Thru Novel Lenses! New Vision New Perspectives New Ideas New Directions For the New World! Futuring Sustainable Development in the Post Pandemic Planet From Pre School to Policy Making
Peeps, I returned home from exploring the millennia old civilisations of the Incas of Peru and older ones of the Mayas of Belize to the sounds of a party. Blaring loudspeakers woke me up this morning and have been going non stop since between spurts of some newly concocted calypso - made me wonder if I had misjudged the time and it was Carnival Monday. They are announcing some political meeting or the other; and begging for my vote, and meh road still aint fix though I hear all parts getting box drains and thing, so I vex.
So peeps, you know I am a sceptic so help me decide. Who should get my vote?
Seeing that we have given up the traditional systems of governance where the people's needs were central to the commune - the traditional governance systems of the Incas that still influence agricultural practices in Peru; the communal systems of the Mayans, the panchayat system of India and village systems of Africa, and survival skils of Maroons of Mooretown and Rastafari in Jamaica for this West Minster thing that want to become the US Presidential thing - yeah - the same US system that right now holding the American public to ransom over some petty power play. Trying to open Caricom eyes to what reparations really mean, instead I opened my mailbox and there was a polling card - along with all kinds of documents of misdeeds here and there 'cause that's wat mail boxes are for, aint? I need to be convinced if I should vote, and who for, and why? So convince me nah, and keep the comments clean, okay, my vote's on you..Visit Demokrissy's New Home .Website: GloCakl Knowledge Pot
Closing Remarks,Dr Kris Rampersad Chair, National Commission for UNESCO, at
Leading for Literacy Now! National Workshop for Principals and Teachers
Sister Francis Xavier Heritage Hall, Abercromby Street, Port of Spain
August 25 2013
One of the advantages in living in a place like Trinidad and Tobago is that we have easy access and exposure to the good books of the many and varied cultures, ethnicities and religions that make up our society.
One of our good books tells us that the world was created in six days.
We have come to the sixth day of this our week-long efforts to begin to recreate and transforming our world, the communities and the spaces and the schools we occupy, as Leaders for Literacy, Now!
Do we feel more empowered? Do we feel better prepared and better tooled? We, of the National Commission for UNESCO of Trinidad and Tobago, and our project partners, the Ministry of Education, BMobile and the UK-Based National Training College for School Leadership and the Trinidad and Tobago Regiment hope that we have met and fulfilled some of those expectations that we outlined at the beginning of this week and when this training preparation began with you earlier this year and with us since last year.
We thank you for investing your time and energies and visions with us, and now we have some expectations of our own. We want results and returns on this investment – not just the more than half a million dollars UNESCO and the Ministry of Education with our project partners are investing in this, but also in the energies and ideas we have shared and exchanged.
We well recognise that many of you function under very challenge personal and professional situations. We well recognise that the tasks with which you are charged as principals and teachers are by no means easy. We well recognise that sometimes the diversity of our society demands constant readjustments to varying expectations.
But we want to challenge you now to go forth and reclaim your places as bonafide community leaders. For too long the term, and the role of leaders in our communities have been hijacked by not too savoury elements who are being held up as the role models for our youths and children. For too long we have watched our children being kidnapped by forces and influences that we wanted to think were beyond our control. For too long the schoolmaster and mistress who were once significant and pivotal axes of social life in our villages and districts, have either abdicated their roles or been forced out of them by other social pressures. For too long we have been held to ransom by bandits and criminals in the guise of leaders and social and community leaders.
We ask you now to go back and reclaim those spaces; to see yourself and to present and represent yourselves as the leaders that you are. To put your hands up proudly when there are calls for meetings and discussions and consultations with community leaders and say that you are leaders in your community.
We ask you that you return to your schools to no longer cower before bullying parents and misguided children and take charge!
We ask you to use what you have learnt here to, as I said at the opening, not just influence the directions of our education system and by extension of our society, but to transform it.
You are the community leaders. You are agents of change and transformation.
It is no secret that we live in not just interesting, as Confucius is said to have said, but also in challenging times; times that demand all our energies and intelligence to manage the winds of change that are blowing and that all of us are feeling in our schools and in our districts. We need to manage these changing times so we do not have the negative repercussions as we are witnessing taking place in Egypt and Syria and elsewhere. We need to direct and redirect the changes that are inevitable, drawing from your own wisdom and experiences to positively impact our youth and harness their restless energies for change.
It certainly will require a few qualities that cannot be learnt in a classroom – open-mindedness, flexibility, and patience – but we do hope that this classroom has provided you with some formulas by which you can assess and understand how to acquire and cull those qualities.
As the same good book said, on the seventh, the Creator rested. I don’t think that meant that for you, not for us.
Tomorrow, we go on our drill with the Trinidad and Tobago Regiment which is promising us through the Army Leadership Training Centre, a one-day outdoor team-building and risk training exercise to what you already know and have learnt of leadership.
Like us at the National Commission, the Army Leadership Training personnel recognise that this is particularly important in the dynamic environment in which you find yourself working everyday in our schools. They acknowledge your role as principal and educator as paramount in carving and manipulation this chameleon environment in which you function, in dealing with students and staff and parents from all walks of life and with varying morals, values, and social skills that require some extra special skills to help you cope with situations where the answers may either be nowhere in sight, or just under your nose; where the success of the team will not depend on the strength of any one individual or where achieving overall success may depend on the subordination of personal objectives.
So that’s the task of the seventh day, tomorrow - not to rest, but as the ones created for the task, to continue the good work to go forth and multiply these learnings into your schools and communities. To Lead for Literacy, Now!
Because we all know what the power of literacy is. We are all living examples of that – of how our ability to read and to interpret a line, a page, a book can transform how we see ourselves, how we view others and how to make informed and intelligent choices when confronted with difficult options, or no options at all. That has been my experience as a reader, from districts and schools and homes just like the ones you serve.
And it is our sense of personal responsibility that has inspired my Leaves of Life drive for a revolution in reading, to inspire reading in unorthodox ways; and it is the sense of collective responsibility that inspired Mrs Crouch and our team of the National Commission, and the Ministry of Education in planning and organising this Leading for Literacy, Now! We are building a team and I am sure too an army, for change.
We envision that in the forty schools from which you were drawn, voluntarily, we will begin to see results in learning and literacy – in the ability of our children to read as early as the end of the first term – by December, yes December 2013 – we all know that three months is a very long time in the life of a child and they can learn much in such a short space of time. Are we ready for that! We must claim their minds and imaginations before someone else does.
We also envision that from forty districts in Trinidad and Tobago, we will begin to see an impact on perceptions and beliefs of who are our real community leaders; who are really in charge; and to whom our society should turn when it needs advice and directions and leadership. You! Are we ready for that?
As we promised at the beginning, we will continue to encourage you to not only keep up the dialogue, but translate it into actions within your own spheres and share it with your peers, in other schools and districts as we assess the outcomes of this and get ready to draw in more of our principals and teachers and children as we have been mandated by the Minister of Education.
Yes, we were very serious when we titled this Leading for Literacy, Now! Let as take back our communities; let us take back our children, as leaders, Now!
I thank you.
PHOTO CAPTION: Mrs Elizabeth Crouch, Principal of Marina Regina Prep School and head of the education sector committee of the Trinidad and Tobago National Commission for UNESCO lead principals, school supervisors and teachers in the joint UNESCO/Ministry of Education initiative Leading for Literacy Now! Photo Courtesy Kris Rampersad
TRINIDAD-POPULATION-Heritage consultant wants comprehensive archeological survey of Trinidad and Tobago
PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad, Apr 27, CMC – A heritage consultant says the recent finds of skeletal remains and artefacts believed to be early century BC should serve as an opportunity for a comprehensive archeological survey of Trinidad and Tobago. (See:Them Red House Bones this site http://kris-rampersad.blogspot.com/2013/04/them-red-house-bones.html).
Dr. Kris Rampersad said that the findings under the famed Trinidad and Tobago Parliament building in the capital, should also encourage tertiary institutions to establish “all-encompassing programme in heritage studies that incorporate research, scientific, conservation, restoration, curatorial and forensic study among other fields that would advance the knowledge and understanding of Trinidad and Tobago’s prehistory and multicultural heritage.
“This also has value to the region and the world. We have for too long paid only lip service to our multiculturalism. The find under the Red House of bones potentially dating to the beginning of this epoch points to the significant need for a proper survey and actions to secure and protect zones that are of significant historical and prehistoric importance,” said Rampersad, who has been conducting training across the Caribbean in available mechanisms for safeguarding its heritage.
She said one of the most distressing evidence of lack of attention was the state of the Banwari site which is one of, if not the most significant known archeological treasures of not only Trinidad and Tobago but the region and around which very little of significance has been done since it was discovered some forty years ago.
“ Why, forty years later, as one of the richest countries in the region, must we be looking to other universities from which to draw expertise when by now we should have full-fledged - not only archeological, but also conservation, restoration and other related programmes that explore the significance of our heritage beyond the current focus on song and dance mode? “.
“Activating our heritage sector is not pie in the sky. We are sitting on a gold mine that can add significantly to the world’s knowledge stock, and forge new employment and income earning pathways, while building a more conscious society,” she added.
Bones beneath Red House, heritage consultant calls for...
Story Created: Apr 25, 2013 at 10:01 PM ECT
Story Updated: Apr 26, 2013 at 7:04 AM ECT
IT’S time to stop paying lip service to First Nation people and move to protect this country’s history, heritage consultant Dr Kris Rampersad has said in the wake of the discovery of a set of bones beneath the Red House in Port of Spain.
Two weeks ago, skeletal remains were found beneath the Parliament Building. The remains were accompanied by artefacts, such as pottery pieces, typical of the indigenous peoples.
In her Internet blog, Demokrissy, Rampersad referred to the need for a comprehensive archeological survey of Trinidad and Tobago.
“This also has value to the region and the world,” said Rampersad, who has been conducting training across the Caribbean in available mechanisms for safeguarding its heritage.
“We have for too long paid only lip service to our multiculturalism.
“The find under the Red House of bones potentially dating to the beginning of this epoch points to the significant need for a proper survey and actions to secure and protect zones that are of significant historical and prehistoric importance.”
Commenting on another famed--but neglected--historical site, Rampersad noted the neglect of the Banwari site in San Francique, south Trinidad.
The Banwari Site was the home of the Banwari man, a 7,000-year-old inhabitant and one of the most significant and well-known archeological treasures of the region.
Discovered some 40 years ago, little has been done to preserve and promote the site.
At a recent workshop, the potential of T&T’s heritage assets as UNESCO World Heritage sites were discussed, Rampersad said.
However, there was concern among Caribbean colleagues that this country was yet to move to effecting the research, legislation and other actions necessary to pin the sites as being of value.
Rampersad said Trinidad’s entire south-west peninsula was a key entry point in the migration of prehistoric peoples.
“So much of the history of the region is still unknown and so much of the accepted theories are being challenged,” Rampersad said.
A special tour of Port of Spain through the eyes of award winning fictional writers and famous characters fiction will be offered to citizens and visitor to Trinidad and Tobago on Saturday April 27, 2013. Booking Form LiTTour April 27 2013. Deadline April 25: 2013
The LiTTour is an offspring of the critically acclaimed LiTTscapes – Landscapes of Fiction from Trinidad and Tobago by Dr Kris Rampersad.
It will celebrate Port of Spain as a creative city like no other. It takes place on Saturday April 27, 2013 from 8 am by prebookings only, leaving from the South Quay compounds of the Public Transport Service Corporation (PTSC).
This LiTTour is a special collaboration with PTSC’s Know Your Country Tours to expose the capital city as seen through the eyes of authors in its raw, real and pulsating states as one of the most creative cities in the world, of Trinidad and Tobago.
We hope to renew and heighten appreciation of our capital and understanding of the literary and creative imaginations that have been representing and reflecting us, and our city: our landscapes and our lifestyles; our institutions, our cultural life, our politics, our architecture. We hope such appreciation can defray violent and negative practices that misrepresent who we are as a people and encourage young people into creative activity and away from lives in crime.
The LiTTour will be free to persons who between now and April 25, 2013, purchase, a copy of LiTTscapes – Landscapes of Fiction from Trinidad and Tobago. For details contact 1-868-377-0326; email lolleaves@gmail.com and visit:www.kris-rampersad.blogspot.com.
LiTTscapes describes through descriptions and photographs how some 60 writers in more than 100 works have portrayed Trinidad and Tobago in literature from as early as 1595 to present day. It is designed by Sonja Wong. Head of the Guyana Prize for Literature, Professor Al Creighton described LiTTscapes as a work of art; a documentary, a travelogue, a critical work with visual and literary power. It takes us on a tour of the country, giving some exposure to almost every aspect of life, at the same time exploring the literature to indicate how the writers treat the subjects, what they or their fictional characters say, and how they are used in the plots. Photographs are accompanied by the descriptions and literary excerpts of the capital city, other towns, streets, urban communities, villages, historic buildings and places, vegetation, animals, institutions, culture and landscape. There is considerable visual beauty, what Derek Walcott calls “visual surprise”.
In conjunction with LiTTscapes and LiTTours, launched last August, we has also introduced LiTTributes – events in tribute to Caribbean cultures and creativity which have to date been staged in Guyana, Antigua and Trinidad and Tobago and soon in the UK and USA. They are meant to promote literacy, creativity and interactive appreciation of the global multicultural milieu Trinidad and Tobago.
Customade LiTTributes and LiTTours based on district, theme or body of literature are available on request.
20 March 2013/ UNESCO Havana/Portal of Culture of Latin America and the Caribbean
The workshop Management of Caribbean cultural resources in a natural environment: Sites of Memory and participation of local communities, trained 20 participants from Barbados, Curaçao, Grenada, Jamaica and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines to foster the best involvement of local communities in World Heritage. Released near the Historic Bridgetown and its Garrison, World Heritage site in Barbados from 11 to 15 March 2013, the workshop contributed to enhance mechanisms for the participation of local communities in Heritage sites, implementing also an agreement reached in June 2011 on the Caribbean Capacity Building Programme (CCBP), for World Heritage, between the University of the West Indies and UNESCO.
The workshop is part of a series organized by UNESCO Offices in Havana and Kingston and UNESCO's World Heritage Centre, counting with the support of the Netherlands Funds in Trust, and being delivered in coordination with the Barbados National Commission for UNESCO and The University of the West Indies (UWI), Cave Hill Campus.
Thanks to the contribution of representatives of the States Parties present at the workshop, 5 cases studies, currently in the tentative list and in progress as nominations dossiers were discussed by the participants. As a referential case it was considered the proposal for the Blue and John Crow Mountains National Park BJCMNP (Jamaica) promoting a cross cutting debate with the collaboration of experts representing IUCN and ICOMOS. Participants also explored Caribbean connections with the University of the Netherlands Antilles and other heritage related organizations and appraised several examples during a field trip session.
From 24 to 28 March, also organized by Havana and Kingston field offices and UNESCO's World Heritage Centre, now under Japan Funds in Trust, another training is to conclude the final segment of the Caribbean Training Course in the Preparation of Nomination Dossiers for World Heritage (started in Kingston last June 2012). The final segment will be developed in St. Mary’s, Antigua & Barbuda analyzing the nomination proposals of 16 Caribbean sites. Specialists from IUCN, ICOMOS and from the UNESCO World Heritage Centre will also participate for the appraisal in situ of the advances in progress for the nomination of The Antigua Naval Dockyard to the World Heritage List.
Trinidad and Tobago’s Dr Kris
Rampersad, author of LiTTscapes
– Landscapes of Fiction from Trinidad and
Tobago will team up
with icons of Antigua and Barbuda to stage a literary tribute to the Antilles on
Saturday (March 23, 2013) at the museum in St John’s, Antigua.
Dr Rampersad, whose book,
LiTTscapes, was launched as part of the golden jubilee celebrations of Trinidad
and Tobago last August, has undertaken a series of tributes called LiTTributes
to highlight the contributions and value of the creative sectors of the
Caribbean.
LiTTscapes has been described
as a
groundbreaking encyclopaedic yet coffee-table style compendium of the
lifestyles, landscapes, architecture, cultures, festivals and institutions of the
Caribbean and quintessential to
the Caribbean diversification agenda as a means of promoting sustainable development
through the creative sector in its presentation of history, politics, cultures and lifestyles, by
reviewers as head of the Guyana Prize for Literature and deputy vice chancellor
of the University of Guyana, Professor Al Creighton; Poet Laureate of Port of
Spain, Pearl Eintou Springer; former principal and pro vice-chancellor of the
University of the West Indies, Dr Bhoe Tewarie and former First Lady of
Trinidad and Tobago Dr Jean Ramjohn Richards, among others.
Said Creighton: “Easy
to read, LiTTscapes is a work of art,
a documentary, a travelogue, a critical work with visual and literary power. It
is a quite thorough artistic concept, a portrait and biography of the nation of
Trinidad and is attractively, neatly and effectively designed. It reflects a
considerable volume of reading, ranging from the dawn of Caribbean literature (as
early writings of Walter Raleigh, through to present including Nobel laureates
Derek Walcott and Sir Vidia Naipaul). Whatever one says no one book can do,
this one almost does.”
Rampersad explained: “The literary tributes, called LiTTributes,
celebrate the creative synergies between fiction, the built and natural
landscapes and the creative energies of writers, musicians, dramatists, artists,
architects and other creators.” She noted that the launch of LiTTscapes was followed
by the LiTTribute to the Republic in Trinidad and Tobago in September 2012 and LiTTribute
II - LiTTurgy to the Mainland in Guyana in February 2013.
“The Antiguan event is being called
LiTTribute to the Antilles and will include presentations by Rampersad and Antiguan
writers and performers, including writers as Joy Lawrence, Joanne Hillhouse and
Floree Williams with support from the Historical and Archaeological Society of
Antigua and Barbuda which operates the museum, and Best of Books, Antigua. It
will feature readings and performances inspired by LiTTscapes, which represents
some 100 works of some 60 writers, including the Caribbean Nobel laureates for
literature, Derek Walcott and Sir Vidia Naipaul.”
She said: “LiTTributes are
meant to make both the creators and our communities aware and heighten
appreciation of how we may work in tandem for the benefit of our countries and
our region. I am indeed humbled and buoyed at the enthusiasm being showed
throughout the region and indeed the diaspora for these as already I also have
interests expressed for similar LiTTributes in North American and Europe from
where a considerable number of our fiction writers have functioned.
“LiTTscapes is a celebration of ourselves –
small islands whose creative energies have generated enormous waves across the
globe, as this LiTTribute to the Antilles will endorse. Antigua has given us
writers like Jamaica Kincaid and Joanne Hillhouse. Derek Walcott titled his acceptance speech for
the Nobel Prize, The Antilles – Fragments
of Epic Memory. This event is a celebration of that epic Antilles, not as fragments,
but for the wholeness of our aesthetics,” said Rampersad.
Rampersad said along similar
lines of the LiTTscapes celebrations, the Antigua/Barbuda event will feature
the Caribbean architectural alongside literary, visual and performance
heritage. Its staging at the museum building will recognise Antigua’s oldest heritage building which is the former site of an
indigeneous marketplace. Previous events were staged at the historic Moray
House in Guyana, Knowsley Building in Port of Spain and White Hall, one of Port
of Spain’s Magnificent Seven edifices.
For details and information,
reviews, interviews email lolleaves@gmail.com
or visit kris-rampersad.blogspot.com.
In Brief:
LiTTscapes: Key Features
ØFull
colour, easy reading, coffee table-style
ØMore
than 500 photographs of Trinidad and Tobago
ØRepresents
some 100 works by more than 60 writers
ØCaptures
intimate real life and fictional details of island life
ØEssential
companion on T&T for tourists, students, policy makers, academics, lay
readers
ØTotally
local effort to stimulate local creative industries
ØEncourage
literacy and creative activity
See: LiTTscapes album on Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/kris.rampersad1
About the
Author – Kris Rampersad
For
more than two decades Dr Kris Rampersad has been actively involved in
analysing, assessing, critiquing and defining the development agenda for
Caribbean societies.
She
is a journalist and educator in Caribbean literature, culture and heritage.
The creativity of the islands
of the Antilles will come into focus with LiTTribute to the AnTTiles to be
staged at the Museum of Antigua and Barbuda on March 23, 2013.
This is the third in a series
of tributes to the creative heritage of the Caribbean to be staged by author of
LiTTscapes – Landscapes of Fiction from Trinidad and
Tobago Kris Rampersad.
Rampersad will team up with
Antiguan writers and performers, the Historical and Archaeological Society of
Antigua and Barbuda which operates the museum, and Best of Books, Antigua for
the event which will feature readings and performances inspired by LiTTscapes with
input from artists in the oral and literary heritage of Antigua.
It follows the recent
successful staging of LiTTribute II – LiTTurgy to the Mainland hosted by the
Guyana Prize for Literature and Moray House Trust in Georgetown, Guyana and the
LiTTribute to the Republic on Trinidad and Tobago’s 36th anniversary
as a Republic. LiTTscapes was launched as part of Trinidad and Tobago’s golden
jubilee of Independence festivities in August 2012 along with LiTTours and
LiTTevents.
“LiTTscapes is a celebration
of ourselves – small islands whose creative energies have generated enormous
waves across the globe, as this LiTTribute to the Antilles will endorse.
Antigua has given us writers like Jamaica Kincaid and Joanne Hillhouse. Derek Walcott titled his acceptance speech for
the Nobel Prize, The Antilles – Fragments
of Epic Memory. This event is a celebration of that epic Antilles, not as fragments,
but for the wholeness of our aesthetics,” said Rampersad.
Acclaimed as a
groundbreaking encyclopaedic yet coffee-table style compendium of the
lifestyles, landscapes, architecture, cultures, festivals and institutions of the
Caribbean as represented in more than 100 fictional works by some 60 writers,LiTTscapes, she explained,is geared to stimulate interest in reading, literacy
and connect the Caribbean through synergies with the creative industries and
sectors of the Caribbean.
Rampersad said along similar
lines of the LiTTscapes celebrations, the Antigua/Barbuda event will feature
the Caribbean architectural alongside literary, visual and performance
heritage. Its staging at the museum building will recognise Antigua’s oldest heritage building which is the former site of an
indigeneous marketplace. Previous events were staged at the historic Moray
House in Guyana, Knowsley Building in Port of Spain and White Hall, one of Port
of Spain’s Magnificent Seven edifices.
Pound d alarm. Much rage over Nikki Minaj's nothing place but u can show d girls who own dem not on d trail of American Idol but palace files near begnnings of dis Roman empire's Raj on shelves lettered H or R or W or P including S near T...details forthcoming in LettersToLizzie Pre-Order Now see https://sites.google.com/site/krisrampersadglobal
PS: Waffle to baffle: No just d late arrival, but using waffles to baffle and taking the long, scenic colourful route to pronouncig judgement on American Idol - it's a Trini thing...
'We came from nothing!' Nicki Minaj bonds with Liberian refugee... as American Idol's final ten women are revealed
PUBLISHED: 06:51 GMT, 28 February 2013 | UPDATED: 00:43 GMT, 1 March 2013
Trinidadian-born rapper Nicki Minaj wasn’t born with much, and she fought tooth and nail to gain her stardom.
That could be why the Pink Friday singer got so emotional on American Idol this week, when a Liberian refugee, Zoanette Johnson, brought the house down with Circle of Life.
Always one of the most riotous contestants Zoannette, 20, has been in the US since she was two - after escaping from her war torn motherland.
Pound The Alerm Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HYK4ffyETqc
Living in Liberia: http://www.guardian.co.tt/editorial/2013-03-03/living-liberia
Published:
Sunday, March 3, 2013A small social media-fuelled storm erupted soon after entertainer Nicki Minaj commiserated with American Idol competitor Zoanette Johnson about the challenges of their childhoods. “I’m proud that this place right here gives people like you and me that came from absolutely nothing, from a country that we probably didn’t think we would make it out alive, it gives us a shot.”
Ms Minaj, once known as Onika Maraj during her first five years of life at Bournes Road, St James, has had an undeniably challenging life, often leveraged to promotional advantage. Nationalists quickly began pointing out the differences between this country and Liberia while Ms Minaj’s supporters quickly pointed out just how specifically difficult her life experiences were in Trinidad and Tobago before her migration to the United States.
The fame that Nicki Minaj has been enjoying has been a tempting lure for the Government. In October 2010, the performer gave a concert at the Hasely Crawford Stadium that was partly underwritten by the Ministry of Sport and Youth Affairs. The youth outreach effort came under criticism from Diego Martin Central MP Dr Amery Browne, who accused the Sports Minister of spending $900,000 on the money-losing event, half of the allocation for youth development projects.
Her stated interest in the country of her birth, and perhaps her experience at that concert, led her to produce a Carnival-flavoured video for her song Pound the Alarm, celebrated as a national PR coup. Last week’s commentary, which paralleled her childhood experiences in T&T with a Liberia still recovering from bloody civil wars, are the flip side of depending on celebrities to promote a national image.
In November 2012 the singer announced that a fifth of this country’s population had died from HIV/Aids, a figure that’s closer to 25,000. Somebody needs to brief this young woman about the country of her birth, and quickly. Far too much of our image building has been done on the backs of individuals who by virtue of their hard work and sometimes even their personal mistakes, have come to global attention.
It’s a lazy and potentially lethal shortcut and no replacement for a properly formulated and designed plan to create a consistent and attractive tourism product and to promote it using all the myriad media tools available for modern communication with the world. Nicki Minaj was never a magic bullet for tourism promotion for this country, nor has the appointment of high-profile tourism ambassadors done much for us generally.
The Ministry of Tourism and its agencies of execution continue to make dangerously naive assumptions about the value of our tourism product in a world full of nations aggressively working to package their assets, charms and uniqueness as lures for the curious visitor. As the tourism sector in Tobago gently collapses through lack of visitor interest, Ms Minaj’s comments come as a welcome wake-up call, a pounding of the alarm, as it were, that we’re playing the fool with our tourism assets and it’s time to stop.
Trinidad-born rapper Nicki Minaj compared T&T to Liberia on television on Wednesday, saying she didn’t think she would get out alive. Liberia is known for having endured bloody civil war during the past two decades, in which more than 200,000 people died and a million sought refuge in neighbouring countries.
Tourism Minister Stephen Cadiz said yesterday he could not comment on Minaj’s latest comment on the “nothing” place she came from, since he was not sure exactly what location she was referring to. Minaj, on the American Idol show last Wednesday, likened her own underprivileged background to that of contestant Zoanette Johnson, a Liberian refugee living in the US, the UK Daily Mail reported yesterday.
Minaj said, “I’m so proud that this place gives people like you and people like me, who came from absolutely nothing, a place that we didn’t think we’d make it out alive from, it gives us the chance. Thank you.” The story in the Mail said: “Trinidadian-born rapper Nicki Minaj wasn’t born with much, and she fought tooth and nail to gain her stardom. “That could be why the Pink Friday singer got so emotional on American Idol this week, when a Liberian refugee, Zoanette Johnson, brought the house down with Circle of Life.”
Zoannette, 20, has been in the US since she was two, after escaping from her war-torn motherland, the newspaper reported. “Listen, Zoanette, you make me so emotional, you came from Liberia, all those siblings, they are going to get a chance to see you on this show. I am so proud of you. So proud of you,” Minaj said.
Minaj, born Tanya Onika Maraj, is from Bournes Road, St James. She lived there with her grandmother until the age of five, when she migrated to Brooklyn, New York, to be with her parents.Cadiz said he could not comment because he was not sure whether Minaj was referring to a hard life she lived in Brooklyn or in St James. “I have no idea what her family life was like,” he said.
Cadiz said he would not like to think of St James as a “nothing” place and noted that Minaj would have had some kind of good opportunity in order to reach the US. “I am not casting aspersions on Brooklyn but I don’t know if she had a hard life in the States...She would have to explain what she meant,” he said. The minister recalled that not long ago Minaj spoke about the high number of Aids cases in T&T and quoted totally erroneous figures.
In November, she was quoted in the UK Guardian as saying 250,000 people in T&T were living with the disease. The actual figure is reported as being a tenth of that.
LiTTscapes: Moray House Trust in conjunction with the Ministry of Culture and the Theatre Guild and in association with Trinidadian Dr Kris Rampersaud yesterday presented “LiTTribute 11 – LiTTurgy to the Mainland” with readings and performances inspired by Rampersad’s book LiTTscapes – Landscapes of Fiction from Trinidad and Tobago. The coffee-table style book contains photos and writings from T&T. In photo: Rampersad (right) hands over a copy of her book to UG’s Al Creighton. It will be available in the University of Guyana library. (Photo by Arian Browne)http://www.stabroeknews.com/2013/media/photos/02/16/moray-house/
LiTTscapes – Landscapes of Fiction From Trinidad and
Tobago
Moray House Trust, Georgetown, Guyana
February 15, 2013
Mistress
of Ceremonies: Paloma Mohammed and longtime friend; Professor Al Creighton: Acting
Vice-Chancellor of the University of Guyana and Head of the Guyana Prize for
Literature; Distinguished guests all, Friends
Students
of the Guyana Theatre Guild – brilliant, brilliant interpretation of the
introduction to LiTTscapes.
I salute you, thank you for making the
work your own, because that is what it was meant to be – to be claimed and
owned and rendered by the generations next and those to come.
If I might begin by drawing attention to
the title of this event – a LiTTribute – first of all – a title with which I
took obvious authorial licence - as a combination of a literary tribute that
has Trinidad and Tobago at its centre and which also celebrates other creative
disciplines of music, song, dance, art and architecture, fashion and cuisine.
A
confession – this is really not just the second such – if one were to count the
launch of LiTTscapes itself during the jubilee of Independence month in August
last year which set the tone for the LiTTribute (To the Republic) – hosted by
Trinidad and Tobago’s First Lady in celebration of the 36th
anniversary of Trinidad and Tobago’s Republican status. That in itself was
followed by the inaugural LiTTour – literary journeys evoking tribute
to the landscapes of fiction from Trinidad and Tobago and took on a life of its
own – as on that fateful journey we stumbled upon the defaced tombs of some of
the earliest European settlers in South Trinidad – a French family shipwrecked
enroute from Martinque to Venezuela in the mid 17th century.
Yep – that is our Caribbean story.
Inescapably, our stories are tied up and entangled and intermingled with each
other’s and that goes back into our prehistory.
As now, the unfolding story of
LiTTscapes – post-publication - it unfolds with these LiTTributes, the LiTTours,
but also the expanding knowledge that will be reflected in the next publication
on my table – Letters to Lizzie – an engagement with Queen Elizabeth in the
context of her 60th jubilee celebrations and our 50th
anniversary of Independence (the celebration of which I have found particularly
problematic to identify with – given that my whole orientation, the whole
vision and world view of LiTTscapes is that we ought not to be defining our age
in terms of the time of recent self governance but as the sum total of all our
history and experiences; the sum total of all the peoples who came and those
whom they met there; and the yet nebulous truth of from whence they came and
how our islands and this our continent began).
What the story of these LiTTributes
unfolds, is that it is clearer and clearer that as islands, we are not just islands.
We are part of that continent at the beginning of the world, as Lawrence Scott
in his novel, featured in LiTTscapes articulates.
So it brings me to beginnings. I have
never been able to contemplate the history of my islands as the isolated story
of Independence or colonialisation or even migration, not the recent migrations
that brought most of us here, nor even the prehistoric ones.
I have poured over maps and drew the
invisible line that connects South American rivers and topography with our
islands; and looked at biological studies of our flora and fauna and geological
and anthropological and archeological reports, and even without that, know,
there are primordial linkages which we have been taught to forget.
Within the whole context of debates and
discussions about globalisation are those other debates and discussions – those
on globe-forming – in which we have not really seen ourselves, but in which our
writers – our writers of fiction position us.
A couple months ago when an anaconda
crawled up the Caroni River, Trinidad’s attention was jerked awake to the
realities of such primordial connections to the ecology of South America. It is
part of our knowledge we have buried somewhere in the dark recesses of our
heads.
Until about four years ago, I had never
been to Guyana – the land just a stone’s throw away – and then only for a day
so all I saw was the route to the airport and back, and immediately it recreated
for me the landscape around the Gangetic plains from which some of our
ancestors originated.
Last year I was back and this time for a
couple more days and saw a little more, something of what lay behind the
mystique of the Demerara River.
This time around, my third tryst here, I
braved the potholed roads and on a return boat that is a little more than canoe and ventured further into what Joseph Conrad might call the heart of
darkness.
For me, it was the heart of light; the
niggling inside my head that is getting more insistent of late as I research
and get ready to release Letters to Lizzie (that is if I can get the time and
headspace to finish writing it!); the niggling that there is so much more
beyond our immediate geographic space; beyond the waters of the Caribbean Sea
and the Atlantic Ocean that washes upon us that we often view as waters that
divide us but which to me contain our shared experiences and heritage and
cultures.
But I have not had only three visits to
Guyana – so as our master calypsonian would say, I lied! You see I had already
visited Guyana a hundred times through my imagination, through research and
through the stories and poems of your authors like Wilson Harris, Roy Heath, Edgar
Mittelholtzer, Jan Carew and Martin Carter. (And
Al Creighton in his comprehensive and incisive and generous review mentioned
Raleigh and Ian MacDonald whom we share along with Lakshmi Seetaram-Persaud who
is married to a Guyanese Al – they do not belong to Guyana alone (and there is
only one Derek Walcott citation in LiTTscapes that refers to St Lucia, the
other citations are all based on his comments on Trinidad).
Even before last week when I went to the
native people’s habitats in Berbice, I had already sailed with Wilson Harris’ Donne
hundreds of times to the Palace of the Peacock a conqueror and captor; and
participated in the density of history and the condensation of time he saw, as
a surveyor, mirrored in the Guyana hinterland that he has been able to infuse
in his novels;
I had numerous hilarious private moments
laughing at Lizzie, through John Agard’s mashing up the Queen’s English – so
now she had to take note and made him the UK’s poet laureate – hats off and
congrats!
And I had, with Martin Carter and Walter
Rodney danced on the walls of prison and shared an insistent that although a
prison, it was my wall and hence mines to cry or dance on. And that is why I
requested the Dance interpretation of Martin Carter’s poem The Knife of Dawn. And I have never seized to marvel at this one,
written in 1927 with the lines “We who are sweepers of an ancient sky;
discoverers of new planet, sudden stars… “ Yes, you heard me, written in 1927,
before space travel, before mega thrusts to the moon” Our writers have been our
visionaries though we have remained blind to the enormous possibilities and
potentials of ourselves that they have been presenting us with.
So that’s why I asked and was immediately
granted my wish for a dance interpretation of Carter’s poem which will be done
by the Guyana National School of Dance – thank you for that, Paloma, for so
readily agreeing without even knowing what a tremendous source of inspiration
that poem has been in its notes of defiance, of empowerment, of envisioning –
and which still is to me in all of what I try to do!
That item will close tonight’s
LiTTribute: and indeed the LiTTurgy to the Mainland: though they may think
they may be paying tribute to LiT scapes, the work before us today; it is also
my tribute to a source of inspiration and which I present to those who follow
and hope they to will take what might have seemed to be a ridiculous and
petulant decision to make my dance right here; to remain in the Caribbean and
continue the exploration of the nuts and bolts that make it this place we love
so well and so love to hate as well. And that despite the tremendous force that
is constantly in operation to insist that there is a better world out there to
make someone of ourselves – forcing and pushing our young people out to
discover new planets and sudden stars elsewhere - not the ones hanging over
their heads.
It is this kind of reawakening that I am
hoping of LiTTscapes and its ambitions and intentions – what I called at its
launch last year a revolution – a revolution in reading! A revolution to
re-envisioning ourselves; at how we look at our world in the first and foremost
instance, and how we look at the rest of the world and our place in it – as
centres, not on the periphery – as sweepers of an ancient sky; not as
offsprings in a new world; and as DISCOVERERS – of new planets and sudden star;
not stargazers.
That is our challenge: to lift ourselves above
and beyond the self derision and self negation we have been hinged.
What brought me to Guyana this time was
my own exploratory urge.
LiTTscapes, I hope is a stimulant to
curiosity – to be curious about ourselves in the first instance, our immediate
locale and to discover and explore and rediscover ourselves and those around us
an those who have been exploring and discovering those around us – our writers
– who have probed and can stimulate us to probe deeper, beneath ourselves – to
move beyond the self-derision and self deprecation and the discover our
ugliness too, and too, our beauty.
That’s what I found in the Guyana hinterland
this week – what I began to find as I traced the imaginary line that connects
us – island and continent.
This is a LiTTurgy – a praise song: to
all those who came before, and on whose enormous shoulders we stand and are
dwarfed.
Peeps, I returned home from exploring the millennia old civilisations of the Incas of Peru and older ones of the Mayas of Belize to the sounds of a party. Blaring loudspeakers woke me up this morning and have been going non stop since between spurts of some newly concocted calypso - made me wonder if I had misjudged the time and it was Carnival Monday. They are announcing some political meeting or the other; and begging for my vote, and meh road still aint fix though I hear all parts getting box drains and thing, so I vex.
Trying to open Caricom eyes to what reparations really mean, instead I opened my mailbox and there was a polling card - along with all kinds of documents of misdeeds here and there 'cause that's wat mail boxes are for, aint? I need to be convinced if I should vote, and who for, and why? So convince me nah, and keep the comments clean, okay, my vote's on you..Visit Demokrissy's New Home . Website: GloCakl Knowledge Pot
