Kalypsoul: The Other Self: Visit to the Prime Minister

Friday, February 04, 2005

Visit to the Prime Minister

(Dr. Eric Eustace Williams, Premier/Prime Minister 1956-81)

Visit to the Prime Minister

Well awrite nah, yuh ent boun to push mih so
I come here long before you, yuh know
Well ah get een de bus an ah pay mih fare
An ah get orf by de roundsabout in St Claire
Ma’am could I help you? Dat is de guard at de gate
Ah comes to see de doc. Where is his orfice situate?
Sorry Ma’am but no visitors today
You may come back on Friday or nex week Monday
So you mean to say I get up long before three
Ketch de firs bus from quite San Souci
Sleep still in mih eye – ah com een town
Now all yuh people want to push mih around
Eh, eh! I is a citizen an ah knows mih right
Same ting ah was telling Vio de udder nite
Ah wants to see him right now, get dat straight
An doh gimme no talks; dis business cyah wait
How yuh watchin mih so like yuh tink ah mad
Hear nuh, I is a distinguish pusson here in dis Trinidad
Doh tell me yuh never hear bout me?
I marrid de biggest fowl tief in dis country
He nicer dan you wid yuh bald-pated mout
But A! A! Yuh know de man shovin mih out!
Mister, doh push yuh han in mih face. Ah say doh push yuh han in mih face!
Allyuh people wants to see ruction in dis place?
You telling me my face squashy like mud
But a mosquito bite you an spit out de blood
An yuh behind – it flat like a 100 meters race
Life nowadays ent as hard as yuh face
Corbeaux does pass yuh an steups fus yuh stink
An yuh face – it like a big shot kitchen; it have two sink
Doh talk bout yuh lip - it stretch out like it arskin for more
If ah had a dorg dorter, ah tek yuh for mih son in law
It look like every time yuh open yuh mout
Two teet does steups an walk out
An yuh head so big, it look like ah young whale
Wen it ready to put dong, doh forget, ah want a male
Yuh ent too big for mih to put yuh over mih knee
Yuh ever hear bout lil axe dat does cut dong big tree?
Look, jus carry mih to de man before ah start to cuss
Look mih five dollars done jumpin up in Vio purse
Doh tink I put orn nice dress, necklace an shoe
To come quite here to parade for you!
Awrite, jus wait here yuh go see wot yuh could do?
Yuh constipated chicken, yuh better hurry before I get blue!
An he so darm thin he could get a paunch if he swallow a channa
An he mout ben up like if it turning a corner
But de grass growin nice around here, eh!
Lemme siddong on de lawn til de bastard appear
Ah now sittin dong to enjoy de breeze
Miss Lady, Miss Lady, come dis way please!
Good morning Mr.Prime Minister I is Rose from San Souci
Yes suh is I who did want to see yuh urgently
An dat guard yuh have out dey, he comin out o he shell
An he more waste dong dan a sno-kone in hell
Dese young people eh! He ent even start to cut teet
Why de hell yuh ent sen he home to watch Sesame Street
Mih reason for comin? Well suh Vio bet mih five
Dat ah cyah get een here today to see yuh live’
Dat is all ah win, so tanks for letting mih een
Well is now Rose playin San Souci Queen!

© KPLewis (Kalypsoul)
1973

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The Way I Use Language

Author’s Note: Codeflow

You will find that I have started to experiment with movement in communication referencing (in speech and thought patterns) from dialect to standard that is neither unidirectional nor formulaic. This is deliberate. The style used here is my experimentation with what I call code-flow. I find myself writing the way I speak – in a comfortable, fluid mixture of standard and dialect, often within the same sentence, the same thought. It is what we Caribbean people do in uncontrived everyday speech. It is not code-shifting with which the literary world is familiar. Code-switching or code- shifting tends to follow a certain pattern, dialect for speech and standard for description and narration as has been traditionally used in Caribbean fiction. I am taking it a step further, letting dialect flow into standard and back again in both dialogue and narration/description, mingling together in the same sentence, the same thought. To me this shows the true fluidity/reality of how we operate linguistically in everyday life. We do not think in standard English and converse in Trini dialect; we think in both and speak in both but not all the same time. I may begin a thought in the standard received form but suddenly I want to express surprise, hilarity, indignation, outrage and the standard does not have the right words. I flow effortlessly to that in which I can express those thought, those ideas, those sentiments most comfortably. I express them and, depending on what I wish to reference next, I either move back to standard, stay where I am or move deeper into another dialect comfort zone. I may say it in French Patois or Cocoa Panyol or a dialect of Hindi or of English or I may use a uniquely West African turn of phrase or grammatical construct or express m thoughts in a totally creative word or expression known only to my country or one group or individual within. Language gets created through use and new words and expressions all have a very specific starting point.

Code switching is an improvement on the outright rejection of the use of dialect as having no place in the written word or in Caribbean literature. It also differs from the outright rejection of the standard as a form of linguistic resistance to colonialism. Yet, code switching is a colonized, conformist mode that, in spite of itself, accepts the superiority of the standard and makes apologies for dialect by restricting its use only to direct speech. It reflects the pedagogy of colonial education which polarized the acceptable standard of the reading books and the classroom from the unacceptable dialect of everyday use by everyday people. It was a time when the whip was applied to purge the tendency towards dialect use in respectable settings.

Code sliding attempts a more integral blending of the two and brings together a variety of Caribbean dialects in one form. It moves in the direction of defining a distinct and decolonized Caribbean identity in the aftermath of colonialism. The term code-sliding, however, implies for me a lack of control, a downward sort of slippery slope movement, and a built-in acceptance of linguistic hierarchies. Instead I advance the concept of code-flow which conveys the sense of non-hierarchical fluidity and an effortlessness that defines acceptance of a unique identity in the context of postmodernity rather than deliberate conscious resistance in the context of coloniality or postcoloniality. It speaks of creativity, reinterpretation and transformation. The smooth fluidity of language that melds the standard with dialect in a thought, in a phrase, in a sentence, shows not so much a rejection of historic influences but an acceptance of the new self, the birth of a Caribbean identity in which colonialism and an ethos defined by resistance to it are merely blurred distant memories. Caribbean code-flow essentially involves and emerges from an unequivocal acceptance of all aspects of a new self: Africa, Europe, India and Mesoamerica, all integral to the new identity through reinterpretation and transformation. It is méstissajé, creolité, unrepentant.