By Linda E. Edwards
January 17, 2007
I have not met Choc’late 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.
The 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.
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 “terrorist/freedom fighter,” 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.
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’s chances are slim. He is mortally wounded, but we hope that the mother and child make it.
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’s father. The language is from hell. The newborn infant is a symbol of hope.
Little Choc’late 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.
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’s my garden. My neighbor is not going to do it for me. A gun will not cause my garden to grow.
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’s 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.
Forget the movie, just a load of tripe to mislead us.
Things not going to get better.With all that nakedness,drukenness,witchctraft and revelry that represents recreation for my people,that tidal wave can come from anywhere.
The thing about fasting “when ye fast” no one must know .Its your petition with you and the Most High.
The leader of the country should take pattern and proclaim a national fast for a year,and repent.
No carnival, parties,chutney,alcohol consumption etc.
Curfew for a year ,get back to truth and reality. Family and community services with loud singing and giving praise and thanks.The hope for our loved ones lie only in faith and trust in Jesus Christ .There is none other.
Should they get the Taliban to carry out your mission?
The “Taliban “has already put us in this position.
Following false doctrines and teachings after the tradition of men and not God.Attending to the lusts of the flesh,the lust of the eyes and the pride of life.
If by a word we move the wining an’jamming from north to south,move the smelter from land to sea,why can’t the same word bring us to repentance.
“Render unto Caesar what is Caesars”. Fear not the Tidal Wave as Patrick Manning has almost finished the Tsunami Shelter in Tarouba. The Lord helps those who helps themselves, ye of little faith too afraid to go tho mass at midnight, or to enter the forest to cut palm fronds.
BTW did God not make us naked and the devil caused us to cover up?
I would wish that those commentators who call the name of the Lord as a comma, would go to the website http://www.odili.net a portal into African news,just like Trinicenter is for us, and read of the exploits of a Pentecostal Minister calling himself the Rev. Dr. King, who is now under sentence of death. And then, there were those two Godly men, Rev. Jim Jones and David Koresh of the branch Davidians.
I endorse this article.
Choc’late gravy train
BC Pires
IF you wanted more proof of the leadership crisis in this barrel of crabs than the Police Commissioner begging Vindra Naipaul-Coolman’s kidnappers to be nice boys and release her, please, it was spread out massive (in a tiny package) on the steps of the National Library last week, where a child barely into puberty, who should have been in home-school, attracted personal visits and public admiration from the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition.
Continue reading, “Choc’late gravy train”
As I was driving through Couva I beheld a most gaudy residence, it looked like an ice-cream sand castle.Every where there was space, some shiny flashy object was adorned. The expanse was enough to house a multitude, and shiny new cars occupied the drive way. This was around Christmas, and there was enough electricity being used, to light up a shanty town. Lo and behold, from this majestic abomination emerged a geri-curled pastor, followed by a tone deaf choir singing “Don’t use condoms even if they saves lives”.
Boy Christianity sure has come a long way from riding a donkey, and working construction.
Good showing Reason! good showing!!
Don’t stop there.
Render therefore unto Caeser the things which be Caeser’s,….and unto God the things which be of God.
The coin had Caeser’s inscription but we have God’s inscription, being made in His likeness and image.Thus we ought to give to God His own ie, our ownselves .Like He did looking after the things of others( if ye sow in the flesh ye shall reap in the flesh, but if ye sow in the spirit you’ll reap in the spirit.)
God helps those who helps themselves is not scriptual.None of us can add to ourselves one cubit of stature.Our help is in the Name of the Lord,which made heaven and earth and all that therein is.Turn to Him.
A prudent man forseeth evil and hideth himself .The simple pass on and are punished.They eh ‘fraid to go in the dark just wise.
Ms Edwards yuh only looking one side
How ’bout Bono leading the cause for Aids,Desmond Tutu leading the fight on apartheid,Martin Luther leading the captives free,Jimmy Carter working to eliminate river blindness,St Mikes hospital,St Joseph hospital,Mt Sinai hospital,look ah running outa space.
Reason,you do God’s work like that curly hair guy and you’ll look shiny too!Find out how many lives have been changed,captives liberated ,mourners comforted etc.by that guy’s proclamation of the Gospel.See with your spiritual eyes too!
Gods work does not shiny make.Selling snake oil on the other hand is quite profitable. Churches in this land are a joke. I don’t see how all those people in Sando, priest included, attend mass and observe the masses of vagrants camped out outside, or in POS right behind the Trinity Church. Where does the $$$ go. O yea to look shiny.
BTW The founders and philanthropists of Mt Sinai Hosp., do not believe in Jesus .
“Reason,you do God’s work like that curly hair guy and you’ll look shiny too!Find out how many lives have been changed,captives liberated ,mourners comforted etc.by that guy’s proclamation of the Gospel.See with your spiritual eyes too!”
chandar…don’t forget to include how many have had their wallets emptied too.
Reason that is not true.Do your research.
Did you not read when Moses came down from the mount his face glowed so brightly that no on could look at his face$
or of Jesus when He was transfigured how His face shined ever so bright and His face shone so bright that His
whole countenance was changed.So it is with everyone who has been with the Lord,as the Holy Spirit do distribute as according to the Fathers will and purpose for His glory.
From all that is known no one has ever given for the Lord’s work has ever gone away empty.The Lord never suffers the soul of the righeous to famish.Today there are millions of people who are blessed by those who gave.Even in our own land they came taught English ,built scores of institutions taught the Word so the helpless can have an opportunity
Sitting on the same place where these missionaries sat,and hear of projects forthe Masai,those in Malawi,of those sponsored from refuge camps,of those being rescued from the streets of Calcutta,one can freely give. We are all products of these missionaries who gave.You eh Know that?
Of course there are always swindlers working for the evil one,even Judas who walked with the Lord.
It seems some people rather get knowledge from movies and man’s doctrine rather from the Engrafted Word which is able to save their lives.As long as the things of the world so thrill man we would be prisoners,for He came to set the captives free!
Riaz you could quote my writings anywhere if it will make your opinion look good. God’s word is not bound
chandar ramkhelawan that is not true. Do your research.
Did you not see as the pastor drove out of his driveway, how the sun glistened off his BMW 7 series. I am no product of any missionary.
Turn down the volume, you’re disturbing the neighborhood.
chandar, thanks for the permission to quote you to make my opinion look good. I’ll have to use caution though as you are the same person who thought Mesopotamia was in Africa.
But seriously, the missionaries whom you talk about so highly, they basically bribe people into their religion. If Presbyterian missionaries in Trinidad didn’t offer schooling, how many Presbyterians would be in Trinidad today? They go into the Amazon and parts of Africa and impose Western Values on people which are impractical. The Masai are a semi-nomadic people but they encourage the Masai to settle near schools and churches they set up. This may sound good to you who lives in a Westernized society but this endangers the Masia way of life and the eco-system of the environment with over grazing. They make the people of the Amazon cover their bodies in Western garb in 35-40 degree heat near 100% humidity levels. The missionaries in Trinidad’s past can’t be all good as you claim also. If they were then why did the Amerindians massacre them?
My face shines too….when I don’t bathe.
The Missionaries came here enslaved the natives, and when the natives resisted the slave labor, and were beaten, they defended themselves and killed the “holy” men. Warriors as they were they killed the Gov. who came to punish them, and were then driven to Toco, and were slaughtered by the Christian troops. I guess they had to kill them to save them. Who was massacred in the era of San Raphael? Jesus said “When you pray go to your room, and close the door.” I guess the rear ends of all those altar boys also had shiny bottoms after attending Sunday school .