if they widen. L takes what he calls a scientific approach to the quake. He explains the math behind the Richter Scale and has decided it’s not worth worrying about aftershocks. In fact, L sleeps through the aftershock that occurs on Sunday afternoon.
The radio reports on Sunday indicate that people continue to be evacuated from the city. Over lunch, L tells us that some “méchants” (troublemakers) are spreading rumours that people who opt for evacuation won’t be allowed to return to the capital for five years. We also talk about L’s sister, a physician who has come from the States to volunteer her services and is now working in a centre at Croix des Bouquets. L’s sister reports that Haitian doctors are being sidelined in the relief efforts, and it’s only after she gives an interview to CNN that she starts getting some grudging respect from the big international agencies.
We finally leave Laboule late on Sunday afternoon and descend into Port-au-Prince. There are fallen buildings all along the Route de Bourdon and a slum that covers the hillside across the distance like a skin looks chipped and battered. It gets worse as we get nearer to the city centre, but it’s still not the total wreckage from the photos. We arrive at the Champ de Mars, the massive square, which has been partly overtaken by a multi-section tent city. The sinking feeling sets in officially as we stop in front of the National Palace with its caved-roof. That one certainly matches the news photos, except that up close it’s more massive and more desolate. We drive around the Champ de Mars and pass in front of the Plaza Hotel, where a news cameraman is filming what looks like a heap of black rags in the street. The black rags are in fact two dead bodies, perhaps recently pulled from the wreckage, their limbs intertwined.
The area just east of the Champ de Mars is straight out of the news photos. A long corridor of rubble, not a building left standing. You’ve all seen it by now, so I don’t need to describe it further, or the scent of decay that hangs in the air, now several times less intense than it was a few days ago.
I’m adding these last few lines just so I can say I didn’t end on a note of despair. I apologise for adding to the heavy burden of bad news already borne by this country.
And now to make a plan for what we’ll be doing while we’re here.

Earthquake damage in Carrefour

DAY 2
We went into downtown Port-au-Prince again yesterday. We’d heard via Twitter that food was being distributed near the National Palace, followed by reports from Carel Pedre and Karl Jean-Jeune, of UN security “spraying gas” and “throwing tear gas”. Examining the footage posted on YouTube by Carel Pedre back at headquarters (i.e. his apartment in Barcelona), my Global Voices colleague Marc Herman concluded that the substance being sprayed looked more like pepper spray. The pepper spray story was corroborated by reports from the UK Times Online, and the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, though Al Jazeera English maintains the tear gas line.

Food distribution line
in Port-au-Prince
Whether pepper spray or tear gas-related, the scuffle has died down by the time we arrive in town. The line is long, but people are waiting patiently. We ask a bystander what’s being distributed. He says he thinks it’s rice. I ask Roosevelt, our driver, to circle the Champs de Mars for a bit so we can see what’s going on in the vast tent city that now occupies most of the city’s central square.
Unsurprisingly, the regular rhythm of Haitian life seems to have established itself in the maze of makeshift shelters clustered among plinths bearing statues of Toussaint, Pétion and company, the country’s founding fathers. Women are cooking, bathing babies and doing laundry in basins along the perimeter wall, bathing themselves at the roadside. Children are playing football, vendors have set up stalls on the periphery. Near the National Palace, people have gathered to watch a safe being lowered from a government building. Less formal salvage and scavenging operations are taking place in other parts of the city as well. We pass groups of men shoveling rubble, people picking among the ruins of buildings for things they can reuse. Among the detritus, Port-au-Prince is slowly coming back to life.
 Around the tent city on the Champs the Mars, life resumes its normal rhythm
Last night a friend who’s come here to work with a Canadian NGO wondered how many of the “displaced” were people whose homes were intact but who were simply afraid of sleeping indoors. Yesterday the Haitian government, such as it is, issued a bulletin summarising the impact of the earthquake. On her blog, Anne-Christine D’Adesky posts translations of some of the highlights:
“Around 112,000 dead, 195,000 wounded, 1 million homeless, half the houses destroyed in Port-au-Prince, Jacmel and Leogane; at least 23 private hospitals collapsed.
“The government yesterday announced the creation of 2 camps for displaced persons in Port-au-Prince: one on the road to Tabarre, the other at Croix des Bouquets. Another site has been identified in the zone of Leogane.

Around the tent city on the Champs the Mars, life resumes its normal rhythm.

“Only qualified engineers can determine if a damaged building is sound enough to be re-occupied. The rule to follow until an engineer has evaluated a property is: if the building doesn’t look sound, it isn’t.
“Today, we estimate the capacity of food distribution varies between 200,000 and 300,000 rations a day. This means that, in Port-au-Prince and its surroundings alone, over 800,000 people will not be reached. This is the major challenge.
“The government is opposed to precipitous adoptions and uncontrolled departures from Haiti of vulnerable or orphaned children and is concerned about the risk of trafficking.
“NGOs engaged in humanitarian or food aid are encouraged to work with the UN system that has been established.”
It’s hard to know what’s really happening on the ground. Port-au-Prince is a vast and unfamiliar city, and my primary goal in being here is not to report on the situation. We’re staying in Petionville, away from the fray. As the tear gas story above demonstrates, it’s difficult to verify information. You try to get around as much as you can, but in the end you’ll see only a tiny fraction of the whole, and perhaps understand or read accurately only a fraction of that. But the overriding story is about the distribution of aid: how badly it’s going, how supplies are failing to get to those who need it, and also how difficult the whole exercise is. I’m pretty sure that one is true.
On the edge of the tent city near the National Palace I talk to a pair of middle-aged women from Bel Air. They say they haven’t received any food supplies. I ask them if they plan on leaving the city for the countryside. The older one says no. I ask why. She says it’s because her father is dead-she has no family left “en province”.
 
Earthquake damage in Carrefour
We drive out west to the bedroom district of Carrefour, where 40-50% of the buildings are said to have sustained damaged. Along the main roads at least, the impact of the quake doesn’t seem as dramatic as in central Port-au-Prince, as the buildings are lower and not as densely clustered. Tent cities have sprung up on the median strips and there are mounds of burning garbage along the roadside. But Carrefour didn’t need an earthquake to render conditions appalling. Yet, the community is going about its business, obviously accustomed to the general squalor and the grey slurry of macerated garbage underfoot. We pass three money transfer agencies with long lines in front, a sign that remittances which, by some estimates, account for over half of the country’s national income, are flowing back into Haiti once more.

 Tent city on the
median strip on the
Carrefour main road
Crowd gathered at a money transfer agency in Carrefour, awaiting remittances from abroad
We head back into central Port-au-Prince to engage with a different side of Haiti at the storied Hotel Oloffson in Bois Verna, where it seems like half of the Corbett Haiti mailing list is lunching. We chat briefly with hotel proprietor Richard Morse, who now has 12,065 followers on Twitter and appears on 638 Twitter lists, all as a result of the earthquake. Also there: Anne-Christine D’Adesky, who’s been blogging and posting to the Corbett list consistently since the earthquake hit and says that Haiti is the litmus test for whether the lessons learned in other recent humanitarian situations have really been learned; New Yorker Tequila Minsky, just in from taking photos in a nearby neighbourhood; writer Amy Wilentz, who’s blogging for TIME magazine; Haitian photographer Daniel Morel, who corrects my camera-holding techniques; and Leah Gordon, who offers to take us to Portail Leogane to visit the sculptors of the Grand Rue.
But that’s the subject of another post. Over and out.

By KEVIN BALDEOSINGH

The American evangelist Pat Robertson drew sharp criticism, both within the United States and around the world, when he claimed that Haiti’s problems were caused by a pact made with the Devil 200 years ago. “That’s a true story,” said Robertson on his TV show. In Trinidad, many Christians publicly rejected this “explanation” (what they might have said within their churches is a different matter). Yet the historical account of Haiti offered by Caribbean academics is, for the most part, a secular superstition that is just as tendentious.
Principal of UWI’s Cave Hill campus Hilary Beckles in an article circulating the week after the 7.0 earthquake which devastated Haiti asserted that “Haiti’s independence was defeated by an aggressive North-Atlantic alliance that could not imagine their world inhabited by a free regime of Africans as representatives of the newly emerging democracy.” Other commentators have taken a similar tack, focusing on white racism, the refusal of the rich nations to trade with Haiti, and France’s 1825 indemnity demand as the key reasons for Haiti’s poverty today.
Even if these assertions fitted the historical facts - which they do not—none of them can confidently be declared as causal. Take the French levy of 150 million francs. Germany after World War One also had a punitive reparation imposed on it, to the tune of 32 million marks a year, yet this did not prevent that nation from re-building so that within 20 years it was able to launch a war against the main European powers. It can be argued, correctly, that Germany had institutional advantages which Haiti did not: but that argument in itself proves that the causal factor was not the levy per se. Indeed, Beckles contradicts himself even within his own article, writing that the Haitian government agreed to pay France the indemnity because “the economy is bankrupt”  but that “payments began immediately”. Good trick for a collapsed economy.
In fact, Haiti at the end of the 18th century was in more or less the same socio-economic position it is in today—i.e. the leaders were rich, the masses poor. The British vice-agent in Port-au-Prince reported in 1799 that Dessalines rented some 30 sugar plantations at 100,000 francs a year, while Christophe was worth US$250,000. Toussaint himself owned several properties from which he got a good income. But he was committed to re-building the Haitian economy and he did so by imposing a rule as strict, if not stricter, than had obtained under slavery. “On the plantation, the work was organised in a military fashion…The worker who ran away from a plantation was dragged before a court-martial… Marronage was fought intensively. For Toussaint, marron and vagabond were synonyms. Both were considered bandits,” writes historian Mats Lundahl in an essay titled Toussaint and the War Economy of St Domingue.
But this system successfully revived export agriculture in Haiti. By 1802, sugar production was back to 38 percent of its 1789 level, coffee was at 45 percent, and cotton at 58 percent. Historian Robert K. LaCerte  argues: “It was not a lack of markets which frustrated Toussaint and others, but the failure to secure capital, labour, and technical expertise.”

The Haitian blacks were also disaffected by being forced to work on the plantations, wanting instead to get land for subsistence farming. The mulatto leader Pétion, who ruled the west and south when the island was divided after 1806, gave the blacks what they wanted. “By meeting the demands of the ex-slaves, Pétion decided the agrarian future of Haiti,” LaCerte writes. “The first black republic emerged from the long wars of independence as a society of peasant proprietors given over to a subsistence economy except for coffee…This in turn placed the new nation in an adverse competitive position with the better capitalised Brazilian coffee planters and ensured its economic decline.”
In his article, however, Beckles assigns a different cause to this decline: the indemnity demanded by France, which he describes as “a merciless exploitation that was designed and guaranteed to collapse the Haitian economy and society.” But in a 1996 academic essay titled Divided to the Vein, Beckles is more circumspect, saying only “This debt, generally described as a burdensome levy on the economy, added considerably to the further productive decay of Haiti by draining away foreign exchange earnings.” In any case, this debt was paid off in 1922. If it was such a potent cause of Haiti’s poverty trap, what has been the keep-back during the past 87 years?
A further example of  the intellectual dishonesty that attaches to this issue is the claim that the 150 million francs is worth over US$20 billion in reparations today. That figure, which comes from former Haitian president Jean-Bertrand Aristide and has been repeated uncritically by Caribbean commentators, was arrived at by calculating compound interest rather than, as is the more usual practice, by converting the 19th century worth of the francs into an international dollar equivalent at current prices.
Beckles in his article also claims that “Haiti was isolated at birth - ostracised and denied access to world trade, finance, and institutional development.” In his essay, by contrast, he sticks to the facts: “The United States emerged as Haiti’s principal trading partner during the first year. English merchants…jostled with the Americans for the larger share of Haitian trade.” Thus, as is too often the case with UWI historians, ideology tramples on fact. So you won’t hear how in 1793 the Spanish government offered the blacks an alliance against the French. You won’t hear how Toussaint joined the French in 1794 and was made a general by that government in 1796. You won’t hear that Toussaint wrote the American president John Adams in 1798 to restore trade relations, and how the US, along with England, gave Toussaint the arms and supplies he needed to defeat the mulatto leader Rigaud. In other words, racism, which was indeed a factor in Haiti’s history, was nevertheless always trumped by realpolitik.
In fact, the most significant event where both racism and realpolitik meshed is rarely referred to: in January 1805, all the white people in Haiti were massacred on orders from Haiti’s self-declared first emperor, Dessalines. In this context, consider a counter-factual: suppose the apartheid government of South Africa had killed every black person in the country. Suppose that all African nations, as well as the rest of the world, thereafter broke all links with South Africa, thus impoverishing that country. Would the same people who condemn Europe and the US for supposedly isolating Haiti apply the same argument to this imaginary South Africa? Or would they say that impoverishing the apartheid regime was a just punishment?
The facts of Haiti’s history demonstrate that ideological interpretations based on race and exploitation are not necessarily true, and indeed are likely to be no more than half-truths. Such interpretations implicitly, and explicitly, absolve Haitians from all complicity in their own parlous state. Yet a reasonable historical interpretation is that Haiti has always been ill-served by its leaders, including Toussaint in some respects. Reginald Dumas, in his book An Encounter with Haiti, writes: “History and culture are central to a country’s behaviour. What they must not be permitted to do, however, is manacle the country in conduct that does not take sufficient account of the views of a changing world…You cannot credibly say that the world must help you but that you alone must decide how that help is to be utilised…”

The fact is, Haiti will never escape its poverty trap without outside assistance and, if we agree that Haiti’s leaders are a key part of the problem, then rule from outside may be a necessary part of re-building that nation. In this regard, I find it ironic that so many of these Afrocentric commentators like to cite CLR James’s The Black Jacobins when talking about Haiti, while ignoring the message James himself emphasised: “I have written in vain if I have not made it clear that of all formerly colonial coloured peoples, the West Indian masses are the most highly experienced in the ways of Western civilisation and most receptive to its requirements in the 20th century.”
Although this is also a half-truth, James’s recommendation is clear: Haiti, and by extension the Caribbean, needs to adopt the ways and values of the same nations we like to blame for the region’s woes.

PNM vs UNC(OP)
By SUNITY MAHARAJ

Depending on how he views his world, Winston Dookeran might consider himself the biggest winner or loser in the UNC elections of January 24. Suddenly, the party that was born out of disaffection with the politics of Basdeo Panday has lost its raison d’etre. For Dookeran, a man with an apparent distaste for the cut and thrust of politics, this could be cause for great relief- unless silent ambition has got the better of him.
Dookeran has repeatedly suggested that the only thing standing between the UNC and COP was Basdeo Panday. With Panday now out of the way, UNC defectors to the COP can be expected to return to their old party in droves to join a re-energised campaign in hopes of returning to government. The floating ONR votes that had come to rest, first in the NAR and more recently in the COP, are probably already sizing up their prospects with a UNC led by Kamla Persad-Bissessar, although Patrick Manning must surely be thinking about building his own bridge to the COP camp.
Not everyone in the COP would want to surrender so easily. The ONR cohort is likely to urge the COP  leader to hold out to see whether Persad-Bissessar’s honeymoon halo will  shine all the way to the next general  election—which could be all of two years from now unless Mr Manning gets divine instructions to the contrary from above.
The opposition electorate’s love affair with Persad-Bissessar is currently far too intense for any rival to get even the time of the day. The better bet would be to wait for a cooling-off period and hope it comes within Panday’s six-month calculation for her collapse. Those in the COP who are insisting on holding the line against the UNC will want to caution Dookeran against engaging in discussions with Persad-Bissessar and Jack Warner; but if he decides to do so,  it is difficult to see who in the COP would be capable of commanding a significant enough number of its forces.
Inside the PNM, the calculation would be the same. A resurgent UNC would rule out of a snap election (again one assumes no divine intervention). Suddenly, local government elections have become attractive, both as a warm-up opportunity for rallying constituencies at the base level  and for testing the party’s strength  within the context of the new political configuration.
In the evolving scenario, the greater likelihood is for general elections after October 2012, following a grand celebration of the 50th anniversary of Independence.  In the current political and economic environment, it would make sense for Mr Manning to try and get the recession behind him before taking on a re-energised UNC.  Equally important from the PNM’s point of view is the political value of time: Two years provide more than enough time for tripping up the UNC’s new political leader and deflating her momentum.
As for Panday, the logic of his six-month projection would suggest that he should step away and allow the situation to evolve. But strategic calm has never been his strength.
Instead, he is likely to end up strengthening Persad-Bissessar’s hand by sustained irrationality which, ultimately, would only serve to bring her greater sympathy and admiration from her adoring public. More than anyone else, Panday should understand the magnetism of martyrdom- having built a political career on it.
Persistent pappyshow could also end up backfiring on Panday by serving to distract the public from a more clinical assessment of Persad-Bissessar’s performance as a candidate for national leadership.
From her perspective, a defiant Panday is the perfect foil for the new UNC leader who would be better off leaving him to the mercy of the party’s angered membership while she turns her attention to deepening her resume, building her platform for national office and expanding the party’s base to include the COP on acceptable terms.

Her options would include alliance, merger, accommodation, redundancy and contestation.  With Persad-Bissessar’s stocks running as high as they currently are, redundancy would seem a reasonable option. But in the fluid world of politics, there is no guarantee that conditions won’t return to give  the COP  a second wind. It would be surprising if the UNC leader or Jack Warner would be  content to leave their future to chance, in which case, the possibility of talks towards a merger  of forces in the form , say, of a UNC(OP) (United National Congress of the People) could become attractive.  The real challenge would lie in the negotiations involved in getting from here…to there. But then that’s the advantage of having Jack Warner as a mergers and acquisitions specialist.

By Mickey Matthews

New UNC Chairman Jack Warner

When, in late November, Jack Warner announced his decision to run against Basdeo Panday, then Chairman and Political leader of the UNC, he was in fact signaling that for him at least, the issue in the January 24 election would be Panday’s succession.
Panday’s conviction on a violation of integrity legislation had brutally brought this issue to the fore in  the constituency carved out by the efforts of Bhadase Sagan Maharaj and the Capildeos in the quest for representation for Indos as we approached first self government and then political independence. Succession, however, remains the transcendental theme of our time.   This is  so ineluctably the case that the mischievous business of Panday conceding minority leadership of the House should not distract us..
Everywhere, in trade unions and credit unions, in the panyards and in the world of business and politics,  the independence generations are compelled,  whether by attrition or   conscious deliberation to give way if only, as is the case in quite a few instances, to a successor generation that is inherently transitional.
Only time will tell whether this is so in the case of Kamla Persad-Bissessar’s succession of Basdeo Panday, although her landslide victory over her “guru” does present her with opportunity more real than that muffed by the once anointed Winston Dookeran. She can conclude the UNC leg of a process that is ongoing, troubling and engaging in every other theatre of politics, big and small.
 It is the common view that the succession to the Robinson/Charles continuum of leadership in Tobago could not but be transitional.  After the Chambers cameo, Manning fudged the issue in the PNM, first by a less than transparent re- election and then by a culling of his rank as if the bloodletting would win him the key to eternal life. Some such fate awaited the issue of succession in the UNC after Panday returned to undo his anointing of Dookeran and the courts set aside his conviction had not the trio of Warner, Maharaj and Peters not staged a revolt against his stonewalling.
This revolt propelled Mrs Persad-Bissessar to the leadership of the UNC. To say that is not to diminish her own exertions and achievements; nor is it to sneeze at the wit and tact she must possess to survive in the male-dominated world at the top of which Panday stood supreme, hostile to pretenders to his crown.
However, the newly minted leader of the UNC must consider what would have happened at any point in her campaign had it not been for Jack Warner’s nimble-footedness. She could take as a random beginning, what would have happened on the day of the elections had Warner not have forces on the ground equipped to police the polling and to repulse attempts by Panday loyalist to steal the elections?
 As decisive as that is, it was only the crowning piece of the comprehensive plan Warner had engineered for Panday’s demise. The first two had been guerilla-type strikes at Panday’s citadel. One broke up a council meeting chaired by Panday. The other targeted the opposition’s flagship city of Chaguanas where the collateral damage was the office of Mayor Suruj Rambachan. Collectively they punctured the aura of Panday’s invulnerability on his home turf.
In the air-war, so to speak, Warner struck at Panday’s legitimacy by defining him as a leader who was both a liability and without mandate.  He expressed his desire to contest the elections, dragging in his opponent in conciliatory tones.   With the battlefield defined, he upped the ante and plucked Kamla Persad-Bissessar from the bosom of Basdeo Panday in a very precise reading of the evolving political situation in the UNC and the changing balance of forces. 
Left outstanding after all these maneuvers  were the pledge he had made to Ramesh Maharaj, his comrade- in- arms at the start of this offensive, and the psychological warfare of the final days of the campaign. Maharaj’s commitment to running ensured that there would be a contest for the leadership in the days of uncertainty, but once Persad-Bissessar’s candidacy was established, Warner was quick to denounce Maharaj’s as  nuisance.
He next took charge of the psychological warfare by backing a picket of the offices of Kelvin Ramnath, partisan chairman of the membership committee. The picketers demanded their right to vote in lieu of the return of their membership fee and transparent arrangements for the elections. Moreover, from the rear guard, Warner promised “a long hot summer” if the demands were not met, expressing the same level of conviction in now promising the longest period of “tranquility” for the UNC under his chairmanship.
In gauging her own strength, Kamla Persad-Bissessar must indeed weigh the role played by the streetwise and slippery Warner in driving the politics to this point.
In 2007, Sepp Blatter, Warner’s boss at FIFA, said Jack Warner had intimated to him his ambition to be the Prime  Minister of Trinidad and Tobago.  Panday’s allegation of a file on Persad-Bissessar held by Warner, is metaphor for the way this ambition, coupled with his role as financier, had worked to block her ascent to the leadership of the UNCA; even though Panday’s right to Couva North may have closed that option off. 
In the new UNC dispensation, unlike the old, rival ambitions need not derail partnership among leaders.  But for it to work to mutual advantage, the new leader would have to concede Warner’s right to his ambition by accepting him as rival collaborator within the concept of working in tandem to deliver the exciting new vistas for which the UNC membership voted.
A Warner that is secure in both constituency and party would be better able to address the problems of the east/west corridor-  something neither Warner nor any of his co-ethnics in the UNC has ever enjoyed but which could be crucial in  the corridor’s marginal constituencies.