Shereen Ali

Prof Sel­wyn Cud­joe strong­ly op­pos­es the of­fi­cial plan to build a mul­ti-sports com­plex at the Tacarigua/Or­ange Grove Sa­van­nah. It would be like pour­ing con­crete on top of the Queen's Park Sa­van­nah in town, he says: a form of ex­treme com­mu­ni­ty sac­ri­lege.

Cud­joe is pro­fes­sor in com­par­a­tive lit­er­a­ture and Africana stud­ies at Welles­ley Col­lege, Mass­a­chu­setts. Born in Tacarigua, he left Trinidad in the 1960s, and now di­vides his time be­tween the States and T&T.

He has al­ways main­tained close fam­i­ly and com­mu­ni­ty ties to Tacarigua, and has writ­ten aca­d­e­m­ic pa­pers, and even pro­duced a doc­u­men­tary, on the com­mu­ni­ty his­to­ry of the area. Late last year he pub­lished the 58-page book, Pre­serv­ing the Tacarigua Sa­van­nah, specif­i­cal­ly op­pos­ing the pro­posed sports com­plex with clear­ly ar­gued rea­sons.

Cud­joe, a burly, out­spo­ken lit­er­a­ture pro­fes­sor who loves his neigh­bour­hood and his com­mu­ni­ty, spoke can­did­ly with SHEREEN ALI.

Q: Can you share some child­hood mem­o­ries of grow­ing up in Tacarigua and what the Sa­van­nah meant to you as a youth?

A: Every­thing hap­pened in the sa­van­nah. I went to Tacarigua EC School, which bor­dered the sa­van­nah–so every­body played in the sa­van­nah. Foot­ball, crick­et, soc­cer.

Tacarigua was an agri­cul­tur­al area–Or­ange Grove Sug­ar Es­tates was one of the largest sug­ar es­tates. There was a live­stock/agri­cul­tur­al show every year–peo­ple brought their best pigs, cows, yams, their best cas­sa­va–and every year peo­ple looked for­ward to that com­ing to­geth­er...I re­mem­ber that from when I was a lit­tle boy, right up to the 1960s.

Schools had school gar­dens to en­cour­age kids to plant, and make a com­post heap, and grow dasheen and tan­nia and so on. And be­cause of the cen­tral­i­ty of the sa­van­nah, that took place there too.

Years ago, when the length of the sa­van­nah from the East­ern Main Road (or the Pri­or­i­ty) to the Churchill Roo­sevelt High­way was emp­ty space, the first Caribbean Girl Guides meet­ing took place in that sa­van­nah. They all camped on the sa­van­nah–such was the space.

Ro­han Kan­hai (a Guyanese crick­eter who rep­re­sent­ed the West In­dies in 79 Test match­es, one of the best bats­men of the 1960s) played one of his first games in the Tacarigua Sa­van­nah, as did Bri­an Lara as a young boy.

Every­thing hap­pened there. It was our cen­tre. We used to have sports meet­ings. Re­mem­ber, we had no oth­er ac­tiv­i­ties. It was an out­door so­ci­ety–com­pared to to­day, when we live in­doors, with our com­put­ers–but then, it was an out­door so­ci­ety. You went to the rivers, you played foot­ball and crick­et in the sa­van­nah. Life was lived out­doors rather than in­doors.

So the sa­van­nah was the cen­tre around which all the life of the com­mu­ni­ty re­volved.

Why did you de­cide to write Pre­serv­ing the Tacarigua Sa­van­nah?

Tacarigua has al­ways been my home. My peo­ple have lived there since be­fore slav­ery's end.

In Ju­ly of 2013 a friend–Ul­ric "Bug­gy" Haynes–came and told me, "Hey, they tak­ing over the Sa­van­nah." That's when I wrote the first es­say, Pre­serv­ing the Tacarigua Sa­van­nah, about the peace­ful his­to­ry of Tacarigua...the Hin­dus used the El Do­ra­do or Par­adise grounds, Mus­lims were in Dins­ley, and Africans in St Mary's...every­body had their own space, it was democ­ra­cy in the Greek sense, every­body just re­spect­ed each oth­er and shared.

And then what you have now is the im­po­si­tion by this for­eign en­ti­ty, called the Gov­ern­ment, who de­cide: "We know what's best for you." But you don't know what's best for us. We are the vil­lagers. We know what's best for us.

We know there are some in­dis­putable facts: there has nev­er been a po­lice sta­tion in Tacarigua. There was one in Tu­na­puna; in Arou­ca; nev­er in Tacarigua. We've al­ways been very peace­ful. That peace came about be­cause we were self-gov­ern­ing; be­cause we had the rivers; we had the sa­van­nahs; peo­ple blew off steam and had a place to ex­press their en­er­gies and ac­tiv­i­ties.

We al­ways knew that our com­mu­ni­ties were cen­tral. So we had our vil­lage coun­cil­lors; we had our con­certs; we had our plays; we had our moth­ers' unions; we had our gar­den clubs. We have been self-gov­ern­ing.

Some might say you may be de­fend­ing the preser­va­tion of the Tacarigua Sa­van­nah out of nos­tal­gia, and have lost sight of cur­rent com­mu­ni­ty needs. How would you re­spond?

First­ly: any healthy com­mu­ni­ty must have open spaces. Open spaces are cen­tral to healthy and sus­tain­able liv­ing. That has noth­ing to do with nos­tal­gia. You do not touch Cen­tral Park in New York, or Hyde Park in Lon­don, for in­stance. These are open spaces which are re­tained for the health of the com­mu­ni­ty.

Sec­ond­ly: that par­tic­u­lar area is the wa­ter basin for the en­tire Tacarigua, Tu­na­puna. Arou­ca and Ari­ma area. It's a wa­ter ta­ble. The wa­ter sinks in­to the ground. There are wells there. WASA has pumps there. Now when you put down a car park for 300 peo­ple, the wa­ter runs off...An ex­am­ple of that is when they took a small part of the sa­van­nah on the south­west­ern side to build a small car park, and the peo­ple in Trinci­ty are suf­fer­ing now be­cause the wa­ter, in­stead of go­ing in­to the ground, now runs off, back­ing up the sew­ers.

So it's not nos­tal­gia: it's about health! Wa­ter is very im­por­tant. When you take that car park for 300 peo­ple, and you put a sta­di­um for 900 peo­ple, and you put ar­ti­fi­cial grass–where is that wa­ter go­ing to go? And we've seen the ef­fects–in flood­ing. That's not nos­tal­gia.

Third­ly: what are these needs? The claim is that we'll have "elite" ath­letes–which is non­sense...We have al­ready pro­duced ath­letes (with­out such fa­cil­i­ties). What we are re­al­ly do­ing is de­stroy­ing the com­mu­ni­ty.

In T&T we nev­er plan ahead. Twen­ty or 30 years ago, Laven­tille was a thriv­ing place, with Des­pers, and peo­ple had jobs. Then when they mech­a­nised the port, peo­ple had no jobs, and what you have is a spate of mur­ders. Be­cause peo­ple need places to play and to work, and to let off steam.

Now to Tacarigua: a build­ing such as a $200 mil­lion aquat­ic cen­tre would have to be closed off and main­tained–for a par­tic­u­lar few. So what you're go­ing to have, I can con­fi­dent­ly pre­dict, is a rise in crime. Be­cause you would have more peo­ple com­ing to the area, (nowhere for them to play or re­lax), more kinds of an­ti­so­cial be­hav­iour...

So it's not about nos­tal­gia, but plan­ning.

In an age of re­pub­li­can­ism, it is the peo­ple who should de­cide what we want, based on our own tra­di­tions. Not the Gov­ern­ment. The Gov­ern­ment is dis­cov­er­ing they can­not solve crime by build­ing big­ger po­lice sta­tions; peo­ple must come to­geth­er and say: this is not ac­cept­able. For that, you need a sense of com­mu­ni­ty.

We al­ready have our own com­mu­ni­ty tra­di­tions in a place like Tacarigua.

Num­ber four: what is de­vel­op­ment? As op­posed to growth? Growth is sim­ply ris­ing sta­tis­ti­cal mea­sure­ments of GDPs, etc. De­vel­op­ment must mean the all-round de­vel­op­ment of peo­ple–not build­ings, not things, but peo­ple. De­vel­op­ment must arise out of peo­ple's nat­ur­al needs, and what is best for them, and how they could best re­alise them­selves liv­ing in har­mo­ny with their en­vi­ron­ment and their com­mu­ni­ty. That is de­vel­op­ment. Not build­ings for the sake of build­ings: that just im­pedes de­vel­op­ment.

Those be­hind the pro­posed de­vel­op­ment (at Tacarigua Sa­van­nah) are most­ly friends and col­leagues of Anil Roberts–and aligned with swim­ming, not foot­ball, soc­cer or many oth­er sports...

We're not against the project: they could build it else­where, if they want, and it could en­hance the en­tire area. But to do it here would dis­rupt the nat­ur­al sa­van­nah.

Why is pre­serv­ing her­itage (for in­stance, pre­serv­ing valu­able built struc­tures, or pro­tect­ing nat­ur­al ar­eas re­lat­ed to our cul­tur­al tra­di­tions) im­por­tant?

?

A peo­ple are their her­itage. A peo­ple do not ex­ist in­de­pen­dent­ly of their her­itage. You re­move that, and you have zom­bies. You have root­less liv­ing or­gan­isms op­er­at­ing in space and time–a for­mu­la for cre­at­ing crazy, dis­em­bod­ied peo­ple.

You are your past. You are your her­itage. I speak, con­scious of the fact that those who went be­fore me, made their con­tri­bu­tions to mak­ing so­ci­ety what it is. My her­itage is what I share in com­mon with oth­ers; for in­stance, my "Or­ange Grove-ness" or my "Trinida­di­an-ness."

Any so­cial de­vel­op­ment changes over time...in Trinidad, for in­stance, each peo­ple–African, In­di­an, Chi­nese–brought their own spe­cif­ic con­tri­bu­tions...and that's what makes you a Trinida­di­an. You are speak­ing of a cul­ture that has shaped and nur­tured you in terms of your lan­guage, your way of see­ing the world, even the Tri­ni love of fetes, or our T&T cos­mopoli­tanism...as op­posed to oth­er cul­tures...To say that we ex­ist with­out that, is not on­ly an anachro­nism; it's stu­pid­i­ty.

Peo­ple need a sense of be­long­ing in some place, a sense of con­ti­nu­ity and re­spect for who they are. If you have no sense of that, you are al­most a dis­em­bod­ied be­ing; you are a noth­ing; you are a neg­a­tive. Cul­ture and her­itage give you a sense of con­ti­nu­ity that is a link be­tween the past and the present; which of course helps to shape the fu­ture.

Peo­ple will come to­geth­er on the ba­sis of their own so­cial link­ages, when they have things in com­mon....Peo­ple are what de­vel­op­ment is about.