RE: Going back to the campus

2013-Aug-03-0028Hrs

Dear Errol:

I found going back to the campus to be a moving experience. I live in Arima and pass by the college regularly. But being in the auditorium was special. I could hear someone shouting out "Mayfair", a voice from 46 years ago. Could have been Andre. Or Bullock. I could see Bunny Osbourne coming back into the Hall after I had shouted out "Bolero", and putting out an all points bulletin for "one name". He did get that name, but the problem for him was what to do with it.

The moment of silence for our fallen colleagues, and the spontaneous calling out of some of the names was poignant. The Mausican alas is not immortal. My year group has lost 14 good souls, more than one tenth of us. I remembered the pudding falling down on the late Cheryl Gittens in the formal dinner. Errol Jones, Stanisclaus, and Raymond Mendes (and probably Noel Duncan) were bringing the flaming pudding into the hall, the tallest men on campus. And the flames got too uncomfortable, and they tried to make an adjustment, and the pudding shifted. And fell on poor Cheryl, a girl whose spirit was quintessentially Mausican.

I also remembered Yvonne who had the same number as I (20), thus we had to perform before the assembly together twice, on the same morning. I suppose at some point they cut out that aspect of the place. But in 1967 when I got there, each morning two people performed. You sang, read a poem, danced...whatever.

Can some of you send a note to Errol indicating what were your performances. I think I read an essay for one of them,"The case for not conforming" that made its way into the Mausican.

I saw a few people from my year group, 67-69, and a few who were a year upstream , and some a year down stream from us. Links in a chain that was important to me. That annual replenishing and the tension it produced, cannot be compared.

Mausica in its hey day, was before computers and power points. The library was never adequate. But the textbooks were great. The lecturers stood there before a podium and explained their content. I am still to work out the paradox of Dukhan, being so incredibly deadpan and boring, and yet educational psychology was the subject I think students loved the best.

Mausica remains for me a very emotion-filled memory, I think I grew up there. One of our graduates,Leroy Cox, from Point Fortin, sang a calypso, and in the chorus was a mournful refrain

"Mausica! doh leh me go, doh leh me go you know

That I love you so

Mausica! doh love me go, doh leh me go you know

How I love you so.

I could see how the thought of leaving the place could have caused a man to grieve like that.

Scratchie

Theodore Lewis 69