Leroy George

In the strongest of To­ba­go ac­cents, my neigh­bour, Buzzer, asked me, “Tall boy … yuh friend who swim from To­ba­go to Trinidad, ah wha kin­da man dat? Dat ah mad­man?”

I tried to ex­plain to Buzzer that John Pro­cope was not just sane, but he was ac­tu­al­ly a very in­tel­li­gent per­son, ge­nius even. A for­mer co-work­er of Pro­cope hap­pened to be pass­ing by. He con­firmed that my psy­cho­log­i­cal as­sess­ment of John was ac­cu­rate.

Buzzer, be­ing old­er and ar­guably wis­er than the two of us, did not read­i­ly sub­scribe to our find­ings on the men­tal sta­bil­i­ty of now leg­endary swim­mer—Pro­cope. The old­er man high­light­ed that by his es­ti­ma­tion, on­ly a mad­man could or would swim the full dis­tance be­tween the two is­lands via non­stop swim­ming for about 24 1/2 hours, wear­ing noth­ing but his swim trunks and googles. This con­ver­sa­tion hap­pened the night af­ter John­ny made his­to­ry as the first man to do this swim unas­sist­ed and doc­u­ment­ed it via video footage.

Less than one year af­ter this, John in­formed me that he was go­ing to swim around the en­tire pe­riph­ery of To­ba­go. This swim will be no less than twice the dis­tance of the pre­vi­ous swim. I am now forced to take a deep­er look in­to the man that I have known for about one decade to re­vis­it the the­o­ry of my neigh­bour Buzzer. What kind of man is John Pro­cope?

Pro­cope was born not too far from the St Ann’s Hos­pi­tal at 10.25 am on Feb­ru­ary 8, 1976, at the Nicols Nurs­ing Home in Port-of-Spain. His moth­er, Pamela Pro­cope, had two chil­dren from a pre­vi­ous mar­riage (a girl and a boy). Get­ting di­vorced is sel­dom ever easy and recom­mit­ting to a sec­ond mar­riage al­so takes some brav­ery. The spir­it of courage must have been with Mrs Pro­cope when she gave birth to at­tor­ney Bruce Pro­cope’s son.

John was a bright stu­dent in school. His pri­ma­ry school ed­u­ca­tion hap­pened in Trinidad. His sec­ondary school ed­u­ca­tion was ex­pe­ri­enced in Great Britain, and his ex­pe­ri­ence with uni­ver­si­ty was gained in the Unit­ed States. From the Unit­ed States, he moved straight to To­ba­go, where he start­ed his ca­reer as a PA­DI scu­ba in­struc­tor.

By the time John­ny was in his 40s, he de­cid­ed to go on an ad­ven­ture to see how fit he could get ex­er­cis­ing with dis­ci­pline and con­sis­ten­cy. One day, he swam from Store Bay to Pi­geon Point and was sur­prised at his own fit­ness, so he did the same swim again; this time he swam back and forth from both beach­es. As his ca­pa­bil­i­ties in­creased, he even­tu­al­ly be­gan par­tic­i­pat­ing at triathlon events.

Dis­ci­pline and con­sis­tent ex­er­cise can give you great sta­mi­na but per­fec­tion re­quires some skill.

The win­ner of one of the triathlons he par­tic­i­pat­ed in gave him some ad­vice that caused him to learn how to swim with per­fect tech­nique. Calm seas nev­er made a great ship’s cap­tain and if you want to be a leg­end like Pro­cope, you will have to be ready to em­brace some daunt­ing chal­lenges. One day, John­ny and a friend de­cid­ed to swim from Arnos Vale to Store Bay (about 1/3 of the en­tire length of To­ba­go). One of the two swim­mers for­got to bring along his own wa­ter. In­stead of de­lay­ing the swim, John and his friend de­cid­ed to swim with the swim­mers, hav­ing just one bot­tle of wa­ter.

As they ap­proached Store Bay at the West­ern end of To­ba­go, an­oth­er chal­lenge arose, the Buc­coo Reef was in low tide. In­stead of giv­ing up, they swam around the reef rather than through it. By the time the swim was com­plet­ed, the two men had been swim­ming for 9 ½ hours.

If John could swim for 9 ½ hours un­der such im­per­fect con­di­tions, he thought, then un­der the most per­fect of con­di­tions, per­haps he could swim the en­tire dis­tance be­tween To­ba­go and Trinidad. His first at­tempt was with a team of friends on a day that was far from per­fect. In­stead of hav­ing to swim around a reef, the men found them­selves in wa­ters made im­pos­si­ble to nav­i­gate due to a ma­jor storm not too far away. John and his friends had the seren­i­ty to ac­cept the things they could not change, so they gave up af­ter swim­ming more than half the dis­tance from one is­land to the next.

It was not long be­fore Pro­cope at­tempt­ed his sec­ond swim. This time, he got even clos­er than the first time, cov­er­ing about 70 per cent of the dis­tance, but a strong cur­rent made com­ple­tion im­pos­si­ble. The third time was the charm and by Oc­to­ber of last year, John made his­to­ry by swim­ming from Scar­bor­ough all the way to Trinidad. Bri­an Lara once said that there is no se­cret to suc­cess. Pro­cope did not suc­ceed be­cause he was lucky, nor have his ac­com­plish­ments been as a re­sult of men­tal or phys­i­cal ca­pa­bil­i­ties that are su­per­hu­man. Hard work, mixed with con­sis­ten­cy, dis­ci­pline, with a mus­tard seed’s worth of faith and be­lief, are the tools that Pro­cope will be go­ing in­to the sea with to­day for yet an­oth­er his­to­ry-mak­ing swim around To­ba­go.

Ex­pe­ri­ence has taught him to start at the right time to catch the high tide that would en­able him to swim over rather than around the Buc­coo Reef. His last ma­jor chal­lenge on that lit­tle known swim from Arnos Vale to Store Bay will be his first chal­lenge con­quered, as he push­es him­self in­to an­oth­er stage of hu­man evo­lu­tion. You can fol­low Pro­cope’s swim to­day on Face­book Live via Fb.com/john­pro­copeswim. The swim will be cov­ered by sev­er­al plat­forms on tra­di­tion­al and so­cial me­dia. The Green To­ba­go Tours YouTube page will do a live broad­cast, start­ing just be­fore the swim be­gins at 8 am and al­so at the end of the swim, in­form­ing every one of the ex­act plat­form pages that can be used to fol­low this his­tor­i­cal event as it hap­pens.

Leroy George is the Pub­lic Re­la­tions Of­fi­cer of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Writer’s Guild, which can be reached via phone +1(868)6205799 or email at to­bagowrit­ers­guild123@gmail.com