I recall as a very young girl, just four years old, hearing a family friend whisper to my mum, “Roma is a precocious little girl.” I did not quite understand what that meant, but though youthfully innocent, I thought she meant, a rude child, because I had burst out, “That looks like my mother’s slippers you’re wearing.” So, from that tender age, I understood that I had a curious, outspoken personality.

Another characteristic I believe I possessed was that of a cheeky little tot. I remember provocatively singing for one of my father’s friends, whose name was Tom, “Tom, Tom, the piper’s son. He stole a pig and away he ran.” And then off I would run… not Tom, hiding behind the chairs, daring the piper’s son to catch me. Of course, I then had little reverence for seniority.

At my primary school in my hometown of Siparia, I was clearly considered to be a petite, bright student, an excellent reader and speller.  I can still picture him, my father, early one morning, face beaming as he awakened me with the news, “You passed for Convent, you passed for Convent!” I was then only ten and one of the first students from my primary school, St. Brigids Girls’ R.C., to succeed in gaining a Common Entrance Pass to St. Joseph’s Convent. All that August vacation I stared in awe and excitement at my school uniform. That my school skirt fell mid-calf and completely out dwarfed me in no way deterred my excitement.

Little did I know it would be the first and last time I would wait with bated breath for the opening of school. The young country girl it seemed, could not keep pace with the bright city kids. She was perhaps the youngest in the class and did not have exposure to the wide range or depth of subject matter as the city girls. She also lacked their maturity, their sophistication, their understanding of the school norms.  On afternoons, instead of socializing, adjusting to city life, she would run down to the wharf to catch the train to take her back to her country home, some sixteen miles away. 

After the first year, a nun in conjunction with the French teacher arrived at the decision that a year spent repeating first form would give the young country girl time to mature, even as she learnt to conjugate the French verbs.  My joyous anticipation of the previous year, awaiting the opening of school, turned into dread, apprehension and embarrassment one year later.

Did I enjoy my secondary school life, where I spent my early teenage years? Awe and discipline I easily recall, much more than joy, laughter and learning excitement. Yet, I appreciated being nurtured with a sense of responsibility and respect and Christian principles. And always I enjoyed my Language, and Literature classes, where I continued to shine out.

 So, no wonder after attending two all-girl schools at both the primary and secondary levels, with fairly rigorous discipline, administered by nuns and raised in a middle-class home, where ‘mind your own business,’ was one of the many values inculcated, that when I entered Milner Hall some years later, the guys wrote on the wall, “Achat doh chat.”

But, if truth be told, I did chat, but my conversations were mainly among friends, classmates and only those strangers who approached me politely and pleasantly. After all I had been the ‘victim,’ of ‘grubbing’ better known as initiation when I first entered Hall life. Gruesome, intimidating and alienating was that first U.W.I. encounter. But more about that another time… Today, I share my written word as I have been doing for some decades. Only now, I have ventured into publishing them.