KEEPING THE CARNIVAL SPIRIT ALIVE
Dr. Lester CN Simon
I get the Carnival spirit on Carnival Sunday. After many slavish weeks of rehearsal and playing in the calypso tent, the Calypso Monarch Competition is only hours away. I read and re-read my music sheets, looking for familiar and unfamiliar phrases and tricky parts. I play all of these parts over and over until I am freed from regarding every musical phrase. I tell myself that I and the other members of the band, who go through the same routine, are links in a chain of events that started long ago and must never die.
Tim Hector said that Carnival is an Afro Caribbean expression of freedom. When I consider the freedom with which we play the written music on Carnival Sunday night, I am reminded that freedom comes out of years of discipline and dedication and perennial frustrations and arguments during rehearsals and the tents. Freedom is not free.
To realize the spirit of Carnival to keep it alive, we have to confront the genesis of our freedom from slavery and plantation life. This requires a critical examination of the primordial state from which freedom was wrestled. In this regard, we must know that capitalism begot slavery and not vice versa and that the reasons for slavery were not moral but economic circumstances. This is why Eric Williams’ book is called Capitalism and Slavery, not Slavery and Capitalism. Eric Williams also recorded that “Slavery was not born of racism: rather, racism was the consequence of slavery”.
Hence, all of us West Indians face an assaulting paradox. We must celebrate the freedom from the primordial economic slavery, which had become a blinding racial phenomenon, and at the same time, we must learn to enslave ourselves once again. This second, self-inflicted enslavement must be to the rigors and discipline of hard work for ourselves, our families, our communities and for nation building as we contribute to the entire development of human kind. In short, we West Indians, black, white, indigo and in between, have to find a new economic order together, whilst we celebrate our freedom from economic slavery. Keeping the Carnival spirit alive demands that we pay rapt attention to the root of all evil and the fruit of our labour that underwrote our freedom.
But another paradox is bearing down on us West Indians. As we prepare to take on the world by binding together in one community, we hear rumblings and clamours of a new economic slavery of the small, vulnerable Caribbean states by the large, powerful ones. We ignore history, our story, at our peril.
History has shown us the disastrous effects of enslaving black, African people on the basis of economics and then effecting racism. Why then did our new leaders use economics again as the basis for bringing the 15-member group of Caribbean states, with a market of 14 million people, together in a Caribbean Single Market and Economy (CSME)?
A prerequisite to CSME must be an examination by West Indian black, white, indigo and in between, in public and in toto, of Caribbean people’s emancipation from slavery. Thereafter, the cultural celebration of Carnival as emancipation will be complete, such that “Jam and Whine” do not become the only, banal focus but stylized paraphernalia to our central Carnival spirit. After all, even ballerinas have to whine as they strut across the stage and stand en point, less they topple over from ignoring the laws of physics.
Only after we have done the examination and the real celebration can we possess what Tim Hector called, “a sense of focus, a sense of mission, or a sense of purpose, a sense of overcoming”. This is why he said that our first Carnival was in 1831. That was the year when closure of the Sunday Market was threatened and when, after fighting firepower with real fire, the slaves celebrated their triumph in a cavalcade of masqueraders, bands, drums, sticks and masks of horns of oxen.
According to Tim Hector, “African slaves here in particular, developed an African custom or tradition at Sunday Market, the one day, and the single day they did not work on the plantation…. (when) they gathered in circles talking and laughing, and ridiculing those in planter power”.
And so, on Carnival Sunday, as we musicians, calypsonians, spectators and judges prepare to re-enact our Sunday Market, we are indeed keeping the Carnival spirit of the freedom of Sunday Market alive. But we must never forget that freedom is predicated on a base of rigid discipline. What we must keep alive is the spirit, the eternal life-force to solve the unique, West Indian paradox that we cannot ever allow the severity of slavery to deny our attention to new forms of indispensable rigidity. This is the Carnival spirit we must birth and keep alive.
Wednesday, June 6, 2007
Sunday, May 27, 2007
The Fidelity Of Cuba
THE REVOLUTION WILL BE TELEVISED
Dr. Lester CN Simon
Arguably, one of the most unacceptable ways to mount a revolution in this country, in this century, is to see a major problem coming and disregard it until it literally erupts in your face on the front page of The Daily Observer. A major revolution in medicine is brewing in Antigua and Barbuda and Cuba is at the heart of it.
The first Antiguan and Barbudan Cuban trained medical doctor went to study in Cuba in 1980. Two more medical students followed in 1982 and one in 1984. With varying numbers trained over the ensuing years, a maximum of 20 Antiguan and Barbudan medical students left for Cuba last year. Remarkably, not a single scholarship to study medicine in Cuba will be offered this year. Poor planning or, correctly, no planning whatsoever has resulted in doctors returning from Cuba with no jobs available for them.
The yawning gap between the demand for jobs and the surplus of doctors will widen. Allegedly, 12 additional Antiguan and Barbudan doctors will return home this year from Cuba and about 6 or 8 will add to the rising dam next year. The gravamen of the problem is that the internship done by our doctors in Cuba is considered inadequate for our purposes. Two different health systems are in unprepared conflict.
Internship is the immediate period after you graduate, during which you gain first-hand, practical experience working under supervision as part of your training. Interns from the University of the West Indies (UWI), work for 18 months on hospital wards and in the community as part of a firm. The intern is the first person to see the patient admitted to the firm. Internship is a trying, eye-opening period with many sleepless nights.
The Cuban system has a 10 month internship but the intern has to compete with medical students and senior doctors to have as much direct access to the patient and as much hands-on management of the patient as the UWI trained intern. For the Cuban national, the internship is quite suitable because after internship, the Cuban doctor fits into a tightly knitted network of referrals and gains tremendous experience. When our doctors return home, they enter a completely different system from their Cuban counterparts.
In many countries, such as Jamaica, an intern gets a legal, provisional registration until successful completion of the internship, when full registration is offered. Thereafter, attendance at conferences and other forms of continuing medical education are requirements for yearly continued registration.
After observing the Cuban trained Jamaican doctors in practice and a fact finding mission to Cuba, the Medical Council of Jamaica, the registering body, mandated that Cuban trained Jamaican doctors must do a one-year, UWI style internship and pass an examination afterwards to be legally, fully registered.
Partly because we do not have a history of training doctors here and because some aspects of medicine here are marching backwards as others advance, we have only one type of registration: full registration. Any doctor, local or visitor, no matter how inexperienced, can legally open a private office after registration.
Because of the humongous demand for, and supply of medical scholarships, the exponential increase in the number of medical students in Cuba has resulted in a falling off of the quality of training. Quite simply, there are too many pairs of eyes, ears and hands to benefit from a patient during the Cuban internship. Some eager students will go the extra mile to see, hear and feel all that is available but the average student will not be able to do so. The best student might become frustrated by inadequate provisions for the unique, practical demands of the increasing numbers of overseas students returning to a different health system.
Many CARICOM states are following Jamaica and are making provisions for some form of additional, more hands-on type of internship and a common exit examination before full registration. This revolution requires dedicated specialist doctors in many fields to guide young doctors, a modern medical library and, inter alia, the foresight and will to turn our problem into a golden opportunity and devise and activate a health plan to solve our health needs. In the while, we cannot be overzealous and take all that Cuba generously offers if we know we cannot handle the consequences of excess. This is a lesson we learn at Carnival time.
While we are looking at our local doctors trained in Cuba, we must also look at the other doctors who have been fully registered. These doctors practise medicine under a life-long registration with no legal regard for continuing education as a requirement for continuing registration. Some registered-for-life doctors look askance at our Cuban trained doctors. They are so anti-Cuban, they lack fidelity (and a sense of humour).
Many students want to study medicine. It is a noble profession and it appears to attract a lot of money. Unbeknownst to most prospective doctors, the money that was once associated with being a doctor was old money and the new money came on top of a parental, grandparental or even great grandparental deposit. These days, the obverse is that the extended family is dependent on the doctor’s financial withdrawals. The immediate fancy car, fancy house and bags of money right after graduation is a disillusion-in-waiting.
We cannot allow our returning doctors to become frustrated, despondent and depressed. They will eventually leave. And guess who will fill the void, amigo? We must push the medical registration board, the medical association and the government to get off their backsides, enact tiered registration and devise a plan in which public and private health facilities can network to accommodate our returning doctors.
President Castro said that a doctor is like a shepherd, a priest, a missionary and a crusader. Inarguably, it is obscene to train young doctors and leave them out in the cold. History will not absolve us of the medical negligence of our best and brightest minds whilst we celebrate diversity. !Venceremos! We shall overcome!
Dr. Lester CN Simon
Arguably, one of the most unacceptable ways to mount a revolution in this country, in this century, is to see a major problem coming and disregard it until it literally erupts in your face on the front page of The Daily Observer. A major revolution in medicine is brewing in Antigua and Barbuda and Cuba is at the heart of it.
The first Antiguan and Barbudan Cuban trained medical doctor went to study in Cuba in 1980. Two more medical students followed in 1982 and one in 1984. With varying numbers trained over the ensuing years, a maximum of 20 Antiguan and Barbudan medical students left for Cuba last year. Remarkably, not a single scholarship to study medicine in Cuba will be offered this year. Poor planning or, correctly, no planning whatsoever has resulted in doctors returning from Cuba with no jobs available for them.
The yawning gap between the demand for jobs and the surplus of doctors will widen. Allegedly, 12 additional Antiguan and Barbudan doctors will return home this year from Cuba and about 6 or 8 will add to the rising dam next year. The gravamen of the problem is that the internship done by our doctors in Cuba is considered inadequate for our purposes. Two different health systems are in unprepared conflict.
Internship is the immediate period after you graduate, during which you gain first-hand, practical experience working under supervision as part of your training. Interns from the University of the West Indies (UWI), work for 18 months on hospital wards and in the community as part of a firm. The intern is the first person to see the patient admitted to the firm. Internship is a trying, eye-opening period with many sleepless nights.
The Cuban system has a 10 month internship but the intern has to compete with medical students and senior doctors to have as much direct access to the patient and as much hands-on management of the patient as the UWI trained intern. For the Cuban national, the internship is quite suitable because after internship, the Cuban doctor fits into a tightly knitted network of referrals and gains tremendous experience. When our doctors return home, they enter a completely different system from their Cuban counterparts.
In many countries, such as Jamaica, an intern gets a legal, provisional registration until successful completion of the internship, when full registration is offered. Thereafter, attendance at conferences and other forms of continuing medical education are requirements for yearly continued registration.
After observing the Cuban trained Jamaican doctors in practice and a fact finding mission to Cuba, the Medical Council of Jamaica, the registering body, mandated that Cuban trained Jamaican doctors must do a one-year, UWI style internship and pass an examination afterwards to be legally, fully registered.
Partly because we do not have a history of training doctors here and because some aspects of medicine here are marching backwards as others advance, we have only one type of registration: full registration. Any doctor, local or visitor, no matter how inexperienced, can legally open a private office after registration.
Because of the humongous demand for, and supply of medical scholarships, the exponential increase in the number of medical students in Cuba has resulted in a falling off of the quality of training. Quite simply, there are too many pairs of eyes, ears and hands to benefit from a patient during the Cuban internship. Some eager students will go the extra mile to see, hear and feel all that is available but the average student will not be able to do so. The best student might become frustrated by inadequate provisions for the unique, practical demands of the increasing numbers of overseas students returning to a different health system.
Many CARICOM states are following Jamaica and are making provisions for some form of additional, more hands-on type of internship and a common exit examination before full registration. This revolution requires dedicated specialist doctors in many fields to guide young doctors, a modern medical library and, inter alia, the foresight and will to turn our problem into a golden opportunity and devise and activate a health plan to solve our health needs. In the while, we cannot be overzealous and take all that Cuba generously offers if we know we cannot handle the consequences of excess. This is a lesson we learn at Carnival time.
While we are looking at our local doctors trained in Cuba, we must also look at the other doctors who have been fully registered. These doctors practise medicine under a life-long registration with no legal regard for continuing education as a requirement for continuing registration. Some registered-for-life doctors look askance at our Cuban trained doctors. They are so anti-Cuban, they lack fidelity (and a sense of humour).
Many students want to study medicine. It is a noble profession and it appears to attract a lot of money. Unbeknownst to most prospective doctors, the money that was once associated with being a doctor was old money and the new money came on top of a parental, grandparental or even great grandparental deposit. These days, the obverse is that the extended family is dependent on the doctor’s financial withdrawals. The immediate fancy car, fancy house and bags of money right after graduation is a disillusion-in-waiting.
We cannot allow our returning doctors to become frustrated, despondent and depressed. They will eventually leave. And guess who will fill the void, amigo? We must push the medical registration board, the medical association and the government to get off their backsides, enact tiered registration and devise a plan in which public and private health facilities can network to accommodate our returning doctors.
President Castro said that a doctor is like a shepherd, a priest, a missionary and a crusader. Inarguably, it is obscene to train young doctors and leave them out in the cold. History will not absolve us of the medical negligence of our best and brightest minds whilst we celebrate diversity. !Venceremos! We shall overcome!
Thursday, May 17, 2007
Stick Em Up! With Stick?
GUNS AND NOSES
Dr. Lester CN Simon
Having a gun pointed in your face can be a life encapsulating moment. It’s amazing what you can see in microseconds. The first time my face encountered a real gun was some time in the sixties in Montserrat. A group of us, relaxing after a drama production, was listening enchantingly to war stories told by a World War II veteran exhibiting his captured Luger pistol. He had shown us at least three times that the gun was not loaded. When he suddenly pointed it in my face, my entire life went flashing by in vivid technicolour.
The second and last time a gun bumped into my face was when I was reluctantly leaving a night club in downtown Kingston in the seventies after a squad of policemen barged in. It was really a case of fools rushing in where angels should fear to tread. On this occasion, I did not see my life flashing by, probably because it had become much too complicated. Or maybe the jaw-dropping go-go dancing I had seen in the club, called The Keg, on lower Orange Street, had already taken me through my life’s journey when the police interrupted.
During the many sleepless nights of my medical internship in Jamaica I tried, unsuccessfully, not to get accustomed to the Pavlovian link between the sound of gunshots and the sound of the telephone summoning me from my bed to the hospital. Wary and weary of guns, I tried hard to confuse the sound of gunshots with the sound of backfire from a car. But Jamaica had many good auto mechanics and many more active gunmen.
When the last comptroller of Customs of Antigua and Barbuda was brutally murdered, I thought at first that it was an outside job. My protective instinct initially prevented me from admitting the obvious for fear of what could happen to any citizen, including me, my family and friends. But the crime scene was too much of bloody mess to be a professional, outside job. For that same reason, it took us less than ten seconds on boarding the Computer Challenger yacht in Barbuda, to suspect that that too was a local killing.
Since those two local murders, the numbers of guns, deaths and injuries from gunshot wounds have shot up. Some people do not like to hear the truth but guns were rampant during the tenure of the last government and guns are more rampant now. Could it be that forces other than politicians are facilitating the entry of guns into a once halcyon Antigua and Barbuda? We have a nasty, satisfying habit of blaming politicians for everything. And please do not say that the last government still has operatives in strategic places. The alternative might be too hard to countenance, but it may very well be that people other than politicians are facilitating the movement of guns.
Any teenager knows that the vilest goings on can take place right inside the church, in schools, hospitals, offices of professional business persons and such places. We all know that unsuspected professionals can do unsuspected, evil things, professionally. That was why I laughed hysterically one time in Jamaica when we were held back in a road block to allow a speeding public vehicle, escorted by outriders, to run through. Someone jokingly remarked that it was alleged that that was the best way to transport drugs and guns.
Despite the sordid gun stories I heard and witnessed professionally and otherwise in Jamaica, the most heart wrenching one was right here at home. A hard working police officer noted how difficult it was to fight the war on drugs because someone always seemed to know when a police raid would take place. One week later he was almost as distraught as the mother of a young man who was killed on or near a basket ball court. The good officer, convinced that the mother knew the killers, could not fathom why the weeping mother, aching and boiling over for the loss of her son, refused to say a single word about the suspects.
It reminded me of the time fifty years ago when, despite my protest of innocence, I received a thorough lashing for allegedly pouring water into a tall, family sized Jergens lotion bottle, with few precious drops of lotion remaining. Later, it was discovered that someone else had done the watery deed. Moreover, one person witnessing the rain of licks on my backside knew the guilty one. To this day, no one apologized to me or even put my licks on credit for the next occasion when I was really guilty. To this day! How then, did they expect me to run to them and inform them on what was really going on in the outside toilet when pairs of boys and girls would seemingly and seamlessly disappear?
Now, I know that sometimes you have to take the wrongly inflicted licks and say that the national toilet is really full of feces (for want of a four letter word). Something rotten is going on here. Almost all of the murders are committed by our own born and bred Antiguans and Barbudans. I repeat, almost all of the murders are committed by our own born and bred Antiguans and Barbudans. In the while, we prepare for an invading, imaginary army from outer space and blame the immigrant army of Caribbean nationals. Foreigners do commit crime, as we did in the Virgin Islands. Frankly, if most of the gun crimes here were committed by hardened criminals from overseas, all of us would have been stiff, tone dead long time.
The pen is indeed mightier than the sword but words know their targets. Bullets are worse than stray animals. We cannot wait until people in high places get shot and killed to use the national resources we already have to put a stoppage to gun crimes. If we were to do that, we would be admitting two very awful things: that some lives are more important than others, and worse, much worse, that, like little Bo Peep’s sheep, the guns have finally found their way back home, bringing their tales behind them.
Dr. Lester CN Simon
Having a gun pointed in your face can be a life encapsulating moment. It’s amazing what you can see in microseconds. The first time my face encountered a real gun was some time in the sixties in Montserrat. A group of us, relaxing after a drama production, was listening enchantingly to war stories told by a World War II veteran exhibiting his captured Luger pistol. He had shown us at least three times that the gun was not loaded. When he suddenly pointed it in my face, my entire life went flashing by in vivid technicolour.
The second and last time a gun bumped into my face was when I was reluctantly leaving a night club in downtown Kingston in the seventies after a squad of policemen barged in. It was really a case of fools rushing in where angels should fear to tread. On this occasion, I did not see my life flashing by, probably because it had become much too complicated. Or maybe the jaw-dropping go-go dancing I had seen in the club, called The Keg, on lower Orange Street, had already taken me through my life’s journey when the police interrupted.
During the many sleepless nights of my medical internship in Jamaica I tried, unsuccessfully, not to get accustomed to the Pavlovian link between the sound of gunshots and the sound of the telephone summoning me from my bed to the hospital. Wary and weary of guns, I tried hard to confuse the sound of gunshots with the sound of backfire from a car. But Jamaica had many good auto mechanics and many more active gunmen.
When the last comptroller of Customs of Antigua and Barbuda was brutally murdered, I thought at first that it was an outside job. My protective instinct initially prevented me from admitting the obvious for fear of what could happen to any citizen, including me, my family and friends. But the crime scene was too much of bloody mess to be a professional, outside job. For that same reason, it took us less than ten seconds on boarding the Computer Challenger yacht in Barbuda, to suspect that that too was a local killing.
Since those two local murders, the numbers of guns, deaths and injuries from gunshot wounds have shot up. Some people do not like to hear the truth but guns were rampant during the tenure of the last government and guns are more rampant now. Could it be that forces other than politicians are facilitating the entry of guns into a once halcyon Antigua and Barbuda? We have a nasty, satisfying habit of blaming politicians for everything. And please do not say that the last government still has operatives in strategic places. The alternative might be too hard to countenance, but it may very well be that people other than politicians are facilitating the movement of guns.
Any teenager knows that the vilest goings on can take place right inside the church, in schools, hospitals, offices of professional business persons and such places. We all know that unsuspected professionals can do unsuspected, evil things, professionally. That was why I laughed hysterically one time in Jamaica when we were held back in a road block to allow a speeding public vehicle, escorted by outriders, to run through. Someone jokingly remarked that it was alleged that that was the best way to transport drugs and guns.
Despite the sordid gun stories I heard and witnessed professionally and otherwise in Jamaica, the most heart wrenching one was right here at home. A hard working police officer noted how difficult it was to fight the war on drugs because someone always seemed to know when a police raid would take place. One week later he was almost as distraught as the mother of a young man who was killed on or near a basket ball court. The good officer, convinced that the mother knew the killers, could not fathom why the weeping mother, aching and boiling over for the loss of her son, refused to say a single word about the suspects.
It reminded me of the time fifty years ago when, despite my protest of innocence, I received a thorough lashing for allegedly pouring water into a tall, family sized Jergens lotion bottle, with few precious drops of lotion remaining. Later, it was discovered that someone else had done the watery deed. Moreover, one person witnessing the rain of licks on my backside knew the guilty one. To this day, no one apologized to me or even put my licks on credit for the next occasion when I was really guilty. To this day! How then, did they expect me to run to them and inform them on what was really going on in the outside toilet when pairs of boys and girls would seemingly and seamlessly disappear?
Now, I know that sometimes you have to take the wrongly inflicted licks and say that the national toilet is really full of feces (for want of a four letter word). Something rotten is going on here. Almost all of the murders are committed by our own born and bred Antiguans and Barbudans. I repeat, almost all of the murders are committed by our own born and bred Antiguans and Barbudans. In the while, we prepare for an invading, imaginary army from outer space and blame the immigrant army of Caribbean nationals. Foreigners do commit crime, as we did in the Virgin Islands. Frankly, if most of the gun crimes here were committed by hardened criminals from overseas, all of us would have been stiff, tone dead long time.
The pen is indeed mightier than the sword but words know their targets. Bullets are worse than stray animals. We cannot wait until people in high places get shot and killed to use the national resources we already have to put a stoppage to gun crimes. If we were to do that, we would be admitting two very awful things: that some lives are more important than others, and worse, much worse, that, like little Bo Peep’s sheep, the guns have finally found their way back home, bringing their tales behind them.
Monday, May 7, 2007
Greed
TOO MUCH OF A GOOD THING
Dr. Lester CN Simon
One of the secret joys of growing up and growing old should be made public. It is the quiet realization that the words of wisdom that members of your family, neighbours, friends and even perfect strangers, uttered to guide you along, are universal concepts that you have discovered to be true. It is now your sacred duty to pass them on.
Too much of a good thing can be bad for you. If you do not take kindly to advice from elders and others, you should read on and take counsel from hard scientific facts.
Pathology literally means the study (logos) of suffering (pathos). It is concerned with the causes of disease and well as the mechanisms underlying the causes of disease and how they lead to the signs of illness and the symptoms of patients. Television has presented the pathologist as someone who deals exclusively with matters related to the dead. Some pathologists, known as forensic pathologists, do that almost exclusively. Most general pathologists spend much more time and effort working in a lab overseeing technologists and examining and reporting on all sorts of specimens from the living. Indeed the motto of the Royal College of Pathologists is that pathology (including forensic pathology) is the science behind the cure.
The Newsweek magazine issue of May 7, 2007 carries an article by Jerry Adler in which he writes that doctors are changing the way we think about heart attacks and even death itself. The remarkable thing here is that the rethinking doctors are doing is based on a fundamental concept that would have made my dearly departed maternal grandmother smile knowingly. In fact many Antiguans and Barbudans are intimately familiar with the concept that, under certain circumstances, too much of a good thing can be bad.
When parts of the body are injured, they may adapt, suffer or die. A particular form of suffering occurs when the tissues of the body are deprived of blood. The flow of blood to and through the tissues is called perfusion. If loss of perfusion is massive and sudden, death can occur. If the loss of perfusion is not massive and it is gradual and prolonged, adaptation or suffering can take place. The decrease in perfusion is called ischemia (holding back of blood).
The news celebrated in Newsweek is based on the seemingly contradictory concept that when normal blood flow is restored to ischemic tissues that were chronically starved of blood, the suffering tissues can be injured more severely by the return of the formerly vital blood flow! This is called reperfusion injury. There are many mechanisms at work here. One such mechanism is that compromised tissues in their accustomed state of deprivation or chronic ischemia cannot suddenly adapt to the high concentration of vital chemicals that the renewed blood flow is bringing in. Do you see members of a united political party smiling?
In retrospect, we should not be surprised by the concept of reperfusion injury. We have all been suddenly awakened from deep, lovely sleep and had to snooze for a while before getting up. Or we recall being in the dark and suddenly exposed to very bright light. Worse, some may recall getting used to the blues of a lost relationship when all of a sudden the ex-lover reappears out of the blue bringing old tidings of great joy and new tales, fears and tears of rekindled injury.
One of the lessons from the remarkable research into reperfusion injury is that we may be treating some forms of heart attacks incorrectly. Many heart attacks occur because the heart is starved of blood beyond its ability to compensate. When we try to jolt such a weakened heart back to life we may be doing more harm than good. Instead of the jolting, heavy handed approach of almost literally beating the heart back to normal, we should reduce the demand on the heart and adjust the way it functions so that it can be coaxed safely and gradually back to normal. This slowing down, or slow waking up approach may require
lowering the body temperature to decrease the amount of energy required and using other practical methods currently under research.
But my grandmother knew all of this high science and technology long ago. I am sure she smiled in heaven and begged pardon for me when I got into trouble in biochemistry class at university. The lecturer was going on and on about the structure of large, complex protein molecules and how scientists used an enzyme called papain to break down these complex protein molecules into smaller, “digestible” pieces to study them. Unable to contain myself, I busted out laughing and disturbed the entire class.
My excuse was that I had recalled Granny cooking cow heel with green pawpaw on Saturday evenings for soup on Sundays. Green pawpaw is a natural source of the enzyme papain, which breaks down muscle protein. Despite what some fellow students would say, I swear I did not tell the lecturer, whose initials were E.V.E., that he reminded me of my grandmother.
Were Granny alive today, she would demonstrate reperfusion injury in double measure by cautioning me, on the same Saturday evenings when I wanted to run off to too much of whatever, to tarry a while after turning on the pipe to get clean water from a public utility authority.
Dr. Lester CN Simon
One of the secret joys of growing up and growing old should be made public. It is the quiet realization that the words of wisdom that members of your family, neighbours, friends and even perfect strangers, uttered to guide you along, are universal concepts that you have discovered to be true. It is now your sacred duty to pass them on.
Too much of a good thing can be bad for you. If you do not take kindly to advice from elders and others, you should read on and take counsel from hard scientific facts.
Pathology literally means the study (logos) of suffering (pathos). It is concerned with the causes of disease and well as the mechanisms underlying the causes of disease and how they lead to the signs of illness and the symptoms of patients. Television has presented the pathologist as someone who deals exclusively with matters related to the dead. Some pathologists, known as forensic pathologists, do that almost exclusively. Most general pathologists spend much more time and effort working in a lab overseeing technologists and examining and reporting on all sorts of specimens from the living. Indeed the motto of the Royal College of Pathologists is that pathology (including forensic pathology) is the science behind the cure.
The Newsweek magazine issue of May 7, 2007 carries an article by Jerry Adler in which he writes that doctors are changing the way we think about heart attacks and even death itself. The remarkable thing here is that the rethinking doctors are doing is based on a fundamental concept that would have made my dearly departed maternal grandmother smile knowingly. In fact many Antiguans and Barbudans are intimately familiar with the concept that, under certain circumstances, too much of a good thing can be bad.
When parts of the body are injured, they may adapt, suffer or die. A particular form of suffering occurs when the tissues of the body are deprived of blood. The flow of blood to and through the tissues is called perfusion. If loss of perfusion is massive and sudden, death can occur. If the loss of perfusion is not massive and it is gradual and prolonged, adaptation or suffering can take place. The decrease in perfusion is called ischemia (holding back of blood).
The news celebrated in Newsweek is based on the seemingly contradictory concept that when normal blood flow is restored to ischemic tissues that were chronically starved of blood, the suffering tissues can be injured more severely by the return of the formerly vital blood flow! This is called reperfusion injury. There are many mechanisms at work here. One such mechanism is that compromised tissues in their accustomed state of deprivation or chronic ischemia cannot suddenly adapt to the high concentration of vital chemicals that the renewed blood flow is bringing in. Do you see members of a united political party smiling?
In retrospect, we should not be surprised by the concept of reperfusion injury. We have all been suddenly awakened from deep, lovely sleep and had to snooze for a while before getting up. Or we recall being in the dark and suddenly exposed to very bright light. Worse, some may recall getting used to the blues of a lost relationship when all of a sudden the ex-lover reappears out of the blue bringing old tidings of great joy and new tales, fears and tears of rekindled injury.
One of the lessons from the remarkable research into reperfusion injury is that we may be treating some forms of heart attacks incorrectly. Many heart attacks occur because the heart is starved of blood beyond its ability to compensate. When we try to jolt such a weakened heart back to life we may be doing more harm than good. Instead of the jolting, heavy handed approach of almost literally beating the heart back to normal, we should reduce the demand on the heart and adjust the way it functions so that it can be coaxed safely and gradually back to normal. This slowing down, or slow waking up approach may require
lowering the body temperature to decrease the amount of energy required and using other practical methods currently under research.
But my grandmother knew all of this high science and technology long ago. I am sure she smiled in heaven and begged pardon for me when I got into trouble in biochemistry class at university. The lecturer was going on and on about the structure of large, complex protein molecules and how scientists used an enzyme called papain to break down these complex protein molecules into smaller, “digestible” pieces to study them. Unable to contain myself, I busted out laughing and disturbed the entire class.
My excuse was that I had recalled Granny cooking cow heel with green pawpaw on Saturday evenings for soup on Sundays. Green pawpaw is a natural source of the enzyme papain, which breaks down muscle protein. Despite what some fellow students would say, I swear I did not tell the lecturer, whose initials were E.V.E., that he reminded me of my grandmother.
Were Granny alive today, she would demonstrate reperfusion injury in double measure by cautioning me, on the same Saturday evenings when I wanted to run off to too much of whatever, to tarry a while after turning on the pipe to get clean water from a public utility authority.
Sunday, April 29, 2007
Mash Gas
WHO IS PASSING GAS?
Dr. Lester CN Simon
Friday, April 20, 2007 might go down in the recorded history of Antigua and Barbuda as a day to understand who we are and what sort of society we want to become. Long lines of vehicles driven by all classes of people including robots, vulgarians and elites were inching into petrol stations and obstructing many of us from driving to our yards. I was one of the robots until Radio Observer clarified the matter as one of a temporary nature and advised that, based on information from the national supplier of petrol, normality would be restored in less than 24 hours.
I have asked a few persons why drivers with an adequate amount of petrol to last until the next day would remain in the long lines despite the assurance that the minor, temporary setback would be over long before they could drive around the island twenty four times. The answers ranged from not hearing the clarification on radio or cell phone, not believing the clarification, being safe rather than sorry if the setback worsened, to sheer panic.
James Surowiecki, a business columnist of the New Yorker magazine, has written a highly acclaimed book called The Wisdom of Crowds. His argument is that contrary to what many of us believe, a large crowd of diverse people is smarter than a small number of brilliant, expert individuals. What great wisdom did the crowd of drivers display on Friday, April 20, 2007?
Surowiecki provides many examples to support his claim. One example is that in the television series Who Wants to be a Millionaire, the audience is right 91 percent of the time compared to 65 percent for the experts who are called on the phone when the player is stumped for an answer.
A wise crowd must meet four criteria. It should be noted that crowds are not good for every problem, especially ones involving skills such as performing surgery or flying a plane. West Indies cricket would have a very wise crowd were it not for one of the four criteria.
One: The crowd must have a variety of people. The idea is based on statistical sampling theory. A small group of experts working together tend to think alike and reinforce each other. The outcome will be based on their collective wisdom, right or wrong. Their individual mistakes will add up and give the wrong answer more often than the answer from a larger, mixed group. A larger, mixed group will include experts but the errors of the very unwise will cancel out the errors of the very smart. A larger, mixed group is more representative of all the possible answers including the best answer. It is probably safe to assume that the Friday gas crowd met this criterion. Which is the most diverse political party in the state?
Two: The members of the crowd must be independent thinkers. They must pay attention to their own information. The opinions of other members of the crowd should not determine the opinion of any one individual member. Let’s leave this one for last. Which local political party qualifies best for this criterion?
Three: The crowd must be decentralized. No dictators are allowed. It may be that great leaders master the art of not appearing to be dictators. One of our three Prime Ministers is considered the supreme qualifier. Drivers in the Friday crowd might have reacted negatively to the suggestion that they should come out of the line if they had sufficient petrol and leave the space for those with near empty tanks. Some people resent being told what to do even if it is the right thing.
Four: The crowd must be able to turn the individual judgments into a collective action. Which political party does this best? Drivers in the Friday crowd could have driven away or stayed in line. Drivers who wanted to leave might have been obstructed by the traffic. Others probably were too ashamed to be seen leaving the line and be accused of having had sufficient petrol all along.
Perhaps most of the drivers were not acting independently and were responding to the action of each other. It cannot be that what happened on gas-Friday was the action of our wisest crowd. Can it be? If a large, diverse crowd of independent individuals gives the smartest answers then such a crowded political tent with disagreement and even conflict must be the smartest political ensemble. But all four criteria must be met, including number four.
There are times when politicians want wise constituents and times when they want compliant ones. If independent thought and action remain a national mirage, do not be surprised to see a repeat performance of gas-Friday just before the next general election.
Dr. Lester CN Simon
Friday, April 20, 2007 might go down in the recorded history of Antigua and Barbuda as a day to understand who we are and what sort of society we want to become. Long lines of vehicles driven by all classes of people including robots, vulgarians and elites were inching into petrol stations and obstructing many of us from driving to our yards. I was one of the robots until Radio Observer clarified the matter as one of a temporary nature and advised that, based on information from the national supplier of petrol, normality would be restored in less than 24 hours.
I have asked a few persons why drivers with an adequate amount of petrol to last until the next day would remain in the long lines despite the assurance that the minor, temporary setback would be over long before they could drive around the island twenty four times. The answers ranged from not hearing the clarification on radio or cell phone, not believing the clarification, being safe rather than sorry if the setback worsened, to sheer panic.
James Surowiecki, a business columnist of the New Yorker magazine, has written a highly acclaimed book called The Wisdom of Crowds. His argument is that contrary to what many of us believe, a large crowd of diverse people is smarter than a small number of brilliant, expert individuals. What great wisdom did the crowd of drivers display on Friday, April 20, 2007?
Surowiecki provides many examples to support his claim. One example is that in the television series Who Wants to be a Millionaire, the audience is right 91 percent of the time compared to 65 percent for the experts who are called on the phone when the player is stumped for an answer.
A wise crowd must meet four criteria. It should be noted that crowds are not good for every problem, especially ones involving skills such as performing surgery or flying a plane. West Indies cricket would have a very wise crowd were it not for one of the four criteria.
One: The crowd must have a variety of people. The idea is based on statistical sampling theory. A small group of experts working together tend to think alike and reinforce each other. The outcome will be based on their collective wisdom, right or wrong. Their individual mistakes will add up and give the wrong answer more often than the answer from a larger, mixed group. A larger, mixed group will include experts but the errors of the very unwise will cancel out the errors of the very smart. A larger, mixed group is more representative of all the possible answers including the best answer. It is probably safe to assume that the Friday gas crowd met this criterion. Which is the most diverse political party in the state?
Two: The members of the crowd must be independent thinkers. They must pay attention to their own information. The opinions of other members of the crowd should not determine the opinion of any one individual member. Let’s leave this one for last. Which local political party qualifies best for this criterion?
Three: The crowd must be decentralized. No dictators are allowed. It may be that great leaders master the art of not appearing to be dictators. One of our three Prime Ministers is considered the supreme qualifier. Drivers in the Friday crowd might have reacted negatively to the suggestion that they should come out of the line if they had sufficient petrol and leave the space for those with near empty tanks. Some people resent being told what to do even if it is the right thing.
Four: The crowd must be able to turn the individual judgments into a collective action. Which political party does this best? Drivers in the Friday crowd could have driven away or stayed in line. Drivers who wanted to leave might have been obstructed by the traffic. Others probably were too ashamed to be seen leaving the line and be accused of having had sufficient petrol all along.
Perhaps most of the drivers were not acting independently and were responding to the action of each other. It cannot be that what happened on gas-Friday was the action of our wisest crowd. Can it be? If a large, diverse crowd of independent individuals gives the smartest answers then such a crowded political tent with disagreement and even conflict must be the smartest political ensemble. But all four criteria must be met, including number four.
There are times when politicians want wise constituents and times when they want compliant ones. If independent thought and action remain a national mirage, do not be surprised to see a repeat performance of gas-Friday just before the next general election.
Sunday, April 22, 2007
Is English We Speaking
NOT LOST IN TRANSLATION
Dr. Lester CN Simon
One find day, destined to be made wretched by a vacuous salesgirl, I was in a delicious dilemma in a department store on my maiden visit to London, trying to explain myself to an assemblage of fine English women. I was buying a reading lamp. The bulb was sold separately. Since I was set for some hard studying long into the night for one year, I decided to purchase two bulbs instead of one. The smiling salesgirl seemed bemused and amused by my West Indian English twang. She beckoned to another perky salesgirl who waltzed up to the counter allegro con moto and asked me to repeat my request.
By this time, the music in the store had changed to Air on a G string by Johann Sebastian Bach. I have to confess that it did occur to me that Bach’s pleasing Air on a G string might have modulated from the G string of the violin to its perfect meaning had she been sunbathing on Dark Wood Beach in Antigua. But by then I was so distraught I simply repeated, slowly, that I wanted two bulbs. To my unforgettable amazement, the airy, fairy one said, “Did you say toe?” Between my two and her toe, I heard myself exclaiming, exasperatingly (in central London), “Lady, why don’t you speak English!”
The concern about not speaking dialect in school is opening up a debate that we must entertain. The paradox of colonial identity haunts every West Indian from the teenager in the sex video who spoke in abject dialect to the 1992 Nobel Laureate for Literature, Derek Alton Walcott. Yes, A West Indian was valorized by the Swedish Academy for discovering the English language 500 years after we discovered Christopher Columbus.
All of us in post-colonial societies in general, and school children in particular, are caught on the horns of the dialectics of dialect. The creativity in our native dialect is being asked to be sacrificed in lieu of the creativity of an imitative tongue. Surely the solution to this dilemma must include removing the bastardization of our natural dialect and officially embracing it whilst we embrace English, Spanish and all languages.
Louise Bennett told us through her Aunty Roachy that if dialect is a corruption of English then English is a corruption of Norman French and Latin etc. Here’s one for the school pikiniega: The great Shakespeare, Chaucer and Robert Burns whom we revere so much, (Who you trying to fool with your ploy?) wrote dialect that to an Antigua Grammar School head boy, sounded like Dutch.
This does not mean that English must not be our official language of communication. You have to know both English and dialect well to know when and when not to confuse but to suffuse the two. We cannot love English and hate dialect. If we do, Walcott suggests that our bodies will think in one language and move in another. What an awful discordant sight that would be on parade.
When Walcott writes of how schizophrenic it is to be wrenched by two styles, he is warning us not to satisfy the notion that to change our language we must change our lives, or (I would add), that to change our lives we must completely change our language and irreverently abandon our native tongue. The very nature of a developing West Indian society is constitutively, politely schizophrenic. Walcott himself denies that he has a great original voice. He concedes that it is the chorus of voices, including dialect (I would add), that allows him to make that one beautiful song.
English and dialect are solo as well as harmonic instruments of unique timbre in an orchestra of melodious, symphonic sounds. When someone says they love English and hate dialect or vice versa or that they love songs with words and dislike songs without words, run from them fast, like a crazy man, for they are the real lunatics and are decidedly not of sound mind (if you get the pun, run).
We must be clear and sober about the uniqueness, duality, independence and interdependence of English and dialect. Another Nobel Laureate, Joseph Brodsky, reminded us that civilizations are finite and when they begin to fall, it is not legions but language that keeps the center of civilization from disintegrating. He contends that the job of holding the center often belongs to those at the periphery. (Pay attention West Indies Cricket). In this context and to paraphrase Brodsky in reference to Walcott, and to us all, the throbbing and relentless lines of anyone who values and respects the sound of language must keep arriving on the English language like tidal waves. The outcome will be the most logical thematic and stylistic evolution of the English language.
A final word of warning to those who, in desperation, want to kill dialect to save English. In a poem called The Spoiler’s Return (in reference to the calypsonian, Spoiler, “Ah Wanna Fall”), the love for the sound of languages and a musical ear for the play on words ignite Derek Walcott to write what I think is the fitting epitaph for dialect: “Tell Desperados when you reach the hill, I decompose, but I composing still”. This, a real spoiler might say, to settle the score and to try a ting, takes us back to Bach in the department store and Air on a G String.
Dr. Lester CN Simon
One find day, destined to be made wretched by a vacuous salesgirl, I was in a delicious dilemma in a department store on my maiden visit to London, trying to explain myself to an assemblage of fine English women. I was buying a reading lamp. The bulb was sold separately. Since I was set for some hard studying long into the night for one year, I decided to purchase two bulbs instead of one. The smiling salesgirl seemed bemused and amused by my West Indian English twang. She beckoned to another perky salesgirl who waltzed up to the counter allegro con moto and asked me to repeat my request.
By this time, the music in the store had changed to Air on a G string by Johann Sebastian Bach. I have to confess that it did occur to me that Bach’s pleasing Air on a G string might have modulated from the G string of the violin to its perfect meaning had she been sunbathing on Dark Wood Beach in Antigua. But by then I was so distraught I simply repeated, slowly, that I wanted two bulbs. To my unforgettable amazement, the airy, fairy one said, “Did you say toe?” Between my two and her toe, I heard myself exclaiming, exasperatingly (in central London), “Lady, why don’t you speak English!”
The concern about not speaking dialect in school is opening up a debate that we must entertain. The paradox of colonial identity haunts every West Indian from the teenager in the sex video who spoke in abject dialect to the 1992 Nobel Laureate for Literature, Derek Alton Walcott. Yes, A West Indian was valorized by the Swedish Academy for discovering the English language 500 years after we discovered Christopher Columbus.
All of us in post-colonial societies in general, and school children in particular, are caught on the horns of the dialectics of dialect. The creativity in our native dialect is being asked to be sacrificed in lieu of the creativity of an imitative tongue. Surely the solution to this dilemma must include removing the bastardization of our natural dialect and officially embracing it whilst we embrace English, Spanish and all languages.
Louise Bennett told us through her Aunty Roachy that if dialect is a corruption of English then English is a corruption of Norman French and Latin etc. Here’s one for the school pikiniega: The great Shakespeare, Chaucer and Robert Burns whom we revere so much, (Who you trying to fool with your ploy?) wrote dialect that to an Antigua Grammar School head boy, sounded like Dutch.
This does not mean that English must not be our official language of communication. You have to know both English and dialect well to know when and when not to confuse but to suffuse the two. We cannot love English and hate dialect. If we do, Walcott suggests that our bodies will think in one language and move in another. What an awful discordant sight that would be on parade.
When Walcott writes of how schizophrenic it is to be wrenched by two styles, he is warning us not to satisfy the notion that to change our language we must change our lives, or (I would add), that to change our lives we must completely change our language and irreverently abandon our native tongue. The very nature of a developing West Indian society is constitutively, politely schizophrenic. Walcott himself denies that he has a great original voice. He concedes that it is the chorus of voices, including dialect (I would add), that allows him to make that one beautiful song.
English and dialect are solo as well as harmonic instruments of unique timbre in an orchestra of melodious, symphonic sounds. When someone says they love English and hate dialect or vice versa or that they love songs with words and dislike songs without words, run from them fast, like a crazy man, for they are the real lunatics and are decidedly not of sound mind (if you get the pun, run).
We must be clear and sober about the uniqueness, duality, independence and interdependence of English and dialect. Another Nobel Laureate, Joseph Brodsky, reminded us that civilizations are finite and when they begin to fall, it is not legions but language that keeps the center of civilization from disintegrating. He contends that the job of holding the center often belongs to those at the periphery. (Pay attention West Indies Cricket). In this context and to paraphrase Brodsky in reference to Walcott, and to us all, the throbbing and relentless lines of anyone who values and respects the sound of language must keep arriving on the English language like tidal waves. The outcome will be the most logical thematic and stylistic evolution of the English language.
A final word of warning to those who, in desperation, want to kill dialect to save English. In a poem called The Spoiler’s Return (in reference to the calypsonian, Spoiler, “Ah Wanna Fall”), the love for the sound of languages and a musical ear for the play on words ignite Derek Walcott to write what I think is the fitting epitaph for dialect: “Tell Desperados when you reach the hill, I decompose, but I composing still”. This, a real spoiler might say, to settle the score and to try a ting, takes us back to Bach in the department store and Air on a G String.
Sunday, April 15, 2007
Ducks! Ducks! Ducks Man!
NOUGHT INTO NOUGHT
Dr. Lester CN Simon
Sometimes, when you are overwhelmed, as one of my maternal aunts (King Obstinate’s mother) was wont to become, your only recourse is to stand akimbo and shout, “I will lift up my eyes onto the hills”. But when you live on a relatively flat island like Antigua or Barbuda, you cannot look to an exhaustible number of hills forever. Sooner or later, you have to look elsewhere to find a rational explanation for what on earth is going on in West Indies Cricket.
Having made the bold assertion, in newsprint “to rahtid”, that there was a divine and rational explanation for the conjoining of the Cricket World Cup and the bicentenary of the legal end of the British Empire Atlantic Slave Trade (BEAST), I feel compelled to find a divine and rational explanation for the dismal performance of our cricket team.
Divine and rational explanations demand a careful study of mathematics. After all, it was Euclid, the Greek mathematician, who said, “The laws of nature are but the mathematical thoughts of God.”
Imagine if you can, 242 runs divided equally amongst 11 West Indian cricketers. Each player makes an average of 22 runs. More realistically for the West Indies Cricket Team, divide zero runs by 11 players. The obvious answer is an average of zero runs per player. Division is all about sharing or distribution. When there is little or nothing to share or distribute, there is little or nothing to get. We West Indians know this very well. Sharing a little or sharing a lot is predicated on good management, realistic expectations and cooperation between management and workers. Some of us West Indians do not know this at all.
Now that you are versed in the practice of divisional mathematics, imagine that the legacy of West Indies cricket and the expectations of West Indian people are represented by a very large number. If, after watching the West Indies Cricket Team, you cannot imagine a very large number, consider the same 242 runs you imagined before. The prize-winning question becomes what is the result of dividing our legacy and expectations, or the number 242, or any number greater than zero, by zero itself? The quotient or answer is not zero. You cannot share or distribute something amongst nothing. It is a mathematical and absolute absurdity. This is what the West Indies Cricket Team has become. But wait; there is more; so rally round, according to Lara, the “Rest Indies”. By the bye, if the allegation is true that our cricketers perform better at night, in relative darkness, why can’t they bat? Do you think they are smart enough to get that?
The natural destination of our mathematical journey is the enigma of dividing the zero West Indies Cricket Team by the nothingness or zero of the West Indies Cricket Board, or vice versa. In mathematical terms, this idea is said to go beyond absolute absurdity and to become indefinable. If it is an absolute absurdity to divide a positive integer, like our legacy and expectations, amongst nothing, which is personified by either the West Indies Cricket Team or the West Indies Cricket Board, then to divide or share or distribute the zero Board amongst the zero cricketers, or vice versa, must be an indefinable, alienable thought.
To redefine ourselves in sports, as in life, 200 years after we have wrestled legal freedom from the BEAST, the two zeros in our sporting life, which mirrors our entire West Indian life, must be disbanded. We must continue to question the competence of those so called successful business managers who perform so poorly when they are removed from the trappings of hereditary, social and political connections.
Yet these are the very same business gorgons who are barefaced enough to talk about ordinary West Indian people being afraid to take risks in business ventures. The little sugar cake and lollipop vendor at the side of the road takes more risk relatively, every single, blessed day and would have done infinitely better. Incarcerate the kings! Incinerate the keys! And may the good Lord have mercy on your torrid soul if you confuse these instructions.
Nought into nought not only just cannot compute; it is mathematical heresy. Try it on a calculator. The better ones will give “error” for an answer. It is not just that you cannot divide zero by zero. It is that the very thought of it is truly the quintessential, incomprehensible and indefinable absurdity of West Indian life. My beloved aunt taught me this fundamental mathematical fact, probably because she knew that even Christopher Columbus, bearing maiden gifts of shiny things, can-cups and all, understood precisely that.
Dr. Lester CN Simon
Sometimes, when you are overwhelmed, as one of my maternal aunts (King Obstinate’s mother) was wont to become, your only recourse is to stand akimbo and shout, “I will lift up my eyes onto the hills”. But when you live on a relatively flat island like Antigua or Barbuda, you cannot look to an exhaustible number of hills forever. Sooner or later, you have to look elsewhere to find a rational explanation for what on earth is going on in West Indies Cricket.
Having made the bold assertion, in newsprint “to rahtid”, that there was a divine and rational explanation for the conjoining of the Cricket World Cup and the bicentenary of the legal end of the British Empire Atlantic Slave Trade (BEAST), I feel compelled to find a divine and rational explanation for the dismal performance of our cricket team.
Divine and rational explanations demand a careful study of mathematics. After all, it was Euclid, the Greek mathematician, who said, “The laws of nature are but the mathematical thoughts of God.”
Imagine if you can, 242 runs divided equally amongst 11 West Indian cricketers. Each player makes an average of 22 runs. More realistically for the West Indies Cricket Team, divide zero runs by 11 players. The obvious answer is an average of zero runs per player. Division is all about sharing or distribution. When there is little or nothing to share or distribute, there is little or nothing to get. We West Indians know this very well. Sharing a little or sharing a lot is predicated on good management, realistic expectations and cooperation between management and workers. Some of us West Indians do not know this at all.
Now that you are versed in the practice of divisional mathematics, imagine that the legacy of West Indies cricket and the expectations of West Indian people are represented by a very large number. If, after watching the West Indies Cricket Team, you cannot imagine a very large number, consider the same 242 runs you imagined before. The prize-winning question becomes what is the result of dividing our legacy and expectations, or the number 242, or any number greater than zero, by zero itself? The quotient or answer is not zero. You cannot share or distribute something amongst nothing. It is a mathematical and absolute absurdity. This is what the West Indies Cricket Team has become. But wait; there is more; so rally round, according to Lara, the “Rest Indies”. By the bye, if the allegation is true that our cricketers perform better at night, in relative darkness, why can’t they bat? Do you think they are smart enough to get that?
The natural destination of our mathematical journey is the enigma of dividing the zero West Indies Cricket Team by the nothingness or zero of the West Indies Cricket Board, or vice versa. In mathematical terms, this idea is said to go beyond absolute absurdity and to become indefinable. If it is an absolute absurdity to divide a positive integer, like our legacy and expectations, amongst nothing, which is personified by either the West Indies Cricket Team or the West Indies Cricket Board, then to divide or share or distribute the zero Board amongst the zero cricketers, or vice versa, must be an indefinable, alienable thought.
To redefine ourselves in sports, as in life, 200 years after we have wrestled legal freedom from the BEAST, the two zeros in our sporting life, which mirrors our entire West Indian life, must be disbanded. We must continue to question the competence of those so called successful business managers who perform so poorly when they are removed from the trappings of hereditary, social and political connections.
Yet these are the very same business gorgons who are barefaced enough to talk about ordinary West Indian people being afraid to take risks in business ventures. The little sugar cake and lollipop vendor at the side of the road takes more risk relatively, every single, blessed day and would have done infinitely better. Incarcerate the kings! Incinerate the keys! And may the good Lord have mercy on your torrid soul if you confuse these instructions.
Nought into nought not only just cannot compute; it is mathematical heresy. Try it on a calculator. The better ones will give “error” for an answer. It is not just that you cannot divide zero by zero. It is that the very thought of it is truly the quintessential, incomprehensible and indefinable absurdity of West Indian life. My beloved aunt taught me this fundamental mathematical fact, probably because she knew that even Christopher Columbus, bearing maiden gifts of shiny things, can-cups and all, understood precisely that.
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