The empty feast
In the Port-of-Spain, glistening skyscrapers and brilliant feats of architecture are rising out of the sparkling sea, pulled out by the able hands of a government obsessed with development. The people of this country demand cars and Internet access and everything else the first world has gorged itself upon. This country is intent on having all the trappings of the first world, and there is no doubt in my mind that it will, one day very soon. But I wonder at what it means when appearances are valued more than reality, when you pursue ends and forget the means.
On the coasts, villages lie silently in the shadows of smokestacks that pump money into the country's coffers. In the cities, parents beg for the safety of their children. In the fields, men wonder where they will go when the land has surrendered all it has to give. Is this what development means? Is this the price of modernization?
I refuse to believe that we must sacrifice who we are to get what we want. But my newly cynical heart tells me it is inevitable, that the allure of the modern, the luxurious corrupts. Who will halt industry, when it has provided so many jobs? Who will stop the rise of the city, when it offers so much convenience? Who will say "no," when everyone else says "yes"?
Perhaps the practical, rational part of humanity always wins, discarding what is ethical for something shinier and more substantial.
At the California site of DukeEngage in Trinidad and Tobago, there are proposals, reports, and goals, all the trappings of the professional, the effective, the efficient. Visitors will be impressed with community-based meetings and individual presentations. But what are these papers and performances? Ends—for student empowerment, for meaningful engagement, for much-needed assistance—or means—for another summer of the same, for resources, for applause?
There is, no doubt, a checklist for developed countries like this one to be considered modern. One day, all the boxes will be checked and the country will rejoice in its arrival into the modern, the proud, the developed. And maybe that’s when we will see that the cars and the buildings were supposed to be merely the means of fulfilling the promise of a happy, fulfilled people, and instead the material suddenly became an end in itself, and success was abandoned for the appearance of success.
And there is, no doubt, a checklist for project sites like this one to be considered legitimate, acceptable, up the high standards of this ambitious program. Maybe then we’ll see if the reports and spreadsheets were merely signs of an empty promise to this community or if they are indeed harbingers of true progress.
A Trinidadian once told me that the people of this country are starving in the middle of a feast. The televisions and microwaves don’t fill that void in your heart that yearns to feed upon the intangibles, that craves the sweet tang of justice and the refreshing taste of honesty.
Maybe that practical, rational part of my brain has failed to fully develop. Maybe I believe that the principles that have founded the mission are more important than the mission itself. Maybe I am mistaken and I should have just eaten my piece of the pie.
I am leaving to go back to the United States tomorrow morning. I withdrew from the DukeEngage program last Friday. I’m starving, and we’re in the middle of a feast.
To follow the experiences of the five students of the DukeEngage in Trinidad and Tobago project, please visit their blog at http://devilsintrinidad.tumblr.com/.
