Good Friday Boboolee
By Linda Hutchinson-Jafar
Guyana Chronicle
April 8, 2007
AN EARLY morning drive on Good Friday morning through the central areas of Chaguanas and Couva in Trinidad turned into an adventure of sorts as my family and I ended up trying to see who can spot the boboolees outside homes and businesses.
In case, you're not familiar with the Good Friday tradition in Trinidad, boboolees are made from stuffed pants and shirts and a crude head to look like a scarecrow and stuck on sticks along the roadways.
Boboolees are supposed to symbolise Judas who, according to Biblical scriptures, betrayed Jesus Christ, ending in his crucifixion. People pass and hit the boboolees with sticks and some, with a good aim, could pelt it from a passing car.
There seemed to have been a particular theme this year in Central, reflecting the mood and thoughts and maybe even anger of some people.
Several boboolees we passed were dressed as cricketers, with white shirt and pants and all padded up.
A sign around the neck of one boboolee read, "ICC killing Caribbean culture." Another read, "WI team is ah boboolee, everybody beating them."
I could relate to the first sign, in particular, since frankly, I have been soured and turned off by the ICC World Cup cricket taking place in the Caribbean.
Like hundreds of thousands of Caribbean people, I love cricket with a passion. I follow the WI team, lose, win or draw, whoever is at the helm of captaincy.
I particularly enjoy cricket when it is played in the Caribbean as I can feel the excitement watching the matches on the television, as I would sitting down in a stand at an Oval.
So what has turned me off? - as if you did not know or even feeling the same way I'm feeling.
Truly, I feel a great con job has been done on the unsuspecting Caribbean people by the strict rules imposed on us by the ICC and our governments, as the supporting cast.
Donald Marcano, perhaps just another average guy in Trinidad, was so upset by the ICC rules that he took time out to write a letter to the Sunday Express talking about how the ICC had misunderstood West Indian cricket culture and why they were paying for it at the gates with poor crowd support.
Before going to a one day, he said in his letter, families get up early, cook a variety of food, having organised the drinks in coolers the night before and their flags and musical instruments.
"We spend Trinidad and Tobago dollars so we cannot afford to buy food and beverage in US currency. We blow horns, beat drums and knock bottle and spoon...," he wrote in reference to the strict ICC rules about entering the cricket ground with food, drinks and musical instruments.
"But you have to come to the West Indies with your rules and U.S. food prices and expect to see full pavilions. I would like you to know we are still supporting our boys, we are just not supporting the ICC. You can find us at the rum shops and bars, watching big screen (TV), eating jerk pork, geera pork, barbeque chicken and pelau, blowing horns, beating drums, knocking bottle and spoon plus the added bonus of instant replay," he wrote.
"So if you ever want to 'come by we' and hold a world cup again, I think you would have to be a little more lenient with your rules in order to make a profit and please we're too poor to spend US dollars."
Well said, Donald.
I spoke to another cricket fan, Harry Rampersad, who said the ICC's high entrance fees and strict rules have turned him off from even looking at the matches on television.
"Nothing resembles the kind of cricket matches that are played in the Caribbean. No music, no dancing, no conch-blowing, no characters in the stands, people can't even talk loud," said Rampersad, noting that cricket for the vast majority of Caribbean people was not just about a sporting event.
"It's a major cultural and even social event for us. We take our families, with our big basket of food, share it around with people we don't even know, get drinks from them and become instant best friends. It's a big picnic with jokes and laughter all around. Whatever the ICC and the governments have put on does not reflect Caribbean cricket."
Even if the entrance fees were too expensive for most of us, watching the ICC matches on television is like watching a funeral pass by. Empty of any excitement - unless you think the Australians romping around with plastic kangaroos is funny - the music, the laughter, the loud talking, the friendly heckling, the passing around of food, dancing, the characters, the conch-blowers, the families who bring their aged parents and young children, and the list goes on.
Anil Roberts, ah real Trini to the bone - and I might add, a passionate Caribbean man - was bodily thrown out of the spanking new Antigua ground two weeks ago by police and his ICC press pass taken away from him.
According to Roberts, all he was doing was getting on loud as usual, supporting and heckling the cricketers on the ground depending on how they were playing.
That is typical of the average West Indian cricket fan in the Caribbean.
But the ICC doesn't know that.
We don't burn down houses and stores and bomb buses and mosques and churches and spit on our cricketers.
We cuss when Lara get out for a duck, we quarrel with Chanderpaul to stop voopsing (that surely is a West Indian made up cricket word) and hit the bloody ball and laugh when the ninth or tenth man comes confidently to rescue the WI team by hitting a massive six.
That's our cricketing culture and it should not have been such a big mystery to Lara when he said he could not understand why the pavilions were empty of the home crowd.
I've also had to convince some journalists from the African continent that whatever they're seeing on their televisions - the empty chairs and the dull atmosphere - does not reflect the true West Indies at cricket matches.
Outside of the ovals, hotels, restaurants, taxi drivers and artisans are fuming too about the poor sales they were getting out of the much-hyped up ICC World Cup cricket.
I saw a news feature on the Guyanese artisans who seemed to have been working day and night, getting their arts and craft ready for the big influx of tourists into Georgetown. Sadly, I read in one of the newspapers in Guyana that sales were really down as the crowds of tourists that were expected just did not happen.
Trinidad and Tobago with its Brown Package may have ended up a lot better than Guyana and the islands that are hosting the cricket.
Apart from the expenditure on the Queen's Park Oval and the UWI cricket ground, I think it was business as usual for the rest of the country, with no one complaining about losses or the lack of tourists to buy their wares.
The expectations in Trinidad were that low.
As for the rest of the ICC world cup matches, I guess my interest might only peak if Ireland and Bangladesh end up as the finalists!