{"id":166,"date":"2007-01-17T22:01:13","date_gmt":"2007-01-18T02:01:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.trinidadandtobagonews.com\/blog\/?p=166"},"modified":"2007-01-18T07:52:14","modified_gmt":"2007-01-18T11:52:14","slug":"a-little-child-shall-lead-them","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.trinidadandtobagonews.com\/blog\/?p=166","title":{"rendered":"“A Little Child Shall Lead Them?”"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Linda E. Edwards
\nJanuary 17, 2007<\/i><\/p>\n

\"Choc'lateI have not met Choc\u2019late Allen, but the adulation of three media columnists, two in the Guardian, one in the Express and at www.trinicenter.com caught my attention. Immediately the above quotation came to mind. I also thought of Lincoln Myers, who fasted on the steps of the Halls of Justice twenty or so years ago, to many odd comments and assumptions. I thought of Christ, fasting in the wilderness, and of Ghandi, and the Dalai Lama, of Muslims fasting for Ramadan, and Christians who used to fast during lent, and I thought of the bloodily violent movie Children of Men that opened in theaters in the U.S. last Friday.
\n
\nThe quote above refers to my subtitle for the movie, the bloodiest shooting gallery of a movie that I ever saw. There may be some that are bloodier, but I do not usually go to movies, I could have missed them. I went to this one because the New York Times reviewer spoke of its saving grace towards the end. The movie is an eerie portrayal of what the world could look like at The End, a swirling morass of death and destruction. Set in Britain and filmed in grainy, grim colours, the film depicts a scenario where Britain has incarcerated every person not of British heritage living there. Every foreign name and accent (blonde haired and dark, Chinese, Asian) are rounded up in the name of terrorism, and brutally shipped off to detention centers. There they riot and scream and have their heads bashed in. Some clearly do not understand what is happening to them, but are bashed in anyway. Within the transport buses are cages where people are separated. And of course some terrorists strike back. A conglomerate o f resistance includes Africans, Englishwomen and men, some Muslims and a very brave Arab woman. <\/p>\n

At the center of the story is a young African woman who is pregnant, in a country where the birthrate is now zero, for eighteen years, and no one is saying why. All kinds of people want to get hold of the child, to use it, yet unborn, for political purposes. A few goodhearted people try to protect the mother and unborn babe. They are pursued and targeted for death by both the resisters and the British police. In one gory scene, a \u201cterrorist\/freedom fighter,\u201d always a matter of interpretation, is shot through the throat as they speed along with the pregnant girl in the back of the car. So much blood! She, it turned out, had given birth once, to a child for the guy who is now trying to protect the girl. <\/p>\n

A series of murders, bomb blasts and gore ensues. They dodge bullets, get scrape wounds and seem about to be done in, until the Arab woman gives them shelter. She does not know the girl is pregnant. When she comes back into the room, and sees the child; she is transformed, and risks her life to get them safely to another destination. Everyone with whom the young mother comes into contact, in that overcrowded tenement being shot to hell by the British troops, is transformed by the crying of the child. They reach out to touch, they clear the way amid shrapnel and bursting bombs. The child, its mother and their protector get to the street, where the British troops, armed, rampant and bristling, are blocking the way. The cries of the child opens a path. Soldiers fall to their knees. All weapons are lowered to resting position. In that moment, the whole country, the only one left standing seems to realize that its survival lies in that one baby and its mother. By the time the shooting starts again in the background, the child and her mother are in a small boat being rowed out to sea to rendezvous with a steam boat that would take them to safety. The protector\u2019s chances are slim. He is mortally wounded, but we hope that the mother and child make it. <\/p>\n

This little African girl, born to a mother with no stated father, becomes the symbol of life for a dying world. The clothing, mostly wrapped blankets; and the colour of the film, evoke Biblical images of the Christ child and its mother, protected by a man not the child\u2019s father. The language is from hell. The newborn infant is a symbol of hope. <\/p>\n

Little Choc\u2019late Allen is evocative of hope. While there is hope, the rest of the nation could each ask: And what can I do? A tangible, specific thing, not write in the papers only. <\/p>\n

Those guns in the hands of criminals are coming from somewhere, by someone or someones, at huge profits. When? Where? Where cocaine and compressed marijuana come in, guns also come in. Yet lock-downs and drug sweeps are annoying to most people who see them as inconveniences. We want paradise to be paradise, without working to keep it so, without any individual effort. Well, if I want my roses to bloom, I have to take care of my garden. It\u2019s my garden. My neighbor is not going to do it for me. A gun will not cause my garden to grow. <\/p>\n

I recently downloaded Google Earth (google.com), a satellite hookup that enables you to visit anywhere in the world from your desk in front of the computer. I spend a lot of time looking down on Trinidad and Tobago, at the two ships loading at Point Lisas this rainy morning, at my friend\u2019s house in Diego Martin, and at the naked exposed coastline of TnT, with little white dots on the water. I think of a child being home schooled by her parents, and what would happen to the place where she ought to continue her studies at University, if things do not improve. I look at the clear dirt roads leading from the north coast over the mountains, and wonder what traffic comes across there, and who knows about this. I also look at the small hill that protects the Diego Martin Valley from a tidal wave on the North Coast, and I am troubled also, about what a violent undersea earthquake can do to those I love.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Linda E. Edwards January 17, 2007 I have not met Choc\u2019late Allen, but the adulation of three media columnists, two in the Guardian, one in the Express and at www.trinicenter.com caught my attention. Immediately the above quotation came to mind. I also thought of Lincoln Myers, who fasted on the steps of the Halls … Continue reading “A Little Child Shall Lead Them?”<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-166","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general-tt"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.trinidadandtobagonews.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/166","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.trinidadandtobagonews.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.trinidadandtobagonews.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.trinidadandtobagonews.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.trinidadandtobagonews.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=166"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.trinidadandtobagonews.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/166\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.trinidadandtobagonews.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=166"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.trinidadandtobagonews.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=166"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.trinidadandtobagonews.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=166"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}