RE:

2013-Nov-29-0838Hrs

Dear Errol:

It was good to see Hazel's account, where you have to ask for  napkin, and Julien puts you through changes just to get one, sending her to matron. I think that some of those non-teaching characters in the Mausica play decided they would not be denied, and were intent to give themselves more lines than were allotted. When I got there, havenites used to sing a calypso about Julien...Count Julien. It was a song of displeasure about him.

When St. Rose, chief custodian was leaving, they called an assembly, and indeed, after he was presented the gift, he came to the podium and made a speech to the full assembly. The most memorable entreaty he offered in that speech, was "Dont marry until you get your degree". Now this was in a college where Harry Joe had already given to us the mathematics of marriage by saying 330 plus 330 make 660. (For those who came in late, that was a reflection of the big teacher salary increase,  and what could happen to it if we did not just only add, but multiply).

But some of us including yours truly who at that time was caught in the throes of Mausica love, and charging full speed ahead to marital nirvana, took offence (or is it offense??) and decided to make a calypso about this...part of which was as follows:

Well he work for five years as chief custodian

So when he leaving we show appreciation

We bought a gift an wrap up nice for he

But he saaaaay he want ah assembly

So he invited the staff and the warden too

he say come down look St. Rose want to talk to you

He lean on the lectern and he start talking to we

Friends listen to St.Rose Philosopy

(He say)

Doh married until you get yuh degree

But I tell him I have my degree arready

Ah find that St. Rose too farse,

He step right outa he class

Ah hear they ketch him wuking down in de labasse

Now I am aware that many did not like the calypso because they felt it was harsh, and etc. and so forths. But unlike the one I made about the girls, in which I also had a La Basse line,  I am not apologizing about this one. I am invoking free speech. And in any case it is kinder than the one the other Mausican sung about Julien.

By the way, anybody care to publish the lyrics for that one? I would understand if there are no takers. Deceased Martin Brathwaite used to sing the chorus out loud in Haven, and my roomate Sto made sure I learned it.

Now back to St. Rose, and indeed I defied him and got married to a mausican before getting a degree. But that is another story. I am yielding nothing to St Rose.

------

In another vein I was glad to see that my Haven brother Rodney is OK now. I agree with him that every day is Thanksgiving day, but not because I have any religious bent. Yesterday, which was thanksgiving day in America my brother called me, and I had to remind him that down here in Trinidad we are different from America in that we celebrate thanksgiving anytime.

"Giving a thanksgiving" is something members of the African community here did routinely long time, inviting all of the children in the neighbourhood to a prayers in the house, along with some neighbours, and of course some baptists, and cooking food, making sweet bread and sharing. Thanksgiving was the primary time when you got parch corn and chillibibbi. Again, for those who came in late, or those mausicans who grew up in town, in places like St. Clair, or, uhm, Arima, chillibibbi is what you get when you pound parch corn in a mortar.

AS to what is parch corn, a reasonable follow up question if you were middle class, parch corn is dry corn that you temper in a big iron pot, till it becomes high brown. Parch corn could offer surprise when you try to bite it. Hence chillibibbi , which is the powdered version.

The only problem with local thanksgivings that I found as a child, was that you had to wait till the baptists were finished with the prayers part of the proceedings before you could get anything to eat. And those were long prayers.

Now as I said, thanksgiving could occur at any time. No special day. If your child pass common entrance, or college exhibition, or if somebody in the house got a job, or something like that, where it look like providence was smiling on you...you showed appreciation through the invocation of chillibibbi.

Scratchie

Theodore Lewis 69