What is the cost of national pride? Apparently about $2 million, if the figures given by the Sports Company of T&T are anything to go by. I had thought it was $18,000 because that was the figure given by Sport Minister Gary Hunt the day before.

But what is this thing called national pride?

I had thought it was that feeling I got when I watched the national cricket team, led by Daren Ganga, light up India and make our nation the talk of the cricketing world.

I thought it was that feeling I got watching our Under-20 footballers play so well in Egypt.

I don’t get that same feeling when I watch the $2 million flag!

If the feeling I get when I look at the flag costs $2 million, I wonder what the feeling I got watching Richard Thompson winning the silver medal in Beijing cost-because those two feelings are like chalk and cheese!

Since I’m shopping around for feelings, here are some other feelings I’d definitely like to buy-

That feeling I got watching children gainfully occupied in the Ministry of Sports holiday camps. I wonder how much that costs?

How much would it cost to feel secure, on entering a public health institution, that it’s not a one-way trip?

How much would it cost to be able to walk the streets without fearing that at any moment a bullet can end your life just so!

How much does it cost to not feel that despite the wastage of our oil boom money from the 1970s, we doing it all over again?

How much does it cost to not feel there’s a certain kind of people who would experience two colossal oil windfalls like the ones we experienced in the ’70s and this one, and waste them both-and we’re that kind of people?

Lastly, how much would it cost us to send an underprivileged child, from Sea Lots, abroad to get a life-saving liver transplant?

Those feelings are worth any amount of money this government is willing to spend on our behalf!

Kurt Seucharan-Fuentes

via e-mail