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
Infectious
enthusiasm. Claire Broadbridge envelopes me into her unfolding vision for our
National
Museum and Art Gallery. The transformation is already evident. She
walks me, or rather races
through each room of what was once known as the Royal
Victoria Museum, renamed the National Museum and Art Gallery.
In her brisk
and hurried racing speech that matches the pace of her steps and gestures, she
is the epitome of someone who understands that every moment counts; that time
waits for no man, nor woman either, even as a historian, tapping into time to
cheat it into lasting one moment longer.
That might
have been also her thought as she struggled through last breaths as her life’s
blood oozes out of her, throat slit, for having reached a ripe old age, just
hoping for an easy expiration.
She points,
here will be constructed the story of Trinidad and Tobago to come alive through
walk in visual exhibits, and interpretive descriptions. Where actual artefacts
do not exist replicas or paintings and illustrations are being commissioned.
They are not just vision or plans, she is making them happen, racing on to
describe a holistic vision that include natural history, cultural heritage, all
the elements that breathes life into a people and a nation.
Quickening my
steps and thoughts to keep up with her, I do not have a krystal ball to see
that one day I would be called to steer this institution into a future path myself.
I do not look into the antique mirror on one of the walls resonating of
historical myths, or I might have seen the Fates that would befall Claire’s
dream for the museum, also tugging at me.
In our
reflections, staring back at us from the newly installed glass cases laying out
the story of our prehistory, I did not interpret, as if not a curator an artist
might have, that I would be digging and sorting through our history myself in
processes of reconstructing the past.
But the writing must have already been on the wall, like the briefly
laid out narratives, capturing the significance of a moment or object.
If I had
looked closer, I might have seen myself walking this same route on my inaugural
official tour of the Museum three decades hence. It might have shown me how I would
immediately vividly recall the moments when Claire is racing me around her creation-in-progress.
It might have mirrored my inner thoughts, capturing my quick computation,
comparing the life that was being breathed into a half-finished dream, with the
pathetic shadow of itself that confronted me thirty years later and enveloped
me in a shroud from which I am still struggling to emerge.
I had been
to the museum before my first encounter with Claire for that interview in the
first few months of my career in journalism. Those early visits were on one or
the other of the stops on occasional school outings that included such
mundanity of the sweetdrink factory on the Highway which offered a chance at
refreshment enroute to the Zoo, the Royal Botanical Gardens where we would stop
for lunch after meeting with and greeting the animals, and thence to the
National Museum, before heading back to our reclusive south, beyond the reach
of the movers and shakers of national life, up north. Even from those early
school excursions to the museum, there was an evident lack of narrative
continuity and cohesion in the displays most of which were tucked remotely away
in unlabelled glass cases. There was not much research being done on broader
areas than the colonial condition or the more varied elements and comprehensive
picture of what makes a nation. One felt the lack but there was still an
inkling of pride.
A few weeks
later, I will begin the Discover Trinidad
and Tobago to chronicle and capture the life and times of the people, past
and present, the forerunner to much of my international explorations as well as
scrutiny of the functions and value of national, regional and international
cultural heritage systems, mechanisms, conventions, processes and policies and
a pile of writings and articles published, and even more unpublished, that can
fill encyclopedias.
Recognizing
at the same time the gaps in our history and the need to encourage research and
cull and cultivate interest and enthusiasm, Claire opened the doors of the
museum’s library and the piles and volumes of documentation at the museum for
my research that included seeking out the many libraries in not just public but
also institutional, corporate and private spaces and sifting through not just
documents but also artefacts, and later preoccupation of compiling comparative
cultural and historical data from oral experiences.
My interest
in the museum was more than a casual one. In my thirst knowledge, instinct for
exploration and discovery and desire to get beyond the piloted history with its
ad nauseum regurgitation of distortions, inaccuracies, falsities and mistruths,
I courted the idea of becoming an archeologist, only to be told that that was a
dead end and there were no real education nor employment opportunities for such
a pursuit in the country. That was because there was no relationship with the
museum and other tangential institutions of the country – art galleries as
satellite showcasing, the university to develop research, other educational and
community institutions to cull curiosity and a culture of philanthropy that
would support efforts to which one cannot put a dollar value. There was no
sense of a continuum of the quality of our lives and our treatment of our
natural environment, built heritage, cultural heritage, underwater heritage
that would aid us into being better individuals in a more livable society.
Without the
means to seek education elsewhere - there being no excess income from my
father’s farmer and market gardening earnings to support advancing my education
beyond high school and I would have to earn to pay my way into any further
studies - I shelved the idea of becoming an archeologist, at least in relation
to formal education.
While working
and saving for advanced education, I spent time engaging with those engaging
with the continuum of past to inform the pulse of contemporary occurrences that
become the stuff journalism is made of. It was a supposed to be a temporary
detour onto other paths that would become a vocation, because it became a
portal to access and partake of all other vocations; to advance my education
long before I began advancing towards university studies, joining a dig, a
field trip, a presentation or discussion. It was education one cannot get in a
classroom and has been on going and lifelong.
And so it
was that I came to sit at the feet of the likes of the real nation builders -
Broadbridge, Harris, Kenny, all now deceased, and others, imbibing their
knowledge, savouring their experience, drawing from their passion, drive, the
unstinting selflessness, their energy and enthusiasm for their art that they
crafted, even as work, into hobbies.
It was
infectious.
Thus
infected, if I had one, the krystal ball would have also shown me the stunted
pathway on which their dreams raged to their anguished understanding, as they
each did, in the end, as Broadbridge did, although, not with the similar
physical brutality that took her life.
Emerging
from my own confrontation with life’s fragility, having walked the path of
these patriots, in facing the mirror - as they each have done time and time
again in their private space, and vocally to me and to others – to see the
future reflected, in a place where neither one’s work, nor one’s life, is of
any significance; that either or both can be snuffed out in a jiffy. The piles
of bleeding flesh scattered around the nation mutilated, pumped it bullets, is
testimony to the culture of disrespect, of brutality, of hatred, of intolerance
we have cultivated. When we had a chance to set forth the best of us, we
instead hold up the worst of us. That is the heritage legacy and inheritance of
the public service and its system in this country. What little has been
gathered or saved has been done through private and largely individual effort
as a kind of vigilantism that has become legitimized because the formal systems
and institutions have been so disempowered by the pitiful powermongers, aided
and abetted by the architects of greed and indifference in the name of
conservation.
Without the
formal structures, nor systems, nor mechanisms to support a career in archeology,
I began my process of reconstruction as a hobby collecting oral experiences and
traditional knowledge that spread out from the local into the regional and
international sphere, alongside the other things I would do as a vocation,
turning them into hobbies. At my side, urging me on, too, as we discuss his
work and the stultified progress and lack of interest in what my research
pinpoints as indisputably the most significant find in the region, was Peter
Harris, with whom I would also have a final recorded full-length interview,
before he too goes the way of all flesh; the way of all our real patriots, his
life’s work adrift in the wind. Like Peter despairing at the too slow
progressing without the resources nor support mechanisms to quicken the pace,
while I have written much, I am still in the process of turning into a cohesive
whole the bulk of that work and explosive core findings that in its current
form can make sense to no one but myself.
Along this
path, I pursue my piecing together of a history continuum drawn from oral and
other sources at formal and informal museums, archives and knowledge
repositories wherever I visited in the work as a facilitator for UNESCO culture
initiatives, developing policy directions through Commonwealth, volunteering or
otherwise across continents that connect our history to theirs and our selves
with theirs – Africa, Asia, Europe, the Americas, the Caribbean and the Pacific.
The
undefined cultural underpinnings of the society is captured partly in the focus
on fictional literary heritage and its underpinnings in orality represented in LiTTscapes – Landscapes of Fiction from
Trinidad and Tobago, where the National Museum is represented thorough recounts
of its origins as a science and arts museum and evolving uses from a craft
centre for little old ladies to perfect their art of knitting, embroidery and
lacemaking. It appears in early fiction of authors like Naipaul, who like
myself would visit the Museum which was just a hop skip and jump from his High
School, Queen’s Royal College. QRC - along with other heritage structures, sites
and cultural practices - is also represented in LiTTscapes, as an institution of education as well as an object of
satire about its relevance or irrelevance in the grooming of new breeds and
successive waves of neo colonials that appears throughout our fiction: ‘The
purpose of education’ being - to quote Naipaul through the lips of one of his
educators thinly disguised as one of his fictional characters - ‘to form, not
the inform.’
That early
sneak preview of the unfolding ‘New Look Museum’ (see article photo this page) as
the first article and interview with Broadbridge is entitled was published even
before I began the ‘Discover Trinidad and Tobago’ series which would begin a
month later and which would benefit from access to the museum’s library as well
as the libraries of other institutions in natural, marine and cultural
histories that were worthy of being called such, along with other private
archives across the country.
Through various
episodes of Cross Country the
television series I would be writing a couple years later that shot to the
charts, and with the founding of Newsday as the resident researcher, writer,
historian and explorer writing of A Piece
of History and Glimpses Into the Past
along with interviews of many of the founding pillars of the nation, I would
see Broadbridge’s dream taking shape, the dreaming into being of a nation
through a museum system of which we can all be proud. There would be many other
articles and discussions and actions in the decades later – chasing an
artefact, joining an archeological expedition, compiling research on an object
or incident or activity.
In another
sneak preview interview/tour of the Fort San Andreas Museum at South Quay a few
years later which had become part of the museum system, Broadbridge’s vision
was also beginning to take shape. With her many hands and heads in command of
the various units and activities that goes into the making of an institution
such as this, the museum was coming alive as an entity with a narrative of our
nationhood threading through the natural history display, glimpsing into
prehistory, the various migrant streams to economy, culture, festival and art
that makes us who we are.
Because
that’s what a museum is. It lifts us up and places us on show, on pedestals of
accomplishments, achievements, survivals despite the many challenges life
brings. That’s what gives a nation character and buoys for its youths in
voyages of achieving their own aspirations despite limitations. But that psyche
of the value of legacy has never really penetrated our islands that live only
to gorge for today.
Built by the
Spaniards to defend the island against other covetuous and intrusive island
mauraders to its point of being appropriated as a reading room by the Chamber
of Commerce and subsequently traffic branch before being abandoned to be
arrested by Claire’s visioning, the San Andreas Museum was to be a showcase to
the island’s migratory history, at the port of entry to our island. And it
functioned as such for a while, until Claire was hounded out of office, as I
would later be too, threats and all, and bit by bit of the work was dismantled,
collections neglected with much that seems to be missing. Research had ground
to a halt and the museum had very little to engage a society. Subsequent museum
administrators with the best of intensions will also face their own share of
the manoeuverings, manipulations and meanderings of a place that had lost its
way.
When I
reentered the museum in that more recent capacity, it was to see the San
Andreas structure virtually gutted, with some considerable uninformed
construction works that had done more to undermine the structure than to
enhance it, a shell of its former self, despite millions already poured into
reconstruction and the purses of the architects of our demise. At both, collections
and pieces worth millions from what I remembered of early excursions and
interviews also seemed to have gone missing and every attempt to harness the existing
knowhow of many of the well- wishers in the society were thwarted at every
step, a public system gleefully wielding the machetes of its failed massahood
and ancient serfdoms of entitlement with a built-in guillotine that all ideas
should be beheaded and all must fail. Failure is what we do best. How dare
anyone even try to defy that.
They are the
guardians and conservators of the processes they have evolved: that millions
spent on reconstruction and restoration of the public treasures that keep surfacing
are only means to open up more avenues to squander millions, rape and raid what
little national patrimony may be left. Despite Claire’s efforts and the efforts
of a few others who followed, we have not inched an iota forward in time, but
moved considerably backward into some frightening time warp that could inspire
a few blockbusters entitled Nightmare at the Museum.
On my
inaugural tour of the National Museum as its chair three decades later I was
eager to develop and enhance the space where I had spent so many hours pouring
over old and rare documents and artefacts trying to coax out their hidden
secrets, eyes and nose watering from the dusts and fragility. That eagerness
ebbed as I walked through room after room. When I asked to see the library, horror
of horrors, I was told there was not one and was shown an empty room that had
become something of a stock room for paraphernalia. All the documents were
gone, I was told some was in storage.
By the time
I was called to serve at the Museum, much of the work of Broadbridge had
already been dismantled and the museum itself was in shambles. It took enormous
effort to stem the overwhelming sense of despair that descended everytime I
entered the structure and every ounce of strength to not sit on the stairs and
allow the tears to flow. The despair was compounded by the confrontation of the
absolute resoluteness by the powers that be to frustrate the exercise at
rescuing the museum and the refusal to relinquish its grip on the institution
which was now trying to give effect to the laws to establish its autonomy under
its own management system. Despite a host of well-wishers from personal and
professional enthusiasts whom I had met along the way, willing to give of their
means and services, every effort was thwarted for seemingly no rational purpose
except the glee of its perpetrators who had hardened paper-pushing into a
pleasurable pastime augmented by the aggravating and thwarting the efforts of
others. It was a matter of self-preservation to escape only to be hounded
still.
Like an
Octopus, is the synonym that comes to mind about the woman who would be and
almost-Octogenarian had her life not been brutally truncated.
She took
upon herself many roles, as many of us are called to do, because there have not
been developed capacities. In other places, these functions are done by drawing
together developed expertise in the range of disciplines required and much of
that is through division of labour. It is supported by systems, structures and
mechanisms and know how that form a supportive and protective cocoon to do what
needs to be done so one is not left alone, baying at the moon, pounding one’s
head against walls, facing the risk of being branded as an eccentric or idiot
for pursuing one’s passion.
Claire’s
battle with bureaucracy is historic in itself. She would rub many people the
wrong way. How can you not, I would find out for myself, when you are driven by
a goal and passion to differential agendas of a system of indifference at
worst, at best more intent on asserting its miniscule power to maximum
frustration. The antithesis of infectious enthusiasm, or misguided enthusiasm
throwing zeal and glee instead into their art of perversion, corrupting new
bureaucratic appointees and frustrating every attempt at developing an
institution. That was what her crusade was against. I would find out myself,
called to Chair the National Museum Board.
The sense of
overwhelming sadness that engulfed me, everytime I entered the building,
crumbling at its seams, aided and abetted and orchestrated by those who hold
the strings manipulating the powers. By then most of Claire’s work and some of
those who followed and shared her vision had already been undone. Starved of
resources and competent staff – because the education system let you know there
are no career options in pursing these fields in the first instance. The
exhibits were in disarray, speaking more to a nation in chaos than one with any
sense of direction. Much seemed to have been raided; the library dismantled. No
sense of interpretation; no sense of narrative, no vision of nationhood.
The sense of
futility that fills one, to seem too, the architects of conservation themselves
also succumbing to the greed, selfishness and indifference focusing on a few convenient elements when the real treasures of our place in a universe of heritage disappear into ignominy because you cant construct skyscrapers that will aid you into million dollar skyscraper contracts, so instead you build a legacy where every creed and race finds an empty place.
That has not
been only my experience, as a national and a patriot, nor just Claire’s.
As an
element of a knowledge or tourism or heritage economy, a museum is the kind of
institution to which one ought to be able to go for a quick understanding of a
people and a place as I would when on limited time in a travel assignment. To
illustrate, a few months before I took up the museum assignment, having
directed a delegation from UNESCO visiting for a meeting to the museum, I was
horrified to learn the next day that they had exited almost as soon as they
entered the building, themselves despairing at the state of such a signature
establishment in a country that was not without resources, not without
intellectual capacity, not without skills and talent and imagination. By the
time I was handed the task to steer the new museum board the writing was
already on the wall and I was already a target for those who probably saw their
easy access to a ready treasure throve might be thwarted.
Year after
year as the Chamber of Commerce and various other organisations held their
discussions on budgets and planning I asked where is heritage on the agenda.
‘In our next meeting’ I was told. The next came and went and never came, and
the oil industry began crashing again and with it too is tumbling the nation.
Where are
you in the battle for the soul of the nation?
Claire
Broadbridge’s dream was already mutilated, long before she was mutilated and
murdered.
Look into
the mirror, my friends. You know who you are. You too have had a hand in slitting
Claire’s throat and signed the contracts on the heads of our nation long before
Saturday when Claire was found mutilated in the hours of ripe old age. You have
helped create this society that has no sense of its moorings. You have created
the environment of hatred and animosity and vicious disrespect and disregard of
each other. Your hands on the public patrimony have culled this environment of
entitlement that legitimizes the climate of piracy and banditry that allow
criminals to roam without fear of reprisal.
You have
created the systems and structures and processes meant not to support but to
thwart those who are resolute about repairing, reconstructing and who are
outside your clique of entitlement to the purse strings of public institutions.
Utilising
your pliable and protected sycophants you have stooped to whatever depths to smear,
blackguard, criminalize, and hound out of office, fabricating accusations and
evidence and when that fails, construct threat and hired hitmen.
That is your
legacy. It is the heritage and the artefact of the life you will leave, when
you too are dead, like Claire’s dreams.
I wonder if
you are looking in the mirror now, and seeing the bloody streak on Broadbridge’s
throat, recognising that you might not have wielded the knife but certainly had
something to do with shaping the mind and the atmosphere that inspires such
brutality, disrespect, inconsideration and unconscionability?
Perhaps it
was never clearly defined that public service is a service to the public and
not any excuse to grab, gorge and gouge out as has become the national growl
and thwart the efforts of those trying to do public service.
A museum is
just one base element of knowledge system of a people. It is an amalgamation of
knowledge which is why in many societies museums are associated with research
infrastructure, library, art galleries, seminars, workshops, talks, activities
which frame core exhibits, allow for engagement and interaction where through
private contemplation or through debates in interpretation.
That’s how
we build a resolute society, with generations confident and fortified with
resilience and self-worth enough to not be suckered into the system as clones
of their massas. We are reaping the rewards of this vacuity as we witness
everyday in even the youths who have been given an opportunity to serve in the
Parliament, for instance in a society built on powerlessness without knowledge
that rests back in inaction and all the basest elements of human nature because
that’s all that is left to fall back on.
In not
allowing a museum and like institutions to blossom, we are already opening the
portals through which the termites will crawl and continue to gnaw at not just
the weakest but those parts that like to think themselves strong. Claire was as
strong as the comes, someone says, but the tentacles of predatory place got her
too.
A museum is
part of a network of infrastructure that includes private and public systems of
education, universities, libraries, art galleries, financiers and philanthropy.
In that way, it focuses national energies into constructive goals and
strengthens the national character.
Without that
we are doomed and all talk of new buildings and infrastructure will fall as
quickly to the architects of greed as peopling it with vulnerable.
In a place
where knowledge banks and expertise are limited, and the curatorial knowledge
to drive it virtually non-existent, one has to educate oneself into
competencies that encompass the museum’s multifarious roles. In a place like
Trinidad where heritage is the least of valued priorities it is left to one or
two or a handful of individuals.
I have seen and
worked with many museums and heritage enthusiasts across our region and beyond.
From these experiences I have seen first hand of what can be done from little.
From the small one-person passion of a little old lady in a village in Belize to
the humongous developed facilities of international engagement that the Louvre,
the British Museum, the Smithsonian, built perhaps by the collections from
other spaces but it is because there is a frame. I have seen what one
individual can do, like the colleague who fled Trinidad for another island and
is doing yeoman service in developing its museum, virtually single handedly,
because much can be accomplish when it is not this environment.
It was not
just Claire’s work as we all know, for those who want to point fingers at her
‘difficult’ personality as I’ve heard myself described as well, for which I
make no apologies. It is what it takes to accomplish a modicum of anything in
an environment like ours. I have cited Peter Harris, Professor Kenny as an
environmentalist. I think of Gaylord Kelshall’s Military History Museum, itself
on the rocks of myopic development path ongoing unwillingness to relent in
pursuit of his passion. Pat Bishop; Sheila Solomon:the human face of constitutional reform
We boast of
having the resources, the intellectual capacity and a natural and cultural
heritage that is an amalgamation and microcosm of virtually everywhere else.
Not many can have that boast. We have no excuse. Is there any institution of
note that we can hold up as one of which we can be truly proud?
We have
given no priority to strengthening the national character beyond piecemeal
tokenism and lip service with no enduring vision nor commitment beyond gouging
out to feed today’s habits. We have shown no compassion or sensitivity to what
is required to cultivate an environment where youth can see possibilities and
potential in something larger than themselves to which they may aspire and achieve,
rather than succumb to the temptation of entitlement and of becoming thieves
and robbers, whether it is of the national purse or private property. And for
those who do, and try, the tentacles move in to cut down and terminate and so create a haven for criminals and criminality to flourish.
Trying to
harness the knowledge and expertise of those who had gone before; trying to
stem the swarms of termites crawled through its walls and eating not just at
the frame but at the substance; trying to ward off the greedy, gorging on and
gouging out the eyes and ears and limbs, to resist the attempts to manipulate
one contract and another and another in the name of conservation can bring
threats to your life and those around you. That takes its toll on one’s nature,
and one’s character. What an effort it is to flee the reach of the mirror image
of becoming embittered and branded as the Claires, and many others who have
tried to serve to similar ends.
The greed,
the selfishness and the indifference has penetrated and permeated every fabric
of our lives.
We are
poorer not just in losing you, but in the manner of your loss.
It is not
about size, it is not about money, or resources, or know how or expertise. It
is about how each individual view himself/herself and his or her place in this
society and what he/she is willing to put personal ambitions aside to ensure it
has a viable future for next generations.
The termites
had already chomped their way in to foundations, claiming the largesse of
national heritage infrastructure and collections as they have, I daresay
burrowed into virtually all institutions in the country. Holding on to
illusions of power, tentacles are ready set to grab on to new comers and claw
at their dreams to trap them into flycatchers of crumbling serfdoms, webs of
shame, guilt, petty politicking and failed massahood.
So even the
young, energetic, idealistic and enthusiastic must have more than an extra
layer of self worth to resist, or they succumb and become part of the swamp. Just look at the Parliament, boys and girls once bright and promising turned into mimic men and clowns and clones of failed politicians and failed system. What distress must your fathers and forefathers and those who toiled be in to see this.
They don’t
come stronger than Claire, someone said.
You spend years trying to cull a better environment, giving of your time
and energy and spirit and it can all be torn down by a gnash of one power
crazed individual.
It is
patriot’s month and one of the country’s most consistent patriots has her life
snuffed out. How can we not connect the dots?
Look into
the mirror leaders of and aspirants to office in institutions, agencies,
departments
Look into
the mirror leaders and aspiring leaders of business
Look into
the mirror, heads and aspiring heads of banks
Look into
the mirror leaders and aspiring leaders of industry
Look into
the mirror leaders and aspiring leaders of education
Look into
the mirror, leaders and aspiring leaders of media
Look into
the mirror leaders and aspiring leaders of parties
Look into
the mirror aspirants to public and private office
Look into
the mirror leaders and aspirants to the Parliament
Look into
the mirror leaders and aspiring of government
Look in the mirror judges, lawyers police justices
Look into
the mirror leaders and aspiring of movements of all kinds
Look into
the mirror leaders and aspiring of trade unions
Look into
the mirror, leaders and aspiring of the public service
Look, at
what you have made and look at what you will inherit.
Knowing that
it has been made means it can be unmade.
That’s where
change starts.
The end of
despair
The
beginning of hope
Just look in
the mirror.
For Clair Broadbridge. In Rememberance. Rest In Peace.
Former
curator, National Museum and Art Gallery, Claire Broadbridge believes that the
University of Connecticut is being handed carte blanche—the Scarborough Harbour
project to chart and possibly recover some of the French, Dutch seventeenth
century and British nineteenth century vessels which lie under the silt of the
harbour. In a letter, Broadbridge charges that “this country is being once
again sold out to foreign domination.”
She states
in the letter that “similar projects in Sweden the WASA Flagship of the Swedish
King Gustave Adolph’s sunk in the harbour in 1628 and recovered in 1961; the
Mary Rose of Henry VIII sunk in Southampton Harbour the recovery and
conservation of which is a work in progress.
“These are
of less historical significance than the French and Dutch vessels sunk in the
harbour of Scarborough. Hoteliers and restaurants in Tobago should note that
these have attracted tourists in tens of millions in a continuing basis while
Tobago sits doing nothing for the last decade.” Broadbridge noted that the
project of locating and charting and partially recovering one of these vessels
in Scarborough was completed in 1990 to 1997. “It was directed locally.
All was
charted and admiralty maps of the harbour done. Work was halted in order to
plan a Caribbean Institute of Marine Archeology within the University of the
West Indies Faculty for Social and Economic Research—Such an institute to serve
the entire Caribbean would be very prestigious for Tobago. All funds which have
to be garnered for this work would be used for the lasting benefit of Tobago
not for the lasting benefit for a foreign university.
Also the
student and staff of this institute would serve as workers on the project.” She
stated that on assuming office, incumbent chairman of the Tobago House of
Assembly Orville London chose to halt the project. He even abandoned the satellite
components’ of the project—a historic James Park Tourism centre and a living
agricultural museum in Roxborough.
“These were
an integral part of the Scarborough Harbour Project 1990-2002. These components
had been attached to the project in order to geographically distribute the
tourist in land from the harbour.” Facilities for conservation at the docks had
been planned to be open to immediate tourist viewing, an explanatory exhibit in
the cruise ship reception area was designed, artifacts prepared script and
audiovisuals created, Broadbridge indicated. The excavation of one vessel was
partially done and filmed.
All previous
foreign consultants had been hired and paid fees by the local director of the
project, she said, while the Coast Guard divers were present during dives and
all funding was strictly used for the benefit of Tobago.
Rampersad:
UNESCO concerned
Dr Kris
Rampersad, chair of the Trinidad and Tobago National Commission for UNESCO,
when contacted, confirmed that the Commission was concerned about actions that
might endanger these valuable national heritage assets and the lack of
understanding and awareness of the issues surrounding protection and
development of the heritage assets in the waters of not just Tobago, but also
Trinidad.
She said
there was a threat that we may be signing away elements without being aware of
it. She stated that it is not clear what the arrangement is between the
University of Connecticut and the Tobago House of Assembly or any other entity
but that in a meeting late last year with the THA, she expressed such concerns
and received an open ear from the THA Secretary for Tourism.
Rampersad
said, “These are assets that are part of not just the heritage of Trinidad and
Tobago but also of the global community given the historical contexts of the
development of our islands and there can be some severe international relations
repercussions if this is not handled properly.
“We are a
long way from developing the mechanisms that will ensure that the benefits are
secured for Trinidad and Tobago, among which includes training of nationals and
developing the human resource capacity to take care and oversee these assets.
UNESCO encourages the development of the national infrastructure.
According to
Rampersad, “It is in our interest that our local universities take charge of
this, and also in developing the kind of targeted heritage and conservation
expertise we need locally for not just underwater, but heritage in general as
training courses and programmes seem to lag behind the new developments in the
global environment in which we now function.”
In the case
of underwater heritage, she said, “it may also be in our best interest to
develop dive and underwater museum facilities for these assets as is the
current trend, rather than trying to bring up artefacts at tremendous costs of
maintain them above ground.” The heritage dive tourism industry is itself a
multibillion dollar industry that attracts enthusiasts across the world and can
eventually pay for itself in terms of developing the infrastructure and
mechanism required.
Rampersad
said we also need to put in place proper regulations and legislation that will
protect our interests. “It is for us to ensure that our national laws are up to
speed to ward off the risk of foreign entities staking ownership claims and
other like threats.”
