Den­zil Mo­hammed

?My Face­book sta­tus a while aback said it all: "Den­zil Mo­hammed just got his phone bill and is about to pass out." Though I didn't ac­tu­al­ly faint, I felt faint. I was light-head­ed for a while at the hefty charge, which, though I was ad­vised nev­er to con­vert any­thing in the US to the Tri­ni dol­lar, I quick­ly punched in­to my cell­phone's cur­ren­cy con­vert­er. That's when the nau­sea set in. It's a sick­ly feel­ing that comes and goes, punc­tu­at­ing the month like a pe­ri­od. And yet, like a glut­ton for pain, I plea­sure my­self with over­seas calls at will, on­ly to cringe when the cost comes round to bite me in my ten­der spot.

Bought post­cards

It's lit­er­al­ly the price I pay for be­ing away from my loved ones. Un­ac­quaint­ed with the "any­time min­utes" con­cept, they call at their leisure out­side of my any­time, which de­pletes my month­ly al­lowance. When I call them (with their hot­foot) on their cell­phones, I get charged dou­ble the land­line rate.

When they send fond and oc­ca­sion­al­ly stu­pid text mes­sages, I get charged for that, too. Few would dis­agree that to­day's ubiq­ui­tous com­mu­ni­ca­tion tech­nolo­gies are a bless­ing. Ac­cord­ing to the CIA World Fact­book, there are 1.008 mil­lion cell­phones in the land of 1.3 mil­lion peo­ple, and bet your bot­tom dol­lar most of those phones have an "i" be­fore them by now.

There are 96,710 peo­ple on Face­book's T&T net­work, which is a dan­ger­ous­ly con­ser­v­a­tive num­ber, con­sid­er­ing how many Tri­nis, like me, live abroad, and how many Tri­nis, like I once was, just don't know how to link their pro­files to a net­work. When the US Air­ways pas­sen­ger jet crash-land­ed in New York's Hud­son Riv­er on Jan­u­ary 15, the news broke world­wide with a pho­to tak­en by a cit­i­zen jour­nal­ist that was up­loaded to Twit­ter. I used Flickr to send pho­tos of Fourth of Ju­ly fire­works to Face­book in­stant­ly, and pic­ture-mes­saged friends in T&T a pho­to of a man­go, to find out what kind it was be­fore I bought it. One of my lec­tur­ers is trav­el­ling to New Or­leans next week for a con­fer­ence, and will con­duct her class here in Boston via Skype.

She'll be able to de­liv­er her lec­ture, lis­ten to ques­tions and feed­back, and see stu­dents' pre­sen­ta­tions and Pow­er­Point slides. But I thought bless­ings were free. Nev­er have I been forced to fork out so much dough for a share of con­ver­sa­tion. So I pur­chased post­cards in bulk, on­ly to find out postage had gone up in the US in May. And even when try­ing to write more than sim­ply "Hav­ing fun here," I had to nav­i­gate among "Do not write be­low this line" spaces, pho­to cred­its, cap­tions, bar­codes, lo­gos and pre­pos­ter­ous icons of state birds and beasts. And it was on­ly then that I al­so re­alised how in­sane­ly long some T&T ad­dress­es are for such a minis­cule place.

Do I re­al­ly need to state: "Be­hind the Sev­enth-Day Ad­ven­tist Church" in a mail­ing ad­dress? At that point, I tried some hard tac­tics nev­er be­fore at­tempt­ed: I forced my moth­er to learn to use e-mail. Oc­ca­sion­al­ly she'd call (out­side of my any­time min­utes, of course) to say she got my e-mail, but couldn't open it, and won­dered what it said. Or, she'd call to ask how to open at­tach­ments, de­spite the in­struc­tions on open­ing at­tach­ments I painstak­ing­ly penned in the e-mail. Or, in­stead of tak­ing the time to send e-mail, she'd call to say why she hadn't been e-mail­ing. And then she won­ders why my phone bill is so high.

Berlin to Tokyo

No doubt, though, for the tech-savvy Tri­nis study­ing or work­ing abroad, to­day's per­va­sive com­mu­ni­ca­tion tools–get­ting faster and small­er and more ver­sa­tile every day–help to keep us ground­ed, con­nect­ed and sane.

We main­tain blogs that di­arise our thoughts, feel­ings and ac­tiv­i­ties. We Tweet on Twit­ter to let the world know where we've been and where we're head­ed.

Once in a while, I'll get a phone call from Lon­don, or a video call from the British Vir­gin Is­lands, or an in­stant mes­sage from San Fer­nan­do from some­one who just wants to hear my voice or see my face or find out how I'm do­ing. I've "met up" with friends from as far back as pri­ma­ry school on Face­book whom I've not seen in decades, and who now live in cities as dis­tant and di­verse as Berlin, Mil­wau­kee and Tokyo. With­out typ­ing a let­ter, I can click and see what uni­ver­si­ties they've at­tend­ed, what qual­i­fi­ca­tions they got, where they work, to whom they're mar­ried, and how drunk they got last week­end.

And any time I feel as though I'm go­ing crazy–with the os­cil­lat­ing weath­er, the pres­sures of grad­u­ate study, and the tribu­la­tions of be­ing a small man in a strange land–I have myr­i­ad meth­ods of reach­ing out, stay­ing in touch and find­ing re­as­sur­ance. As dif­fi­cult as it of­ten is to be a Tri­ni abroad, and de­spite the fact that noth­ing can re­place a hug or a kiss or the mag­i­cal spon­tane­ity of tac­tile con­tact, we've got ways of bridg­ing the gap, as­suag­ing the pain and feel­ing the warmth. Just don't do it out­side of my any­time min­utes–please.