Soyi­ni Grey

Se­nior Pro­duc­er, CNC3

soyi­ni.grey@guardian.co.tt

Cheryl Lala is a non­con­formist. Not by choice, but by de­sign. Which is a hard thing to be in T&T. This is a coun­try that loves obe­di­ence, and Cheryl (pro­nounced Chair-Ril, not Cher-ril) Lala is not in­ter­est­ed in fit­ting in, but she’s not try­ing to stand out ei­ther.

At 65 years old, she is em­bark­ing on her third at­tempt to re­tire. This time, she’s sure that it will stick, though peo­ple have al­ready called to of­fer her jobs. But she is re­solved to take a break. Her last day at the of­fice was on Tues­day, and on Fri­day she hopped on a plane with her niece on a flight to Lon­don, then Paris, which will be the start of a much-need­ed va­ca­tion in Eu­rope. Lala, who de­spis­es be­ing bored, said she has plans to vis­it friends in Grena­da and a best friend in Mi­a­mi and to fi­nal­ly get some rest.

 She start­ed work­ing at 19 and has pret­ty much worked steadi­ly since then, in­clud­ing two pre­vi­ous failed at­tempts at re­tire­ment. There was her work in ad­ver­tis­ing, mov­ing through the ranks from copy­writer to cre­ative di­rec­tor. It was there that she first be­gan her pro­fes­sion­al re­la­tion­ship with the first fe­male pres­i­dent of T&T.

 “We weren’t like bo­som bud­dies, but we were friends with each oth­er over the years af­ter we went off to our ca­reers.”

Lala and Her Ex­cel­len­cy Paula-Mae Weekes, whom she worked for when she be­came pres­i­dent of T&T, first met in high school. Both ladies start­ed at Bish­op Anstey High School in 1970. Sharon Clark-Row­ley, the wife of Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley, was in the same class as them.

But when Lala worked in ad­ver­tis­ing, Weekes would reach out to re­quest that she de­sign her sta­tionery: call cards and let­ter­heads. Be­fore Weekes was elect­ed pres­i­dent, she was the Chan­cel­lor of the An­gli­can Church. She would again turn to her friend to cre­ate posters or newslet­ters for church events. Lala, her­self a non-be­liev­er, would cre­ate those posters per­son­al­ly, com­ing up with games and spe­cial seg­ments like “What the Pew Knew”.

 More im­por­tant­ly, when Weekes was an­nounced as pres­i­dent, Lala called her class­mate on the phone to of­fer some much-need­ed but un­so­licit­ed ad­vice. She told her not to an­swer the phone, es­pe­cial­ly if the calls came from the me­dia. If she ig­nored the first ad­vice, she told her what to ex­pect if she did take the call: “Be­cause you might be live on ra­dio, and you don’t know.”

That con­ver­sa­tion led to her man­ag­ing the pres­i­dent’s first ma­jor in­ter­view, and that’s es­sen­tial­ly how she be­came her com­mu­ni­ca­tions ad­vis­er.

 As pres­i­dent, Weekes de­vel­oped a rep­u­ta­tion for be­ing dis­ap­prov­ing. It seems the pub­lic and the me­dia found that she wasn’t warm. The pub­lic mis­con­cep­tion con­fused the for­mer pres­i­dent.

“Peo­ple thought that with this pres­i­dent be­ing a fe­male, they will get a moth­er,” she said. “She’s the pres­i­dent! She’s no­body’s moth­er!”

 It is a pat­tern that is be­ing re­peat­ed with the cur­rent pres­i­dent, who is al­so fe­male, for whom Lala al­so worked. “Every ar­ti­cle about (Her Ex­cel­len­cy) Chris­tine Kan­ga­loo has been she wore this! What that has to do with any­thing?”

 As some­one who has been for­tu­nate enough to work with two pres­i­dents, Lala has unique in­sights in­to their per­son­al­i­ties. She dis­cov­ered while work­ing with pres­i­dent Weekes that de­spite ap­pear­ances, they were both very sim­i­lar peo­ple. With Pres­i­dent Kan­ga­loo, she made sure that the new of­fi­cial was com­fort­able work­ing with her, telling the new Pres­i­dent, “You and I have to see if we get along, if we can do this job to­geth­er,” which they did un­til Lala’s re­tire­ment.

 When she is not rail­ing against gen­der norms, Lala is wor­ry­ing about the fu­ture of this coun­try. A pa­tri­ot, she has worked for peo­ple across the ma­jor po­lit­i­cal par­ties. Her stint in po­lit­i­cal com­mu­ni­ca­tions has giv­en her unique in­sight in­to the psy­che of this coun­try, its pub­lic, the role of the me­dia, and how hard it can be to in­form peo­ple who sim­ply do not want to be con­vinced oth­er­wise.

 “Peo­ple don’t know, and they do not want to know.”

 This “wil­ful ig­no­rance” means that some rather be­lieve what they want re­gard­less of the facts. The prob­lem is that these peo­ple aren’t silent.

 Where this be­comes a con­cern, Lala be­lieves, is the lack of civic un­der­stand­ing with­in the coun­try. Peo­ple do not know how the Gov­ern­ment works. They do not con­nect that through line that links poor ser­vice in pub­lic of­fices to the elec­toral process. Lala said this goes be­yond par­ty pol­i­tics be­cause then per­haps peo­ple would hold their rep­re­sen­ta­tives re­spon­si­ble for poor rep­re­sen­ta­tion in­stead of blind­ly vot­ing, or not vot­ing.

 “It’s time to vote for who is go­ing to solve my prob­lems, give me the life I think I de­serve, and man­age the coun­try how it is sup­posed to be man­aged. It mat­ters not what colour they wear, what colour they are, if their hair soft, if it hard, it don’t mat­ter to me. But this is why I de­spair for my coun­try be­cause most of us do not think like that.”

She be­lieves that ig­no­rance is be­ing ex­ploit­ed by our some­times pet­ty and vin­dic­tive politi­cians, and the cy­cle con­tin­ues. Now, Lala, who had said she would nev­er live any­where else, un­der­stands why some feel they must leave T&T to find their way.

 “I worked close­ly with these peo­ple (politi­cians), and I re­al­ly de­spair for the coun­try. I have be­gun telling young peo­ple to get out.”

 She, how­ev­er, was meant to live here. There is a dis­con­nect that can come when Tri­nis mi­grate. They move to a new coun­try and be­come cit­i­zens, but re­main aliens in their new home and, af­ter some time away, lose the abil­i­ty to func­tion ef­fec­tive­ly here. Lala said that must nev­er hap­pen to her. But in terms of ef­fect­ing pos­i­tive change in T&T, as an in­di­vid­ual, she does not know how to, and that frus­trates her deeply. 

When not think­ing about na­tion­al is­sues, Lala looks for­ward to her fu­ture with op­ti­mism. Read­ing must be done. She loves ro­mance, but not hor­ror (so no to Stephen King) and sci­ence fic­tion. De­spite man­ag­ing the Green Room at the re­cent­ly con­clud­ed Bo­cas Lit Fest, she doesn’t read a lot of Caribbean nov­els, but a chance en­counter with a Bar­ba­di­an sci­ence fic­tion writer at the fes­ti­val has her promis­ing to seek out her work.

There’s wood­work­ing as well. Years ago, she took part in a work­shop at the John Don­ald­son Tech­ni­cal In­sti­tute. Those skills need to be re­vis­it­ed. And then there is the tricky is­sue of her in­abil­i­ty to re­main re­tired. Lala said she may be will­ing to work on a per-project ba­sis, but a full-time job re­quir­ing her to dri­ve to Port-of-Spain in traf­fic is a com­plete no-go. WE mag­a­zine promised to check in with her in six months to see if she was able to stay away from the world of work.