From Jubilee to Johannesburg

 

The black and white photograph sits timeless in my photo album. It shows a team of gangly youth. The players look westward towards the horizon. Behind them stands a cinder block wall. In the distance,  mountains  loom large, like giant hedges protecting the players’ backs.

This was the Montserrat national under 19 soccer team. Circa 1978.  I was 16. In the front row, I crouched low and squinted against the afternoon sun.  The players standing behind me were boyhood friends: Oscar, the star striker who could dribble through a school yard of rampaging  boys. Norman, the left footed striker and midfielder. Dwight, the goalkeeper. And his brother Gershom, a striker. Their father was a Seventh Day Adventist minister so Saturday games were off limits.

Eddy was the right winger. His skill was to work the ball down the right side of  the field and  cross it over in front of the goal, where one of the forwards would either head or kick one time into the goal.  I was the right midfielder. Eddy and I were an inseparable tandem.  We worked the one-two, the give and go, like Scottie Pippen and Michael Jordan, with feet instead of hands.

 It was almost psychic. Without looking for Eddy, I sent passes into his speeding path. Opponents took to calling us hyphenated: Eddy and Andrew in one breath. That’s how quickly we zipped through defenses. We played domestic league football on a team made up of students from the island’s only high school, our teachers - Peace Corps  volunteers and the British equivalent - and employees from Higgs & Hill, the international building contractor that constructed the pier at the harbor. We were a lethal mix of old and young, black and white, skinny and brawny.

As we raced up and down those hard-baked fields, the youth players dreamed of international soccer glory. But those illusions were dashed each summer as our national youth team was thrashed in the regional competition. It wasn’t for a lack of effort.  Half of our summer vacation was dedicated to two-a day practices. As each day dawned, my coach and teammates woke me with a knock on my louvered windows so we could jog three miles to the park.

In 1978, as in the years before and after that, our endeavors proved fruitless. Undersized and overmatched, heart and energy were no answer to our man-sized opponents, who were mature enough to grow beards. But the results didn’t matter. We danced and cheered partied afterward. Desire, friendship and  a game of soccer on a tropical Sunday afternoon.

I loved soccer before I loved girls. I grew up with cricket but soccer conspired to steal my heart early. One afternoon after Sunday school,  I walked to the park to watch a league game. Arrived early. One team was a few players short. They scoured the sidelines for scrubs to make up the numbers. Somebody heard I was good, so they selected me.  But I was ill-prepared to play. My t-shirt was fine, but my bell bottom pants and imported English shoes were not soccer wear. Undeterred I dashed on to the field. Somewhere, somehow, the ball fell at my feet and I smashed it into the net. Exhilaration. Triumphant. Goooooal!  I was hooked. I was a soccer prodigy. I was going to be a star.

That was a long way from kicking a deflated netball barefooted on asphalt in front of my home in Jubilee, the small village on Montserrat, the Caribbean island where I grew up. Kicking with toes meant unkind collisions between skin and gravel. Games often ended in blood and sweat but never tears. Those are the ingredients of soccer dreams. For many of the players competing at the 2010 World Cup in South Africa, that is where their soccer dreams usually begin.

I even dreamed of migrating to England to play soccer professionally. But eventually, reality intervened. I settled for the mundane; I became a government civil servant.

But I got lucky.

 I discovered journalism by writing about soccer. From early on though, I vowed never to be a sportswriter. I wanted to go to the games to cheer on my team. I would always be a fan.

Soon my fandom becomes the ultimate fantasy. My soccer journey will take me from Jubilee to Johannesburg, the scene of the 2010 World Cup.

I will be a fan of the game and a journalist at the event. I will have the best of both worlds. I

 will write about the host country and enjoy the spectacle of the competition. Best of all, I will

 share it with the world. Come along for the ride.

Tiger Woods

Some events will always be inextricably linked in my mind. Today it's my daughter's birth and Tiger Woods winning his second Masters championship.

It was Sunday April 8, 2001.  The day began with labor pains and an early trip to Carolinas Medical Center in Charlotte, N.C.  My wife had made a similar trip twice before. I had never been invited inside the delivery room. The third time was different. A nurse came outside and invited me to don hospital garb and step inside. I entered armed with my camera. 

As I sat awaiting my daughter's arrival, my mind wandered to the other big events of the day. Tiger Woods was on the verge of winning a second Masters Championship. I couldn't help but wonder how he was doing. Did he win? Could he seal the deal?   My daughter emerged kicking and screaming, healthy and strong. She had the cheeks of an African princess.  She was my princess.  

As I drove home that day, I turned on my car radio to hear the sports scores. Tiger was leading and he eventually won.  Much has happened in the nine years since that Sunday afternoon. My daughter is a fun third grader. My heart jumps each time I talk to her on the phone. 

For his part, Tiger has shown he can close the deal. But he has also shown he is all too human. The world has seen a dark side of  TIger. Now we know Woods the Womanizer. There's nothing pretty about that person. But in a way, he is no different from most of us. He fooled around. He cheated on his wife. He betrayed his family. What separates him from the rest of us is that he is wealthy, talented and, he is Tiger Woods. 

Today, he tries to make a comeback. Today he tries to change the headline of his personal and professional narrative. He tries to help us remember by making us forget. It doesn't matter how this tournament ends. It doesn't matter whether Tiger wins or loses. What matters is that he regains his moral  center, that he realizes that in order for Tiger to be Tiger, his public and private personas can't be at odds. We want him to succeed because a successful Tiger is good for his family, good for the country and, most important, good  for him. If Tiger makes the cut, I'll watch the back nine on Sunday afternoon. Imagine the emotional powder keg if he wins it all. 

A birthday memory

On April 8, 2001  I sat in the operating room at Carolinas Medical Center in Charlotte, N.C., dressed in a medical gown, camera in hand. My wife lay on the operating table as surgeons performed a C-section.  It didn't take long before they reached in a pulled out a baby girl with cheeks the size of plums. I grabbed my camera and snapped pictures, then I held her. My voice was the first she heard. I don't remember what I said, but I just kept talking to her as if she could understand me. She probably did. She still does. 

I was a father again. I had a daughter. 

Now she is nine.  She lit up my life that day and she still does. 

An excerpt from "firesticks"- Short story by Andrew J. Skerritt

 

She remembered everything as if time were an accordion. Fifteen years felt like fifteen minutes; it was 1981 again; Leroy was on the phone and the line between love and loyalty, trust and treachery had not yet blurred in her mind.
 "Good evening, Lorna Mae. Is Jerry home?" Leroy was her husband's boyhood friend. He lived in Boston.
"No, he’s not in,” she answered.  “Don't you remember?

“Remember what?”

“It’s volleyball season,” she said. “Jerry isn't sixteen anymore, but he still lives as if he is.”
"Good for him,” Leroy said. “I wish I could trade places.”

“Be careful what you wish for,” she teased.

 “I hate this time of year, with the cold and the way the time change robs the afternoon of its sunshine," he said. "Darkness comes much too early."
From where she sat she was a stranger to his world. The island breeze filtering through her wooden jalousies smelled like roasted asphalt, just like it did on hot nights in the village where she grew up. Lorna Mae sat up in bed, her check book and unpaid bills scattered among the cotton-stuffed pillows. The TV watched itself.
 During the 80s, many of Lorna Mae's former schoolmates traded in island living for American dreams houses and Yankee accents. But hearing Leroy complain about the cold weather reminded her of why she refused to leave Margarita.
“What are you complaining about,” she said feigning impatience. “Don’t you get all the sunshine you need?
"I guess nature gives and the government takes," he replied, turning on his trademark wit.
"How's work?" she asked trying to throw him off balance.
"It's office politics and subtle racism as usual at AT&T," he said.
"Talking about politics, whom do you like in next week's election?" She remembered Leroy was one of  the few radicals on Margarita to call the government radio station to protest the 1983 U.S  invasion of  Grenada.
"I'm voting for Ralph Nader instead of Bill Clinton,” he said. “Nader won't win, but at least he's not a bagman for the big corporations.”

“You haven't changed much, have you. So how’s Donna and the twins?” she asked struggling to carry the conversation.
"She's at her mother's for a few days. Her mother isn't feeling well," he replied. "Renate and Sara are asleep. I'm washing the dishes.”
She heard the sound of water on china and the metallic chaos of cutlery being wiped and stacked.
"I have a thing for men who don't mind washing the dishes," she said. "I wish Jerry would follow your example."
"Jerry isn't much of a follower," he reminder her. "Plus, this is therapeutic for me. Even though we own a dishwasher, I prefer to wash the dishes by hand. It gives me time to think."
Jerry always said Leroy spent too much time thinking. Her husband preferred to act first and think later.
"So what’s on your mind tonight?"
“You,” he chuckled. “That's why I really called.”
She was taken aback by his forthrightness. If he could have seen her an ocean away, Leroy would have seen her face glow, flush with surprise. She held her breath and waited; she felt her heart wanting to hear more.
“There’s a full moon out tonight. I can see it from here,” he said. “Full moons always remind me of you.”

“I don’t get the connection,” she responded. “Why me?”

He paused for a few seconds before answering. When he did, his words were more a jazz riff than a response to her two-word question.  He said full moons exerted a certain cosmic pull on his soul, made him feel vulnerable and restless.

“Restless enough to step outside on to a moon beam, keep walking and never look back,” he said.
He sounded closer than usual; his word flowed freer.
“Sounds like you're trying to get away from something or is it someone?”
“Who said anything about escaping.”
“Not me,” she played along.
“I don't confuse my fate with my fantasies,” he said.
“You’re in an interesting kind of mood tonight,” she countered.
When he turned off the faucet and the sound of running water died, she heard the light switch click. She pictured Leroy standing, lanky and long in the hushed darkness of his kitchen, his refrigerator humming and wheezing, moonlight slicing through his window. She pictured him staring at the moon with hungry dog eyes, whispering to it as if courting her, like he courted her fifteen years before.
 This was the first time Leroy had ever hinted at what they had done with and to each other. Until then, it were as if they had imposed a no-fly zone on their dual memories. Since their break up, they had conducted no autopsy, sought no reassessment, had never asked each other why, after all the promises they made to each other, they both ended up with someone else.

2010 Montserrat Creative Writing Contest Results

POETRY

 

Title                                                              Author

 

1.  Daily Bread                               Chadd Cumberbatch

2.  Word Processing                       Clover Lea

3.  Balandra                                    Chadd Cumberbatch

 

Special Merit

 

The Bird                                          Laura Taylor-Scotland

 

 

Honourable Mention

 

Dead in Some Places       Laura Taylor-Scotland

Take Me Home                  Maxx Maynard

W. H. Bramble                   Shirley Spycalla

 

SHORT STORIES

 

Title                                                              Author

 

1.   Night Again                              Gordon Buffonge 

2.  Firesticks                                  Andrew J Skerritt 

3.  Sins of the Mother                    Laura Taylor-Scotland

 

Special Merit

 

Jack-O-Lantern                              Shaumen Thompson

Honourable Mention

Volcano Jumbie Dance   (Screen Play by Capt. John Howes)

 

The Box                                                                              Clover Lea

 

Snapshot from Boy to       Manhood                   Margaret Dyer Howe