17 December 1998, 884 words
The people I most enjoy talking to are all ten to 15 years younger than me. I probably enjoy talking to them because I am basically immature. But, besides that, the minds of most young persons are still open and curious. That is an crucial quality for me to be friends with anyone (hence the reason I have so few friends.) Most of the people around my own age or above - I'm almost 36 - have already decided that they know all they need to know in life. I can't converse with them.
When a boy like picky-headed Garnet Lake, whose best option in life is collecting rubbish from the Beetham dump, can say to the Prime Minister, "It is better to be hated for who you are, than to be loved for who you are not" at the funeral of his friend Shawn St Clair, I am impressed both by the thought and the phrasing of the thought. And I suspect that young Lake is the rule, rather than the exception. That so many of these young persons fail in the education system is the fault of the system, not them.
The younger people challenge me to question my own concepts, because they are interested in fundamental things like gender relations, sex, social responsibility, religion, democracy, science and so on. It was twenty-two year old Indira who, four years ago, made me change my mind about the death penalty after all the arguments of this country's bright human rights lawyers had failed to persuade me. And it was 18-year-old Varna who, just last week, made me realize that my definition of evil - she was arguing that people chose to be evil, I was saying that all evil acts were rooted in social problems or mental illness - had to be developed further.
But the girl who is the brightest young person I know is 19 years old and will be writing the CXC examinations for the first time next year. Her name is Ronita. She isn't backward academically. In fact, she is far brighter than I was at her age. But when she was 13, Ronita's mother took her out of school because there wasn't enough money to pay for her transport, books, clothes and so on. For the same reason, Ronita had to take care of her five younger siblings. She also started working as a bottle-washer with her mother. (Oh, you didn't know child labour was alive and well in T&T?)
The family lives in a small squatters' settlement in Central Trinidad. Their plyboard-and-galvanize house has no electricity or running water. Ronita used to cook two or three times a day. They walk to the nearest grocery, which is about a mile away, every day to get supplies for the little parlour they have in the front "room". Their customers are the other squatters and the workers from a nearby scrapyard. Ronita's father does not work and her mother lost her job in a roti shop two months ago. A younger sister works in a Chinese fast food place. That, and the parlour, is the family's only income. I have no idea how they make out; and I don't ask.
From her job as a bottle-washer and, later, domestic worker, Ronita managed, over the three years, to save a few hundred dollars. She used this money to register at a private school a year ago so she could get her O Level passes. She is doing six subjects. She still has to cook when she comes home on evenings and she can only study after everyone else goes to sleep because all the pitch-oil lamps are in use till then. She likes to read novels. That was the only reading she did for the crucial four years of school she missed. But she passes all her tests except Math. That is why I say she is the brightest young person I know.
I hope she will pass her exams next year. After that, she will probably get her job in a fast food place. If she is very lucky, she might become a clerk somewhere. She wants to be a cosmetologist. "I like anything to do with beauty," she says. But it is still a waste of potential. In better circumstances, Ronita's spirit and willpower would put her at the top of any field she chose. Because, despite all the difficulties of her life, she remains a basically happy, optimistic girl. True, she also seems to be under a constant strain, and her black eyes are too alert. But she has a nice sense of humour and a very clear sense of responsibility. Like many of the young people I know, I admire her; and I can say that only of five living Trinidadians of the older generation.
These young people are by no means perfect: even the admirable ones are too materialistic, shallow, superstitious and class-conscious. The crux will come when they hit their 30s and 40s and begin to enter positions of power. Will their intelligence and liberalism win out over their materialism and class biases? Will their ambition, a neutral quality, make them barbarians or civilized human beings? I don't know. I have faith in them, though; but that might just be my immaturity showing through.
Copyright ©1998 Kevin Baldeosingh