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Inspiring positive change
« on: April 18, 2008, 08:35:46 AM »
Inspiring positive change
Fazeer Mohammed

Friday, April 18th 2008

It's the sort of story that almost brings tears to your eyes.

Tansley Thompson was talking passionately yesterday morning about sport being a powerful vehicle for positive change among the troubled youth of our country when he made reference to an experience he had a few years ago on the Beetham Estate.

Wearing his hat of boxing promoter and general opportunity-giver to the underprivileged, Tansley picked up a few youngsters from the area who showed a keenness for the sport and took them to a gym in Port of Spain for some introductory training. That was the end of his involvement in that particular exercise.

As the former national footballer tells it, a couple years later the boxing trainer friend he had taken the young men to bounces up Tansley somewhere and tells him that one of the boys he had brought to the gym definitely has something special about him.

"Is so?" says Tansley, or something to that effect. "Yes, man!" comes the enthusiastic reply. "He down in Australia right now with the Commonwealth Games team."

This story about the emergence of Christopher de Freitas from humble circumstances to be flying the flag of Trinidad and Tobago more than half-a-world away at the 2006 Commonwealth Games in Melbourne is worthy of a documentary of some sort. It can serve as an inspiration to others as to just what can be achieved in the face of considerable adversity, it can bring pride to a community and improve self-esteem, and it can help lift the veils of prejudice that cover the eyes of so many of us who are content to place damning labels on an entire group of people.

We need more people like the old Tans, although he may not like the "old" part, seeing that he made me understand that he played top-level club football until the age of 52 (surpassing the mark of his inspirational father by one year) and believes he still has enough juice left in those legs to show the current crop a thing or two.

Someone reading this could just be steupsing right now, believing as they might that this is all about one man portraying himself as some great saviour of the country through sport when there is so-and-so from such-and-such community who has been doing much more than Tansley for much longer and no-one would even give them a dinner mint. If so, you're missing the point as badly as the former sports store owner would probably miss an open goal these days.

This is not about the messenger, but the message: that taking sport to the people who need it most can turn their lives around, bring discipline and order to their lives and give them a sense of purpose. It is not about fuelling unrealistic expectations about becoming a superstar multi-millionaire like a LeBron James, Tiger Woods or Ronaldinho, but adopting a lifestyle that is itself its own reward even without the prospect of becoming the greatest thing since Brian Lara.

That preoccupation with glory, fame, glitz and unfathomable riches will be manifested this morning in the start of the new money-spinning Indian Premier League in Bangalore, a Twenty20 tournament that is set to revolutionise cricket at the highest level. But it is at the grassroots level of our communities throughout the country that the real revolution needs to take place.

Listening to Tansley talk about the experience of putting on boxing cards free to the public in places like Africa up in Laventille (I know about Bangladesh close by me, but had no idea of that district), the Beetham, and Eddie Hart Ground in Tacarigua was like discovering a new world, a world occupied by the have-nots who are continually reminded how worthless and dangerous they are to the rest of society.

If only for the extremely selfish reason of self-preservation, we must somehow find an effective way to bridge the ever-widening gap between these two worlds...or pay a grievous price somewhere down the road for our negligence.

But this must be more than doing just enough to protect our particular empires. It has to be propelled by a desire to make this place a better one for all of us and for the generations to come.

It ain't easy, especially given the increasing polarisation on the basis of race and political affiliation in recent years that has generated the "us versus them" siege mentality from which nothing constructive or enlightened can emerge.

After spending some time in foreign, Tansley had returned home for Trinidad and Tobago's final-round World Cup football qualifiers in 2001 ahead of the finals the following year in Japan and South Korea. Apparently not being aware of the level to which things had disintegrated during his absence, he made the mistake during a radio interview leading up to one of the games of saying how much he enjoyed eating a true Trini roti once again.

Who tell he say that? A caller promptly took a turn in his tail, implying that as a black man, he should be enjoying pelau and callaloo and not something from "them other people".

In the silence of his non-response, I could hear Tansley's utter bewilderment and frustration at what we have come to.

But, as he says, his back is broad that there is a greater will that moves him to keep on keeping on. Like Christopher de Freitas the Beetham boxer, Tansley Thompson the sports pyong should be an inspiration to us all.
"Moral certainty is always a sign of cultural inferiority.  The more uncivilized the man, the surer he is that he knows precisely what is right and what is wrong.  All human progress, even in morals, has been the work of men who doubted current moral values, not of men who tried to enforce them."

 

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