Indeed, if one were to listen to the chatter of the bones in the cemeteries in St Joseph (as one would from the bones under the eternally-under-renovation historic Red House Parliament building or the bones of Banwari (Wo)man secluded in another dark, unlit, place), one would hear a much different story to that written in our history books and from what's falling out the mouths of campaigners.
Right to Recall
Newsflash! the Pitch Lake was NOT discovered by one Sir Walter Raleigh! Are tourism officials scrambling now to vote for the Right of Recall of its brochures and signs marking these sites; signage like the one featured in this page in LiTTscapes - Landscapes of Fiction of Trinidad and Tobago with that recurring misinformation? So as you clean graves of dear ones, and light candles for the dearly departed in this historic district this La
Toussaint (word Fr origin, meaning All Saints), and celebrate the lights of enlightenment of Divali deeyas this weekend, remember that the origins of La Toussaint also predates Christianity, with which it is now associated. It may be, as old as, one might say, the true discoverers of the Pitch Lake itself!
Admittedly, the attempts to pronounce on the district's past - which in fact, did you know, predates the former now-relegated-to-the-political-cemetery member of parliament (he who would not be namd) as well as his predecessor politicians of the era of the ghosts of our colonial past - are indeed impressive.
If this by-election brings anything to St Joseph and indeed the country, O ye soon-to-be winner and losers, let it be a wholesome restoration of our history as it ought to be told, and rewriting of our history that is now being taught in schools and touted on political platforms and from the mountaintops once claimed by conquerors...
Trick or treat, An enlightened Divali to all. More....
