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
When is literature #CulturallyInappropriate ...we have been inducted and nurtured on culturally irrelevant and culturally inappropriate literature and education through colonisation that still handicap our sense of self, values, development and progress...or do they? Does someone living inside an experience have more rights to writing about it than just a visitor? And where does that leave travel literature? Does historical truths have to be fictional truths? more #LettersToLizzie @krisramp @lolleaves
At 15.25 minute to 18.40, I describe the multicultural nature of the cuisine and the representation of diversity, both in the distinctive identity and flavours, but also in borrowing and blending flavours of the cuisine of other ethnicities.
'Callaloo: The Melting Pot' is the story of Indians living in Trinidad and Tobago, a multi-ethnic, multi-racial nation in the Southern Caribbean, which is inhabited by a diverse set of people, marred by a painful history of imperialism, slavery and migration. A riveting mix of assorted cultures, the place upholds a highly globalized, yet indigenous identity that is critical to its growing collaboration with India in various sectors of development. The film explores the socio-cultural vibrancy of Trinidad and Tobago's Indian diaspora and its indispensable contribution to the evolution of the nation and its economy and culture. The film also looks at the growing potential for investment and commerce with India, with which, it is also bound by a myriad cultural influences in art, music, fashion, films and food.
As the world gathers to discuss the
plight of Small Island Developing States (SIDS) - what some of us have
presented to the UNESCO community to be rebranded as Big Ocean Sustainable
States (BOSS) - the vulnerability of islands like ours and the fate of
near-coastal districts like those in Nariva/Mayaro in Trinidad and Tobago’s
south eastern corner come sharply into focus.
Invited to its centenary celebrations to
prophesy what may portend for the Rio Claro of 100 years hence, I envision, in
what follows, beyond the ‘bush’ (as the district is often described and the
tendency to think of development as urbanisation), to the intrinsic value of
‘bush’ and pronounce on the potential realities of its vulnerability as a SIDS
and its sustainability as a BOSS, gleaned from my Kristal ball of research on
the interconnectivities of the globe and our island, the global island .TT (Dot TT – Global Island):
Rio Claro 2114: Through the Kristal bowl
Knowledge Centre of .TT, the Global Island
Address by Dr
Kris Rampersad Independent Media and Cultural Educator and Producer
and Trinidad and Tobago Representative on the
UNESCO Executive Board
on Perspectives
on Sustainable Development - Rio Claro
next 100 years,
Friends, Neighbours, Countryfolks.
I’d wondered when I
would get a chance to say that last line, altered from one of Shakespeare’s
masterpieces of oratory: Friends, neighbours, countryfolks.
Here, in Rio, it
rings true: Though I migrated out on graduation from high school to the big
city, and as my mother still says in her exaggerated style, I left her house
and never came back- Indeed I have been somewhat of a wanderer since, T and T
based, but about 250 global districts and more than 50 countries later, here I
am, on home soil. Thank you for inviting me back home.
To be honest growing
up near this district, Rio was just a place we passed through enroute to the
beach at Mayaro or Guayaguayare. The folks may stop to stock up on ice or other
liquid supplies while we young ones crammed as sardines into my brother’s
Cortina, would peer over the wings of the always-polished silver angel that
graced his car bonnet, wondering when they would get the show on the road: After
all, the beach was calling.
Sometimes, on the
way back, exhausted and ready for bed, ma or pa would remember they had family
around, and we would have to put the sleep creeping up on us, on hold.
So in fact, my
roots run somewhat deeper here in Rio, than just neighbour status. My mother
was from these parts, Navet, until she was whisked away as a child on the death
of her mom to live with an uncle and aunt in Fyzabad, returning to New Grant to
begin a family with my father, the Sheriff, in her mid-teens, and sixty years
later – she is now a young 80 something, here we are. Some of our folks still live around here.
Ma’s life, indeed,
spans much of the past 100, Rio is now celebrating – That thought struck me
with the enormity of the task before me of trying to envision Rio 100 years
hence. Would she, as a child in Navet, have envisioned anything of what the
district has become today? So how can I, begin to do this.
In parenthesis I
note here that Rio is celebrating 100 years since the trainline enhanced the
population of the district. The soil on
which we are now, holds more than 10,000 year old history and heritage which we
need to harness which is where I see its future. These are the kinds of
specificities of our history that we need to be conscious of and that we need
to correct – including misrepresentations replicated on our National Coat of
Arms and National Anthem.
In preparation for
this, I did what anyone of the now generation would do: I put out a call on
social media – they call it crowdsourcing: ‘Share your thoughts? What would Rio
look like in the next 100 years?’ I got plenty ‘likes’ and thumbs up, but no
thoughts save one who advised to consult a politician sitting here today, not
at the head table.
Sigh! So much to do
to develop critical thinking. I wasn’t looking for ‘likes’ or commendations,
but ideas.
So I did the next best
thing when faced with such a dilemma. Research. And like everyone of the now
generation, I started on the internet. I was thrilled. The Rio Claro/Mayaro
Corporation actually had its own website, complete with a waving national flag
and pretty pictures. I immediately felt welcomed. But skimming through looking
for plans I saw that its vision ended 2013. And then I saw this at the bottom of the municipal's page: LAST UPDATED: SUNDAY SEPTEMBER 25, 2011.
You have to be a researcher to understand what a kill
joy that is. Seems not only the historical but also the contemporary history
reflected in the Kristal waters around this district are a little bit murky. I searched further and found the Rio Claro/Mayaro Development plan. I was already familiar with the Ministry’s national
development plans having participated in one of its consultations and made some
suggestions which I am yet to see reflected therein. You see, the National
Plans identify various growth poles for Trinidad and Tobago, but there is none
for this region, even with the enormous potential of what the area contains identified in its regional plans. The beach pictures on the Municipal Corporation’s
website triggered thoughts of global
warming, sealevel rise and vulnerability of what the so called developed world
call small island developing states – SIDS -
but what myself and a couple colleagues from the Pacific/Oceanic region
on the UNESCO Executive Board in Paris are now trying to change to Big Ocean
Sustainable States: BOSS. But that is harder than trying to change the Trinidad
and Tobago Constitution. It means moving 193 countries in the UN system to
agree. Pressure!
In addition, I
looked at the data and projections on sea level rise from climate change (with
its associated erosion, flooding and submergence of land); the potential for
earthquakes and other natural vulnerabilities to which we may be subjected. And I
drew from my travel/research experiences: Port Royal, Jamaica, sunk by earthquakes of
1692 and 1907 – buried below the sea; nearby in Guyana, parts of what used to
be its coastline is now invisible – in the sea; no different than parts of
Cedros, here and the Mayaro/Guayaguyare coastline.
It’s a heavy
thought. Would Rio even be around in the next 100 years? I couldn’t come here,
like a prophet of doom and gloom. I wanted a more positive flavour for my home
district.
With this looming
sense of hopelessness, in desperation I turned to my Kristal ball. Yes. I have
one of those. Every consultant should in times like these, when all other
sources fail, one must have something to consult, ent?
My Kristal ball is
a little murky itself: dust had accumulated, especially in the spots around
Trinidad and Tobago, because it had been a while since I had been called by my
islands to look into it and share its prophesy.
My friends call it
my fishbowl without fish. My niece has threatened to throw it out. It contains
no fish, nor any fluid transparent liquid that transforms into visions of the
future. It is really a glass fishbowl with an accumulation of nondescript rocks
and pebbles into each of which I have injecteda memory of a place – of no value or worth to anyone except to myself – they hold for me a memory from the soil of the some
250 districts in more than 50 countries I’ve visited: some to prepare
communities like this one to be empowered, resilient communities and face
whatever the future may hold.
My Kristal bowl of
pebbles of my memories surfaced this memory: from North England, near what is now known as
Hogwart’s Castle from the Harry Potter film complete with a princess whose specialty
is poisonous herbs! I was invited to speak at the World Summit on Arts and
Culture in 2005 and went on a field visit to this place. Keilder Forest: looks so much
like Biche forest: art and architecture transformed this region from bush it
was considered to be – with the darkest skies in all England, they say: into a
carefully managed world attraction close to half a million a year and could
have more if it wasn't controlled. An observatory, to watch the night sky in all its
glory and make use of the darkest skies in all England;
The skyscape is
viewed through what we would call an obsokey building, but enter it and you’d
realise that the artist who designed it meant to change the way you look at the
sky, forever. It includes a cycling trail, bits of manmade art scattered around
the woods that regenerated what was believed to be a district in decline into a
vibrant visitor retreat and a place locals value and enjoy.
Even without the
manmade art and architecture, the Biche forest is a natural wonder: the self-growing
stone, the vegetation, and something else I’ll share later. I got lost in there
once on a hike with Dr Brinsley Samaroo. There was a reason for that, you may
be astounded at what I found.
My Kristal ball moved
a little further north on the globe: Glasgow, Scotland. In 2007 I participated
in a global civil society summit, where I presented what that movement now
knows as CivicCalypso: a calypso recounting the value of the civil society
movement, and my experience of the New Lanark World Heritage site. Rio’s rural
agricultural character could extract something from this example. New Lanark
had revolutionised the labour practices for the cotton industry in Europe, and New
Lanark recreates that industrial heritage along with the near half a million
visitors it attracts annually. It also revitalised interest in the district's wool textiles
sector.
You see,
organisations like UNESCO, in its sustainable development thrust is friendly to
how industry changes the world. For the last three years I have met with enthusiastic
nods mixed with mounting rumblings every time I speak about World Heritage
status for Trinidad and Tobago – with murmured fears that such moves would
negatively affect the oil industry. So far from the truth. In fact, the nomination
I have presented of an ecosystem of Trinidad and Tobago’s natural, cultural and
industrial heritage that incorporates the collective values of several of our
elements into an unparalleled global continuum and to which Rio and its
surrounding district is pivotal, has already won widespread support in the
international community. It is now for us to move our officials to action.
My Kristal ball is
now moving away from Europe which you might say is rich and developed to an
island, like ours: Bali, Indonesia. The year is 2011 so clearly this Kristal
fishbowl with rocks not fish has no sense of chronology. I am
participating as an Independent member of the consultative body of the UNESCO
Intergovernmental Committee on Intangible Cultural Heritage and your Member of
Parliament, and now Minister of Community Development who was then the Minister
of Arts and Multiculturalism is representing Trinidad and Tobago and I am sure
he has much to share of that experience.
Everywhere one turns,
it seems, talent and art coming out of stone, literally too. I only last week heard
the current Minister of Arts and Multiculturalism describe Trinidad and Tobago in
those words “talent growing from the pavements.” Bali lives it: in one example,
a UNESCO programme on strengthening its intangible cultural heritage has helped
transformed its batik cottage industry into a multimillion dollar international
trade, providing employment for what is considered the world’s most populous
country, with a satellite of spinoff industries in tourism, agriculture, all
tied into attractive interwoven natural, tangible and intangible heritage
industries.
There are countless other downstream spin offs too: as each of these draw crowds of tourists who throng to Bali for
its sun, sand, sea, and Bali has another “S” – not the one that you may be thinking
of, but for its spirituality that has gained added impetus from the book and
movie Eat Pray Love. All heritage tourism
which it combines into arts and crafts tourism – because people curious about
how things are done, and agricultural tourism, and its natural eco tourism,
flocking to the ornate terraced rice fields and the range of what is sold as
‘attractions’ but is really the everyday life of the average citizen. That’s
what heritage is about: being what you are can be an attractive commodity – and
we all know that apart from how we does walk, talk and cook, we does make good
company.
Even without the
terracing, the site of rice fields is beautiful, with the sun reflecting off
them. Some of us here have planted rice at one time, right? It seems like drudgery
that work, but when you add appreciation and wonder to any task it becomes
noble – ask anyone in Bali. In connecting the dots of my research, I also went
to the neighbouring island, home of Java Man, one of the earliest humanoid
known so I could draw the connecting dots to our own best kept secret on the
site next door to here where Banwari was found. This is the site. I took time
to get there from Bali, is also a World Heritage site, really a wilderness but
endowed with value that we need to start developing for our own.
And incidentally, I
met no one, not a single person in Bali who had dreams of leaving the island.
That’s what connection to self, through heritage, supported by a state system, can do. That’s what we mean when we talk about building resilient communities.
That’s what we do,
as we have done, my Kristal ball is changing coordinates to closer home now:
Brasilia, most
recently. There to devise plans for World Heritage for the next decade, earlier
this year in May – alas, just before the World Cup: someone clearly got their
timing wrong. But it was opportune to be in this city before it was overrun by
football fans.
In the 1960s, a
rare, you might say, visionary politician, decided to listen to a prophesy of a
century earlier – for true – and move the capital of Brazil from Rio de Janeiro
to Brasilia, lock, stock and barrel as we say. He must have been an
extraordinary politician because he didn’t mind people dreaming bigger than
him. In fact, he got someone to dream up a design for the city and an architect
to fill it with some of the most astounding buildings I have ever seen: and
that’s what the Brazilian capital looks like: Awesome and awe-inspiring from
every angle, and carefully managed with laws that protect the city from overpopulation
that is now threatening. So it’s not about just putting up buildings, but
having the back up resources, infrastructure, legislation and policy to
maintain and protect them and I can present on how this city has done this, as
well as several others we have worked/are working with including those in the
Caribbean: Cuba, Jamaica, Antigua and Barbuda, St Kitts and Nevis, Guyana,
Curacao etc.
At the back of my
mind, this picture of doom still lurks. Who’s to say that with the flooding in
Port of Spain, as the sea reclaims with was taken from it – how many of you
know Port of Spain is built on land reclaimed from the sea - Well, with sea
level rise, the perpetuation of flooding etc, it is not difficult to imagine
that there might soon be a need to find a new capital. (I described this in my
most recent book LiTTscapes, published as a commemorative book for the 50th
anniversary of Independence: One of our Trini writers, Arthur De Lima in a book
called The Great Quake envisioned the
city destroyed by an earthquake and we all having to return to rurality.
Remember I mentioned Port Royal in Jamaica, now below the sea and which we are
preparing for World Heritage status. Who knows, Rio Claro could envision itself
as the future capital, with its own portals to the sea, as Brasilia, built in
the 1960s, with such breath and vision, and is considered the world’s most
modern city, and since inscribed as such and as a World Heritage city: so
UNESCO not only looking for old ruins, you see. The vibrancy of our own lives
make several of our districts candidates and in the continuum I am preparing,
unparalleled.
I thought that
would be enough by way of comparison to now lay out my vision for this district
for the next 100 years, but my Kristal bowl was on a roll…remember I have about
250 districts in it from more than 50 countries across Asia, Africa, Europe and
the Americas; we’ve only drifted through four.
It hurriedly turned
to Peru. In 2013 to work with others in the region to help develop the Latin
American and Caribbean regional blueprint for intangible cultural heritage in
Cuzco, the centre of the 12th century
Inca civilisation, headquarters in breathtaking (literally, high up above the
sea) MachuPichu – a world heritage site with Cuzco itself being a centre of
intangible cultural heritage. They say the Inca empire lasted just about 100
years – by the way – perhaps an historical inaccuracy, but a lot can happen in a
100 years you see. The Inca empire extended in its heyday all the way through
to Argentina, and not just in its remarkable feats of building at high altitudes,
and an astounding road networks, but it has also left a legacy of an ability to
feed itself through time tried agricultural practices of hydrology and
fertilisation. Peru’s boast even today is its self sufficiency in food and I
note that’s one of the dreams in the development plans for this district is self-sufficiency
in food. Virtually all of Peru’s basic food needs are met from home grown food.
Its import bill comprises only nonessential luxuries and it is justifiably
called the cuisine capital of the Americas, with some of the most startling
flavours for the taste buds I have ever experienced. I know, having returned a
few pounds heavier, and I am not talking about my luggage.
The Kristal ball,
in its now self-driven frenzy landed next, on Peru’s neighbour and ours, on
Belize. Over the last couple years I have been developing and conducted
heritage training for the range of stakeholders from policy and decision makers
to communities and knowledge holders and practitioners in many fields,
not just culture, and developing what is now becoming something of a blueprint
for such training in the Caribbean which we have replicated in Jamaica,
Grenada, St Kitts, Guyana. So we worked with talented people in agriculture, in
traditional knowledge and medicine, in arts, craft, culture, and policy makers
and tourism officials and educators and archaeologists and museum specialists
and researchers to pull their vision together for sustainable heritage and
tourism development – from things like new textbooks and educational materials for
schools to teach local Garifuna language; or identifying gaps in the macro
infrastructure: like trade mechanisms etc. Belize, one of our Caribbean/Commonwealth
neighbours has an astounding Mayan heritage, you know. We walked through the
seven hour process of making pastelles – we think that’s from the Spanish, but
it’s Mayan, or maybe earlier - I may not
have time to explain those elements of my research in detail here.
Belize was part of
the Mayan Empire that dominated the region from about 3000 BC. You would never
look at bush the same way again, because buried under and disguised as
mountains and forests are thousands of Mayan constructions – they estimate
about 2,500, and there are living Mayan communities, as there are Incas too – the
colonials didn’t kill them all out as our history books tell us, you know,
though they took much else from them; but they exist and in thriving numbers similar
stories from Guyana, Suriname our neighbours, Dominica. Hence the need to
inject our history books with all this new knowledge that is surfacing and
which I have been trying to gather in my research and travels and interviews
across the region of local communities, some which few people can reach.
Now suddenly, my Kristal
ball, is not murky anymore and the clouds have cleared and I realise what it has
been trying to tell me to say about Rio Claro in the next 100 years; and that,
even if we are all washed away by sea level rise or taken down by an earthquake,
and may not be around, at least not in the glory of the ancient Mayans and
Incas but as lesser mortals if a natural disaster strikes - let the powers
forbid - an earthquake shatters all these nice plans we have for sustainability
and take away our oil rigs and city skyscrapers, and highways and all those
things we hold so dearly as markers of our development. If the sea rose up
again as it does in ... this is an excerpt ... for full and for more or to contract sustainable development consultancy visioning action planning and capacity development services email: lolleaves@gmail.com, see @lolleaves @krisramp #Demokrissy #LeavesOfLife #CaribbeanLiterarySalon
The Triumph of Gollum in the Land of Shut Up Suicide of the
Fellowship of Partnerships Book 11. A Sequel Futuring the Agenda Forward https://goo.gl/HU3rp3
Celebrating Jamettry The Sacred and the Sacriligious
