Doh dig nutten

By Johnny Coomansingh

Some gravediggers in Trinidad tend to be somewhat loud, angry and difficult. Without a six-foot deep hole in the cemetery, no coffin could be lowered for burial. There was this time that two gravediggers demanded a bottle of spirituous liquor from the undertaker. While walking away, the undertaker told them, “Doh dig nutten.” He assumed that the belligerent gravediggers would have understood that their bottle of rum would be sure. When the undertaker returned with the corpse, he saw the two fellows idly leaning on a tomb with their digging implements at their side. Astonishingly, he asked the two gravediggers: “Where is the hole for this coffin?” They replied, “Ent yuh tell we doh dig nutten?”

Against this well-worn statement, “Doh dig nutten,” my objective is to portray Trinidad and Tobago as the most doh dig nutten place in the world. I don’t know if any other Caribbean country has this ‘trait.’ In Trinidad and Tobago , doh dig nutten could be translated as, ‘Doh worry nah,’ ‘Take it easy nah man,’ ‘Doh beat up,’ ‘Wuh yuh getting on so for?’ ‘Wuh yuh quarrelling so for?’

Despite the fact that governments come and governments go, things tend to remain the same, especially when members of a new political party are sworn in as leaders in parliament. These new members of parliament would constantly blame the opposition for squandering taxpayers’ money. They would swear by all the gods of heaven that there is no money in the treasury and chide the other side with what’s inside their chalices of corruption, chaos and confusion. As one politician said, the whole day is “…yeng, yeng, yeng.” Nevertheless, doh dig nutten…take it easy nah, we go fix everything bhai.

Now let me be clear. Since I was five years old, the citizens of this country have been pleading and begging the governments, every one of them, for a regular potable supply of water. A few lines from the lyrics of my calypso titled ‘No Water’ will elucidate my sentiments:

“Mih toilet ah cannot flush…No water!

Look ah have tuh use di bush…No water!

No water tuh make some tea…No water!

No water, ah cannot pee…No water!

So ah ask tantie Kamla tuh fire the minister

And all dem big boys up in WASA.

Dey say ah smelling stink…No water!

Mih life is on the brink…No water!

Ah cannot brush mih teeth…No water!

Dem tong gyul ah cannot meet…No water!

All rong mih mouth is wahpia, like ah went and wuk obeah

Is nutten more than ah disaster.”

Take a close look at this excerpt of what I wrote and published in Caribbean News Global  “Coughing Spigots” –

“In 1995 I left the Petroleum Company of Trinidad and Tobago (PETROTRIN). I studied in the state of Kansas for eight years, and there was not one day that I heard a coughing spigot. Not one day! Kansas is in the rainshadow of the Rocky Mountains, a place that is arid: “…where the skies are not cloudy all day.” We even had a swimming pool in our backyard. The area of Kansas is 80,000 square miles. Trinidad is a dot on the map with about 2000 square miles. It means that Trinidad could fit into Kansas 40 times. So why is Trinidad and Tobago in such dry and dire straits? I moved from Kansas and then to Missouri, no problem with water. I went up to North Dakota, no problem. I lived in Delaware and still no problem. I guess Trinidad and Tobago is now relegated to fourth or fifth world status because of the unreliability of a daily potable water supply. Many would want to argue that our country is a rainbow country, a land of festivals, a location on the map where wining and jammin’ is never in short supply, and that “God is ah Trini” with more hoopla than we could take. I have come to terms with the eternal and everlasting problem. WASA continues to advertise, “Take Shorter Showers,” but if there is no water, if our spigots are constantly coughing, WASA should focus on a ‘Doh Bathe’ philosophy.”

Trinidad and Tobago is in Amazonia, a rainforest-type climate, where rain falls to flood the country several times over, yet many are there that would like a couple drops of that water. ‘Mister parliamentarian,’ don’t tell me that things eh so bad. Don’t tell me that things could be worse. Don’t tell me that we have to ration the water because we are in the ‘dry season.’ Don’t tell me ‘El Nino’ is here. A senator recently inferred that there is enough rainfall in Diego Martin to flood the whole of Trinidad. He said that we have to seriously look at the collection, storage, and distribution of our water, but doh dig nutten, hold strain ah little nah…we go fix dat!

I did not want to get into this diatribe, but the Water and Sewerage Authority (WASA) keeps digging! The mantra is doh dig nutten, but WASA is ah ‘tattoo’ (armadillo). It could be that WASA has to dig, but why the hell can they not fix the damn road after their digging activities?

On matters concerning the deplorable nature of our roads, how long should we, the citizens, wait before our roads are of the quality suitable for good and peaceful driving? Note carefully, Trinidad and Tobago has 99 acres of asphalt! We have all kinds of road-building materials in this little country, including pitrun gravel, washed gravel, quartz, bluestone, dolomite, red sand, and white sand, yet we suffer; there is an infestation of potholes, lumps, bumps and humps everywhere! The leaders then tell us, especially on the election hustings, that they will make sure we get good roads.

One day before the April 28, 2025 general elections, the then government cut ribbons to open the Elmina Clarke-Allen Highway. This highway is far from being complete. They made us understand that the highway, like the ANR Robinson airport terminal in Tobago and the addition of the 12-storey Central Block of the Port of Spain General Hospital were “practically complete.” What a crock of horse manure! Once again, doh dig nutten…wait and grind ah little nah.

While we are waiting on the roads to be fixed, our health system is in shambles! There is some real bacchanal occurring with regard to the registration of 365 pharmaceuticals with only one recorded instance of the Drug Advisory Committee (DAC) being involved. Verdel Bishop in her Daily Express (August 06, 2026) article, ‘So no one knows how these 365 pharmaceuticals were registered,’ reported:

“The issue surfaced during the 12th meeting of Public Administration and Appropriations Committee (PAAC) yesterday, which examined the State’s acquisition of pharmaceuticals and the processes governing their importation and approval…Committee chairman, Jagdeo Singh, questioned officials on how hundreds of pharmaceuticals could have been registered without what he described as the statutory body responsible for guiding the approval process… He added that some pharmaceuticals, which were allowed into the country through special permission, were never registered. ‘What is even more alarming to me…is that some of them were permitted to be imported by way of special permit; we now realise that some of them were never registered and have not been registered up to today,’ he said.”

Much more than that, the hospitals in Trinidad and Tobago need serious attention. Sometimes there are no beds for patients, no medicines, delayed X-rays, MRI and CT Scans. Appointments for specialist care are distant. It takes months that morph into years for cataract surgery. The lines are long, and waiting on care seems like forever. If you don’t have money to pay for private medical practice, then heaven help you. By now, everyone understands the doh dig nutten mantra in the health system.

Business entrepreneurs continue to be unscrupulous. Sometimes there are no price tags to identify the real price of items on the shelf. Rotten produce, for example, avocado, are packaged and sold. Customers lose their precious dollars every day! In the most subtle ways, prices keep going up and up but doh dig nutten because citizens have no choice but to accept the crimes committed by the groceries.

On the ever-present subject of crime and criminal activities, Trinidad and Tobago will never heal! In a place where racial discrimination is rife, could there ever be peace and safety? There is a long-standing war between the two dominant races that is politically stoked. I believe that this war will never end. Home invasions, auto theft, banditry in all its forms, gun slinging and daily murders continue.

Last night, Ian Alleyne’s Crime Watch reported 232 murders to date. Law adding citizens live in fear. Nevertheless, doh dig nutten because 30 new ‘mobile’ police posts are being installed at strategic points throughout Trinidad and Tobago to help quiet the crime. But wait! It’s not one or two or even three police officers that are presently on suspension for who knows what. There are over 250 officers on suspension right now! Even members of the Trinidad and Tobago Defense Force (TTDF) are sometimes caught engaged in illicit activities.

Cleaning up Trinidad and Tobago is a Herculean task. Both the Trinidad and Tobago Police Service (TTPS) and TTDF) need to be purged. I challenge anyone if they could find enough ‘Senna and Epsom salts’ to clean the Augean Stables of the protective services. I guess everyone knows that there is an ‘Environment Management Authority (EMA) in Trinidad and Tobago. Maybe it’s an armchair authority. Is such an authority actually on the ground seeing what is happening all over Trinidad? I don’t have to read and spell for the EMA, but I look at the mess we have on our beaches, roads, verges, rivers, waterways, and drains.

Last Sunday, August 09, my birthday, I went to Manzanilla Beach just after the Nariva River mouth. The seawall walkway was full of litter, beer bottles, and miscellaneous plastic ‘bottles.’ The garbage containers were overflowing. Almost everywhere was littered with garbage, plastic bottles, beer bottles and trash! Again, it’s possible that the citizens would like a la basse everywhere they go. Maybe the EMA is saying doh dig nutten because the heavy rains and floods will eventually wash everything out and deposit the trash on the seashore.

What can I say again? I could cry blood but the government would tell me doh dig nutten. Live with it. Live with the crime, road hogs, hate, garbage, destruction of our environment, squatting, malfeasance in public office, poor service at banks and public institutions, corruption, nepotism, and all the noise around. Don’t complain. Don’t even try to explain. Try to close your eyes. Stuff your ears with cotton buds or earplugs. Believe what Bob Marley said: “Everything gonna be alright,” and doh dig nutten. It dey, dey good so.