thepancollective

You want fries with that shake?

One of the things I've been trying to come to terms with in Trinidad again is the men. After a few years of silent appreciation (unless I made a trip to Peckham or Brixton markets where the population of Caribbean men was very present and reassuringly vocal) I'm having to re-learn how to deal with the constant commentary.
The fact that every man from the crack pipe smoking vagrants in front of the bank in Port of Spain, to the coconut vendor to the well suited bank worker thinks he can address me in the following ways:
"Psst"
"Darkie"
"Rassie"
and then proceed to make sundry comments, depending on what I'm wearing, or if they have a penchant for dreads, but usually the comments take the predictable lines of, I could play in those locks all day, family, or your bamsee looking real nice in them pants, etc etc.
Usually I keep my head straight, trying not to wince or worse turn around and slap the commentator.
The problem is of course, that there are women who respond to these ludicrous summons, out of habit or because they just don't have the self-confidence to do anything else but feel flattered if a man pays them the same compliment he's paid to every single women who's gone past him for the day.
I wonder what the point of it is.  Why do men think that we need their reassurance?  Why do they think that we want to know what base thoughts they are thinking. And really now, is that supposed to make me interested in you.  Am I supposed to drop everything I'm doing to stop and have a really interesting and enlightening conversation with you? 
Now the truth is, Trinidad is hot woman capital.  I know this because I always feel inadequate in the face of all these annoyingly stunning of all shapes and shades.  So I guess the drive by 'suitings' is the Trini man's primitive version of speed dating. 
The general attitude in the Caribbean is that this is just machoman-ism at it's most harmless. We women have to just put up with it. It's just some harmless fun. The other day when I confronted a suitor by asking him what else he really had to offer me but his unclean teeth, he got very upset and defensive as if I was the one who had infringed on his rights to walk down the street without being harassed.  He just couldn't understand why I wouldn't want someone, just some arbitrary man on the road side that he wouldn't mind 'resting it' on me. But with rapes so high, incest and child abuse and domestic violence, suiting takes on a very sinister kind of tone.  We Caribbean women must deal with being objects for a whole society of men and not ever dare speak out against them. 
In the end I gave up, he couldn't justify his behaviour and he was also too big for me to clout so I moved on, seething. 
It can't be a healthy habit.  It's not cute and most of the time it's not even funny, witty or well-meaning.  It's not about appreciating the beauty of the women of this country, but a really subtle attempt at undermining our independence and our sense of who we are.

those dirty people

As the saying goes, you're either 'infected or affected'. There is no need to go into explanations about how the HIV/AIDs issue pervades societies around the globe, touching the lives of everyone from unborn babies to old people.

Last night I was at the 2006 International AIDs Candlelight Memorial (concert and candlelight walk) in Arima. I had been asked by a friend who was organising the event to do a candlelight display in one of the tents (see here for that story). Whilst there, I was chatting with someone who said that she had invited someone she knew to come to the event. The person had adamantly declined, saying she did not want attend anything involving "those dirty people". The thing is, unbeknownst to her, the person sitting next to her at work may be 'one of those dirty people'. (God forbid) she may be one and may not even know it if she has not been tested. And what if her best friend became 'a drity person' - would he or she cease to be a best friend? Would her sister cease to be her blood relative simpy because of 'dirty' status?

It is for this very reason (and others) that events such as HIV/AIDs candlelight memorials are held annually. Those who have been lost to AIDs are remembreed and honoured, support is shown to those currently living with the virus, community awareness is raised and attempts are made to decrease associated stigmas. Overall, it is hoped by organisers of these events that communities will become more involved in the fight against the disease.

Which brings us to the big question: what is the real disease? HIV/AIDs or ignorance and prejudice?

my granny the ancestor

It's been three years since my maternal grandmother Ida became an ancestor.
I wasn't here when she took her last breath, I went back to London three days before.  Two months before that I was travelling China when I had a series of dreams about her.  In one dream she was taking me around the family yard, telling me about things that needed to cleaned up.  In another dream my sister was showing me where she was buried.  Then I received an email from my mother saying I needed to get home soon, they didn't know how long she would be around.  I left Beijing on a Sunday, spent two days in London and was in Trinidad by the Wednesday. 
It was a worst case jet lag scenario.  But granny was in good form still. I spent two months in Trinidad, watching her slip away.  My mother and sisters, too traumatised by seeing the light going out of her eyes, left it to me.  I slept on the floor of her room, force fed her porridge, toyed with how much morphine to give her. Too little and she could spend the whole night in pain.  Too much and she spent two days tripping.  In her lucid moments she was her usual funny self.  Her favourite pearl of wisdom in those days was 'don't let anybody wash your panty'.  I think she knew she was ready to die when she was no longer able to wash her own.
To her that was the epitome of independence. As a woman, as a human.  To take control of your life.   She knew about that.  Her mother died when she was 14.  She had to forego school to take care of younger siblings. The boys got the education then.  She worked as a domestic to put her children through school. She was fired by her rich employers when my mother won an exhibition scholarship to one of the island's top high schools.  She was unfailingly committed to her children and to us. Perhaps to a fault.  Her joy was us and I always wonder if she had lived in another time, in another reality what wonderful things she would have been able to achieve.
She was out of it the last few days before I left. On the morning I was heading to the airport, I put my head in her lap and cried a long time.  Sensing she wouldn't see me again, she found her voice and put her hands on my head and gave one of her epic prayers.  She never spoke again after that and went in her sleep a couple days later.
So last night, on the anniversary of her passing, we held a traditional Ifa ancestral ceremony. 
Ifa has survived and thrived in spite of all past and continuing efforts to destroy it in the New World. 
In her life, my grandmother was 'poto l'eglise' - a devout Catholic, but never let any of us leave the country, do an exam with out giving us a 'bush bath'.  She used herbs to heal us, recognising plants even after glaucoma undermined her eyesight.
My mother was quite surprised that she didn't request a mass.  But as the Iya explained last night, something happens when they make the crossing.  They reconnect with what was lost.
We sang for her. Cooked her favourite foods.  Cried a bit and missed her dry humour terribly.  And in the end the Iya cast the obi.  The offering is accepted. 
Ase Ase Ase.

money matters

I have recently started going to a cursus about the way government functions in Aruba society. Last week we hit the topic of labor and salary in Aruba.

Well, that was an eye-opener.

According to numbers of the Central Bureau of Statistics, women have 10% more of the degrees in higher education, but only 30% of the highest salary brackets belong to the women. This is a sad state of affairs.

Even sadder is that women, who have the majority of higher education degrees, but on average earn afl. 500,00 (about $275) less per month than a man.

When I asked if this wasn't against the law, a former MP who was present said that there wasn't a law that mandates equal pay for equal work. I was flabbergasted. I asked the MP if there was going to be some sort of opposition to this kind of bill being introduced. He replied that no, not really, but that there were simply other priorities.

Other priorities. This just fills me with an even bigger determination to let my vote and support matter. The further I learn about politics, the less I am inclined to vote for somebody because of family ties or friendship.

My vote is going to be earned.

royal birthday

Last Saturday the countries that belong to the Kingdom of The Netherlands celebrated the Queen's birthday. In Dutch it is called Koninginnedag and in Papiamento it is Anja di La Reina.

It is in reality not the queen's actual birthday, that's in January, but Queen Beatrix decided that when she ascended the throne that she would continue to honor her mother, the late Queen Juliana, and to keep celebrating her birthday as the Queen's birthday.

We've had three generations of Queens. Wilhelmina, Juliana, and Beatrix. For 116 years our monarch has been a woman. While this has not been the magic bullet to take care of sexism, I do believe that it has helped the woman's movement.

The Queen is respected in Aruba, probably even more than in the Netherlands. To me she is a symbol of unity. The countries that form the Dutch Kingdom have different politcs, different cultures, different ideas, but we have only one Queen. I think that for this idea alone the monarchy should be upheld.

On this day, being Dutch is embraced.The Dutch flags are decorated gaily with the orange ribbons. On the radio Dutch patriotic songs are playing, which is a rarity indeed. There are kite-flying contests, bakesales, miniature boat competions, miniature plane competitions.

It is one of those days that makes you feel relaxed and glad to live on this island.

more fire

I was just reading a report in the Guardian UK on feminist bloggers and it was making the point that the female blogosphere is West-centric. The writer, Kira Cochrane, questions the demographics of the feminist bloggers. "The blogs reflect second-wave ideas of consciousness raising and the personal as political (many women write about their experiences of rape and sexual assault), but there's a question mark over how this feeds into grass-roots activism."

I'm not sure what definition of feminism they're working with, but I suppose they wouldn't consider the bloghers in the Caribbean as being overtly and politically feminist? Do we even consider ourselves as feminists?

I think Caribbean women are still wary of the term feminist because we hang in between this precarious balance of matrifocality and 'macho-manism.'  It's an identity that I myself have grappled with, not just because I have a problem with labels, but also because I always thought there was nowhere within all the feminist ideological paradigms in which I could fit comfortably.  More and more however we are coming to terms with notions of Black feminism and organizations like Cafra are making an effort to research and document the region's feminists, whether academic or community activist.

The problem, as I was saying last month when the celebration of International Women's Day came up, we still have no real women's movement in Trinidad.  There are organisations that stand out in my mind:  The Sistren Collective in Jamaica and Red Thread in Guyana.  Red Thread, in particular, has stayed at the forefront of organising grassroots women, across ethnic barriers. But we are lagging behind and desperately need to have a consistent and clear voice of women's action and lobbying.  Or perhaps it is because feminism as a movment in the West is so consumed with the academic, the esoteric discourse, or the focus on political action rather than building from the ground up.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that we shouldn't underestimate the value of our voices.  It's easy to overlook the observations of women who are living and interacting on so many different levels in their own realities and still taking time to analyse and more importantly, document these interactions.  These are not, I suppose, a true idea of feminist discourse.  I anticipate, however, this will change:  in the same way that in Caribbean history, the diaries and journals of plantation owner's wives are now considered to be legitimate and reliable historical texts, that give a more intimate (and I daresay, colourful) idea of life back then.

That said, I do think it’s time that we Caribbean women bloggers get more vocal about things going on in our society, particularly as it applies to women. Women are the backbone of our society and surprise surprise we don’t get the attention, support we deserve. So I guess we just have to start claiming it.

Those of us who have access to the technology need to share it with our sisters who don’t.  Tell their stories because in a lot of ways they are our own.

on your mark...get set...go

This is a great week to begin my journey with this blog collective. It is a week of firsts. This is my first experience “blogging” and this Thursday, Jamaicans will be inaugurating our first ever female Prime Minister- the Honorable Portia Simpson Miller. In the same vein as Liberia and Chile, they have decided that “Since men have gotten us into this mess, let’s see if a woman can get us out of it.” Now, Jamaica is an interesting climate of matrifocality and chauvinism, which means that while more women than men earn the money that supports the households, most men still feel comfortable expecting their every desire and opinion to be taken as law. So, are Jamaican men scared about this shift in power? Yes… but they are more than kind of intrigued by this female politician that is known to be Bible-quoting, baby-kissing, and just the right amount of feisty. In many ways, it is her matronly persona that won over even the most sexist of men, who will always have a soft space in their heart for their mamas.

Electoral races are not the only places where ground- breaking Jamaicans are coming in first. We just participated in the Commonwealth Games, which is where all of England’s old colonies compete athletically in what could be deemed a mini-Olympics. Now, the existence of these games is highly problematic in 2006. The idea of the Queen of England sitting in an aerial seat, looking down on “her subjects” throwing javelins, jumping through hoops (gymnastics), and running around in circles, is slightly too Medieval for me. But no one seems to mind and 53 countries competed. Jamaica won the 7th highest number of medals, mainly by sweeping all the track events, and it has been a great source of pride for all here. And this is so different from how I experience patriotism in America. For one, almost every Jamaican followed the games, as if they personally knew every athlete competing, and with every medal won there was a public swell of pride. It exemplified for me how people here believe that they belong to something bigger than themselves. It is a first for me to experience such national unity and pride.

the price of progressives

When it comes to matters of service, I can be a bit of a pest. I'm the type who walks into doctor's offices armed with my own diagnosis, which I then pit against the doctor's to see which makes more sense. Of course I'm exaggerating, but I am the sort of person who usually demands explanations for things and is assiduous about making complaints. A couple of weeks ago, however, I lapsed: I let an optometrist con me into getting progressives (also known as "no-line bifocals").

I wear glasses to read and to work at the computer. I do not need to wear glasses at any other time (even eye specialists agree with me on this). While my eyes certainly feel less strained when I'm wearing my reading glasses, I haven't yet reached the stage where they're absolutely essential. (I'm not wearing glasses now, for instance -- though that's because I'm too lazy to look for them. Where are the damn things anyway?)

As I see it, progressives are for people who need to be wearing glasses more often than not. So why did my optical people attempt to foist them on me? The argument they give is that you'll eventually have to wear them, so the sooner you start, the better. In that case, why don't I just invest in a walker and start using it right now? Or pull out a few of my perfectly good teeth and get some bridgework, since I may eventually have to deal with that as well. Hell, I'm going to go out right now and invest in some adult diapers.

What they also don't tell you is that progressive lenses cost several times the price of conventional ones (and I know it's my own damn fault for playing against type and not asking about this).

The more important point of the story is that I couldn't even see in the damn things. The area of the lens designed for reading -- the area I'll be using most often -- was about a millimetre wide, and I had to keep my neck locked at a particular angle in order to see anything clearly. Within a week I'd have been wearing a neck brace. So last week I marched back to the optical place and demanded that the progressives be replaced with conventional lenses. They ran through all the arguments again, but I stood my ground, and tomorrow I'll be collecting a pair of proper reading glasses.

While I've never met anybody who actually likes them, I suppose that progressives are right for some people. And perhaps one day I will need them, in which case I'll gladly go through the required period of adjustment. My particular problem, however, was an easy one to solve, and didn't involve invasive surgery or loss of a major organ. You hear all the time about women who have hysterectomies that they learn afterwards they didn't need, or C-section deliveries because their ob-gyn preferred to do things on his/her schedule, not the patient's. The lucky ones among us have people in our lives who look out for our best interests; but in many cases this person is likely to be you yourself.

never get weary yet

On Sunday hundreds of women turned out in a mass show of support for the people of the South-western peninsula of Trinidad where the government plans to allow the building of two aluminum smelter plants.  Industrial issues don't affect women, right?  Furthermore, we don't think that country people can articulate the issues that affect them.

I’ve been attending meetings with community members who are against the introduction of the smelters in their community.  Rural women have been arming themselves with information, in cases where the so-called powers that be think that they don't have a right to it.  It's really inspiring to see how they operate. They're organised and focused. They're doing their research and getting their children involved too.  And on top of all of that they're just really wonderful people.  Everytime I go down to Chatham I leave with a bag I can't carry full of fruits, yams, coconuts.

I look into the future and it alarms me to think that these people's lives will be destroyed for profits that will not come to them.   Because what these woman represent is a vision of Trinidad and Tobago that maybe we who live in the city areas don't get a chance to see very much of.   And maybe I'm being naive and nostalgic, but it's the kind of Trinidad that I want to save.  That I want us to maintain, even as we strive for development.

It's almost a cliché, this notion of the strong Caribbean woman.  Whose back is broad to carry the weight of emotion, family and community.  But if women are the culture bearers, the nurturers, the ones with the responsibility for future generations, then it stands to reason that we take a stand on what we do to the natural environment.

that hard glass ceiling

With a lot of fanfare a local bank announced that they had just installed their first female board director. In the year of our Lord 2006.

The fact that there are still women who are going where no woman has gone before them in the 21st century is giving me pause. I think everyone would agree that womanhood has the right to be celebrated, but by this time, I'd hoped that the walls and ceilings had already been shattered.

One can also notice it in election time. Four years a government is in power, and few are the times were there is any mention of better day care, addressing the difference in the pay scales, or the sexism that exists. Then election time hits and the female candidates are trotted out, as if to say "See, we love women. We even have women as candidates. How could you not vote for us?!"

What I would love to see is that women in politics is taken as a matter of course, not something that is an exception. I would love to see that when a woman is installed as a board director, her business sense and savvy dealings are praised more than that she is a woman. Yes, she is a woman, but she is so many more things than that. I long for the day that womanhood is not considered an obstacle to overcome when reaching a goal, but something that is a part of a person.

I took this picture on the first day I got my new camera. I took it because I loved how the sun illuminated the water around the surfer and the sky in the background. The fact that the surfer is female is not important in this picture. I suppose that's what I want to see happen in Aruba. The next time that a woman does something great, I'd like her accomplishments to be praised just as much as the fact that she is female.