Friday Musings
I DO not pay much attention to the `Dem Boys Seh’ and other side dishes the Kaieteur News newspaper offers in its daily menu of news, features and other coverage.

From my rather casual and infrequent samplings, I have found the `Dem Boys Seh’ and other titbits tasteless and lacking the essential ingredients for a good read. The same can be said of some of the other offerings in that newspaper.

I was returning home Monday night from assignment at the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) when the owner of the Kaieteur News, who was on the same flight, told me that my colleague Adam Harris, who works for him, was mentioning me in his `Dem Boys Seh’ offering for the next day.

He hinted that Adam had poked fun at my attendance at the press conference of French President Nicolas Sarkozy held during the summit and I laughed it off.

But several other colleagues teased me about Adam’s offering after it appeared and I had a look at what he wrote.

I am still trying to figure out what Adam was trying to get at in that piece he penned.

Can you help me decipher it? It’s written in a mixture of English and Guyanese jargon but it seems like French to me because I cannot understand the point of it.

And dem girls tell me Adam was a school teacher.
Here’s his reference to me in that `Dem Boys Seh’ offering: “Sharief go to a press conference wheh de leader talking in French and he claim how he understand every word. He didn’t need interpreter. Well dem boys find out that he was in love wid Sarkozy and he just sit down and admire de man. Talk half. Lef half.”

See what I mean?

Covering summits is not strange to me. I covered the first Summit of the Americas that President Bill Clinton hosted in Miami; I covered President Clinton’s visit to Barbados to meet Caribbean Community leaders; I have covered several CARICOM summits, including one in 2000 of South American Presidents.

I have also been on major assignments for the BBC, the Reuters news agency and other local and overseas media so I am not a rookie reporter and I know about making use of translation facilities when these are to be employed.

The media centre for last week’s CHOGM was well-equipped and press conferences and some other events were streamed live on TV screens to different floors of the building for those who did not want to be there. Simultaneous translations were sometimes broadcast but we were advised that these would not have been available for the Sarkozy press conference.

For the summit, I shared space and worked together in the media centre with my good friend Peter Richards and Ben Meade from the Caribbean Media Corporation (CMC).

Peter is fluent in French and he promised to share key points of Sarkozy’s press conference with me for inclusion in my main story of the proceedings that day at the summit.

So I went along to see the Sarkozy show and to pick up on the colour and feel of a man who has been cutting a larger than life figure on the world stage.

Ear phones for simultaneous translations of what he had to say were available but by the time I tried to get one, we were advised to take our seats as the President was on his way.

I didn’t know Adam was at the back spying on me and looking for material for `Dem Boys Seh’. I thought Sarkozy was the star of the show.

At the end of the press conference, I saw female Trinidad journalists and other women trying to get photos with Sarkozy.

Dem girls say Adam and his boss were also trying to get photos with Sarkozy, Queen Elizabeth, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and other leaders at the summit but they didn’t get through.

Dem girls say that’s why they pick on me to brighten up the usually flat `Dem Boys Seh’ short story.

Dem girls say they know how much I admire beautiful women and they are happy once I remain that way and don’t admire men.
Talk half. Lef half.