'Dis Is Trinidad'

I've spent the last few days listening to various remixes of 'Dis is Trinidad'. It's ubiquitous for some reason; it's an accepted answer to almost anything.

When discussing a recent family member and his adventures with a government public hospital emergency department and 'casualty' with a doctor who otherwise can be quite the conversationalist, we hit the cul-de-sac of 'Dis is Trinidad'. When dealing with nursing staff in a private hospital who didn't seem to know how to use baby powder when changing diapers, 'Dis is Trinidad' reared its ugly head. When discussing the inconsistencies between newspapers with a friend as Edmund Gall pointed out here, I hear - you guessed it - 'Dis is Trinidad'.

It doesn't end there. Two families fighting over where the boundary is between their respective properties both expressed frustration with the process, separately, using the exact same phrase. Traffic on Mosquito Creek as contractors continue repainting the bridge and resurfacing the pavement reminds everyone that 'Dis is Trinidad'. A new outlet of Republic Bank near Gulf City is so poorly designed that it ties up traffic going in all directions... 'Dis is Trinidad'.

The list goes on. And I could respond to all of it with the same phrase - that's the magic of the phrase. Instead, though, I'll borrow a longer phrase from Noam Chomsky:

...what happens from now on depends very much on what people like you are going to do. If you become energized, engaged, involved, active, organized, protesting and so on - OK, there can be more historical changes. If you choose to resign to apathy and obedience, then you get a reconstruction of what happens before. That's the way history works.

What is Trinidad and Tobago doesn't have to be what Trinidad and Tobago will be, you see. And that requires a bit more than... 'Dis is Trinidad'.

Isn't it odd how that phrase never drags Tobago into it?