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
Statement by Dr Kris Rampersad on Trinidad and Tobago’s handling of
matters related to UNESCO
1.Summary of main
issues and concerns
National Coat of Arms of Trinidad and Tobago with
National Motto: Together We Aspire, Together We Achieve
This statement follows a series of unsuccessful attempts to access
existing democratic mechanism and processes for clarification and to correct
the Parliamentary and public records on actions and statements by members of
the Government since November 2015 in relation to the United Nations
Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisations (UNESCO) on activities in
which I was legitimately engaged as a citizen and national of Trinidad and
Tobago.
This occurred within and around the work of this organisation, UNESCO,
devoted to promoting intercultural dialogue, peaceful negotiations and conflict
resolution, in an already highly tense international meeting that involved
balancing various extreme elements, and in the wake of the terrorist attacks on
Paris in November 2015 which put further pressures on the already stressed
peace-building systems and which cast a shadow over actions of officials from
Trinidad and Tobago and the country’s engagement with its international
partners, as well as raised questions about its treatment of nationals.
Returning to private life, my approach to date has been to allow
established mechanisms and procedures to address this matter.
However, using the cover of powers, privileges and immunities of
Parliament both the Minister of State in the Ministry of Education, the
Honourable Lovell Francis in the House of Representatives on January 22, 2016
and the Minister of Education, the Honourable Anthony Garcia in the Senate on
January 26, 2016 have distorted the facts with omissions, misalignments and
misrepresentations of dates, sequences and chronologies; exhibiting as the line
officials on UNESCO matters considerable deficiencies in knowledge and
understanding about matters under their jurisdiction and portfolios on the
roles and functions of offices, institutions, organisations and persons and
processes, procedures and roles, functions and mechanisms and of international
and national systems therein. This has cast further confusion over the issues
about which I have been asked by various quarters nationally and
internationally to clarify.
Just when the immortelles in their blaze of glory mock the
raging bushfires which like the social un-conscience casts in its wake this
monstrous - 'not at all like proper children' of Robert Louis Stevenson's Shadow over
the land in this wild unconscionable rampage of slash-and-burn of forests,
flora, fauna, wildlife, tree limbs, any limbs, any life of man, woman, children
or whatever may be also good and natural, eh?
Just when the yellow and pink and lilac poui blossoms like Asami Nagasaki's Japanese cherry blossoms are beginning to peep out through their-green
leaves on the plains, valleys, hills and mountain tops, shyly then defiantly
daring the monstrous -not-at-all-like-proper, decent well-formed - fires of slash-and-burn
to charge into them too, because they going down singing and dancing and
clapping and celebrating – you, Irmes, ups and jus out out jus so jus so, eh?
You gone, eh? Jus when dem deadly - like Headley, or some
other folks not to be here named – Zika mosquitoes take up positions over the
land in the form of this monstrous shadow, queuing up to kill in execution of
their singular terror-intent, attack with full force; aim to maim, to
exterminate, or at least reduce the already too-bloated brains, heads, and egos
of unconscionable power monsters and their birth parents - the rest will,
shruggingly, only be collateral damage, to cut down to proportional size in the
national hierarchy of things and the universal food chain of human beings, eh?
Gyul, you gone, fuh true? Just when big big raucous hocus
pocus gripping local TV that is also cable and world wide www.internet TV too, with
what now passes for the highest rated shows that are not the views and opinion
of the TV stations or the Parliament Channel – because our Andre Tankered footloose
and fancy free Cross Country jus so
jus so lose its national footing, although it hold the number one rating on
prime time for the entire time of our run; although it grip the people’s
imagination in awe and wonder and promise to expand the social conscience with
real images, sounds and sound information and thoughts and actions of real
people and places that form the diverse mosaic of our national tapestry and
show that we rainbow fuh real, eh? Would our society have been the better for it if you were given a prime time TV spot to share your mind and knowledge and perspective - never seems to have crossed anyone's mind, except mine, eh?
Irmes, remember when the height of public outrage at our
media was over a mere 90-seconds, yes 90 seconds, feature on dead dogs on
streets and highways that Ed insisted on running, distasteful graphics and all
– well how else you could show a dead dog, eh? Dog lover that you are, nothing
I could do or say could erase your upset as we had tried to change his mind,
and then the public erupted that it is aired on prime time TV, on the number
one rated show, how dare we just as they are sitting down to dinner and we show
with their families, and Ralph who was there only in the studio narrating Ed’s
script and layered on to an unsuspecting public through chroma-key so he was
never really there but was always very gracious to accept all the credits for
the fine insights we wrote and presented of our people, warded off taking
credit for that one and poor Dale Kolasingh had to apologise ad nauseum on our behalf for
the insensitivity, and in the end Ed maybe had the last laugh because the
sanitation people get to work to clear away any dead dogs they could find,
though they couldn’t get to the stench; and maybe people start putting their
dogs on leashes too, so they wouldn’t wander out and get knock down by unconscionable
monstrous drivers and their equally monstrous children-drivers, who now just
knocking down people and other vehicles instead, jus so jus so and jus as they
knock away yuh leg when you trying to cross the road hurrying back to work from
some extra hours at the university, and still you crawl back up, heal and
continue to stand tall, though we all know you shorter than me.
AVM Special Report – of the real monsters, parents of monsters and criminal-minded
Who apologising now, eh Irmes, since we no longer could ask
through an investigation by the AVM Special Report that Kolasingh would have surely
put us on the track of the monsters and their parents to find the real roots and the real criminal monster killers of social conscience and springboard of the now heights of insensitivity in the parade of dead bodies, dead babies,
dead school boys and school girls, dead men and women turning up in any nook
and cranny, across the street, on the street, in the next bush, at the
Savannah, on the corner, in the canefield, behind this wall and that building;
and the women and girls with throats slit, or kicked in their stomachs –
literally and metaphorically too - or for who missing and not turning up at all
at all at all? Who apologising for dat, eh?
If you were here, you would share my outrage but draw some
satirical analogy from some great work of literature, or some anecdotal
experience, idea or humorous incident in a
shrug-that-belie-how-deeply-you-too-are-outraged with a deflection that that is
the way of the world which would allow us to refocus and pour our creative
energies on the task at hand to shape, through our media, our art and our craft the social conscience
rather than waste it in a lament, but you gone, jus so jus so, Irmes, and I
here, trying to find a counteractive quip quote or humour that would restore my equilibrium and
sense of faith in people and focus on creating a fire track that would deflect these
current ominous monstrous onward-charge of slash and burn fires burning up the
forests, flora, fauna, wildlife, tree limbs, any limbs, any life of man, woman,
children or whatever may be also good and natural, eh?
Book Talk of inclusive kaleidoscopic shades and colours
You gone girl! Is it to a place that is A Whiter Shade of
Pale or is it a paler shade of white, girl, now that you there, that some knew as Procol Harum’s 1967 song which we didn’t know then
but has recently been rated number 57 among the 500 greatest songs of all
times, and which in our also narrated and chromakeyed through Ralph – BookTalk, also then highly-rated
series, we presented as a poem because poem or song, a Chaucerian Miller’s Tale
or a Naipaulian Mystic tale; a Walcottian Homeric epic, Lovelace-calypso-novel,
Sammy (Selvon) migrant island-world or Michael (Anthony) history-story we
wanted to tell we people that neither shape nor form nor colour nor texture of
a thought or expression, nor its origins nor orientation detracts from
appreciation and respect for the creative impulse and imagination?
Like that die too, girl? We reach anybody? You think? All
those years all dem words and images and ideas? All dem people we hold up as public pillars...whey dem be?
As in the enthusiastic hours shared bouncing off ways of
meeting challenges, especially the mandate of low cost yet high quality
productions which was AVM’s hallmark, I
am replaying the piles and piles of words and images and sounds I have
presented since then, and considering now the piles and piles you too churned
out from that quick wit and unbridled imagination and wry humour that made such
amazing and always refreshing connection between thoughts of one instance, one age
with another, embracing, appreciating, savouring knowledge for itself and
itself alone, and hoping in the process of sharing it that it would also put
food in your dog’s plate, and on your table – in that order, because your dogs
always came first, even in your social media profile but how often both your dog's and your plate was left empty in this place that intent on making strays, homeless and vagrants of as many as it could.
Survival – where the mind is without fear
Irmes, I am replaying
how we travelled with heads held high to Tagore’s Gitanjaliwhere knowledge is
free and we searched out and assigned, mixed and matched images to ideas – from
stills or artistic representations and allusions where moving images were not
available, often times stretching our imaginations so we might pull at the
imaginations of others and transport their minds through connections they did
not think possible; mixing and matching images and ideas to lyrics and sounds
that made and remade a thought and a politician, or two, and maybe made some of
them cringe too; that profiled a corporation or two and helped their profit line
too; that focused on a sector or two and maybe helped it grow; that championed
survivalism through our agriculture series, Survival;
that championed the culture, the heritage, the sportsmen and women, the people.
Remember the hours I remained glued to the screen in the kiosk, playing over
and over Pat Bishop’s words in preparation for the first CARIFESTA we hosted for
my special report on culture – so full of optimism she was at the potential of
our arts and culture that she inspired me since then to the day she just drop
dead, jus so, in front of me in a meeting room where I joined her struggle for
space for we culture? And the time spent with Prof Julien Kenny trying to save the same environment now and still fighting for survival from predators rapists and plunderers and of course the monstrous slash and burn man machine.
Remember the raving mad woman, Bachac, who, on meh way with
crew to Manzanilla I just held a mike to she hanging out she lil board house
window – no questions asked - and she
tell all ah dem and dey modder what to fix in the country, and everybody
chuckle and keep asking for reruns after reruns so they could chuckle some more,
but you think they fix anything she tell them to fix, just like they look on we
yes, providing show and song and music and dance and idea and thought and words
for chuckle after chuckle but all they see is that we just as mad as she,
Bachac.
Incomparable above and beyond Cazabon’s North Post view
Yes girl, like you, mind wandering above them there North
Post hills and seas and d valley, captured by Cazabon in one of the just-repurchased masterpieces for
our museum itself raped and plundered by some, trying to just hold its skirt
seams together so that its crumbling walls wouldn’t expose its private parts and
decayed bones as at the Red House and once seat of Parliament, my memory drifts
through those years, to the image of you huddled over your typewriter as I am
being escorted past the writer’s booth and editing kiosks and around to the
office of media magnate Kolasingh for my interview. It was you who so openly
welcomed me into the ‘writer’s pool’, gently mentoring as you did all who
joined, openly embracing new fresh minds, not a thought of territorialism but
seeing us all as an opportunity to warm and expand your own world, never once
forcing or imposing an opinion, appreciating and understanding dialogue, debate
and the embrace of ideas and opinions and the value of their open flow to take shape
and form that freedom of thought allows.
It was you who later - over hurriedly gulped lunch, or late
hours pounding out on our typewriters the words and lines that would be mouthed
and voiced, after the office had emptied out, or sharing a taxi from the hills
back to town - told me that ‘the Boss’ had already decided he would hire me
even prior to the interview; that the advertisement placed in the newspaper for
which I worked was perhaps placed there to deliberately draw my attention - and
in the process, hopefully others’ too; that that interview had been only a formality;
that the newly begun Cross Country programme
which you would generously hand over to me, as with others, to conceive, to
craft, to create, had already been feeding off my newspaper still fledgling, I
thought, column Discover Trinidad and
Tobago; that when I accepted the position the Boss had received a call from
Len Chong Sing, the very unassuming, shy and reserved then Editor-in-Chief who had hired me without once looking me in the eye call admonishing Kolasingh in what we would here euphemistically call very ‘strong’
language for poaching on his newspaper’s most promising staff, which the Boss
later confirmed to me with his infectious chuckle.
It was only you who knew that it was the Boss, unlike some
others who had tried to smother opportunities, who encouraged me to use the
prize-trip from the BWIA Media Awards I had won on my first year on the
newspaper job for an article in that same newspaper ‘Discover’ series, and had arranged
my first visit to the #UnitedNations in #NewYork where he had previously served,
so it could feed the vision of the world that inspired his and, little did he
know, given his premature and truncated life, like yours - inspired me on the
life path and turns that has brought me to this day.
Well, pragmatist that he is, as he was not going to give me
a salary increase nor an advance, it was perhaps the only choice, because not
then and not now, neither you nor I could think of a using a prize trip to go
shopping - not with the nil value knowledge has here, only recyclable if it is to
wrap fish as I shared with you that real experience of discovery of the knowledge
recycling system that were among the reasons that I took flight from the
frightening prospects of seeing my freshly churned out Mondays' Discover Trinidad and Tobago and Tuesdays' Teenlife columns and other articles and features become fresh wrapping for Sundays' freshly
caught fish at the Port of Spain, San Fernando, Tunapuna, Arima and Debe markets.
It was you who heard and empathised and shared and countered my railing
with your wit and humour at the disjoint between the ought and is, and
strengthened my resolve when the time came to move on, and since, cheering me
on, reaching out in the most unassuming ways to help straighten out a kink,
remove a spec of dust and steer me back on course when the course itself was so
overgrown, like the paths we walked on the North Post trail; to stretch my arms
out to perfection, painting in our minds’ eye what Cazabon did on canvas and
Tagore did in his garlanded song-poem, Gitanjali,
with ever-widening thought and action, a heaven of freedom.
Irmes, I am looking at all that, just as you must be looking
down from that high perch above your’s and mine favourite spot at the North
Post hill now, and wondering when did the social conscience die? Who kill it? Was
it when the 1990 attempted coup also attempted to invade we archives at AVM?
Because is true all hell break lose then, it seems, people still scrambling to
find out who’s their leader to this day; and wondering too, when will be the
awakening.
Academia versus where knowledge
is free as fresh tea leaves
Already then only just having moved out of that production
studio to find my own space and to find some knowledge at the university – ah
still looking - yuh know I hear some order went down to ban me books there - so I hear eh girl well dats what power wielders at universities in banana republics do when they not slash and burning books, people and the hills as you found out painfully when you decided to follow me for your degree, later, and I could only guide you through
manoeuvring the machinations of pseudo academia trying to augment CVs by
appropriating the intelligence of students, especially those with such pure
original imagination like yours; as I could only guide those other students who
in my transitional and temporary status there sought some advice and guidance
too – wanting to stretch their imaginations to take flight, but meeting only
solid obstructionist walls. Meh head still bleeding and pounding from dat.
All I know, girl, is that social conscience dead dead, and
as you well know, sacrificed at the altar
of egos intent on protecting turf even if it mean starving to death people who dare to think they could live off knowledge by packaging and sharing it, by trying to
create opportunities for others to share theirs as would perhaps be par for the
course - or the appetizer, the main course and the dessert in mature countries,
small islands or large island-continents, not in leafy force ripe banana
republics like we sometimes find weself contemplating and writing about and
aligning images to like swaying laden-with-force-ripe banana palms sometimes
mistaken for sohari leaves. They watch d empty leaves and say starve, frustrate talent and energies when all one wants to do as a lifelong learner to share learnings to teach through media or any other forms or place even under the mango tree if they would only give us a chance. Frustrated talent. You not the only one.
I try, eh girl, to stop you reaching for that next drink, as
that life-line from A Whiter Shade of Pale, to get you, instead, addicted to my
freshly brewed teas made from imagination and the leaves I pluck from meh now dying-from-drought too back yard garden
– lemon grass tea and tulsi leaf tea and mint and bay leaf and mango leaf and
guava leaf tea – must have some guava leaf because it is guava season and like you
I planting some tomatoes and bodi, melongene and ochro, mango and pommecythere too, to tide me through these
thoughtful but incomeless times. I tried, but your addiction was already running
too deep as the watering hole down in the Diego Martin Valley into which abyss you
disappeared to re-emerge. How many know, eh, or care, what it takes to keep the
wit and the humour and the optimism and the faith, buoying up others, drifting
into our own darkness while warding off the debtors, eh? Who knows what it
takes when the bullets target bullseye on our efforts to share knowledge, stop
dead in its tracks your search for opportunities to package and disseminate it,
so it instead builds up like bile inside you till it poison your liver and end
your life while you smile with wit and humour and generous faith and optimism,
eh?
From the Section NORTTHWEST in LiTTscapes
Landscapes of Fiction from Trinidad and Tobago
Yet even now, looking and searching for that last clue that
I know you must have left for me, to hang on to the hope and the optimism and
the dream and the wit and the humour, sure enough, you did, girl and I find it,
and I’ll share and reshare it. You leave it there, right before my eyes, right before all of us with eyes to see, right
on your last public quip. There it is in full view of all: all of your wit and
humour and wry commentary and connection between the past and the present, you
have shared it and left it, without comment, for all of us to hold on to in
that other element you also cultivated appreciation in me – for steelpan and
the hours we spent at panorama prelims, semis and finals, backing our own favourites
and trying not to create our own pan fan wars.
You found your last vision of the state we are in, in Kitchener,
whose Rain O’ Rama calypso tent itself has fallen fate to its own domestic
turmoils, in his 1972 calypso of that name and the debates that inspired it, to
cancel the Carnival in the wake of the then polio threat, cheekily detailing
the public outrage, public defence and public display of perceived indecency,
and as it was written then, it is written now, that the forces that stop the
Carnival were those that are beyond our voiced, or unvoiced, protests or rage or
outrage, indignation, anger, hurt or despair.
Your last post - amidst your photos of the ravished landscape,
its bountiful offerings of fruits and vegetables shared just after the one in
which I endorsed our favourite North Post spot as still among my rated most
spectacular spaces - characteristically leaves us Kitchener’s quintessential
piece reverberating through time with the unchanging truth and faith of que sera sera and the simple message to
trust in nature, and true enough, amidst the suffocating heat, here it is
pouring down now, at this midmorning in this dry-drought season, Rain.
Irmes, I may not be able to scatter your ashes to the north
wind over the North Post as you requested and watch the whirl and twirl and then the encapsulation in an immortelle blossom of ethereal conscience, but from me, and all
those who asked and authorised and delegated that I write this on their behalf
in your memory, Rest In Peace, my
friend, and, as the last words from Tagore's Gitanjali:
Like a rain-cloud of July hung low with its burden of unshed showers let all my mind bend down at thy door in one salutation to thee. Let all my songs gather together their diverse strains into a single current and flow to a sea of silence in one salutation to thee. Like a flock of homesick cranes flying night and day back to their mountain nests let all my life take its voyage to its eternal home in one salutation to thee.
Lyrics of A Whiter Shade of Pale
We skipped the light fandango
turned cartwheels 'cross the floor
I was feeling kinda seasick
but the crowd called out for more
The room was humming harder
as the ceiling flew away
When we called out for another drink
the waiter brought a tray
And so it was that later
as the miller told his tale
that her face, at first just ghostly,
turned a whiter shade of pale
She said, 'There is no reason
and the truth is plain to see.'
But I wandered through my playing cards
and would not let her be
one of sixteen vestal virgins
who were leaving for the coast
and although my eyes were open
they might have just as well've been closed She said, 'I'm home on shore leave,' though in truth we were at sea so I took her by the looking glass and forced her to agree saying, 'You must be the mermaid who took Neptune for a ride.' But she smiled at me so sadly that my anger straightway died If music be the food of love then laughter is its queen and likewise if behind is in front then dirt in truth is clean My mouth by then like cardboard seemed to slip straight through my head So we crash-dived straightway quickly and attacked the ocean bed
Played by British Rock Band: English rock band Procol Harum Written by: co-authors Gary Brooker, Keith Reid and Matthew Fisher Lines from Gitanjali(1912, Vs 96) Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high Where knowledge is free Where the world has not been broken up into fragments By narrow domestic walls Where words come out from the depth of truth Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way Into the dreary desert sand of dead habit Where the mind is led forward by thee Into ever-widening thought and action Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake.
years Irma published a fair amount of her creative writing in Trinidadian magazines and newspapers, including The New Voices,Caribbean Beat,Anansesem,Newsday, and the Trinidad & Tobago Review, though self-promotion was not one of her talents. She worked at various media outlets in Trinidad, including the government television unit. From an essay by academic Kris Rampersad paying tribute to Irma, I learn that in the 1990's she was a scriptwriter on the television series “Book Talk” and “Cross Country“, a locally-produced travel show showcasing Trinidad and Tobago's little-known corners that, according to Rampersad, was once the most popular show on television....
....
Kris Rampersad writes of Irma's talent for ‘draw[ing] some satirical analogy from some great work of literature, or some anecdotal experience, idea or humorous incident. . . which would allow us to refocus and pour our creative energies on the task at hand to shape . . . rather than waste it in a lament.’ Two of pieces on the program do have the ring of narratives inspired by current events, but not so much ripped as lifted carefully from the headlines and re-imagined with those from the periphery in the center as protagonists.
...
Irma wasn’t uncomplicated (what good writer is?): Rhoma Spencer in the prologue to her reading of “Rum Shop” hinted at a drinking problem, as did Kris Rampersad in her essay. But shining through all of the stories read that evening was a deep humanity. “Even though the plots she inserts them in might be difficult or cruel,”
This occurred within and around the work of this organisation, UNESCO,
devoted to promoting intercultural dialogue, peaceful negotiations and conflict
resolution, in an already highly tense international meeting that involved
balancing various extreme elements, and in the wake of the terrorist attacks on
Paris in November 2015 which put further pressures on the already stressed
peace-building systems and which cast a shadow over actions of officials from
Trinidad and Tobago and the country’s engagement with its international
partners, as well as raised questions about its treatment of nationals.
However, using the cover of powers, privileges and immunities of
Parliament both the Minister of State in the Ministry of Education, the
Honourable Lovell Francis in the House of Representatives on January 22, 2016
and the Minister of Education, the Honourable Anthony Garcia in the Senate on
January 26, 2016 have distorted the facts with omissions, misalignments and
misrepresentations of dates, sequences and chronologies; exhibiting as the line
officials on UNESCO matters considerable deficiencies in knowledge and
understanding about matters under their jurisdiction and portfolios on the
roles and functions of offices, institutions, organisations and persons and
processes, procedures and roles, functions and mechanisms and of international
and national systems therein. This has cast further confusion over the issues
about which I have been asked by various quarters nationally and
internationally to clarify.
