bejeweled jackass

1. KEN LANS
The Bejeweled Jackass
My earliest memories of Trinidad are of Pointe-à-Pierre. I can remember go-
ing for walks in the afternoons, and seeing crabs scurrying away at our ap-
proach. We were living at that time in one of four small houses which were to
the left side of the Southern Main Road as one left Pointe- à -Pierre, going
north. It was almost at the bottom of the hill, before the railway bridge cross-
ing the road. From there we moved to a small apartment near the top of St.
Vincent Street in Tunapuna, a small town east of the capital Port of Spain on
the densely populated transportation route called prosaically “the East-West
corridor”. It was very close to where our maternal grandmother and aunt
lived. So close, that one of my older cousins was usually at our home to help
my mother with the young ones on weekday afternoons and on Saturday

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The Bejeweled Jackass
mornings. Our next move was to a rented house on Bowen Street which
was off the mainstream of traffic, but it was near enough to be within
convenient reach of all the places we considered important, it was also
down the street from the houses of my aunt and grandmother. An un-
plastered and unpainted tapia house, standing on one lot of land, stood
between the homes of my grandmother and aunt. Their homes were also
made of tapia but were plastered and white washed, and therefore had a
more finished look. These houses would be called wattle and daub (with

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The Bejeweled Jackass
tapia grass) in other countries. There were no
fences separating the houses. Boundary plants
clearly defined the limits of the properties and in
those days that was all that was needed. We
used the street in front of the houses to journey
between them except in mango season when we
had blanket permission to enter the neighbour’s
yard to pick up the fruit when they fell. Most of
our activities and social events were focused on
“Up the hill” due to the absence of other children
in the neighbourhood. At the time of our moving
there, I was the second of five children and the
only boy.
My mother made my first roller from a large tin
cover nailed to the end of a discarded broomstick
and its manufacture coincided with my first solo
trip to the shop on St. Vincent Street, the street

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The Bejeweled Jackass
next to the one on which we lived. On later reflection the play activities
my mother introduced to me always seemed to be a direct relationship to
the type of errands which I was old enough to do for her, and to the
speed at which she needed it to be done! Mastery of the messages and
the roller gradually increased the size and the speed of the gadgets, and
the distances that I traversed. Some of them were only to be used on the
flat if the message had to be hand-carried. This pre-planning ensured my
safety, the safety of the message, the safety of the money and the safety

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The Bejeweled Jackass

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The Bejeweled Jackass

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The Bejeweled Jackass
of the gadget. While I was permitted to go up the hill with any of my
rolling stock, coming down was a different matter once I had a message
in my hand! The chariot had to be left parked up the hill, to be retrieved
on another trip. I was told that this was to lessen the chances of falling
while I ran down the hill. However, I believed, but did not voice my be-
lief, that this was a ploy to get a ‘free message’ transmitted!
‘Trouble’ was, and still is a beautifully challenging word! It is a word
which adults love to use when they are either laying down the rules, or
when they are admonishing their off-spring! The meaning is never clearly

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The Bejeweled Jackass
defined, and because of this, interpretations vary, not only from par-
ent to parent, but from week to week, and they are sometimes de-
pendent on the time of year, or the religious observances that are
taking place at the time. It was the vagueness of the interpretation,
and the absolute certainty of the punishment when one was caught
sailing over the boundaries, that made it challenging. One soon be-
came an expert adventurer on the Seas of Trouble; the glow of suc-
cessfully getting away with it, the only prize.
One episode took place one week after the Emancipation Centennial

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The Bejeweled Jackass
celebrations in San Fernando. It was a swelteringly hot and humid day in
early July; so hot in fact that we elected to spend most of our lunch hour
in the sea at Flat Rock. Our good friend, a.k.a. ‘Big Fish’, was riding
home for lunch, being one of the lucky ones that owned a bicycle; he
lived on Lower Marryat Street. He had to ride uphill to get home and he
passed us pushing his bike and blowing profusely. He complained about
the heat, and as he spoke he saw the ice-cream vendor going down to
service the lunch-time crowd. His eyes lit up and he remarked that at

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The Bejeweled Jackass
that minute he would do anything to get an ice cream cone. It is truly
amazing what children can produce at a moment’s notice. Out of the
thin air it seemed a yellow Cayenne pepper was produced. It had a
healthy glow and a pungent smell that showed real promise. ‘Big Fish’
was invited to eat it in order to be rewarded with an ice-cream cone.
He took the pepper and ate it hurriedly.
While he bent over choking and gasping for air, we scampered down
the hill, stuffing down our sandwiches and dropping our clothes on the
sand before diving into the sea. We spluttered on the salty sea water
while watching ‘Big Fish’ hurriedly riding to his house for liquids and
lunch.

11. KEN LANS
The Bejeweled Jackass
Although we were frequent lunch hour visitors to the sea at Flat Rock
where we swam and played around, none of us had swim suits, for
they would have needed explanations at home, and they would have
been a bother to lug around, especially when wet. We swam “ au
naturel” which was logically simpler. The warning bell usually gave us
ample time to scamper out of the water, don our clothes and run up
the hill to take our places in the line. Harry had joined our group snick-
ering after the escapade with ‘Big Fish’, a frequent tormentor of his.
Not a regular lunch-time swimmer he decided to make up for previ-
ously lost opportunities by staying in the sea to the last possible mo-
ment. He watched us scamper out to dress and run up the hill but he

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The Bejeweled Jackass
decided he would skip the assembly line and sneak into the classroom
before the teacher arrived and then boast about it later.
One of the lessons we had learnt from experience was that bread and
jam sandwiches were a definite no-no when you were going down to
the sea “in ships” as we were fond of calling our experience. We knew
the location of all of the ants’ nests at Flat Rock, and took care to drop
our clothes a safe distance away. Since a safe distance from ants in
indeterminate over a period of an hour we usually kept them busy by
discarding our wrappings close to the ant hills. As always we turned

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The Bejeweled Jackass
our pockets inside out and inspected them before we put on our school
uniforms and we also checked each other’s uniforms-laughing as we
raced up the hill-for while changing, one of our group had moved
Harry’s clothes close to a nest of stinging ants. We looked behind us as
hundreds of yards away Harry was walking on the sidewalk beating at
his short pants and bare legs. Not wanting to take his shorts off in pub-
lic to remove the ants from sensitive areas Harry took a short cut and
ran full tilt up Paradise Hill to the school yard where we heard later that
he had beaten off the intruders on the bathroom walls.

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The Bejeweled Jackass
We however trooped back to school by our favourite route that passed
in front of the San Fernando Town Hall and Police Station on Harris
Promenade. It was just after midday and the sun was beating down on
our heads. This was not the usual time for fancies which are far more
likely to sprout into belief when the sun has quit for the rest of the
day, and when the moon is reluctant to perform her regular duty. We
were surprised to see a crowd of people, probably about four hundred
in all, standing and milling around the front of the Police Station. Our
first impulse was to detour onto Court Street to avoid the crowd, but

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The Bejeweled Jackass
as we got closer we saw no signs of menace, and curiosity won out
over caution. We went into the crowd to find out what was happening.
Nowadays a crowd of four hundred would put a paid-to-party celebrity
to shame but in 1940s Trinidad a crowd of that size was unusual, espe-
cially as there was a World War being fought, and this crowd was in
front of the largest Police Station in south Trinidad.
We had been taught at school and reminded by posters in all the public
places to be careful of “loose talk”, of the possible presence of spies
and this message was reinforced on many of the war bulletins, so we
knew that the correct and safe way to get information was to casually
stroll through the crowd with a studied air of indifference.

16. KEN LANS
The Bejeweled Jackass

17. KEN LANS
The Bejeweled Jackass
There is no better way of eliciting information from Trinidadians. The
sight of an indifferent face passing through the phases of polite lis-
tening to increased interest, then amazement and incredulity, is im-
possible to resist, and everyone tries to be first with the “scoop”. It so
happens that the crowd had gathered in the hopes of seeing a don-
key that was being held in police custody. It was no ordinary “hee-
haw” but apparently one with gold teeth and an expensive wristwatch
on one of the forelegs. After all of these years I cannot remember if it
was right-footed or otherwise.

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Those details escape my memory–fed as it was by hearsay rather than
by any visual confirmation on my part.
And so it was that we were late for school that afternoon and missed
Harry’s ant removal and any revenge planned by ‘Big Fish’, or put an-
other way, we loitered in the School of Rumor far longer than we in-
tended, for as we moved through and circled in the waves of human
gossip, the rest of the stories came out. The donkey was not only be-
jeweled but could actually speak. Then came the moment that the
crowd was awaiting; a policeman came out of the Station and the
crowd surged forward to pose questions. We could not hear what he
said, but what we were told was that he had confirmed that they had a
strange donkey in custody, and that it was really a Chinese shopkeeper
from Princes Town, a smaller town further south, who had the ability
to “turn” into an ass.
As to how he knew that it was a Chinese man, the policeman explained
that the donkey spoke with a Chinese accent and was asking for Chi-
nese food!

19. KEN LANS
The Bejeweled Jackass
We never found out what eventually happened with the crowd, for
that last remark reminded us that we had a Dean of Discipline at Na-
parima College who was able to “make us speak in strange tongues.”
We ran back to school paraphrasing a verse from Shakespeare’s As
You Like It that we were studying in English literature:
“ if it came to pass
That any man turns into an ass,
Leaving his wealth and ease,
Only to please his stubborn will,
Ducdame, ducdame, ducdame:
Here shall he see
Fools as gross as he,
If only he will come to me.”
Now wrapped in the cocoon of safety of distant years, I feel that it
would have been worth the punishment to follow the Greek call of
fools into a circle-ducdame. We might have been able to see that
donkey eat with chopsticks!