Your Honours,
Hotel Torarica, Paramaribo, Suriname, July 22, 1967: sitting around the bar, my first night at a major conference. “They’re sorting themselves out nicely”, remarked a senior colleague looking around, “into Hunters and Gatherers”.
And he proceeded to explain: conferences are held ostensibly to share information, to make contacts, to plan the way forward. But the real business of conferences is to get away from your wife and have a great time.
“Gatherers” are the old geezers there to gather news about former colleagues. “Hunters” are the younger Turks who want to watch women take off their clothes, sample some local pork or maybe just drink themselves socially stupid.
One colleague told me how he negotiated with a prostitute who spoke only Taki-Taki, the Suriname dialect. A tipsy Trini doctor tried to take a street strumpet to his hotel room, causing an uproar. “You are insulting this lady”, he kept telling the doorman while the damsel (who had certainly never been called “lady” before) just wanted out of there. You’d be surprised to learn which Bajan delegate got himself into a similar fix in Cuba.
Of course I’ve only attended technical conferences. Maybe politicians do it differently. Let’s see . . . .
We young agricultural officers once buttonholed our then Minister in the parking lot, eager for news of his recent conference in Rome. “I drink nuff rum”, he told us happily, looking sideways as was his wont, “nuff rum!”
And one recalls how the inimitable Dr Waldo Waldron-Ramsay once told Joshua Nkomo about an encounter with a lion. Apparently Waldo and a female companion were driving through the wilds of Africa when Waldo desired to urinate. He waded through tall grass and had just started to deliver when he realised a large lion was copulating not far away.
The lion (I’m relying on memory here) roared angrily at this intrusion and was about to charge the hapless Waldo when he (the lion) got a glimpse of the Bajan bushmaster Waldo was holding. And with a muted mutter of “Hail, O King of the Beasts”, he slunk off into the bushes.
On hearing this, Joshua Nkomo observed that it would have been most fitting if the lion had eaten Waldo since he (Waldo) had failed to provide suitable female companions for the conference which they were then attending in New York or somewhere.
My point here, your Honours, is that my new WEEKEND NATION Editor Carol Martindale has issued a mandate for “compelling, exciting and solid” content, attributes conspicuously absent from my writings. And when I sought solace from former editor Sanka Price, he advised: “Write ’bout she, nuh!”, a suggestion lacking the substance and syntax one expects from an iconic SATURDAY SUN sex story columnist.
No, sorry, my point here is that . . . okay, one more little piece to put in before I get to the point. We at the Agricultural Development Corporation sometimes contributed to cabinet papers on proposed projects. And often they would be rejected for being “too long” (More than a page? I can’t remember.)
So, here we have politicians averse to reading long documents, conferences where long documents are produced, written in tedious, forbidding legalese requiring a panel of judges to interpret, nightly entertainment, formal or on a one-on-one basis, casinos, unlimited free booze . . . .
I ask you, Your Honours, if our politicians can’t get through our own laws which reach the Senate with all sorts of mistakes and nonsenses, are they capable of handling anything like the Treaty of Chaguaramas?
We now hear that some irrelevant Inter-American Court has ordered us to change our constitution because we “signed on”. Same with the CARICOM mess. And all without any consultation with or approval by we the people.
Conferences, in our opinion, constitute extenuating circumstances, cruel and unusual duress, hassle free hornication, circumstances which impair judgement. And we humbly request that any document signed at a conference be declared null and void.
By the way, we also request that no Bulgarians be sent to prison lest we end up having to give them air-conditioned houses.
One can imagine them calling home to mother:
“Mamma, Doods es yest yike Bulgaria. Only they spell it with a double L!”
• Richard Hoad is a farmer and social commentator.
