I do not own a computer or a television. Neither am I one of those people who automatically reach for their pockets or dive into their handbags at the clink! clink! of a Blackberry message alert tone. I own a Nokia ‘mango pelter’ and a brain-dead smartphone which I bought on a three-month layaway plan.
My working shoes are best worn during dry weather and I’m not going to mention my salary. So you can understand my excitement when I heard the government planned on giving free laptops to poor families. I pictured chatting with hip Tibetan monks and learning fun facts like the life cycle of bread mould. And Facebooking of course. Alas, life is never that simple, is it?
While I am yet to learn how they will decide on the lucky poor it has been publicised that those souls will be required to perform some sort of community service. I’ve already started looking around my neighbourhood for projects to do. I thought about patching the three potholes through my street but someone beat me to it by several hollow blocks. The drains are clear as are the parapets, no thanks to the M&CC. My street isn’t a thoroughfare so there goes painting a pedestrian crossing. However, what it does have is lots of old ladies.
There’s my 72-year-old landlady who paints, hammers and sweeps when she’s not driving workmen batty by bossing them around. Then there’s her friend across the road who should be hired for the Grow More campaign since she always seems to be watering plants; the neighbour to my right who I’ve never seen out of her yard and the one at the end of the street who seems to be visiting from a parallel universe.
Inspiration! Maybe I can ask them about their recollections of life in the community and create a written record which could then be distributed to residents. I’m loving this. I can already imagine myself with that computer. YouTube, Facebook, Twitter. Oh and of course BBC, CNN, Stabroek News…
But there’s a competing idea. Nearly every morning some kind of animal finds its way into a mango tree in my yard and yammers on and on and on and…
At first I thought it was a parrot but then a flock landed in the tree and sounded nothing like this beast. I then thought maybe it’s a macaw, but no. This thing sounds big when it rustles through the leaves and I’m thinking a bird wouldn’t do that. My latest theory is that it’s a monkey. So my idea is to trap it and turn it over to the zoo (no need for anyone to write letters to the editor). That way my neighbours and I can sleep past 6 am. Now that should be worth a laptop right? Then again, I’m really going to have to put some thought into this community service thing. What do you think?
There’s also the small matter of them thinking of giving these laptops to teenagers particularly because of their ease with technology. I’m pretty sure I can pass for a teenager on an overcast Monday (I usually do my barbering on Sunday). I’ve seen high school children I’d argue could not possibly be younger than 20. Then again, with the way the education system is these days they just might be older. I’m going to need help to get around this one. Let me call someone …
“You have no credit …”
(thescene@stabroeknews.com)
