Me­dia col­league and friend, George Lea­cock, beat me to it in a so­cial me­dia post on Sun­day, by quot­ing GML To­ba­go Cor­re­spon­dent Eliz­a­beth Gon­za­les’ re­port on Fri­day’s dra­mat­ic ocean res­cue of a man off the north­west­ern tip of Trinidad in chop­py, open wa­ters.

Pas­sen­gers on board the Buc­coo Reef in­ter-is­land ves­sel had spot­ted a lone swim­mer who was wav­ing des­per­ate­ly out at sea as he trod wa­ter and fought for his life. The fer­ry crew re­spond­ed quick­ly enough to launch a lifeboat and ex­e­cute a dra­mat­ic res­cue—the first ever un­der such cir­cum­stances, ac­cord­ing to Nid­co.

This was when the sto­ry got even more in­ter­est­ing, prompt­ing George to quote just one sen­tence from Eliz­a­beth’s dis­patch: “While some pas­sen­gers were hap­py to help,” the re­porter wrote, “oth­ers were ir­ri­tat­ed over the ex­tend­ed time the voy­age to To­ba­go took.”

The swim­mer was one of three peo­ple even­tu­al­ly saved af­ter a boat left T&T, bound for Venezuela in dark­ness, but over­turn­ing in rough wa­ters. I do not sup­pose rou­tine mar­itime reg­u­la­tions were strin­gent­ly ob­served or that im­mi­gra­tion and cus­toms au­thor­i­ties played a role in en­sur­ing oth­er law­ful guide­lines were ob­served.

And, for a change some might con­tend, with hu­man car­go on board, the bow was con­spic­u­ous­ly due west and, from the stern, could have been seen the north coast shore of Las Cuevas. How both­er­some! They are both com­ing and go­ing!

It could have been much like a sim­i­lar jour­ney three years ago when, forcibly turned back at sea for Venezuela by “the au­thor­i­ties,” a miss­ing ves­sel was pur­port­ed to have tak­en two dozen peo­ple to their deaths. This prompt­ed som­bre re­flec­tions on this very page en­ti­tled: Three Lit­tle Boys.

I metaphor­i­cal­ly en­joined the fates of three lit­tle boys from three sep­a­rate mi­grant tragedies—Alan Kur­di of Syr­ia, Fe­lipe Gómez Alon­zo of Guatemala and a boy called “Pabli­to” of Venezuela on whom writer, An­na Levi, re­flect­ed:

“Pabli­to like an or­na­ment in his birth blan­ket/Asleep with his an­gels/Fall­en over­board/Tum­bling with the tides.”

I had at the time lament­ed the role of the “turn them back” and “close de bor­ders” (com­ing and go­ing?) crew—wil­ful­ly ig­no­rant of non­re­foule­ment oblig­a­tions un­der in­ter­na­tion­al law—who have, since then, nev­er been able to pub­licly and re­gret­ful­ly re­flect on a tragedy that saw some peo­ple brand­ing au­thor­i­ties, politi­cians, and reg­u­lar folks this side of the bor­der near sav­ages.

“Turn them back” (re­foule­ment) had by then be­come the stuff of po­lit­i­cal slo­gan and even of­fi­cial doc­trine—more so as a fall­back po­si­tion had “close de bor­ders” failed.

Now, don’t get me wrong, none of this is meant to ad­vo­cate dis­or­der or un­law­ful be­hav­iour. I am tak­ing aim at the psy­cho-so­cial pre-dis­po­si­tion that con­sid­ers a res­cue at sea an an­noy­ance—a need­less dis­rup­tion. Ex­perts on com­mu­nal men­tal ill­ness and sick so­ci­eties prob­a­bly have a name for this.

This can al­so be a fer­tile metaphor for a state of col­lec­tive be­ing–the lost and drift­ing en­coun­ter­ing the re­luc­tant and un­com­mit­ted, them­selves afloat but hope­less­ly lost.

All of this, even as we our­selves floun­der in a vast glob­al ocean of cog­ni­tive chal­lenges. On­ly on Mon­day, In­ter­na­tion­al Mi­gra­tion Day, UN Sec­re­tary-Gen­er­al An­tónio Guter­res put a brave and healthy spin on this: “If man­aged well, mo­bil­i­ty can be a cor­ner­stone of sus­tain­able de­vel­op­ment, pros­per­i­ty and progress.”

“If man­aged well”—much eas­i­er said than done. We al­so don’t ap­pear to be keep­ing an eye on this par­tic­u­lar re­quire­ment of the mi­gra­tion chal­lenge–even when it comes to what could well have been an at­tempt at vol­un­tary repa­tri­a­tion … per­haps.

It is al­so true that re­cent ex­pe­ri­ences have turned our at­ten­tion more in­ward than it is cur­rent­ly de­vot­ed to ex­oge­nous chal­lenges, how­ev­er ur­gent. The dis­com­fort is ev­i­dent. Wit­ness the par­ti­san con­fu­sion over Guyana/Venezuela when viewed as fu­el for sec­tion­al pos­tur­ing.

On stark dis­play has been the ab­sence of sound, in­de­pen­dent coun­ter­vail­ing val­ues at a time when na­tion­al de­ci­sive­ness on the ba­sis of ra­tio­nal dis­course is re­quired. While the of­fi­cial re­sponse has been con­sis­tent and clear, even if at times in­cor­rect or con­testable, noth­ing much has emerged that ap­pears to be from van­tage points un­touched by sim­plis­tic par­ti­san games­man­ship.

It seems so many times that we are all over­board and grasp­ing at the tur­bu­lent tide. The lifeboats and vests we dis­pense for our own ben­e­fit and sur­vival.