Tony Deyal, Contributor

There is 'Courage the cowardly dog' and then there is 'sand', which also means 'courage', 'stamina' or 'perseverance'. One example, which comes from Mark Twain, is, "She had more sand in her than any girl I ever see; in my opinion, she was just full of sand."

Many of us who grew up in the rural villages of Trinidad which are mainly populated by people of East Indian descent, and then went to city schools or moved to towns in the oil industry where the racial balance is different, had an especially hard time. The impact of indentured Indian immigration on the employment prospects of the freed African slaves, and the British policy of divide and conquer, stirred up racial animosity that still survives and, some would say, thrives today in the politics of Trinidad and Tobago.

What is called the N-word was more common even among people of African descent, and to be called an 'Old Nigger' by people of African descent was the ultimate stigma assigned to those who were 'ignorant' or forever guilty of uncouth behaviour. The term was not applied only to people of African descent, and since I was neither couth nor cute, being a badly behaved and foul-mouthed brat when out of the view and earshot of my parents, it was not long before I was permanently labelled an 'Old Nigger' by the people in the town of Siparia.

We had left the sugar cane and rice fields of the village of Carapichaima for the oil town of Siparia, where my father tried to combine truck driving with selling and consuming alcohol. They were not a particularly auspicious combination.

In my case, the honour of being an 'old nigger' was bestowed on me by my new-found friends in the community of Cassava Alley, later known as 'Peyton Place' after the Grace Metalious book and movie which dealt, as Wikipedia says, with incest, abortion, adultery, lust and murder. To that list we added stealing, assault, battery, gambling and various other petty crimes and misdemeanours, including harbouring people who were wanted by the police.

WRONG SIDE OF THE SAVANNAH

Our reputation in the village was, therefore, not unwarranted. In fact, the captain of our cricket and football team boasted, "All my convictions are for wounding."

In the United States, our community of Peyton Place, consisting of a huge tract of small buildings in various states of disrepair marked by tracks in the sand, would be considered to be 'on the wrong side of the tracks'. In Siparia, we were on the wrong side of the Savannah, or, as we called it, the 'sand-vannah'. Some geological quirk had made Siparia a zone of sand surrounded by the sticky, black clay we called 'sappatay' dirt, with some areas of red clay interspersed.

There is the story of Miss Popelee, a shrewd old Indian woman, who suggested to us that a piece of unused land that she had could make a good cricket ground if cleared. When the boys had got rid of the bush and went to fetch the red clay which was used throughout Trinidad for cricket pitches, Miss Popelee declared angrily, "Corn can't grow on red dirt!" And so, 'a-maize-ingly' ended our field of dreams.

On the other side of the Savannah from us was the town. I had come to Siparia, or 'Sand City', from the ironically named 'Picadilly' E.C. School in East Dry River, or the wrong side of the Port-of-Spain tracks ('behind the bridge', as the area is known). Going to the school, there was an education that helped me survive my early days in Siparia. Later, I was the only person from Peyton Place to have got a Higher School Certificate (Advanced Levels) and ended up teaching English, history and geography in the neighbourhood high school. I was almost the same age as some of my students.

SPORTS MASTER

Because I lived nearby, I became, by default, the school's sports 'master'. My duties included coaching and managing football, cricket, athletics and, because none of the female teachers were sports people, netball. One of the girls on the team is now prime minister of Trinidad and Tobago, Kamla Persad, who later married another student, Gregory Bissessar.

In thinking about those days, I realise how much Siparia did for both of us. It was a place where, eventually, people accepted you for yourself. You had to have sand in the Sand City. It was a constant fight for recognition and respect and had to be earned. Acceptability was the only reward and it was always hard-fought.

The young people in the school, even though it was a Presbyterian or denominational school, were of many different races, religions and hues. While the rest of Trinidad is still a tossed salad, the school was a true melting pot. I no longer involve myself in politics but I continue to see in the personality of the prime minister the ethos of the town I still think of as home.

Kamla's mother ran a bar which my father, and then my friends and I, frequented. This common touch, pragmatism and the ability to translate, as well as transcend, the environment is something that we could only have got from Siparia.

Netball is a rough sport, and recently when my younger daughter, Jasmine, who runs, swims and plays basketball, had to take part in an inter-house netball match in her Antiguan school, she found that out. She came home with scratches complaining of being cuffed, shoved and bounced as well.

We had some tough girls on our Siparia team and even tougher ones on the opposing teams, and I thought the slimly built child would have given up. She had come from Penal, a predominantly East Indian community, but in Siparia she had got sand in her shoes, craw and veins. She never gave up and actually delighted in the rough and tumble. Clearly, had I been astute enough, I would have realised that she was destined for a successful career in politics.

Tony Deyal was last seen repeating a Margaret Thatcher one-liner: "If my critics saw me walking over the Thames, they would say it was because I couldn't swim."