Caribbean Beat — March/April 2020 (#162)

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Contents

No. 162 • March/April 2020

72

88

46

EMBARK

IMMERSE

20 Wish you were here

Klein Curaçao

22 Need to know

Essential info to help you make the

most of March and April across the

Caribbean — from a film festival in

St Vincent to Carnival in Jamaica

40 Bookshelf and playlist

Our reading and listening picks

44 screenshots

Cuban filmmaker Carlos Lechuga talks

about his hard-hitting, sepia-hued

short Generation

46 Cookup

“I’m going to do something

different”

Chef Nina Compton discovered her

passion for cooking as a teenager in

St Lucia. After winning fame on the

TV show Top Chef, she’s now turning

heads with two restaurants in her

adopted city, New Orleans

51 Closeup

All that jazz

Musically, Trinidad and Tobago are

best known for calypso and soca, but

a thriving jazz scene proves there’s

an avid audience for other genres.

Nigel A. Campbell profiles Charmaine

Forde, Vaughnette Bigford, and

LeAndra — three jazz vocalists of

different generations whose separate

stories make a bigger narrative about

paths to musical success

58 Portfolio

The rightest place

“Art has to transform,” says Blue

Curry. The London-based Bahamian

artist puts unlikely objects into new

contexts, writes Andre Bagoo — and

sometimes out of place is where

things belong

66 Snapshot

As far as it goes

When Grenadian Anderson Peters

won javelin gold at the 2019 World

Championships, it took observers

by surprise. This was no overnight

success, says Sheldon Waithe — but

the product of steady hard work and

staunch confidence. Now the young

athlete is preparing for his biggest

challenge yet at the 2020 Summer

Olympics

ARRIVE

72 destination

So near, so far

There are parts of the Guyanese

interior — in the heart of the vast

Rupununi Savannah, or deep in

the Iwokrama rainforest — that

feel thrillingly remote. But daily air

12 WWW.CARIBBEAN-BEAT.COM

CaribbeanBeat

links make these wild adventures

surprisingly accessible, says Nixon

Nelson. And don’t forget the charms

of Guyana’s capital, Georgetown

88 Album

Rite of Spring

Celebrated in Trinidad since the

nineteenth century, Holi — also

known as Phagwah — is the Hindu

spring festival, and a time to enjoy the

company of friends and neighbours.

At the 2019 celebrations in Aranguez,

photographer Ziad Joseph captured

the joyful free-for-all of colour

96 Bucket List

Bathsheba, Barbados

World-class surfing and dramatic

scenery are in ample supply on the

island’s rugged Atlantic coast

ENGAGE

An MEP publication

Editor Nicholas Laughlin

General manager Halcyon Salazar

Design artists Kevon Webster, Kriston Chen

Production manager Jacqueline Smith

Web editor Caroline Taylor

Editorial assistants Shelly-Ann Inniss, Kristine De Abreu

Business Development Manager,

Business Development

Tobago and International

Representative, Trinidad

Evelyn Chung

Tracy Farrag

T: (868) 684 4409

T: (868) 318 1996

E: evelyn@meppublishers.com

E: tracy@meppublishers.com

Business Development

Representative, Trinidad

Indra Ramcharan

T: (868) 750 0153

E: indra@meppublishers.com

98 Green

Nature’s Bread

It’s delicious, nutritious, and popular

across the Caribbean. Even so, breadfruit

— brought to the region from the Pacific

more than two centuries ago — is still

underappreciated for its potential role

in increasing regional food security,

and helping to green our cities. Erline

Andrews learns more

102 On this day

Be fruitful and multiply

March brings the 180th birthday of the

man who singlehandedly created the

Caribbean banana industry. James

Ferguson looks back at the life and

times of Lorenzo Dow Baker, Yankee

entrepreneur

104 puzzles

Enjoy our crossword and other fun

brain-teasers!

Media & Editorial Projects Ltd.

6 Prospect Avenue, Maraval, Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago

T: (868) 622 3821/5813/6138 • F: (868) 628 0639

E: caribbean-beat@meppublishers.com

Website: www.meppublishers.com

Printed by Solo Printing Inc., Miami, Florida

Caribbean Beat is published six times a year for Caribbean Airlines by Media & Editorial Projects Ltd. It is also available on

subscription. Copyright © Caribbean Airlines 2020. All rights reserved. ISSN 1680–6158. No part of this magazine may be

reproduced in any form whatsoever without the written permission of the publisher. MEP accepts no responsibility for

content supplied by our advertisers. The views of the advertisers are theirs and do not represent MEP in any way.

Website: www.caribbean-airlines.com

112 Do you even know

Our trivia column tests your knowledge

of Caribbean Easter traditions. See

how many of our questions you can

answer correctly

WWW.CARIBBEAN-AIRLINES.COM

13

Cover Travelling on the

Rewa River in Guyana’s

north Rupununi

Photo Les Gibbon/Alamy

Stock Photo

Read and save issues of Caribbean Beat on your smartphone,

tablet, computer, and favourite digital devices!

This issue’s contributors include:

Erline Andrews (“Nature’s bread”, page 98) is an

award-winning Trinidadian journalist. She is a regular

contributor to Caribbean Beat and her work has

appeared in other publications in T&T and the US,

including the Chicago Tribune and the Christian

Science Monitor.

Andre Bagoo (“The rightest place”, page 58) is a

Trinidadian poet, journalist, and arts writer, author of

four books of poems, including Pitch Lake (2017).

His book of essays The Undiscovered Country will be

published in 2020.

Nigel A. Campbell (“All that jazz”, page 51) is an

entertainment writer, reviewer, and music businessman

based in Trinidad and Tobago, focused on expanding

the appeal of island music globally.

Vaughn Stafford Gray (“Kingston bacchanal”, page

24) is a Jamaican-Canadian lifestyle, culture, and travel

writer. His work is currently syndicated across multiple

publications in Canada.

Writing with glee on sport, politics, and culture,

Sheldon Waithe (“As far as it goes”, page 66) fuses

these facets into articles for both Caribbean and

European websites and magazines. He is also the editor

of Parkite Sports.


15

A MESSAGE From OUR CEO

The new decade has taken off at

Caribbean Airlines with the addition

of two ATR 72-600s to our fleet. The

two aircraft are being used to support

operations on the domestic airbridge

between Trinidad and Tobago, and

within the region. We will also soon

introduce new routes, which you will

hear and read more about.

Caribbean Airlines was recognised

as the Caribbean’s Leading Airline

Brand at the World Travel Awards

2020. It is the fourth consecutive year

we earned the title, and testimony to

our ongoing commitment to operational

and brand excellence. We were also

nominated in the Caribbean’s Leading

Airline category, an award the airline

won consecutively from 2010 to 2019.

Our teams are excited about these

developments, but more so about

our upcoming brand refresh. What

exactly is a brand refresh, you may

ask. It’s an opportunity to enliven the

brand we have worked diligently to

build and to update many of the visual

elements. It’s also a natural progression

of the customer experience initiatives

that we have focused on over the last

two years — including new routes, new

products, and service enhancements.

The brand refresh will take place

in phases over several months, and

will reflect the energy, passion, and

creativity of the region, using modern,

distinctive, and vibrant designs.

The name Caribbean Airlines will

remain — what will change are key

visual elements, including our logo,

signage, and the appearance of our

sub brands like Cargo, Duty-Free, and

Loyalty. The unveiling event will take

place in mid-March, along with the

launch of our new campaign, “I AM

CARIBBEAN”.

These are exciting times, and we are

happy to share them with you. Improving

your experience motivates all we

do.

Be sure to take your free copy of

this magazine, and check out the Need

to Know section starting on page 22

for events in and around the region. We

will happily fly you there.

Garvin Medera

Chief Executive Officer

What’s new

at Caribbean

Airlines this

month?

Two ATRs added to

our fleet to enhance

domestic and regional

operations

Named the

Caribbean’s Leading

Airline Brand for the

fourth consecutive

year

Brand refresh to be

unveiled in the coming

weeks

I AM CARIBBEAN

corporate campaign

launching in March

16 WWW.CARIBBEAN-AIRLINES.COM

A New Way

To Earn More Miles!

Ship with Caribbean Airlines

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STEP 1

Sign up for a Caribbean

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STEP 2

Contact Caribbean

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STEP 3

Pay your shipping

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earning miles.

SHIP NOW

Call us at 1 868 669 3000 Option 4

*Conditions apply.

Visit cargo.caribbean-airlines.com for more information

Glory on

the field

of play

By Nasser Khan

With the T20 World Cup of cricket looming later

in 2020, the Caribbean will once again be rallying

around the West Indies, as our region’s team

defends its World Championship title from 2016. That our

region’s unofficial national anthem is a cricket-themed calypso,

David Rudder’s “Rally Round the West Indies”, is testament in

itself as to what cricket means to us as Caribbean people at

home and abroad.

Rally, rally round the West Indies

Now and forever

Rally, rally round the West Indies

Never say never

From Jamaica in the north down through our archipelago

of islands to Guyana on the South American mainland, cricket

unifies us as a collective Caribbean people, in spite of the

insularities we sometimes encounter on other fronts. Over the

years, Caribbean Beat has profiled many of our star players,

from Brian Lara to Chris Gayle to Darren Sammy.

Along with sun, surf, and steelpan, cricket and calypso are

often used to describe the spirit of the West Indies. As West

Indians, we celebrate everything with great gusto and camaraderie,

so when cricket enters the fray it is no different. Cricket

is played just about everywhere, using anything available to

serve as bat and ball. Be it with a tennis ball (“windball”) or a

hard leather ball (“cork” white or red), we will play cricket —

man, woman, and child, including a fete match version with

an emphasis on “liming” and having a good time, as only we

here in the West Indies can do.

Since the late nineteenth century, cricket has been part

of the lives of Caribbean people, adopted throughout the

formerly British West Indian territories. As the game took

permanent root in Caribbean soil, in schools and communities,

it began to bear a crop of young players who brought

their own unique skill and flair to the field of play. Since achiev-

ing Test status in 1928, the Windies have become known

for their rhythmic exuberance, eventually being dubbed the

“Calypso Cricketers,” capturing the admiration of the cricketing

world.

We have always rallied around our cricketing stars from the

Caribbean nations: from Learie Constantine in the 1920s and

George “Atlas” Headley in the 30s to Frank Worrell, Everton

Weekes, Clyde Walcott, Sonny Ramadhin, Garfield Sobers,

Clive Lloyd, Rohan Kanhai, Viv Richards, Brian Lara, Darren

Sammy, and — today — the likes of Sunil Narine, Chris Gayle,

Kieron Pollard, and Dwayne Bravo. Not to be excluded, our

women regional cricketers and our under-19 men’s teams

have also done us proud, winning the T20 World Cup titles in

2016.

Suffice it to say that the game of cricket is deeply

entrenched in our culture and our way of life. The successes

of the West Indies cricket team have always given us great

regional pride. Our phenomenal feats with bat and ball on the

field of play have been showcased and exalted in the poetic,

lyrical form and substance of our calypso music. We recall

proudly the cricket World Cups we won in 1975 and 1979,

etched forever in our minds, as are the later world champs

glories of 2004, 2012, and 2016. We owe the sport of cricket

a debt of gratitude for the mighty task it has accomplished

in bringing Caribbean people together and fostering genuine

regional love and unity.

Cricket and calypso are more than just sport and entertainment.

They are modes of self-expression that reflect our

very identity. Since the early renditions of the 1920s, over two

hundred cricket-themed calypsos have been composed and

sung, capturing the progress and evolution of our players and

the game itself, the ups and downs, the triumphs and tribulations.

As a people, when the West Indies cricket team is doing

well on the world stage, we are a happy bunch — such is the

power of the sport that brings us together as one, in spite of

us being separate sovereign nations.

The great moments of Windies cricket are an essential

part of our folklore and collective histories. In the ninety-two

years since we played our first Test match, our heroes have

represented us with great pride, determination, and tenacity,

and have performed extraordinary and memorable feats the

world over — all of which are etched in our minds and hearts

forever.

Nasser Khan is an author, researcher, producer, and journalist

who has published nineteen different national and Caribbean

educational works.

This essay is part of a series reflecting on the Caribbean Identity

and what it can be.


19

wish you were here


Klein Curaçao

A sixty-six-foot lighthouse tower is the chief

landmark on this small islet off Curaçao’s

southeastern tip. Once used as a quarantine station

for enslaved Africans, later mined for phosphates,

Klein Curaçao — flat and relatively barren — is

today a popular spot for day-trippers, thanks to its

pristine surrounding waters and coral reefs, and

expansive white-sand beaches.

Photography by Gail Johnson/Shutterstock.com

WWW.CARIBBEAN-AIRLINES.COM 21

NEED TO

KNOW

Essential info to help you make the most

of March and April: what to do, where to go,

what to see!

Courtesy Hairouna Film Festival

At the Hairouna Film

Festival, the vibe at

community screenings is

down-home and laid-back

Don’t Miss

Hairouna Film

Festival

Under starry skies, in communities spanning the length and breadth of

St Vincent, the second annual Hairouna Film Festival (HFF) will screen

some of the best contemporary films from across the Caribbean. There’s

something about the relaxed atmosphere of an open-air impromptu

cinema that makes a great film even more memorable, and last year’s

inaugural edition of the HFF lingers in the minds of those lucky enough to

be in the audience. The festival also offers a mentorship programme with

filmmaking educational opportunities. Who knows, the next Caribbean

celebrity in Hollywood just might hail from SVG. Grab a bag of popcorn and

fall in as the HFF shares distinctive Caribbean stories on the portable big

screen. hairounaff.org

How to get there? Caribbean Airlines operates three flights each week to Argyle International Airport in

St Vincent from Trinidad, with connections to other destinations in the Caribbean and North and South America

22

WWW.CARIBBEAN-BEAT.COM

need to know

Word of Mouth

Kingston bacchanal

A true Jamaican Carnival lover, Vaughn Stafford Gray offers the low-down on

Kingston’s annual festival. Just don’t revoke his passport . . .

Carnival in Jamaica can best be

summarised by Oscar Wilde’s adage:

imitation is the sincerest form of

flattery. Well, I’ve opened the floodgates

now! I reckon some fellow

Jamaican is readying to report me to the

Passport, Immigration, and Citizenship

Agency, and demand that my Jamaican

“card” be revoked. To that person, I say:

fight me. Facts are facts.

It all started back in the 1950s, on the

Mona campus of the University College

of the West Indies — soon to be known

as UWI. Students from Trinidad and

Tobago and other eastern Caribbean

islands who missed celebrating Carnival

decided to bring their culture to the

halls and streets of the campus. Of

course, Jamaicans got in on the action

also, because Carnival is, in a word,

mesmeric. Cue the birth of UWI Carnival,

and the genesis of Carnival celebrations

in Jamaica — though it wasn’t until

1990 that notable musician Byron Lee

established and formalised Jamaica

Carnival as we know it today.

Comparing T&T Carnival with the

Jamaican version is an exercise in futility.

It’s akin to the iOS vs Android debate

— there will never be a clear winner.

The events are considerably different,

despite sharing soca music, bedazzling

costumes adorned with feathers, walls

of flesh, and taut, sculpted bodies that

haven’t consumed a carb since noon on

Boxing Day.

The differences start with timing:

Carnival in Jamaica takes place after

Lent, and despite being popular, isn’t

as universally embraced as T&T’s

Carnival, Barbados Crop Over, or the

grand dame of all Carnivals in Rio de

Janeiro. But, although it’s had its fair

Dwayne Watkins

share of battles, Carnival in Jamaica is

an extraordinary experience.

The celebration is one of the few in

the country that dissolves Kingston’s

socio-economic lines, lowering

the drawbridge over the moat that

separates “uptown” and “downtown”

experiences. For a few days, celebrants

come together without having to

overly obsess about postal codes and

skin colour. Whether you play mas or

not — there are three main bands:

Xodus, Xaymaca, and Bacchanal —

Carnival in Jamaica is a truly democratic

experience.

So, how should the uninitiated

make the best out of the Carnival

experience? Take a deep breath, jump

into those skin-coloured tights, apply

some baby oil and glitter — I’m taking

you for a ride.

Hot tip: don’t miss the breakfast

parties. The name on the tin says what

it does. These are some of the best

events of Carnival season. Whether you

wake up early to do a full face at dawn,

or do an outfit change after partying

all night, there are few other instances

in life where you won’t be judged for

having rum with your pancakes. Then

there’s Beach J’Ouvert. Each year,

attendees regale those who didn’t

make it with stories of the goings-on —

only to stop midway as the storyteller

realises that it was him- or herself who

did indeed bruk out. No need to selfincriminate:

what happens at Beach

J’Ouvert stays at Beach J’Ouvert.

On Carnival Sunday, the day of the

street parade — which Jamaicans

call the road march — it’s best, in my

experience, not to touch alcohol

until the parade culminates. Don’t

be that person carted away by event

paramedics forty-seven minutes in. Stay

hydrated with water, friends, and wear

comfortable shoes! Buy an inexpensive

pair of sneakers, and decorate them to

match your costume. Don’t get fooled

by the pageantry — Carnival is not a

catwalk. And if you don’t enjoy yourself

— you’re doing it wrong.

Carnival in Jamaica 2020 runs from 15 to 20 April. For more information,

visit the Jamaica Tourist Board website, visitjamaica.com

24


ADVERTORIAL

2020:

UK enhancing relations

across the Eastern Caribbean

In April 2018, the UK announced an expansion of its diplomatic network in the

Eastern Caribbean. That vision became a reality in 2019 when, under the leadership

of Her Excellency Mrs Janet Douglas CMG, the UK’s High Commissioner to

Barbados and the Eastern Caribbean, the UK opened British High Commissions

in Antigua and Barbuda, Grenada, and St Vincent and the Grenadines.

These new missions, each led by

a Resident British Commissioner

(RBC), join the existing regional office

and RBC in St Lucia, and gives the UK

physical representation in five of the

seven Eastern Caribbean countries

to which Mrs Douglas is accredited as

British High Commissioner. British High

Commissions can now be found in

Antigua and Barbuda, Barbados,

Grenada, St Lucia, and St Vincent and

the Grenadines. The British High

Commission in Bridgetown manages

UK relations with Dominica and St Kitts

and Nevis.

This expanded presence provides an

unrivalled opportunity for the UK to

support and work more closely with the

region on issues important to all of us.

The UK’s engagement already covers a

wide agenda, including promoting our

shared interests in the Commonwealth

and its projects — such as the Clean

Oceans Alliance — providing development

funding and assistance to help

bolster the region’s infrastructure

framework and resilience to natural

disasters, as well as assisting with regional

challenges such as security, and

cooperating on global issues such as

climate change.

Later this year, the UK will host a key

climate change conference in Glasgow

(COP 26), convening world leaders,

climate experts, business chiefs, and

Her Excellency Mrs Janet Douglas CMG (middle) with resident British Commisioners [from L to R]: Steve

Moore (St Vincent and The Grenadines), Lindsy Thompson (Antigua and Barbuda), Wendy Freeman

(Grenada), and Steve McCready (St Lucia)

many others to agree much needed measures to tackle climate change. Our

new posts will be particularly valuable as we build up to this conference, helping

to highlight the vulnerabilities faced by the Eastern Caribbean and other

Small Island Developing States, and ensuring these concerns are raised and

addressed.

Our new posts will also enable us to engage more deeply in future with

governments and NGOs at a local level, too. Already our new RBCs have been

able to identify and support organisations and social projects able to make a

difference, including working with local NGOs to provide important community

support services and programmes to build stronger social cohesion, and

supporting efforts to develop sustainable blue economy opportunities.

This is merely a snapshot of how the UK is working with the region to support

its ongoing development. Much more is planned for 2020 and beyond,

as the UK looks for new opportunities to strengthen its relationship with the

Eastern Caribbean.

need to know

For more information or to get

involved, visit slowfoodbarbados.org

and facrp1.webs.com

How to . . .

Have a meaningful Earth Day

The only constant in life is change, and our natural environment is doing that

rapidly — with dangerous results for mankind. In recent years, the Caribbean has

experienced several overactive and destructive hurricane seasons, while experts

warn that the sea level is rising, coral reefs are dying, and increased fossil fuel use

points us down the path to further climate change. So what can ordinary people

do to make a difference to Mother Earth — and our own lives? As the world marks

the fiftieth anniversary of Earth Day on 22 April, Trinidad-based Barbadian

Shelly-Ann Inniss checks in with environmental groups in both of her home

countries for constructive tips.

Eat mindfully

Passionate about environmental

sustainability, Slow Food Barbados

works to educate and inspire the

public to reconnect with farmers,

fisherfolk, artisans, and the environment

to produce food responsibly. Ultraprocessed

and imported products have

a heavier impact on the environment

than whole and locally grown foods.

Furthermore, when we consume crops

or fish in their natural season, it gives the

environment and marine ecosystem a

chance to replenish properly.

“None of us are merely eaters,”

says Slow Food Barbados. “When we

actively participate in sustainable food

production, we also support livelihoods,

and sustain vital culinary and traditional

practices.” Their website and Instagram

page offer seasonal produce guides to

help you shop for groceries and plan

daily menus. You can do this in your

neck of the woods as well, by looking

out for farmers’ markets and local

producers who implement sustainable,

organic, or biodynamic practices. Slow

Food Barbados also recommends

A3pfamily/Shutterstock.com

creating gardens in schools: getting

children involved from a young age

shapes and ingrains customs so that

they become habits. Remember, eating

is an environmental act.

Plant trees

In Trinidad and Tobago, the Fondes

Amandes Community Reforestation

Project (FACRP) focuses primarily

on restoring natural forests, as well

as forest fire prevention. Forest

fires, apart from damaging natural

ecosystems, add to the volume of

carbon in our atmosphere, while

healthy forests are one of the best

ways to sequester carbon emissions

and foster climate cooling. In many

countries, you can join community

tree-planting events around Earth

Day, or — if getting your hands dirty

isn’t your thing — you can also join

in by making a financial contribution

towards a reforestation project. Or

start at home: fill an empty corner of

your front garden or backyard with a

sapling which will grow into a beautiful

tree offering shade, delicious fruit, and

a home for wildlife. FACRP organises

ongoing organic nursery sessions to get

you started.

26


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Great Courland Bay, Starfish Tobago Resort

offers guests of all ages idyllic all-inclusive

tropical getaways. Soak up the sun on the

beach, sip refreshing coctails by the swim-up

bar and enjoy nightly live entertainment at this

picturesque resort. Whether you’re traveling

solo or with the whole family, Starfish Tobago

Resort has something to offer everyone.

starfishresorts.com


need to know

Jordan V.P. Martis, one of the 2019 Arte di Palabra

winners

How did you become involved with

Arte di Palabra?

I decided to help as an extracurricular activity

linked to my studies. I went once, loved it,

and remained so fascinated by the effect it

has on the youngsters who participate that

till this day, I have remained a part of the

organisation.

Papiamentu is also spoken in Aruba

and Bonaire. Does Arte di Palabra

encompass these islands?

Yes, and after the contest on each island,

we have Arte di Palabra ABC — a final

competition between the three islands. This

year it will be in Bonaire. One of last year’s

highlights was an invitation to present at

Carifesta [in Trinidad and Tobago], so besides

Arte di Palabra on the ABC islands, we

crossed the border!

Courtesy Arte di Palabra

The Read

Papiamentu’s young

voices

Although Papiamentu is the most widely spoken language in Curaçao, it

became a compulsory subject in secondary schools only twenty years ago.

To mark this milestone, Ange Jessurun approached other Papiamentu

teachers to create a literary event celebrating the inclusion of the

mother tongue in the education system. The result was the annual Arte

di Palabra competition (running this year from 14 March to 4 April), in

which students in two age groups write and perform original pieces, vying

for national titles. Elvira Bonafacio — a Papiamentu teacher and current

competition co-ordinator — tells Shelly-Ann Inniss what it’s all about.

What literary genres does the

competition explore?

It covers short stories and poetry. Junior high

participants have the option of presenting

an original or existing piece for each genre,

whereas seniors can do an original piece in

both genres.

What’s been the impact on

participants?

The impact is immeasurable. Each

presentation allows the participants to

overcome their insecurities, fears, any other

inhibitions, and grow into a writer and artist.

They get more appreciation for literature,

and their feeling of patriotism flourishes.

Writing and performing serve as therapy to

free their emotions.

Does Arte di Palabra extend beyond

the competition?

Every five years, we publish a collection of

the winning pieces in a book called Pòtpurí.

High schools on the three islands receive

a free package, thanks to the sponsors,

which can be used in class. You can imagine

the pride this inspires, since it is written by

the youngsters themselves. Additionally,

28


An excerpt from “Bida” [“Life”], by Jordan V.P.

Martis, 2019 Arte di Palabra winner

Sinta pensa un ratu di bo bida.

Suku ta dushi pero no ta bon pa pone den sòpi.

Grandinan sa bisa ku papiado di bèrdat

nunka no ta haña stul pa sinta.

Mi ke bo djis para ketu i analisá.

Den bida bo tin ku plania, prepare, i praktiká.

Tin hopi hende ku ta bai ku moda

tambe tin ku moda no ta bai kuné.

Ban kuminsá biba segun nos forsa.

Sanger ku awa no sa midi.

Haa . . . Lei di naturalesa ta Dios su promé minister. Pero

kiko ta bo meta.

Purba daña nòmber di mi pida klòmpi di tesoro. Laga

kada kos ku pasa nos den bida

ta un lès pa nos bira mas fuerte.

Sit down for a while and reflect on your life.

Sugar is sweet, but it ain’t good to put in soup.

Elderly people say that a speaker of truth

Will never be offered a seat.

I want you to pause and analyse.

In life, you have to plan, prepare, and practise.

A lot of people follow fashion trends

There are also those who don’t fit with fashion trends.

Let’s start living according to our capacity.

Blood and water don’t go together.

Ahhh . . . The law of nature is God’s prime minister. But

what is your purpose.

Trying to damage the reputation of my pride and joy.

Let every life experience

Become a lesson to make us stronger.

Tobago's Newest Shopping

Experience Is Here

“Come discover your new favorite place”

throughout the year, the winners perform at radio and

television stations, as well as different social, cultural,

educational, and government events.

What do you love the most about Arte di

Palabra?

I love to watch the development of the child who did not

like to write, and who has a piece on paper now — or the

one who used to be shy, who now presents his work in

front of his peers. Those things are priceless. Watching

the three islands present, listening to each national

anthem at the beginning, hearing the different variations

of Papiamentu on one stage, is special.

For more information, visit artedipalabra.com or

artedipalabra on Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube

Retail:

Clothing Accessories, Shoes,

Swimwear, Locally made

products, Jewelry, Intimate

apparel, Books, Children/Babies

items, Tech, Activewear

Entertainment:

Laser Tag Arena, Games Zone,

Wine Bar, Friday After Work

Karaoke

CATEGORIES

Dining:

Fast Food, Creole Food, Vegan,

Vegetarian, Bakery, Salad bar,

Juices/Smoothies, Burgers,

Cakes, Dessert, Icecream

Beauty/Self Care

Services:

Hair and Nail Salons, Natural

Hair Salon, Barbers

Corner Sangster's Hill + Milford Road, Scarborough, Tobago

Opening Hours: Monday–Friday 7am–10pm, Saturday + Sunday 10am–10pm


need to know

The view of Nelson’s Dockyard

from Shirley Heights, Antigua

Quiggyt4/Shutterstock.com

All About . . .

Nelson and Antigua

At the end of April, as sailors from around the world converge at Antigua Sailing

Week (26 April to 1 May), the prize they’ll all be eyeing is the Lord Nelson Trophy

— named, like Antigua’s Nelson’s Dockyard, for one Horatio Nelson, the most

celebrated naval commander in British history.

Born in 1758, Nelson was just twelve years old when he joined the Royal Navy,

sailing across the Atlantic to Jamaica and Tobago. But the West Indian island

he’s most closely associated with is Antigua, where he was stationed at English

Harbour from 1784 (complaining bitterly about the mosquitoes). His friendships

with West Indian plantation owners influenced his staunch pro-slavery views,

which have made him a controversial figure in the post-Independence Caribbean.

He later won fame for his service in the Mediterranean during the Napoleonic

Wars, before being killed at the Battle of Trafalgar.

The Lord Nelson Trophy

First awarded at Antigua Sailing Week

in 1968, the Lord Nelson Trophy — an

impressive silver bowl — has been

taken five times by teams from Antigua

and Barbuda, but Puerto Rico is the

Caribbean territory with the most wins:

nine in all, including the inaugural year.

Boats registered in other Caribbean

territories account for eight other

victories.

Where history docks

English Harbour on Antigua’s south

coast, naturally sheltered from Atlantic

hurricanes, was used as a refuge for

British ships as early as 1671. In 1743, the

Royal Navy dockyard was established at

its current site — the chief facility for

the repair of naval vessels in the British

West Indies, built with the labour of

enslaved Africans. Famous for its heavy

fortifications, the dockyard was never

attacked, not even at the height of the

Napoleonic Wars. Closed in 1889, the

dockyard was more or less abandoned

for half a century, till the British governor

of the island launched a restoration

initiative in 1951. Ten years later, it was

officially opened as a historical site,

now named for Nelson, becoming one

of Antigua and Barbuda’s most popular

tourist attractions. Said to be the

most complete surviving example of a

Georgian dockyard in the world, it’s now

a national park, headquarters for Antigua

Sailing Week, and a working dockyard for

yachts. The surrounding hills are dotted

with the forts that once protected the

harbour — Shirley Heights being the

most impressive, with its breathtaking

views and Sunday sunset parties.

Yo-ho-ho and a barrel

Famously, after Nelson was killed at

Trafalgar, his body was transported

back to England in a barrel of brandy

(rather than being buried at sea — the

usual fate of less celebrated corpses).

The incident was prefigured years

earlier when Nelson departed Antigua

for the last time. Ill, and concerned

he might perish on the transatlantic

journey, he travelled with a barrel of rum

to preserve his body if needed.

Hero or — ?

Nelson’s best-known monument is the

statue atop the column in London’s

Trafalgar Square. But that was predated

by almost thirty years by a similar

monument in Bridgetown, capital of

Barbados — for generations, the point

from which distances on the island were

measured. In recent decades, debate

about Nelson’s role in British imperialism

and his views on slavery have fuelled a

campaign to have the statue removed.

In 1999, the surrounding square was

renamed National Heroes Square, in

honour of Barbados’s ten officially

recognised National Heroes. The statue

itself was subsequently turned around

180 degrees, and has occasionally been

splashed with paint and bedecked with

placards, but thus far remains standing.

For the Antigua Sailing Week

schedule and other information,

visit www.sailingweek.com

30


Escape the

ordinary. Discover

Hyatt Regency

Trinidad.

31

need to know

Word of Mouth

Breakfast with a view

David Katz eats his fill at the popular West Indian Breakfast in Mt Moritz, Grenada

Like many other places in volcanic

Grenada, the close-knit hillside community

of Mt Moritz is reached by a steep

climb up a twisting road, a ten-minute

drive from the capital, St George’s.

The village has five churches, a sports

ground, and a breathtaking view of the

Caribbean Sea. After the dramatic crest

of Campbell Drive, there’s a winding descent

to a large playing field, where — if

you arrive on the right Sunday morning

— you’ll find the irresistible aroma

of bubbling pots, as vintage soca music

wafts in the breeze.

For the past eleven years, Mt Moritz

has been home to a popular monthly

West Indian Breakfast, where authentic

local delicacies are offered to the

public in a festive and communal atmosphere.

Launched by Nicholas Harris

of the Mt Moritz Community Development

Organisation, the West Indian

Breakfast was started to encourage

community togetherness and to

stimulate revitalisation, as all proceeds

remain in the village, contributing to its

upkeep.

The event is renowned for its range

of bona fide local foods, cooked the

traditional way and served without the

fuss and pomp of hotel restaurants.

So, rather than starched white tablecloths,

there are communal benches in

a massive tent, allowing attendees to

meet the “Mung-Mungs,” as Mt Moritz

residents are affectionately known,

along with islanders from other communities.

And the food is not aimed

at foreign palates, either. Everything

on offer is the genuine unadulterated

article, including dishes like pig-foot

souse, blood pudding, and saltfish

souse. Smoked herring is shredded and

cooked with onions and peppers, yielding

a delightfully savoury treat. There’s

also cornmeal cou-cou, and although

the giant trevally or jackfish is typically

cooked whole in adult form, at

Mt Moritz they often serve it young,

similar to fried whitebait.

You’ll find an abundance of steamed

ground provisions too, with a variety

of yams, sweet potato, breadfruit, and

plantain, as well as the bulky green

banana known locally as “bluggoe.”

And breakfast wouldn’t be breakfast

without a choice of bakes, either baked

in the oven or fried — with everything

washed down by a cup of warming

cocoa tea or an herbal alternative such

as lemongrass. Grenada is known as the

Isle of Spice because so many spices

grow here in abundance. As Grenadians

like their food well-seasoned, breakfast

at Mt Moritz is guaranteed to be

flavourful — and excellent value, as the

entire meal costs a mere US$11.

Since Grenadians tend to rise early,

the Mt Moritz breakfast begins at 6

am. Even if the food typically finishes

by 11.30, visitors often find themselves

lingering into the afternoon, enjoying a

friendly lime with the locals. The West

Indian Breakfast is normally held on the

last Sunday of every month, but before

making the steep drive, make sure to

check the community Facebook page

for scheduling updates.

For more information and the schedule for the monthly Mt Moritz West

Indian Breakfast, visit www.facebook.com/Mt-Moritz-Community-

Development-Organisation-202684563081687

James Hackett

32


Bambú

GIF T & COFFEE SHOP

Rare & exotic arts and crafts

made in the Caribbean

Now GRAB & GO healthy meals

#199 Milford Road, Crown Point, Tobago

T: 868-639-8133 • E: bambugiftshoptobago@gmail.com

www.bambugiftshoptobago.com


need to know

Great

Outdoors

Hash it out

Every two years, Hash House Harriers

from around the globe assemble in

one location, for a grand jamboree of

this international non-competitive

running club. And this year, the World

Interhash comes to Trinidad and

Tobago for the first time, running

— literally — from 23 to 26 April, as

hundreds of hashers arrive to join the

“Carnival of Hashes.”

So what is hashing, for the

uninitiated? Imagine groups of runners

and joggers following trails (marked by

“hares” with sprinkled flour) through

challenging terrain, over hills and rivers,

through forests and beaches, with the

reward of copious amounts of cold

alcoholic beverages at the end — hence

the hashers’ self-imposed nickname,

“drinkers with a running problem.” Over

a hundred countries worldwide have

hashing clubs, and in the Caribbean, it’s

especially popular in Grenada, Antigua,

Barbados, and T&T.

Being fit is not a prerequisite for

hashing, but it is a fun way of getting

in shape at your own pace. If you’re a

good sport, effervescing with energy

and enthusiasm, Interhash Trinidad

and Tobago is an exceptional way to

explore the twin islands, with loads

of laughter, meeting new people, and

breathtaking sights along the way.

The schedule includes an opportunity

to run the trails of Les Couteau and

Arnos Vale in Tobago, an inaugural

Interhash J’Ouvert run in Chaguaramas,

northwest Trinidad, and the signature

Red Dress Charity Run, raising funds

lzf/Shutterstock.com

New to hashing? Unfamiliar with the lingo? Here’s a quick

guide to get you started:

Hare

Are you?

Kennel

BN

Down, down

On, on

for T&T’s Shelter for Battered Women.

Finally, for the hardcore, there’s the

notorious five-hour Ball Breaker Run,

over gruelling trails — the better to

work up a thirst.

At hashes, drinking alcohol is a

normal activity, but when the beverage

is dispensed from your shoe under the

watchful eyes of your new hash friends,

everyone will know you’re a hash virgin.

Consider it a rite of passage. You might

The person who lays the trail

Yell this when you’re lost and cannot find the trail

Hash club

Hash mark indicating a beer stop is nearby (“Beer Near”)

A ceremony of “immaculate” consumption administered

for the fun of it, or for various hash transgressions, like

being competitive. The “holy fluid” might be poured on

your head, shirt, or simply guzzled

You’re on the right track. Yell this when you spot a marker,

or at the sacred end where more drinking begins

find yourself rechristened, too: hash

nicknames are often bestowed after a

designated number of runs, on special

occasions, or when the hasher has

done something memorable. Happy

Feet, Rigor Mortis, and Never Knees are

some of the more printable nicknames.

As you can tell, hashing is less about

athletics and more about fun and

camaraderie. T&T’s World Interhash

could be your chance to join in. On, on!

For more information, or to register for World Interhash 2020, visit

interhashtrinidad2020.com

34


need to know

Above The Bounce (2012;

papier-mâché, oil paint; 37 x

27 x 23 inches)

On View

Wendy Nanan at the

AMA

Over four decades, Trinidadian artist Wendy Nanan

has created a quietly subversive body of work, tackling

issues of cultural hybridity, gender, and sexuality —

letting her visually arresting work speak for itself, and

rarely venturing into the spotlight. A new retrospective

show at the Art Museum of the Americas (AMA) in

Washington, DC, running from 19 March to 14 June,

assembles key works from all the stages of her career

and offers an overdue survey of her oeuvre — and its

implications for the unstable canon of contemporary

Caribbean art.

The eponymously titled Wendy Nanan includes

one of the provocative, gaudily painted papier-mâché

works from her Idyllic Marriage series of the early 1990s,

depicting an uneasy union between the Hindu god Vishnu

and the Roman Catholic Madonna — “an interrogation

36


Opposite page, below

From the Cricket Drawings

series (1984–2011; brush and

ink on paper; 9 x 12 inches)

Above Idyllic Marriage (1990;

papier-mâché, oil paint; 21” x

14.5” x 3.75”)

of the necessary discomfort of mixing in the Americas,”

writes curator Andil Gosine. The exhibition also

assembles a large group of Nanan’s celebrated cricket

drawings, a series begun in the 1980s (and a selection of

which were published in this magazine back in 2002) —

“sensual depictions of the sport and male athleticism,”

says Gosine.

Rounding off the show are six new works from

Nanan’s recent Pods series, wall-mounted sculptural

works made from papier-mâché and sea shells collected

by the artist on Trinidad’s Atlantic coast — “concerned

with anxieties about women’s bodies and sexualities.”

An accompanying short video by the curator depicts

the creation of these new works alongside Nanan’s

recounting of her upbringing in Trinidad and the deep

roots of her work in her home island.


need to know

EFE News Agency/Alamy Stock Photo

Datebook

More highlights of March and April

across the Caribbean

Caribbean Fine Arts Fair

11 to 15 March, Barbados

Over fifty artists exhibit their work at

Barbados’s Central Bank in historic Bridgetown.

An exciting itinerary of spoken word, theatrical

performances, and fashion showcases kickstart

the fair’s tenth anniversary, as it intertwines

with the inaugural Bridgetown International Arts

Festival. cafafair.com

Carriacou Maroon and Stringband

Music Festival

24 to 26 April

A maroon, in Carriacou, is the name for a festival

of gratitude: giving thanks for the most recent

harvest ahead of the new planting season.

It opens with the blowing of a conch shell,

continues with mesmerising drumming, and

the menu is “ancestral” smoked food. Then

follow two days of unforgettable musical

performances. carriacoumaroon.com

Easter goat and crab races

14 April, Tobago

Family-friendly adventures are some of the best ones to have, and

Tobago never disappoints. While most Easter celebrations end on

Easter Monday, Tobago adds an extra day. On Easter Tuesday, wake

up to the sweet sounds of steelpan and soca rhythms as a street

parade gets underway. Then the races begin on the field in Buccoo.

Goats — not horses — are released from the starting gates with their

strapping “jockeys” connected to them by a rope. The crabs, on the

other hand, would make easy targets for a pot. They are tethered by

a string and prodded with a stick to the finish line, but not without

haphazard jumps and comic manoeuvres from their handlers.

International Drum Festival

23 to 29 March, Cuba

The world’s best in rumba, percussion, dance, and art come together

at Havana’s leading cultural venues to showcase the talent that each

country has to offer. The festival is a loving tribute to musician Guillermo

Barreto, one of the first Cuban drummers to play Afro-Cuban jazz and a

major figure on the Cuban music scene for over fifty years.

Taste of Cayman Food and Drink Festival

4 April, Grand Cayman

From delicious street food to cocktails and gourmet masterpieces,

there’s something for everyone’s tastebuds. Over eighteen thousand

portions of Cayman’s diverse cuisine will be served up, as forty-five

restaurants join this culinary celebration. tasteofcayman.org

38


bookshelf

Everything Inside

by Edwidge Danticat (Knopf, 240 pp, ISBN 9780525521273)

The eight stories that make up Everything Inside are invitational. Haitian-

American Edwidge Danticat wields prose like a full pitcher of water, pouring it

with a measured grace, beckoning everyone to drink, and be well. The fiction

herein is its own diagnosis and medicine, its own indictment and cure: Danticat

never shies away from showing us the ways in which humanity sickens itself, yet

no story here is a suffocating lament or, worse, a tirade from a bestseller’s pulpit.

The church we are taken to in these stories is instructive and everywhere:

on the shore of a coastline strewn with dead and half-living migrant bodies; in

the well-worn booths of a Little Haiti bar where diasporic Haitians drink, sing,

and are betrayed for love; on the sands of a horseshoe-curved beach where a

wedding unfolds and an unnamed country holds its breath against chaos.

Danticat invites us to see our inescapable human ill as bound tightly to our

capacity for pure love. While the author pits morally thorny choices against

masterful interpersonal tenderness in almost each story, this contrast pulses

most strongly in “The Gift”, wherein two embattled former lovers are brought

together amid the aftershocks of extraordinary grief. Anika, the former mistress

of earthquake survivor Tom, admits an initial flood of relief on hearing his

list of beloved dead, the better for him to finally be fully hers. Yet desolation

stalks her all the same, a loss so deep it escapes even the language needed to

define it: “She started sketching million-year-old birds because she couldn’t

imagine how to sketch or paint what she really wanted to, earthquakes.”

It is impossible to leave the universal pews of Everything Inside unaltered.

The world, Danticat shows us, has never needed our attention more.

Sun of Consciousness

by Édouard Glissant, translated by Nathanaël

(Nightboat Books, 112 pp, ISBN 9781937658953)

An originary essay demanding

thoughtfulness across emotional

dimensions, Édouard Glissant’s

Sun of Consciousness

has been translated for the first

time into English. Nathanaël,

in her translator’s notes to

this volume straddling criticism

and poetry, calls the work “a

tender geography.” This gives us

clues to interpreting the text,

published in 1956 as Soleil de

la Conscience, which explores

Martinique-born Glissant’s

yearning curiosity at the complications of his early years

in France. The benefit of this new issuing to Anglophone

readers is rich: in its passionate contemplation, readers

can glean the nascent foundations of Glissant’s scholarship,

of the “tout-monde” philosophy that renders the

entire globe an interlaced series of experiences. Sun of

Consciousness makes an island of every realm, then shows

how, from these territories, we reach towards an understanding

of each other in the living world.

Nomad

by Yvonne Weekes (House of Nehesi Publishers,

80 pp, ISBN 9781733633314)

How to capture the smouldering

heart of an active volcano in

one poem? Montserrat-born,

Barbados-based Yvonne

Weekes shows us, in “Stripped”:

“The Mountain knows that it has

stripped us / pushed us out into

frothy oceans / kept us walking

on rough lands / and into new

dreams.” Weekes, who left the

island of her birth following the

1996 Soufrière Hills Volcano

eruption, does not rid her poems

of the evidence of a Caribbean life marked by natural

rupture. On the contrary, Nomad shares its track-marks of

ash and sulphur with the reader, bearing witness to unfathomable

destruction and rendering it in crisp, dramatic

lines. Using her own life as ready canvas, Weekes’s poems

reverberate with a refugee’s anguish; a survivor’s resolve; a

migrant’s hard-won sense of belonging. The ocean unites

us, these poems proclaim, salt-brined and free.


bookshelf Q&A

A–Z of Caribbean Art

edited by Melanie Archer and Mariel Brown

(Robert & Christopher Publishers, 304 pp, ISBN

9789769534490)

To open the pages of this

abécédaire is to walk into a living

museum. Think of A–Z of

Caribbean Art as an interactive

passport, one that catapults

you from an unassailably

crimson vehicle with green

plantains glistening in its red,

red truck-bed (Puerto Rican

Miguel Luciano’s Studebaker,

Plátanos y Machete) to a riotous,

blood-stippled woodcut

print on paper (Bahamian

Maxwell Taylor’s Burma Road). Archer and Brown’s

curatorial vision is the best possible version of communityoriented;

they’ve engaged as impressive a cast of writers

to supply text on the artists themselves. It’s impossible to

please everyone in assemblies of this nature; thankfully the

work sets its sights beyond a “who’s who.” The question

posed, instead, is “where are we, Caribbean makers?” The

answer: everywhere, amply and beyond borders.

Homecoming: Voices of the Windrush

Generation

by Colin Grant (Jonathan Cape, 320 pp, ISBN

9781787331051)

In his memoir Bageye at the

Wheel, Jamaican-British Colin

Grant proved he could expertly

handle the navigation of his

family history on the page. With

Homecoming, Grant steps

behind the Pathé newsreels of

the Windrush experience, to

let those stories abundantly

tell themselves. In the testimonies

and archival recordings of

nurses, slum landlords, activists,

struggling lovers, and more,

this meticulous, generous study brings these “forgotten”

voices to the surface. Though devastated by deliberate

neglect from the UK’s Home Office rulings as recently as

2019, the legacy of these Caribbean-British citizens cannot

be obliterated, or massaged into modern conservative

xenophobia: not, Grant urges us, while we have so much

remembering, and honouring, to enact in their service.

The chorus of voices in Homecoming sings clear, true, and

sentimental, too, with not a recollection out of place.

In Sugarcane Valley, subtitled Stories of East Indian

Folklore and Superstition (136 pp, 9789768280701),

Vashti Bowlah weaves

together elements of folk

fable and social history in

lively short fictions grounded

in Trinidad’s Indian community.

She talks to Shivanee

Ramlochan about her belief

in the value of tradition.

Sugarcane Valley presents a fictional but

familiar village: does this setting represent one

real location, or is it the creative product of

several?

Sugarcane Valley is the creative product of several rural areas

where I spent my childhood. It bears similarities to Esperanza

Village, California, as well as Perseverance Village and Orange

Valley in Couva. There are even bits and pieces of Claxton Bay

and San Fernando. Life in these areas along the sugarcane

belt was full of adventure and excitement in all its simplicity.

Saapins, churiles, raakhas: do

East Indian Caribbean folkloric

spirits frighten or delight you as

a storyteller?

While these spirits may have some

dark qualities, they make intriguing

characters and are certainly a delight to

write and read about. Elders made many

references to these folkloric spirits,

but I was only able to understand them

as an adult. I recall being told to not go

outside at noon or be caught out at sunset, especially near

bushes and trees. There were also stories of widows who

couldn’t keep a husband because they had “a snake in their

back.” I was determined to create my own stories about

these fascinating characters and the many superstitious

beliefs that surround them.

Your stories cleave to Independence-era

traditions in T&T: which of these rituals of

yesteryear has been most essential to your

creative writing?

I grew up in the 1970s, and enjoy hearing stories from my

parents and others about their experiences in the decades

before that. You see, traditions are what bind families

together and are an essential part of East Indian culture,

lifestyle, and beliefs. When I make references to wanting to

preserve our traditions, it’s not because I am stuck in the

past, but instead I want us to remember the essence of what

helped to make our families strong and humble, yet rooted in

a culture that is rich and unpretentious.


41

playlist

Kijombo

Yasser Tejeda & Pal (self-released)

The Dominican Republic has blessed the world

with the highly popular merengue and bachata

genres of music. Native son and guitarist Yasser

Tejeda has blended these and other elements of

traditional Afro-Dominican music — palo, gaga,

perico ripiao — with modern jazz, funk, and rock

to create a fusion that is both danceable and

indicative of the majesty of New World African

music. On the eleven-track album Kijombo, the

music sails through moods and tendencies that

form a study of how almost ancient and sacred

sounds and rhythms can be applied to modern

tropes to elevate the whole. The blurb from

the record label says the album represents “a

journey through a history of Dominican musical

resilience.” The percussive pulse, that African

heartbeat, is not replaced by electric impulses,

but supplemented by ideas and song lyrics that

speak to the retention of native excellence. This

album is an ideal starting point for new musical

discovery.

Home

Kalpee (FVP Global)

The modern trend in creating short-form EPs

sometimes gives the listener the hint that we

are being teased for an upcoming high-value

long-playing album. This EP is too short — less

than fifteen minutes — but in that short burst,

listeners are bathed in the island pop motifs that

anchor much contemporary popular music: a

dolphin whistle here, a millennial whoop there,

and slow burn on the tropical soca riddim.

Kalpee has the distinction of being one of the

few artists from Trinidad signed to a major label.

Going forward, he is finding new boundaries to

cross with his laid-back Trini drawl and lyrics

that speak of finding the centre here in his

island. “Home is where love resides, memories

are created, friends always belong, and laughter

never ends,” he says. The first single, “Wherever

You Are”, a duet with Jimmy October, could be a

hopeful anthem for the homesick wanderer. The

other songs describe an arc that is rooted in his

patriotic pride.

Rebel with a Cause

Pressure Busspipe (I Grade Records)

St Thomas native and popular reggae artist

Pressure Busspipe — you’ve got to love that

name — has released his seventh album since

2005, and on Rebel with a Cause listeners

become aware of both the ubiquity of the roots

rock reggae revival, and the march towards a kind

of powerful testimony in the lyricism of reggae

artists who are slowly receding from dancehall

to find a secure market for this music. This

new album is stacked with fourteen songs that

address issues such as government corruption,

institutional racism, injustice, and economic

oppression, “especially for black people,” he

says. Collaborations with fellow Virgin Islanders

R. City, Reemah, and the late Akae Beka — alongside

Jamaicans Sizzla, Protoje, and others, and

rapper Redman — suggest the album has many

points of interest for both the consumer and

the listener. Contemporary reggae elements are

sprinkled around to keep the album refreshing all

the way through, never dulling its socio-political

subjects.

SOLEY

Grégory Privat (Buddham Jazz)

Martiniquan pianist Grégory Privat continues

his elegant exploration of Creole jazz with this

follow-up to his recent album Family Tree. This

new album of trio music, with collaborators

Canadian Chris Jennings on double bass and fellow

Martiniquan Tilo Bertholo on drums, sparkles

with a new energy, as it incorporates electronics

and allows Privat the opportunity to sing. Fifteen

tracks draw on the richness of Creole jazz heritage

in the French Antilles, and juxtapose those

aesthetic elements with sounds that can only

exist in a synthetic medium, to enrich the band’s

playing. Privat tells us that SOLEY is “a concept

of Spirituality, Optimism, Light, and Energy

(coming to) You.” The album represents continued

mastery of technique and dynamics on

the piano, and a full understanding of the Creole

perspective. There is a sense of experimentation

on this record, pointing to the idea that this

music can be catharsis and spiritual haven: jazz

illuminated and elevated.

Reviews by Nigel A. Campbell


An elite, fiery & vibrant spot

A truly Caribbean restaurant

inspired by traditional cooking

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finger licking food; good

music and awesome

ambience makes us one

of the most preferred

Caribbean restaurants

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1400 North State Road 7,

Lauderhill, Fl 33313 | (954) 626-0907

www.lalloscaribbean.com

screenshots

Courtesy Carlos Lechuga

“Here I was free to

create”

Carlos Lechuga doesn’t pull punches. The Cuban filmmaker established his reputation

with two excellent, independently made features, Molasses (2012) and

Santa and Andres (2015), realist dramas that critiqued the Communist state.

When the latter film was banned in Cuba, Lechuga’s future seemed uncertain.

Now he’s back with a provocative new short, and a renewed sense of purpose.

Set in the 1970s, the dialogue-free Generation centres on a group of Cuba’s

jeunesse dorée at a large multi-level house perched, ominously, on a precipice.

The camera observes the sepia-hued action with a detached irony, as the

young people mix and mingle before proceeding to the rooftop where, one by

one, they calmly step off the edge. The death of a generation in just under six

minutes, set to a rousing bolero.

While Generation is no less political than Lechuga’s previous films, it nevertheless

represents a new artistic direction for the thirty-seven-year-old.

Jonathan Ali speaks with him about this shift, and Vicenta B, the next feature

he plans to make.

What prompted Generation?

After the censorship of Santa and

Andres, I was hopeless and without a

clear project. Then, like a miracle, [the

Cuban artist] Marco Castillo called

me. He was preparing for the Havana

Biennial and wanted to give me the

opportunity to shoot again. It was to be

a work of video art. We started working

with mood, trying not to make a conventional

movie. We studied the Cuban

photographers of the 70s, and made a

homage to them.

Where did the concept come from?

The original idea came from Marco:

a group of people in a house killing

themselves, representing an entire

generation that the country messed

up, that the government tore apart. I

wrote a short script and made a huge

mood board. I tried to imbue each of

the images with personal drama, to

create a concentrated capsule of every

moment in the house. Making this film

was like a jump into the non-narrative

question. In my previous films I had this

component, but the narrative component

always won the battle. Here I was

free to create.

Tell me about “Polvada Mojada”, the

Beatriz Márquez song that scores

the film.

I chose it because I have an old record of

it — late 70s, early 80s — and I listened

to it and I thought: this is it. In Cuba,

Beatriz is called La Musicalisima — the

most musical voice. She is very famous

and was very happy to work with us.

This new direction in your work

comes as you prepare to make your

third feature, Vicenta B, your most

autobiographical film yet.

Vicenta B is the story of my grandma,

who was a fortune-teller. It’s the story

of an Afro-Cuban woman who has a

crisis and starts to lose her faith. It’s an

opportunity to give a voice to a huge

group of people who don’t appear

frequently in Cuban cinema, and to

vindicate Afro-Cuban beliefs.

You’ve said the idea for the film

was prompted by the idea of “the

existential crisis of a black woman.”

In cinema, we’re used to seeing the

existential crises of white and First

World women characters, like in Ingmar

Bergman’s Persona. I’m tired that every

time we film the problems of Caribbean

women we only see material problems

— relationship or money issues. I want

to go deeper, and in a very sensual and

subtle mood. That’s why Generation is a

bridge in my career. I’m changing, entering

a new period, like a painter.

So you’re finished with making

overtly political films?

Yes. I’ve already made them. And I was

brave to do it. But I’m not interested

any more in that. I’m going to make more

personal films and pray for a better

country.

Do you anticipate any challenges

with the authorities as you go into

production on Vicenta B?

If I want to make films, I cannot think

about these people. The fear makes

you freeze, and stop. I’m not going to

stop, even if I have to shoot the film in

my house. One thing is true: I’m going to

continue being independent.

Generation

Directors: Carlos Lechuga and Marco

Castillo

Cuba

6 minutes

44


Give us a call T 246 429 5686

info.bb@massyrealty.com

massyrealtybb.com

Education for Liberty

by Fazal Ali

Attempts to end social inequality through ambitious

education reforms fail simply because varying levels of

education can only partially account for wage inequality.

When level of education attainment is controlled, the

effect of social origin is statistically significant at every

career stage. Education for economic justice posits a

recasting of the ecological frames of schooling.

For more information, see www.fazalali.com

Available on Amazon: www.amazon.com/Education-Liberty-Dr-Fazal-Ali/dp/1975721950

Beat162_EducForLiberty_Ad 1

07/02/2020 1:59 PM

cookup

“I’m going to

do something

different”

Nina Compton was a teenager in St Lucia

when she discovered her passion for

cooking. After years of working in some of

the most celebrated restaurant kitchens

in the US, she shot to fame after appearing

on Top Chef. Now based in New Orleans,

Compton has a passion for sharing Caribbean

cuisine, she tells Franka Philip

Photography by Denny Culbert, courtesy Nina Compton

Her life has been on

fast forward since she

emerged as the runnerup

on the popular

Top Chef TV series in

2013. She’s opened two

restaurants and won a heap of awards,

including a highly prestigious James

Beard Foundation Award — the Oscar

of the food world. When I ask chef Nina

Compton about finding balance in her

life, her answer, with a laugh, is, “When I

figure that out, I’ll let you know.”

“It’s a funny thing how the past couple

of years have gone by so quickly,” she

says. “It’s kind of overwhelming, because

after doing Top Chef and winning these

awards, things just got bigger and bigger

and bigger. The demands are crazy.”

The New Orleans–based chef loves

being able to fly to far-flung places to cook

with her contemporaries, but her main

focus is her two restaurants, Compère

Lapin and Bywater American Bistro. “I

never expected all this success,” she says,

“but I’m very happy that it happened.”

Born and raised in St Lucia, Compton

is the daughter of late prime minister

Sir John Compton, who, even as the leader

of his country, never gave up his profession

as a farmer. Sir John never much

bothered with the trappings of office, and

his children grew up like everyone else,

walking to school and doing just as the

other children did.

The farmer’s daughter grew up with

a love of fresh fruit and vegetables, and

also the sea. In a 2019 interview on the

Bon Appetit magazine podcast, she said

her first food memory was “going into the

ocean and dipping a beautiful ripe mango

in the salt water, then having a bite.” Her

culinary journey began with her English

grandmother in St Lucia. Her granny was

a retired nurse, who spent a lot of time in

the kitchen, preparing meals for the family.

“Her life was just cooking and organising

meals for the family,” Compton says.

“As I got older, I’d ask, ‘Granny, can I help?

Can I cut the onions for you?’ That was

important for me, because we became

very close. Cooking was our bond.”

Compton left St Lucia at sixteen to

attend school in Britain. At first she

thought it would be an adventure, but

soon realised she needed to adapt quickly

to the culture and the awful weather.


Compton knew about

the ultra-competitive

and stressful nature

of the competition,

but she felt Top Chef

was an opportunity to

feature Caribbean food

in a positive way

Two years later, she returned to St Lucia

and contemplated her next steps, but she

knew that university was not for her. It

was cooking the Christmas meal for the

family with her granny that helped her to

decide she wanted to enter the culinary

field. “I remember seeing the reactions,

how happy my family was . . . and I told

my mom, ‘I think I want to cook.’”

Her mother sensibly warned her

about the arduous life that chefs

endure — the long hours, the

stress, and generally not having a social

life. Realising it was something she was

intent on trying, Compton’s mother helped

her get a job in the kitchen at the Sandals

resort in St Lucia. After a year of working

her way around the kitchen, Compton

started feeling “stuck,” she says. She

requested a transfer to Sandals in Jamaica,

where she “had a blast,” but after two

years, that familiar feeling of being stuck

returned.

Advised by her head chef to attend

culinary school, she applied and was

accepted to the prestigious Culinary Institute

of America in New York City. While

there, she made up her mind to work at

one of the top restaurants in the city.

What followed was a period in the early

2000s in celebrated chef Daniel Boulud’s

“intense” kitchen. Under his exacting

chef de cuisine Alex Lee, Compton built a

strong foundation for the future.

Put off by the New York winters,

Compton set her sights south, and

applied to work with Norman Van Aken

in Florida. The so-called “founding father

of New World Cuisine” was a trailblazer

for his use of Latin, Caribbean, Asian,

and African flavours, and this was a huge

draw for the young St Lucian. “He was

cooking with a lot of tropical ingredients

and he was doing stuff that I wouldn’t

have thought of. He was using yucca [cassava],

conch, and ingredients nobody else

was using.”

Fast forward to 2013: Compton’s

growing reputation as a brilliant chef

is cemented after stints at several top

restaurants in Florida. Cable television

channel Bravo calls, and asks her to be a

contestant on season eleven of the series

Top Chef. Anyone who has watched the

show knows it puts the competing chefs

under the microscope in a pressurecooker

environment. Top Chef’s history

is littered with a trail of chefs who simply

cracked under the pressure.

Compton knew about the ultracompetitive

and stressful nature of the

competition, but she felt Top Chef was

an opportunity to feature Caribbean

food in a positive way — and, of course,

bring attention to St Lucia. “It was one


47

Nina Compton at work in the

kitchen at Compère Lapin

of the hardest things I’ve ever done,” she

recalls, but “Top Chef was actually a fun

experience.”

Season eleven was extremely competitive.

Compton reached the final, and was

pitted against Philadelphia chef Nicholas

Elmi — the contestant who fellow chefs

and viewers loved to hate, because of

his perceived lack of humility and bad

attitude. In the end, Elmi triumphed,

but Compton won the hearts of viewers

and TV critics, and was voted People’s

Choice.

Since then, life has been a whirlwind

for Compton and her husband and business

partner Larry Miller. The couple

moved from Florida to New Orleans after

falling in love with the city where some of

the Top Chef episodes were filmed. “The

culture was very similar to the Caribbean

but also very different,” Compton told

Bon Appetit. “New Orleans has a special

feel, that you don’t feel like you’re in the

States. It’s a fun environment, and people

are about life.”

In 2015, she opened her first restaurant,

Compère Lapin (named after the

rabbit character from Creole folktales), to

praise and accolades. In 2017, Compton

was named Best New Chef by Food and

Wine magazine and Compère Lapin was

also listed in Eater’s top thirty restaurants

in the US. In March 2018, she collaborated

with her sous chef Levi Raines to open

her second restaurant, Bywater American

Bistro, serving a menu that reflects

contemporary American cuisine. In May

2018, the hard work truly paid off, with

a coveted James Beard Award for Best

Chef: South.

Catching Nina Compton for an

interview is not easy — she has

some ridiculous working hours.

We eventually speak via Skype early one

Saturday morning before she heads to the

farmers’ markets.

She spoke about the demands of owning

two restaurants and the importance of

creating positive and respectful kitchens,

but she was most passionate about how

welcoming the people of New Orleans

have been to her, pointing out that the

African-American community has really

embraced her. “I’ve had people in the

black community approach me and help

uplift me,” she says. “People come to the

restaurant and say, ‘I came to the restaurant

because I wanted to support a black

woman and what she’s doing.’”

So what can an eager prospective eater

expect on the menu at Compère Lapin

— where the chef’s philosophy revolves

around the complexity of simplicity,

and the power of pure flavours? First

of all, don’t expect a Caribbean take on

Louisana’s most famous dish, gumbo.

“If I do something, I’m going to do

something different, and I want to bring

my Caribbean heritage so people can

understand where I am coming from,”

Compton says. “One of the dishes I have

on the menu at the moment is curry goat.

It’s something I grew up with, it’s my

comfort food.”

But although her Caribbean-influenced

menu has been a hit in New Orleans,

Compton is not sure if Caribbean food

can go mainstream in the near future.

“Caribbean food is so unique and different

islands have different things,” she

explains. “It’s hard, because you can’t put

a collection of Caribbean food together —

people say, jerk chicken is from Jamaica,

or this is from here. People still identify

certain things from particular islands.

“We need to be more universal, and

while every island is different, the islands

are also quite similar. I think there needs

to be a collective exploration of the

Caribbean, that’s what needs to happen.”

The forty-one-year-old believes that chefs

from the region are elevating our food, but

they need to draw more from history in

developing our regional cuisine.

As far as the future is concerned,

Compton seems set to stay in New

Orleans for the long term. Early in her

career, she thought of moving back to

St Lucia to open a restaurant by the sea,

but that is now a “retirement” plan.

“There’s a beautiful feeling when I

reach home,” she says. “As soon as I land,

there is no stress. The Caribbean, a lot of

people take it for granted. Every time I go

home, I think, man, this is where I’m from,

this is the land.” n

Find out more about chef

Nina Compton’s New Orleans

restaurants:

Compere Lapin

comperelapin.com

Instagram @comperelapin

Bywater American Bistro

bywateramericanbistro.com

Instagram @bywateramericanbistro


Immerse

courtesy leandra

51 Closeup

All that jazz: meet three

jazz vocalists of different

generations, all reshaping

T&T’s music scene

58 Portfolio

The rightest place:

Bahamian artist Blue Curry

says “art has to do

something”

66 Snapshot

As far as it goes:

Grenadian athlete Anderson

Peters goes for Olympic

javelin gold

Up and coming Trinidadian jazz vocalist LeAndra

50


All

that

jazz

closeup

WATERCOLOUR Brushes by McBadshoes

Trinidad and Tobago may be known as

the land of calypso and soca, but the

thriving local jazz scene proves there

are many paths to musical success.

Nigel A. Campbell profiles three

remarkable women jazz vocalists

— Charmaine Forde, Vaughnette

Bigford, and LeAndra — of

three different generations whose

individual stories offer insights into a

changing musical landscape

The Caribbean is a fertile space for the

evolution of global talent. Caribbean

music has played a major role in

the development of popular culture

worldwide, and the building blocks

of our island music industries are the singers and

musicians who make all these beautiful sounds.

The idea of being a globally popular soca star has a grip on many musicians

in Trinidad and Tobago, but the three jazz vocalists profiled in the following

pages — Charmaine Forde, Vaughnette Bigford, and LeAndra — coming from

three different generations and three different starting points, share a belief

that genres outside the circumscribed diaspora Carnival circuit also offer the

potential for international success. Their stories chart a revealing pattern of

ups and downs in the music industry, and describe what potential looks like

from a Caribbean perspective.

“A great quality about jazz,” guitar great Pat Metheny once said, “is that

it seems to encourage people to bring the things that are unique to their own

background to the music.” Singing jazz — whether as a fall-back choice,

because of life-changing events, or as an economically viable option in the

islands — has defined these three artists. Their personal stories have shaped

how they sing, and how audiences everywhere will perceive their success.


The

classic

The connections

Charmaine Forde

made on the high-end

event circuit sustained

a career where the

intimacy of a pianovocal

duet has as much

cachet as a concert

hall performance

Back in 2018, when Charmaine Forde returned

to Trinidad after a storied career in the United

States, fans of local popular music from the

late 1970s to early 80s rejoiced. First winning

wide acclaim on local radio, Forde was once the

darling of the local impresario set seeking talent to make the

leap outwards, when American record companies were doing

business with artists from the islands. Hers is a story that

needs to be told within the context of a legacy of singers from

the Caribbean who have focused on the live music industry as

a goal for success, as opposed to the highly

profitable recording careers favoured by a

more recent crop of pop singers.

Born in Port of Spain, Forde grew

up in the neighbourhood of Gonzales,

where the influence of family played an

important role in defining her craft and

her sound. Her elder sister, a fan of jazz

vocalist Nancy Wilson, had her records

on constant rotation in the Forde household.

That inspiration melded with Forde’s natural talent to forge a vocal timbre that

resonates even today with a mix of the phrasing of Wilson and the power and tone of

Shirley Bassey.

Singing in church and school while growing up brought Forde to the attention of

kaisojazz innovator and teacher Scofield Pilgrim, who put her in touch — and, critically,

on stage — with local and regional jazz musicians, at home in Trinidad and then in

St Lucia, Jamaica, Martinique, and Guadeloupe, at festivals and on the lucrative hotel

performance circuit. One musician who was a lynchpin in her recording career debut was Trinidadian

Michael Boothman, an early local jazz innovator and established recording artist on a US record label.

He crafted an arrangement of the Bobby Caldwell hit “What You Won’t Do For Love” for Forde, inspired

by Roy Ayers’s earlier soul-jazz recording, releasing it in 1980 to the nation and ultimately to the region,

presenting her as a new voice that could swing with the best, with a powerful controlled dynamic range

rarely heard locally.

52


Jamal Du-Barry/Lumiere Brosse, courtesy Charmaine Forde

When the opportunity came to leave Trinidad and travel

outside the Caribbean in the 1980s, Forde was up to it: she was

seeing “greener grass outside,” she recalls. “It was bigger and better.”

First Toronto, then California, until she finally settled in the

Miami and Palm Beach area in Florida, becoming a fixture on the

high-end event circuit — cocktail parties for the country club set

and major corporate clientele — as a featured jazz vocalist. She

admits she was a “singer for hire,” but prefers the moniker “song

stylist.” The connections she made on that circuit sustained a

career where the intimacy of a piano-vocal duet has as much

cachet as a concert hall performance or a recording studio gig.

The corporate event industry in the US is where Forde shared the

stage with some of the greatest contemporary artists, including

Aretha Franklin, Natalie Cole, and her idol, Nancy Wilson. It was

a full circle connecting Forde with her longtime idol.

Another full circle brought her back to her homeland after

more than thirty-five years away. Forde’s return to Trinidad and

Tobago’s live music scene has included a handful of sold-out concert

performances branded as “We Kinda Jazz.” In 2020, Forde is

looking towards expanding her brand to regional jazz festivals.

“People say I am trying to make a comeback, but I am trying to

live in my craft and to do the best,” she says. “Just continuing my

craft from where I left off in this market.” And, aware that some

younger listeners and even artists may not remember or know

her, Forde is giving back by helping develop the minds of her

younger peers to understand the world of music.


The

mainstay

Working in the oil

industry, Vaughnette

Bigford got into the

music business later

than many of her peers,

despite knowing she

possessed a smoky

contralto voice

When Charmaine Forde debuted as a

recording artist in 1980, Point Fortin–

born Vaughnette Bigford was just six

years old. Hasten forward to the present,

and her name is now on the lips of a wide

cross-section of the Trinidad and Tobago public as one of

the country’s premier jazz vocalists — as one writer posits,

“the Creole chanteuse who has made the local songbook the

new jazz standard in the Caribbean.” The songbooks of the

wider world and the languages of Europe, Africa, and the

Middle East are no barriers to performance for this singer and

concert producer.

With her trademark shaved head and a cutting-edge

fashion sense that says I am Caribbean

glamour, Bigford confidently channels the

aesthetic sprits of Miriam Makeba and

Nina Simone, yet retains the expressive

phrasing of her hero, jazz singer Carmen

McRae, to make the familiar new for an

audience trained in the language of jazz.

As a child, she was not even consid-

ered a singer. “I was known more as an actress,” she admits. Though she also reminds

people that, in her much younger days, she once placed third to future soca superstar

Machel Montano in a calypso competition. As an adult, working in the oil industry,

Bigford got into the music business later than many of her peers, despite knowing she

possessed a smoky contralto voice. “I started with [jazz pianist] Carlton Zanda and

the Coal Pot Band in 2004 at age thirty,” she recalls. Launching a professional singing

career at that relatively late age, she believes, worked for her in terms of maturity and

her ability to better understand the business of music.

Together with her husband-manager, Bigford mapped out a ten-year plan to be among the top three

jazz artists from Trinidad by popular commercial demand. That plan included setting a new standard

for local jazz vocal concerts. Her event series Shades of Vaughnette translated into media adulation, and

invitations to perform in Tobago and Barbados at the major festivals. A one-year sabbatical in 2010 to

attend the famed Berklee College of Music in Boston, and the performance opportunities arising from

being there, inspired a better understanding of her future role. “I have to be an evolving person and prod-

54


Maria Nunes, courtesy Vaugnette Bigford

uct,” she says. “I have to be different — constant re-invention.

I am now past the stage of being called a jazz singer. I am an

entertainer.”

She knew where she belonged, too: staying in the US in 2010

as an unknown singer was not an option for a highly paid oil

industry worker from Trinidad. Things changed drastically,

however, in 2018, when the oil company she worked at was shut

down. Her new reality was to sink or swim. Bigford’s ten-year

plan bore fruit, allowing for a smooth transition to a full-time

career as an in-demand entertainer on the local jazz circuit. The

path to that pole position included a series of recordings, first as

part of the TriniJazz Project in 2014, then her first solo release,

Born to Shine, in 2017, which together revisited the neglected

canon of lyrically meaningful island songs.

Now, with her recordings and branded concerts securing a

solid base of local and regional fans, and the freedom of not being

tethered to a nine-to-five job, Bigford has turned her eyes towards

Europe and an entrée into an international career: “Europe understands

who we are in the Caribbean, and Africa for that matter,”

she says. And, as with Charmaine Forde, the idea of mentorship

is a prime consideration now, beyond the concert stage or the

recording studio. “People can be taught, but it’s what is caught.

I want to start with younger people and impart knowledge of

my craft.” Her ideas for future growth are also influenced by the

fact that, with a young son, she recognises the responsibility of

creative people in the Caribbean to hasten towards the goal of

collective sustainability. “We’re all in this thing together,” she

says, “and as Carl and Carol, sang ‘We Gotta Live!’”


The

newcomer

LeAndra is the darling

among new T&T

audiences hearing

jazz voices for the first

time. Her innocent

enthusiasm is the

charming counterpoint

to her cool reserve

If Charmaine Forde and Vaughnette Bigford have mature

careers in jazz singing and recording in Trinidad and

Tobago, LeAndra represents the potential future in

search of new opportunities in a connected world. With

a voice tinged with the timbre of a young Billie Holiday,

sans vibrato, with hints of British soul-jazz singer Sade,

she sonically projects a tropical vibe reminiscent of João

Gilberto and Antônio Carlos Jobim’s languid Brazilian bossa

nova. She’s the darling among new T&T audiences hearing

jazz voices for the first time. Her innocent enthusiasm is the

charming counterpoint to her cool reserve.

Born Leandra Head to a Trinidadian mother and a US

marine based in the island, she was a

precocious child with a voice that turned

heads. LeAndra was winning television

talent contests and garnering the attention

of major festival promoters and music

industry people before she was even a

teenager. But that girl was human, not a

machine. She felt stressed and developed

stage fright, she recalls, and quit singing

in front of audiences throughout her

whole time in secondary school. “Until secondary school was over, I was always singing,

but not performing,” she remembers. “My mother helped me by not pressuring me

to perform while I was still young.” In that household, in those formative years, a world

of musical influences opened up, from Barbra Streisand to Sade, from soca and calypso

to the world of Broadway and Disney musicals.

In 2013, she entered the University of Trinidad and Tobago to study for an undergraduate

degree in fine arts, specialising in voice. “I was pretty much training for four years to be an opera

singer,” she says. “I’ve done a lot of different styles and have many influences — from Amy Winehouse

and Adele to Etta James and Nina Simone — so it’s hard for me to say that I am one type of vocalist.”

A move away from opera was a practical decision in Trinidad, and a career with her now trained voice


Andrea De Silva, courtesy LeAndra

began with a few shows on the local festival circuit before

LeAndra headlined her first concert in 2018.

The accolades began, and people took notice. Reviewing

her Tobago Jazz Experience performance in 2019, one local

newspaper noted how her “powerful and soulful voice with her

clear, pure, and soothing vocals caught the attention of the audience,

even those enjoying other performances at the two stages

. . . Head was not only outstanding, but was clearly a crowd

favourite and received a standing ovation.”

Ingénue is an easy label to apply to young artists, but unfair

to attach to LeAndra, as she’s already faced the trials and

tribulations of professional singing engagements in the US (at

Ashford and Simpson’s Sugar Bar in New York) and in Hungary

(in a production of Porgy and Bess), as she slowly recognises

where her best options lie as a performer from Trinidad. Her

awareness — even as a young woman not yet thirty — that the

world is large and sometimes scary is notable, as she plots a

professional pathway ahead, from recording an album in 2020

to developing skills in the music business to navigate from

Trinidad to the world. n


57

portfolio

courtesy blue curry

The

rightest

place

For London-based Bahamian artist

Blue Curry, the unlikely juxtaposition

of objects and ideas is a technique

intended to provoke thought about the

viewer’s place in the world. “Art has to do

something,” he tells Andre Bagoo.

“Art has to transform”

Take a conch shell, insert a strobe

light. A car tyre, coat with beans.

Two starfish, place on an oil drum.

A ton of beach sand, ship to an art

gallery. This is artist Blue Curry’s

way of questioning what belongs

where, and maybe who.

“I came to London a little over twenty years

ago, on the casual invite of my aunt who emigrated

back in the 1960s,” Curry says. “I came for a short

visit and never left. I consider London my base, and

I do feel that I have become a Londoner, but the

Bahamas is still home.”

Curry takes an object from the place where it

belongs and puts it into another. It’s little wonder,

then, that migration is a key part of his story.

He was born in Nassau in 1974. His father had a


courtesy blue curry

barbershop in the city’s business district. It became

an important setting: a social meeting place that

brought together everyone from top Bahamian

politicians to fishermen. “A haircut side by side

equalised their positions for a few minutes,” Curry

says, “and conversations that weren’t possible

anywhere else happened there.”

Years later, pursuing that sense of possibility,

Curry headed to London, where he obtained a BA

in photography and multimedia at the University

of Westminster in 2004, then an MFA in fine art

at Goldsmiths College in 2009, making an appearance

in the two-part BBC documentary Goldsmiths:

But Is It Art? (2010).

Art that is compelling is often art that is hard

to describe. Even Curry has, on occasion, had

difficulty explaining what he’s doing with his sculptural

assemblages, installations, and found-object

poems. In the 2010 documentary, he struggled to

give the filmmakers a mission statement.

“You have this idea of a sculptor or painter just

slaving away at this massive canvas, but if the conceptual

artist just puts that rock on top of a piece

of paper, you can’t see the labour involved with

that, and so therefore it’s not an artwork,” he said.

“It’s a funny thing to try to explain exactly what a

strobing conch shell is saying. What’s happening

here? I don’t know.” In the years since, however,

others have not been as tongue-tied.

“Dichotomies are at constant play in the work,”

wrote Melanie Archer in a 2010 profile of Curry

in The Caribbean Review of Books. She detected a

sense of fun, alongside an “impossible elegance.”

Art critic Carlos Suarez de Jesus positioned

Opposite page The façade

of Ruby Cruel, Blue Curry’s

new arts space in a former

barbershop in east

London. A handpainted

sign by Trinidadian Bruce

Cayonne is displayed in the

front window

Above Untitled, Taino

lithic crushing tools,

softballs, baseballs (2016;

collection of Centro León).

Made during a residency in

the Dominican Republic,

this installation juxtaposes

prehistoric artefacts with

used baseballs that hint

at historic US cultural

dominance


59

nadia huggins, courtesy blue curry

Blue Curry at Ruby Tuesday

Art that is compelling is often art that is

hard to describe. Even Blue Curry has, on

occasion, had difficulty explaining

what he’s doing

Curry’s pieces as balanced on a “tightrope

between cultural artefact and tourist souvenir,”

while Benjamin Genocchio, writing in the New York

Times, described one of the artist’s creations as

“satisfying and silly at the same time.”

“I’m less concerned about how people engage

with my work, but that they engage, full stop,”

Curry says now. “Strong juxtapositions of seemingly

contradictory ideas and materials can make

people engage. Whatever people take from it —

fascination, confusion, anger, delight, amusement

— boredom is never an option with my work.”

The ton of sand ends up at the Nassauischer

Kunstverein, an art space in Germany. On the

shore in the Bahamas from where it is taken,

Curry installs a cheeky sign: “This section of beach

temporarily on loan for international exhibition.

Apologies for any inconvenience caused.” After the

show, some, not all, of the material is returned. The

entire thing becomes Like Taking Sand to the Beach

(2006).

It points to how Curry’s work involves a carnival

of symbols. His installations scramble icons of

identity. The beach — for some, the quintessential

embodiment of the Caribbean as paradise — is

reduced to mere commodity. Something that should

be immune to the idea of ownership is shipped,

possessed, objectified, much in the way colonisation

exploited black bodies. Forget seeing a world in a

grain of sand, as William Blake did. We are in the

realm of the absurd: the colonial nightmare. This


courtesy blue curry

theatrical dis-ordering of signs and ciphers emerges

as the dominant theme in the artist’s work.

And so in Curry’s Untitled (2010), two starfish

are mounted, as if dancing or in amorous embrace,

on top of a painted oil drum. There’s some frothy

silver tinsel between them, and mirrored perspex

appears to have become their dance floor. The

starfish is an easily recognised symbol of the

seaside, of the joyful things we associate with the

marine environment. Placing two of them astride

an oil drum is a harsh juxtaposition that makes us

confront the environmental impact of oil rigs and

fossil fuel usage on this same marine environment.

The mirror gives you the feeling that the starfish

are walking on water — another symbolic gesture,

which deepens the sense of their estrangement

from where they should be, and adds a teleological

twist: are they Christ-like figures about to be

sacrificed? The green paint on the oil drum is yet

another ironic symbol, green being the colour we

associate with nature. Oil itself is natural, even if

its harvesting has brought us to a most unnatural

climate emergency.

All of these elements bring us to a place where

we must confront the dynamics of how smaller

states are affected by the actions of larger, multinational

entities, whether conglomerates or countries,

in their quest to exploit natural resources. That

Detail of Untitled, starfish,

steel drum, mirrored perspex,

silver tinsel (2010)


61

courtesy blue curry

dynamic has been the lynchpin of the relationship

between developing and more developed countries

for centuries.

If Untitled (2010) is about the interplay of forces

within nature and history, Souvenir (2014) is about

politics impinging on the human body. The piece

is a sculpture comprising four translucent hair

combs arranged on a perspex plinth. Combs are

representations of how we tame hair to fit our

ideas of beauty. In this way, they are also emblematic

of larger, more oppressive social ideas. In

a world where black bodies are made to bow

down to white standards of beauty, the comb is a

reminder of the painful process by which a mother

might try to iron out the kinks in her black daughter’s

curly hair. Curry, who most would regard as

white within a Caribbean setting, understands his

nebulous place within the racial dynamics of the

region: that the combs are colourless becomes

a powerful gesture of solidarity. For a residency

at Alice Yard in Port of Spain, Trinidad, in 2016,

the artist would return to this subject, this time

making a group of assemblages from colourful

afro combs. (Comb sculptures, in fact, have been

a longstanding part of his oeuvre, going as far

back as 2010.)

Nor do the politics of class escape Curry’s gaze.

In another untitled piece from 2010 — many of

his works are officially Untitled, and otherwise

identified by their materials — he fills a cement

mixer with thirty litres of sunscreen. The cement

mixer is a symbol of construction work, of builders,

of tough, hardy, typically male figures who

might have little concern for skincare regimes.

The sunscreen is just like the starfish: a symbol

of beach-going, leisurely life. The work offers a

paradox heightening the estrangement between

two class worlds.


Left Untitled, swimsuits, shower

heads (2019)

Below Untitled, combs (2014)

“Art doesn’t have to say anything, but it has

to do something. Art has to transform or

rearrange material or ideas in a way that

hasn’t been seen before”

The idea of the male is also present in 2019’s

Untitled, swimsuits, shower heads, but via its dramatic

absence. Twelve bathing suits — another signifier:

there are twelve disciples, twelve moon cycles,

twelve hours on the clock — are hung on showerheads

lined up along a white wall. Bathing suits

are, again, symbols of leisure, but here, arrayed

in this way, they suggest something mercenary,

perhaps prostitution. The artist may see tourism

as a negative thing, but there’s also a deep critique

of the place of women in society. The limp suits,

hung up here, seem fetishlike, on display, lined up

for an offstage and (likely) male gaze. Their very

proliferation speaks to the absence of women in

other more serious realms of Caribbean society.

Women are numerous on the beach, but missing

elsewhere, such as in the legislative chamber —

women make up only about twelve per cent of the

Bahamas Parliament.

courtesy blue curry


63

“

Art doesn’t have to say anything, but it has

to do something,” Curry says. “Art has to

transform or rearrange material or ideas

in a way that hasn’t been seen before. It should

complicate the familiar elements of the culture

around us, and perhaps make us reconsider our

position in it.” Of Untitled, swimsuits, shower heads

he says, “I’m asking that these bathing suits, which

might seem quite innocuous, be considered in terms

of the mental subjugation of Caribbean people. At

the same time, because of their ordinary nature

as consumer items, they are underestimated as

material for sculpture and art, so I am also interested

in repositioning them as such.”

Another kind of repositioning is occupying

Curry’s attention these days, with his opening of

a new collaborative space in London, named Ruby

Cruel — an anagram of the artist’s own name. It’s a

courtesy blue curry

new dawn in a sense, located at 250 Morning Lane

in east London. Besides the obvious symbolism of

the address, the space was once the site of a barbershop,

bring Curry full circle to his childhood. “I want

it to have a unique and flexible mix of uses, including

exhibitions, talks, workshops, socials, community

projects, and an artist-in-residence programme, to

name a few,” he explains. It’s already had its first

opening night in late 2019, he tells me. On exhibition

when we speak is work by Trinidadian painter and

designer Bruce Cayonne, known at home for his

distinctive fete signs, usually displayed in public

locations. Commissioned by Curry, Cayonne has

made a series of hand-painted typographic works

experimenting with the nascent Ruby Cruel identity

or brand.

“I see Ruby Cruel as a sort of alter ego, or better

put, an anti-ego,” Curry says. “It has little to do


Opposite page Untitled,

customised cement mixer,

sun cream (2010; commission

for the 6th Liverpool

Biennial)

Left Untitled, strobe light,

conch shell (2009)

courtesy blue curry

with my own individual artistic career, and more to

do with working with others and creating creative

possibilities and networks in general.” Those

networks may involve straddling two seemingly

disparate but, in fact, heavily interlinked worlds:

the Caribbean and London.

“I get back twice a year, and bounce around the

Caribbean quite a bit working on various projects,”

Curry says. “In two decades, I feel as though I’ve

lived through three different Londons — which

is hard to explain — but art, fashion, music, and

attitudes have progressed and changed so many

times since I’ve lived here. The city is not the same

one as when I first arrived.

“Just as there are challenges in operating from a

small island space, there are challenges to working

in a big city. I’m fortunate enough that I can move

between the two. This has become intrinsic to

“Just as there are challenges in operating

from a small island space, there are

challenges to working in a big city . . . This

has become intrinsic to the work I make”

the work I make, and also to my own identity as a

Caribbean person.”

Blue Curry and his work stand out wherever he

goes, but he clearly also fits in at many different

places. The ultimate irony, perhaps, is that by

habitually making things seem out of place, by

pushing them across boundaries, he makes them

belong. Suddenly, they seem in the rightest place,

destined for his designs all along. n


65

snapshot

As far

as it

goes

When Grenadian javelin

thrower Anderson Peters

mounted the medal podium at

the 2019 World Championships

in Doha, it was not just a

confirmation of his talent and

hard work, but a breakthrough

for Caribbean athletics. What’s

next? The 2020 Olympics and

the prospect of a gold medal,

he tells Sheldon Waithe

dpa/alamy stock photo

Over a magical eight-week period in 2019,

a young javelin thrower put his tiny island

nation on the map by winning a gold medal

in a hemispheric games, then expanding his

repertoire to do the same on the world stage.

Cue several fairytale stories of the new Pan

Am Games and Worlds champion having come from nowhere to

upset the favourites — when a closer inspection reveals a résumé

littered with titles, medals, and annual progression over a sevenyear

career.

For Anderson Peters, standing on the top step of the podiums

in Lima and Doha — making the Grenadian anthem ring out

once again — was the culmination of inspiration, an incredible

support system, hard work, and staunch belief that resulted in a

positive trajectory year upon year. It was also a direct answer to

the one-hit-wonder theorists, and something that bodes well for

the expectations of his long-term success.

If the world’s media seemed shocked, Peters’s post-event

aura of calm confirmed his conviction that he came to win.

“After the first throw, I believed it even more, consistently telling

myself that I would become the World Champion . . . and eventually

I became the World Champion,” he said after his win in

Doha. Then he reminded himself that while Grenada celebrated

his achievements, there were other immediate tasks to be

undertaken. His sobering reality statement “I have an exam on

Tuesday” referred to the world champion’s return to Mississippi

State University, the place that became his finishing school in the

specialist world of javelin throwing.


Anderson Peters at the 2019

World Championships in Doha


67

Peters won gold at the 2019

World Championships with a

throw of 86.89 metres

dpa/alamy stock photo

“

To me, it was always a natural thing to throw,” says

Peters. “As kids we used to regularly throw rocks to

get mangoes and golden apples.” But though he had

the best arm among all his friends — and broke his school record

the first time he tried the javelin at ten years old — the young

Anderson’s ambition was to run on the track, inspired like so many

Caribbean youths at the time by the invincible performances of a

certain Usain Bolt. He was good enough to run the 4x100m relay

for his country, but by the age of fourteen he’d started getting

recurring injuries, so he returned to the javelin.

While his compatriot Kirani James sent Grenada into raptures

with the country’s first Olympic medal (gold in the 400

metres) at the 2012 Games, Peters focused on another regional

gold medallist. “Keshorn Walcott had a big impact when he won

the London title,” he recalls. “It was an eye-opener for the Caribbean.

Young athletes no longer had to think the only way they

could become champions was in track events.” Peters maintains

a healthy competitive rivalry with the Trinidad and Tobago

thrower — “for years I’ve compared his stats against mine,” he

says — while observing Walcott’s influence and legacy. “We all

depend on each other more than we admit.”

An unprecedented run of five CARIFTA Games titles interspersed

with podium places at the junior Pan American and

World level kick-started Peters’s dreams of Olympic gold. It’s

almost an oxymoron to consider this lofty target against his

background in the small village of St Andrew, but it keeps him

level-headed, along with strong support from his family. The

parental factor extends further, and by good fortune, forged

the bond that has been crucial to Peters’s success: his mother

Antoinette is a close friend of his coach Paul Phillip. “Myself and

his mom went to school together,” says Phillip, “so she has given

me the right to become a ‘parent’ as well.” The golden outcome

If the world’s media seemed

shocked, Peters’s post-event aura

of calm confirmed his conviction

that he came to win at the 2019

World Championships

is Peters’s total belief in Phillip’s regime, from their first meeting

in 2011, as well as Phillip’s total belief in his charge’s ability to

become one of the greatest javelin throwers of all time. “Injury

is the only thing that can stop Anderson,” he says. It’s a match

made in sporting heaven.


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69

The next generation of Caribbean field athletes

Anderson Peters isn’t the only young Caribbean talent to watch on the field as the 2020 Tokyo Summer Olympics draw near.

Here are five more rising talents poised to break the gold barrier

charlie crowhurst/getty images sport

Jamaican discus

thrower Kai Chang

Tyriq Horsford

A Mississippi teammate of Anderson Peters, the Tobagonian

has four CARIFTA titles as well as a silver at the Commonwealth

Youth Games. He’s hoping to emulate compatriots

Shakeil Waithe and Keshorn Walcott as a world-class javelin

thrower.

Chantoba Bright

Guyana’s most decorated CARIFTA athlete is now a long

jumper for the University of Texas, with ambitions to make

the qualifying mark for Tokyo 2020. An all-rounder, she has

also competed for her country in the triple jump and 400m.

Kai Chang

The reigning U20 World Champion is eager to make his mark

for Jamaica at the senior level in the discus throw. A first-year

University of the West Indies student, he should also attend

his first Olympics in 2020.

Jonathan Miller

The current CARIFTA champion is seeking a career on

the professional circuit after completing his scholarship

at Nebraska College. Qualification for the 2020 Olympics

will be an important step for the Barbadian triple jumper’s

ambitions.

Lotavia Brown

The Jamaican triple jumper currently holds the CARIFTA and

U20 Pan Am titles, which should ensure a Tokyo 2020 place

for experience of the big time.

A

teenage life of travelling to high school, training,

travelling back home, and repeat, bore immediate

results. By the age of twenty, with a Junior Worlds

bronze in his pocket, Peters attended his first senior

championships, the 2017 Worlds in Britain and the 2018

Commonwealth Games in Australia. The former provided

exposure and experience, as a nervy Peters finished twentieth

— “I was naive and disappointed,” he says, “it was my coach

“There’s only one other gold medal

that I can win, which is the Olympic

championship,” Peters says

who showed me the positives out of that” — but, being a quick

learner, he bounced back with bronze at the Commonwealths.

The world started to take notice.

During this time, he exchanged his fantastic Grenadian

support network for that of an equally close-knit family at

Mississippi State University, a school so keenly associated

with their prowess in the field discipline that it’s also known

as “JavU.” There could be no better place for a wannabe World

Champion to ply his trade. It proved to be mutually beneficial:

Peters’s scholarship gave him access to education, technique,

and biomechanics, and he provided them with back-to-back

national titles in the prestigious NCAA competition.

With a full season of competition in those arms, he flew to

Peru for the 2019 Pan Am Games and took gold with his first

throw. The man one step below him with the silver medal?

Keshorn Walcott. “Keshorn was Olympic champion at nineteen

years old,” explains Peters, “so I wanted to be World Champion

at nineteen years old.” Peters was no longer a teenager, but the

words were partially prophetic, as he focused on the bigger

prize in Doha.

“There’s only one other gold medal that I can win, which

is the Olympic championship,” Peters says. There is absolute

confidence in his bold statement. And his coach has an even

bigger mission. “I would be very disappointed if we stop at

Anderson,” says Phillip. “I want Grenada to build a dynasty in

javelin. We have it in our gene pool.”

“What I love about the javelin is the uncertainty of how far it

can really go,” says Peters. “The world record is 98 metres, but

I still think a javelin could go further. This drives me to work

even harder, to see if one day I could throw over 100 metres.”

That’s what the rest of the world will be up against at Tokyo

2020. n


ARRIVE

malcolm schuyl/alamy stock photo

72 Destination

Guyana: so near, so far

88 Explore

Rite of spring: Phagwah

in Trinidad

96

Bucket List

Bathsheba, Barbados

A Buff-necked Ibis (Theristicus caudatus), one of the numerous bird species found in Guyana’s Rupununi

destination

The Rupununi River lends its

name to the vast savannahs of

southern Guyana


So near,

so far

Out in the expansive savannahs

of the Rupununi, or the green

wonderland of Guyana’s

rainforest, it can feel like you’re

continents away from ordinary

life. But these wild adventures

in the Guyanese interior are

actually a short journey away

from Georgetown, writes Nixon

Nelson. And don’t overlook the

city either — full of historic sites

but poised to be transformed by

recent offshore oil discoveries

nature picture library/alamy stock photo


73

david di gregorio, courtesy the guyana tourism authority

Getting up close with giant

Victoria amazonica waterlilies at

Mobai Pond near Karanambu

Endless horizons

A decade and a half later, I remember my first arrival in the Rupununi like it

happened last week. Heading south along the unpaved red-earth road that

runs all the way to the Brazilian border, we’d driven for hours through dense

rainforest, the sky a narrow corridor between the treetops above us. We’d kept

our eyes peeled for an elusive jaguar, known to be spotted along this route,

though none appeared that day. As the Land Cruiser manoeuvred around

deep ruts and potholes, we almost didn’t notice a subtle shift in the vegetation

around us. Then suddenly — startlingly — the forest ended and we shot out

into open savannah and a landscape that felt infinitely larger. How far away

were those hills on the horizon? It was impossible to judge.

That night, after dinner in the village of Annai — home to

an airstrip and tourist lodge — I climbed the giant granite rock,

really the size of a small hill, that was the most prominent landmark

for miles around. It was the dry season, and the night sky

was utterly cloudless and immense. The moon was a sliver, but

the stars were so bright and numerous, I could see the savannah

landscape rolling away to the east, etched with foot-trails, and

make out the silhouette of the Takutu Mountains to the south.

Propped up on an ancient rock ledge, gazing across the Rupununi,

I felt the thrill of distance like a shiver. My ordinary life

at home in Trinidad, even the bustle of Georgetown, Guyana’s

capital on the coast, could have been continents away.

But the truth is, as remote and wild as the Rupununi can feel,

this savannah region of south Guyana, two hundred miles from

the Atlantic coast, is a mere hour’s flight from Georgetown’s

domestic Ogle Airport. Even travelling by land, the

Rupununi is a day’s journey (admittedly, bumpy

and dusty) in a 4x4 or an overnight drive by bus

from the city. The Rupununi’s wildness is real, but

its remoteness is a matter of the imagination rather

than practical logistics.

Similarly, whereas visitors to the savannahs

once relied on the hospitality of family-owned

ranches, the past decade has seen many Rupununi

villages establish community-run tourist lodges

with comfortable if not sybaritic accommodations,

easily booked via tour agencies in Georgetown or online. When

I first came here, communication between far-flung villages was

via word of mouth — messages moving along the savannah

rivers in small boats — or by shortwave radio. Improvements

in satellite communications mean that most communities now

have Internet access (and just last year the government of

Guyana announced plans to set up free WiFi in key north Rupununi

villages).

So the outside world isn’t really so far away (if it ever was) —

though the Rupununi’s dramatic scenery and wildlife try their best

to convince you otherwise. The red laterite savannahs, dotted

with sandpaper trees — so named for the texture of their leaves —

are home to giant anteaters and towering termite mounds, while

the Rupununi River and its smaller creeks are home to sleek giant

river otters and caiman sunning themselves on rocky banks.


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Monkeys and parrots play in the surrounding clumps of forest. In

the dry season, this is a landscape of ochres and reds. When the

rains start mid-year, the savannah turns green almost overnight.

Rivers rise, then overtop their banks, small pools begin to spread

into lakes, and miles of savannah are inundated. Villages on high

ground become islands, and boats replace 4x4s, until drought

returns with the cycle of seasons.

A practical base for exploring the Rupununi is the town of

Lethem on the border with Brazil — a booming frontier

town where Portuguese is as much the lingua franca

as English. Daily flights on propeller planes connect

Lethem to Georgetown, and tourist lodges can arrange

land transport from here. Alternatively, key Rupununi

settlements have their own airstrips, and pickups and

landings can be specially arranged. The longest-established

lodges are at cattle ranches like Karanambu

and Dadanawa, and Rock View Lodge in Annai, but

community-run eco-lodges are now found at villages and

field stations across the north Rupununi, many of them

offering specialised tours based on local wildlife. Surama

has lodges in the main village as well as a forest camp

along the nearby Burro Burro River; Maipaima offers

access to stunning Jordan Falls and rich birdlife; the more

remote village of Rewa, which requires a river journey,

caps the number of visitors each year to keep surroundings

pristine. Caiman House in Yupukari offers accommodation

alongside scientists studying black caiman and

other reptile species.

david di gregorio

Forest’s heart

Look at a map of Guyana and put your finger down where you reckon the very

centre: it will land, most likely, on the middle reach of the Essequibo River,

near the village of Fairview and the protected million acres of the Iwokrama

International Centre for Rainforest Conservation and Development. Founded

in 1996, in an innovative partnership between the government of Guyana and

the Commonwealth Secretariat, the Iwokrama Centre is a research site, an

experiment in sustainable forest management, and an opportunity for visitors

to encounter the lushly strange world of Guyana’s rainforest, teeming with life.

As defined by biologists, the Iwokrama Forest is bounded by

the Pakaraima Mountains to the west, the Siparuni River to the

north, and the Rupununi Savannah to the south. Near its centre

are the Iwokrama Mountains, rising to over three thousand feet.

The name means “place of refuge” in Macushi. For Guyana’s

indigenous peoples, these mountains were a natural fortress in

times of crisis. Today, Iwokrama is a different kind of refuge:

considered one of the most biodiverse and unspoiled tropical

rainforests in the world.

Though geographically separate from the Amazon Basin to

the south, Iwokrama shares many plant and animal species with

that region, adding others native to the highlands

of the Guiana Shield. The forest canopy — up to a

hundred feet high — is home to especially diverse

populations of birds (over five hundred species

recorded) and bats (over ninety species). More

than four hundred fish species have been identified

in its rivers and streams, and researchers continue

to discover new ones.

Those statistics are impressive, but for the

average visitor, it’s the sensory overload of the rainforest

environment that’s most astonishing. Whether you arrive by

air — landing at the Fairview airstrip — or by road, driving from

Georgetown, the sheer scale of the forest is breathtaking, seen

from above or below. The low falls at Kurupukari, where the

Essequibo River narrows, have been a traditional crossing point

for centuries — when the water level is low, you can see ancient

rock carvings on Kurupukari’s smooth black rocks. Nowadays a

pontoon boat ferries vehicles across to connect the two ends of

the Linden-Lethem road. The Iwokrama field station is a stone’s

throw away.


Here, in a broad clearing on the bank of the river, are living

quarters for staff, laboratories for scientists, and cabins for visitors.

The dark waters of the Essequibo — stained cola-black by

tannins from fallen forest leaves — slide by, tempting you into a

swim. You could collapse into a hammock here and dream the

day away, listening to the chatter of birds, but the forest awaits.

Expert guides lead hikes on well-tended forest trails — bring

Whether you arrive by air or by road,

the sheer scale of the forest is

breathtaking

sturdy boots and binoculars, and listen for the distinctive call of

the Screaming Piha, a nondescript bird whose drab grey plumage

is compensated for by its powerful voice. The hike up nearby

Turtle Mountain ends, at the summit, with a view across miles

and miles of forest canopy. I remember sitting there, gazing out

The canopy walkway near

Iwokrama’s Atta Lodge

at the unbroken green, and thinking how little the landscape

must have changed in a thousand years. Then nature gave me

a reminder that the living forest is, in fact, constantly changing.

There was an almighty crack, and half a mile away a giant tree,

having reached the end of its lifespan, crashed down through

the canopy, in a swirl of flying leaves and a confusion of birds. A

moment later, the only sound was the wind.

For a closer view of those soaring forest giants, Iwokrama has

built a canopy walkway near Atta Lodge, close to the reserve’s

southern border. Here you can ascend nearly one hundred feet,

via a series of gently swaying bridges and observation decks, to a

part of the forest usually frequented only by birds and monkeys,

insects and orchids. Tours are timed to dawn and dusk, when the

forest fauna are at their most active, and your stroll through the

treetops may be serenaded by macaws and toucans.


77

River run

Guyana, any schoolchild there can tell you, is a name that means “land of

many waters.” And of the country’s thousands of rivers, large and small, the

most fabled is also the largest: the Essequibo, running like a backbone the

entire length of Guyana, rising from the mountains in Wai-Wai territory that

form the southern border with Brazil, and emptying, five hundred miles north,

into the Atlantic, sending plumes of silt far out into the blue ocean.

Guyanese like to tell visitors from smaller Caribbean places

that there are islands in the Essequibo bigger than Barbados

— which is manifestly a fib. But standing at the Parika stelling,

looking out at a river as broad as a lake, you can almost believe it.

From Parika you can catch a bigger ferry or a smaller speedboat

across to the islands of Leguan or Wakenaam, or to the far bank

of the Essequibo, or else thirty miles upriver to Bartica, a small

but ever-growing town at the confluence of the Essequibo and

the Mazaruni.

Just as some Trinidadians have beach houses in Mayaro and

Jamaicans dream of a villa near Ocho Rios, Georgetown’s most

fortunate have river houses along this stretch of the Essequibo,

for holiday retreats. (While Eddie Grant, Guyana’s most famous

musical export, owns an entire Essequibo island.) If you aren’t

lucky enough to get invited to one of these private escapes, you

can opt for one of a handful of river resorts, which combine

swimming beaches and watersports with proximity to nature —

the rainforest is never farther than the nearest riverbank.

But don’t miss the chance to explore Guyana’s history as well.

The Essequibo was the location of the earliest Dutch settlement

of this region. The first capital of what was then called the

Essequibo colony was on a small island in the Mazaruni, where

in 1616 the Dutch built Fort Kyk-Over-Al — “seeover-all”

— which centuries later lent its name to

a pioneering literary journal. What now remains of

the star-shaped fort, abandoned in 1748, is a single

brick arch, which still enjoys a commanding view

of the surrounding country. Though there are no

regularly scheduled tours, many boat captains

at the Bartica stelling are willing to make the trip — price by

negotiation.

Nearer to Georgetown, and home to a Dutch Heritage

Museum, is Fort Island — site of Fort Zeelandia, the Essequibo

colony’s second capital. Once a busy trading post, the fort is now

all but deserted on weekdays, but weekends and holidays bring

visitors from the coast. Though the fort itself is a roofless though

impressive ruin, the historic Court of Policy building was completely

restored twenty years ago, and stands in meticulously

tended grounds, dotted with cannon, interpretive signs, and

gazebos for picnicking.

Guyanese like to tell visitors there are

islands in the Essequibo bigger than

Barbados — which is manifestly a fib

nature picture library/alamy stock photo

A stretch of the Essequibo River

chock full of islands


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79

imagebroker/alamy stock photo

City life

Guyana’s wild interior is what draws many visitors: the promise of adventure

and the intoxicating idea of experiencing beautiful, remote landscapes.

But give Georgetown its due: the capital city, perched at the mouth of the

Demerara River, has fascinated visitors for generations, with its broad

avenues, canals and kokers (or sluice-gates, part of the Dutch drainage

system), and historic buildings, many of them elegant structures of wood.

Central Georgetown is compact enough to explore in a day — but it’s worth

taking extra time to get to know this Caribbean city on the South American

mainland, now in a period of rapid change as the discovery of offshore oilfields

gives a huge boost to the Guyanese economy.

Where to start? Here are ten Georgetown landmarks to put in

your itinerary:

City Hall

The turrets and spires of this Victorian Gothic

Revival gem suggest a fairytale castle, but since

1889 it’s played a more practical role as headquarters

for Georgetown’s municipal administration.

St George’s Cathedral

The city’s Anglican cathedral is sometimes said to

be the largest wood building in the world, its spire

soaring to 143 feet. The pristine white-painted

exterior gives way to the natural finish of the

interior, livened by Victorian stained glass and a magnificent

vaulted ceiling.

Stabroek Market

Opened in 1881, this historic riverside market with its distinctive

clocktower — Georgetown’s skyline icon — is in many

ways the heart of the city, a hub of traditional commerce and

transport.

Walter Roth Museum

Named for a pioneering ethnographer, this national museum

of anthropology is home to an extraordinary collection of artefacts

documenting Guyana’s indigenous peoples — from centuries-old

potsherds to magnificent Wai-Wai feather crowns.


Georgetown’s elegant City Hall is

an architectural treasure

Moray House

The elegant Camp Street residence of the de Caires family

— proprietors of the Stabroek News — is now home to an

arts centre hosting literary events, exhibitions, and more.

1763 Monument

Commemorating a major eighteenth-century rebellion of

enslaved Africans, this striking monument, with a sculpture

by the late Philip Moore, depicts the rebel leader Cuffy,

looking over the Square of the Revolution.

Castellani House

Once a residence for colonial administrators, then the official

home of Guyana’s president, since 1993 this nineteenthcentury

building has housed the national art collection, with

over seven hundred works by celebrated artists like Aubrey

Williams, Frank Bowling, Denis Williams, and Bernadette

Persaud.


81

The spire of St George’s

Cathedral is a Georgetown

landmark

Botanical Gardens

Georgetown’s most popular park is where you can see the

famous Victoria amazonica waterlilies, semi-tame manatees,

and the double-spanned kissing bridge — favourite spot for

selfies — and is also home to the national zoo.

pete oxford

Umana Yana

This “meeting place of the people,” a traditional thatched Wai-

Wai benab, was first built in the 1970s and has been a popular

cultural venue ever since. Destroyed by fire in 2014, it was

rebuilt two years later.

Sea Wall

This is the place to end your Georgetown tour, at sunset.

Protecting the low-lying city from the Atlantic high tides, the

Sea Wall is a place for jogging, kite-flying, fishing, gaffing — as

Guyanese call old-talk — and enjoying the ocean breeze.

Black is the new gold

A glass bottle with a red plastic cap,

three-quarters-full of an opaque

black liquid, displayed on a child-scale

pedestal: it doesn’t sound like the

most exciting exhibit at Georgetown’s

National Museum. But the artefact,

on display since January 2020,

represents one of the most significant

developments in Guyana’s history. For

this is a sample of Guyana’s “first oil,”

the “light sweet crude” from the Liza

oilfield discovered 120 miles offshore

by ExxonMobil in 2015, which officially

commenced production in December

2019.

Minerals — gold, diamonds, and

bauxite — have long been Guyana’s

economic mainstay. Oil companies had

prospected both on- and offshore

since the 1940s, without finding

commercially viable deposits. The

recent discovery of substantial oil

reserves off the country’s Atlantic

coast — thought to contain the

equivalent of 700 million barrels — is

a major game-changer, offering the

prospect of transforming Guyana’s

economy and funding a new era of

development projects.

According to Guyana’s Department

of Energy, even ahead of “first oil,” the

discovery drew over US$500 million in

foreign investment, creating 1,700 new

jobs and benefitting over six hundred

service providers. The Liza well is

expected to produce up to 120,000

barrels of oil per day, initially, increasing

to 750,000 barrels per day by 2025.

As a result, the IMF predicts that the

country’s GDP could grow by eighty-six

per cent this year.

As new discoveries continue to be

announced, Guyana is poised to be

the fastest-growing economy in the

Caribbean and South America, with

all the accompanying possibilities and

challenges. No wonder the milestone of

“first oil” was celebrated with a massive

fireworks display: managed prudently,

Guyana’s black gold could be the fuel

for a bright future.


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E A N

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85

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87

album


Rite of

spring


89



91



93

2019 was Ziad Joseph’s first

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Phagwah celebrations. Arriving

at the Aranguez Savannah venue

on Saturday 24 March, he recalls,

he was greeted by “a multitude

of vibrant people of all ages and

ethnicities.

“In no time at all,” he says, “I,

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covered in all manner of colours:

yellows, blues, reds, pinks, from

deliberate or accidental encounters

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95

bucket list

simon dannhauer/shutterstock.com

The island’s rugged

east coast offers

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world-class surfing

Bathsheba,

Barbados

BARBADOS

Bathsheba

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96


ENGAGE

mazur travel/shutterstock.com

98 Green

Nature’s bread

102

On This Day

Be fruitful and multiply

Industrial-scale banana production changed the economies of several Caribbean islands in the late nineteenth century

green

Nature’s

Bread

It’s a common staple food in the Caribbean,

especially popular in dishes like oil down, but the

nutritious breadfruit is still underappreciated,

writes Erline Andrews. She talks to breadfruit

advocates across the Caribbean about its

versatility and the potential role of the fruit in

increasing food security

Illustration by Shalini Seereeram

Dr Keith Rowley, the prime

minister of Trinidad

and Tobago, is fond of

breadfruit, the starchy,

cantaloupe-size fruit —

green on the outside,

cream-coloured on the inside — that is

one of the main ingredients in oil down, a

dish popular throughout the Caribbean. A

photo that made the rounds online last year

showed Rowley, his face intent, standing at a

kitchen counter cutting up pig tails, as a large

breadfruit in the foreground waited its turn

to go under the knife. Presumably he then

cooked the meat and the fruit with coconut

milk, the other main ingredient in oil down.

Rowley’s affinity for breadfruit has

inspired two philanthropists to use the

fruit to try to bring about agricultural

and social transformation in T&T. “Like

everybody else, we buy breadfruit at

home,” says Raul Bermudez. “We cook

it, we eat it.” In 2015, he heard Rowley

talk about breadfruit in a radio interview.

“I Googled breadfruit for the first time,”

he recalls, “and discovered what a wondrous,

complete food it is. The following

day I went out and bought a breadfruit

tree.”

Four years later, that tree is about

fifteen feet tall and has finally started to

bear. It’s featured in photos and videos

on the Facebook page of Breadfruit Trees,

the project Bermudez started with friend

and collaborator Omardath Maharaj,

an agricultural economist attached

to the University of the West Indies,

St Augustine. Maharaj is a well-known

eat-local advocate, previously responsible

for bringing Sesame Street producers to

Trinidad to film pineapple farmers for a

segment on the popular children’s show.

The goal of the Breadfruit Trees

project is to cover as much of Trinidad

and Tobago as possible with the trees,

beautifying the landscape, providing a

bulwark against flooding, mitigating the

effects of climate change, and providing

a source of income and food for people

in need. “When you drive into [Port of

Spain], most times you’re met with traffic,

pollution,” says Maharaj, interviewed in

his small but high-ceiled office. A potted

immature breadfruit tree stands in one

corner, its broad, glossy, pronged leaves

making it as attractive as any other decorative

plant. “You don’t think it would be

lovely to drive into the city and see it covered

in breadfruit trees?” he asks. “That’s

a message we could send to the world.”

Working with the University of the

West Indies, the Roman Catholic church,

schools, community groups, and individuals,

Bermudez and Maharaj estimate they

have seen the planting of around three

thousand trees in different parts of the

country, including 210 on the sprawling

compound of the prison facilities in east

Trinidad. The trees will eventually help

with a programme that trains inmates in

food production. The goal is to plant a

thousand trees on the prison grounds. “We

can use agriculture for people coming out

[of prison] to get back to an income and

reintegrate into society,” says Maharaj.

Maharaj and Bermudez buy trees from

the state-run plant propagation station

with their own money, and give them

away. They encourage other people to do

the same. “For a family to go and have

a decent meal in a city restaurant costs

what it would cost you to buy 105 trees,”

says Bermudez.



99

Breadfruit is going through a

worldwide revival. A slew of

news articles and TV programmes

in recent years have hailed it as a

“superfood,” extremely good for both the

human body and the environment. It’s

gluten-free, low in fat, and packed with

essential nutrients and fibre. The tree is

easy to maintain and is one of the world’s

highest yielding crops. It can be used in

a dazzling variety of ways. The fruit can

be used to make French fries, chips, and

pasta. Other parts of the tree can make

insect repellent and latex.

“It’s a gift we’re ignoring,” says Mary

McLaughlin, a retired geologist. She

and her husband Michael founded Trees

That Feed (TTF), another organisation

that has been lifting breadfruit’s profile.

McLaughlin grew up on a farm in

Jamaica, where she was exposed to the

fruit. “Even as a child, I knew that the

breadfruit tree was special,” she says.

TTF starting operating in Jamaica in

2009. Now it reaches eighteen countries

in the Caribbean, Central America, and

Africa, and is responsible for 200,000

fruit trees, most of them breadfruit,

planted in these regions.

TTF’s focus at first was propagating

and planting trees. Eventually, they

started to help small business people

make breadfruit products using simple,

cost-effective equipment. With the backing

of academic peers in Illinois, where

the McLaughlins live, TTF developed

hand-operated machines to shred and

dry breadfruit, then grind it into flour.

The flour is used in a variety of ways.

Most importantly, it makes porridge

to feed schoolchildren in Jamaica and

Haiti. In the latter country, the flour

is also used to make child-appealing

fruit bars by mixing it with dried fruit,

shredded coconut, ginger, and molasses.

“In Haiti, you’re saving lives,”

says McLaughin of TTF’s work in that

country, which is experiencing a food

shortage crisis. “Children in the poorest

communities have food, because there’s

breadfruit flour.”

In other parts of the Caribbean,

breadfruit has even gone upscale. Captured

on video and shared on Facebook,

celebrated Barbados-based chef Adrian

Cumberbatch demonstrates before a

Cumberbatch says. “It’s becoming very

popular. It’s something you must have

when you’re in Barbados.”

Meanwhile, in St Croix in the US

Virgin Islands, chef and restaurateur

Todd Manley has come up with the

world’s first breadfruit vodka. “In the

tropics, we grow a lot of breadfruit, and

you walk around and you see a lot of

people let it hit the ground and waste it.

That bothered me,” he says, explaining

the origin of the idea. “In Tahiti, they

call breadfruit the island potato, so if

The goal of the Breadfruit Trees project is to cover

as much of Trinidad and Tobago as possible with

the trees, providing a source of income and food

for people in need

food festival audience how to prepare

one of his specialities: a breadfruit bowl.

That’s half a roasted breadfruit hollowed

out and filled with various ingredients.

In the video these are beets, chickpeas,

tomatoes, lettuce, and a creamy vinaigrette.

The result, greeted with applause,

looks mouth-watering.

“It’s in the presentation,” Cumberbatch

explains in a recent interview.

He charges between US$25 and $30 per

bowl, and believes he could charge more.

“It goes like that!” he says, snapping his

fingers. Cumberbatch also makes breadfruit

bowls using shrimp, saltfish buljol,

crayfish, flying fish, and lobster.

Roasted breadfruit is a staple in

Barbados, but now it’s increasingly

served at high-end restaurants and

hotels. “The chefs are elevating it,”

you want to make island vodka use the

island potato.”

His Mutiny Island Vodka, launched

last year, is being distributed across the

Caribbean and is due to launch soon in

the United States. “My goal is to make

the awareness of breadfruit — through

Island Vodka — just blow up,” he says.

Back in Trinidad, on the Breadfruit

Trees Facebook page, Raul Bermudez

and Omardath Maharaj encourage followers

to give breadfruit trees as gifts for

Christmas and other occasions. “When a

child is going to be married, give them

a breadfruit tree to put in their home,”

says Bermudez. “By the time they start

to have children, you have that there.”

Maharaj adds: “We may be germinating

something that will carry on itself for

generations to come.” n

All about breadfruit

Originating in southeast Asia, the breadfruit tree (Artocarpus altilis) was first

domesticated in the Philippines around three thousand years ago, and spread

across the islands of the south Pacific by human travellers. It was famously

introduced to the Caribbean in the late eighteenth century by Captain William

Bligh of the Royal Navy, intended as a cheap, nutritious food source for enslaved

Africans on British West Indian sugar plantations. Initially unpopular, the fruit over

time became a staple of Caribbean cuisine. A single tree can produce up to two

hundred fruit each season.


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essay competition with a piece on

“the migration challenge”

Omari Obaseki Joseph of Queen’s College, Guyana (at left, with Erica

Williams-Connell), is the most recent winner of the Eric Williams

“School Bags” Essay Competition. Open to all lower and upper

sixth form (CAPE or equivalent) students in the seventeen Englishspeaking

countries of the Caribbean, the competition was organised

by The Eric Williams Memorial Collection (EWMC).

The biennial “School Bags” essay competition was named after a

statement by late scholar-statesman Eric Williams, who led the

Government of Trinidad and Tobago for a quarter century until

his death in 1981. On 30 August, 1962, the eve of his country’s

Independence from Britain, he famously exhorted: “You, the

children, yours is the great responsibility to educate your parents . . .

you carry the future of [the Nation] in your school bags.”

The winning essay was published online by

UWI Today. The full text can read found at

sta.uwi.edu/uwitoday/article16.asp

Joseph’s essay is on the topic “The migration challenge is one of the

hinges on which the future of Caribbean integration rests.” “Tapping

into the potential of the human resource, particularly through

policies that allow for the free flow of citizens within the Caribbean

community, presents a pressing issue,” he writes.


101

on this day

Be fruitful

and multiply

Born in March 1840 — 180 years ago — in chilly Cape Cod, the American

businessman Lorenzo Dow Baker singlehandedly started the export of

bananas from the Caribbean, changing the economy of the region for

both better and worse. James Ferguson recounts his story

Illustration by Rohan Mitchell

Bananas really are a strange

fruit. They once symbolised

luxury and exoticism, but

nowadays they’re cheap and

widely available throughout

areas of the world like

Europe and North America that don’t

grow them. Oddly, the world’s two biggest

producers — India and China — export

none, while Belgium is improbably listed

as the fifth biggest exporter (it buys them

from South America for resale in Europe).

The most popular fruit in Britain and the

United States, and worth nearly US$15

billion in global export sales, bananas are

everywhere, from supermarkets to modest

street stalls, all year round.

Any visitor to the Caribbean can

hardly fail to notice the distinctive banana

plant (“tattered, green, photosynthetic

machines,” according to US poet Joseph

Stanton), which grows in every rural

yard, up hillsides, and in fertile valleys.

Most of the fruit is eaten locally,

but for a few countries the crop is still

an important export. The Dominican

Republic has big, modernised plantations,

but the smaller Windward Islands

send bananas to Europe that are mostly

cultivated on small family-owned farms.

In recent years, though, the Caribbean

banana industry has been outmuscled

by big Latin American producers such as

Ecuador and Colombia, where multinational

firms dominate market access to

the US and Europe. And one of these firms

is the friendly-sounding Chiquita, with its

familiar blue sticker.

This giant Swiss-based corporation

operates plantations in eight Central and

At its peak, United

Fruit controlled huge

areas of land in South

and Central America,

often intervening in the

politics of impoverished

states that were

derided as “banana

republics”

South American countries and has annual

revenues of some US$3 billion. In contrast,

Jamaica, ravaged by hurricanes and

underinvestment, abandoned the export

market in 2008. Much of the infrastructure

that once brought the island’s bananas to

be sold overseas — railways, wharves,

warehouses — is now decaying. But go

to any one of Port Antonio’s teeming

street markets, and you’ll see a profusion

of bananas and their plantain cousins,

large and small, green and gold, piled high

among an array of colourful produce. Why

Port Antonio? Because this northeastern

Jamaican town, now an ecotourism hub,

is where the international banana trade —

and Chiquita itself — was born.

Yellow bananas caught the eye of

an American sea captain named

Lorenzo Dow Baker one day in

June 1870, as he wandered through Port

Antonio’s market. He was on his way back

to the US from Venezuela, where he had

transported mining equipment, and had

stopped in Jamaica to pick up bamboo

and other exotic commodities. He added

bananas to his cargo, waited for a fair

wind, and set sail in his newly purchased

schooner Telegraph. On arrival in New

Jersey, the hold was opened — to reveal a

load of blackened, overripe fruit.

But Baker, who was born in the

Massachusetts peninsula of Cape Cod

on 15 March, 1840, was convinced that

bananas would make his fortune. The following

year, he returned to Jamaica, sold

a cargo of codfish and textiles, and bought

450 bunches of green bananas at ten cents


each. Eleven days later, the now ripe fruit

was landed at Jersey City, and sold for $2

a bunch. Baker, a man raised in the tough

whaling and fishing culture of Cape Cod,

had instinctively understood that American

consumers would quickly embrace

the tropical delights of the banana.

Baker’s trips to Jamaica then

became more frequent, and he and

his associates invested in more ships

to carry bananas safely to the

eastern US. He also encouraged

Jamaican smallholders to grow

the crop, proclaiming, “the

first man who has ten acres of

bananas will be rich.” A miniboom

took place, a godsend

to the island’s depressed

post-plantation economy.

“It was said that on Banana

Day (which was any day a

ship was loading) carousing

planters would light their

cigars with five-dollar bills,”

writes Margaret Morris in

Tour Jamaica. Baker meanwhile

bought run-down former sugar estates for

banana production as well as investing in

roads and warehouses. Such was

his enthusiasm for Jamaica

that he moved with his

family to Port Antonio

in 1881, returning to

his hometown of Wellfleet

each summer.

Despite his success,

Baker could only go so

far without more investment,

and in 1885 he and

Bostonian businessman Andrew

Preston formed the Boston Fruit

Company. With Baker busy in Jamaica,

the ambitious Preston had free rein in

Boston, and in 1899, unbeknownst to

Baker, negotiated with the splendidly

named Minor C. Keith, who had interests

in Costa Rica, to create the United

Fruit Company. This powerful business

imported bananas on an industrial

scale from Central America via its own

railways and a shipping fleet, which also

transported tourists to Jamaica. Baker,

the founding father, was soon pushed

out and forced into retirement. He

continued to divide his time between

Jamaica and Cape Cod until he died in

Boston in June 1908.

United Fruit was merged with another

firm to become United Brands in 1970,

then morphing into Chiquita Brands in

1984. At its peak, it controlled huge areas

of land in South and Central America,

often intervening in the politics of impoverished

states such as Honduras that were

derided as “banana republics.” The company

was not known for an exemplary

human rights record.

The practices of the United Fruit

Company were far removed from

the paternalism of the stoutly

Methodist Lorenzo Dow Baker, who even

today is viewed by Jamaicans in a favourable

light. According to the website

jamaicaportantonio.com, “He believed that

his financial success was only a fulfilment

of God’s will, and that it was his duty and

obligation to help those who lived in his

winter and summer hometowns. In

Jamaica, he built a hospital and many

schools; paid decent wages and provided

better living conditions for his

local workers and their families.” He

was also a benefactor, as well as an entrepreneur,

in Wellfleet, rebuilding the

lightning-damaged Methodist church

and opening a hotel that in summer he

staffed with Jamaicans.

The golden age of Port Antonio is now

a distant memory, but traces of Baker’s

legacy are still visible. With the profits

from the banana business, he opened one

of Jamaica’s first purpose-built tourist

facilities, the luxurious four-hundredroom

Titchfield Hotel, famed for its

sophisticated amenities and stellar

guest list. It eventually fell into

the hands of the Hollywood

icon Errol Flynn after years

of decline, and enjoyed a

brief period of notoriety

in the 1950s before it succumbed

to a fire in 1969,

leaving only a few ghostly ruins.

Perhaps in a reference to

Baker’s Cape Cod childhood,

Boundbrook wharf is to be found

by Port Antonio’s sheltered natural

harbour, looking across to the Titchfield

peninsula where the hilltop hotel stood.

Baker renamed this district Boundbrook,

formerly Bog estate, when he bought it in

the 1880s. In its heyday, the wharf, which

was owned by United Fruit, was the scene

of frenetic activity when the banana boats

moored. Now it is disused, though locals

hope it may be resurrected by the cruise

ship industry.

Meanwhile, some 1,700 miles north,

close to the Cape Cod town of Wellfleet, is

an idyllically deserted expanse of dunes

and beach called Bound Brook Island.

Now connected to the mainland, this wild

spot is where Baker was born and raised

in a cottage before he went to sea aged

ten. Did he name his Jamaican property

after this, his first home? He eventually

returned here. He, his wife, and daughter

are buried nearby. n


103

puzzles

adventure

banana

border

breakfast

bun

climate

conch

crab

debut

diva

drum

dye

river

Easter

folklore

gallerist

groove

Zoomers

Word Search

Sunshine Snacks Nuts

hills

Holi

jaguar

javelin

jazz

journey

kite

lighthouse

regatta

sail

sand

sculpture

south

surfing

tour

vocalist

E M U R D T S I R E L L A G C

J A S T S I L A C O V H N N L

U T S A S U R F I N G U X R I

E R U T N E V D A S B Y T B M

J R S H E D Y W U L O F S A A

A U R T R R A D S L R O A N T

V O E U H E P V I I D L F A E

E T V O Q Q G G I H E K K N F

L I I S E L H A A D R L A A R

I T R T I T G C T H C O E T A

N T I A H R O X V T R R R U U

B K S O O N R E T S A E B B G

A U U O C I H O L I B O F E A

C S V H E R U T P L U C S D J

E E D V Y E N R U O J Z Z A J

Spot the Difference

There are 13 differences between these two pictures.

How many can you spot?

by Gregory St Bernard


Sun Mix

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

Caribbean Crossword

10 11

9

Across

1 Evergreen tree from down under [10]

6 It’s a long story [4]

10 It keeps Georgetown dry [7]

11 Paperwork, of a sort [7]

12 Monarch of the chess board [5]

13 In search of a lost ark?[6]

14 ___ vs them [2]

16 Guyana’s forest treasure [8]

19 Main vein of a leaf [6]

22 Original home of those famous Greek

games [7]

24 Refined and graceful [7]

25 Written on gift tags [2]

26 Take over [6]

27 They cover a couple of feet [5]

30 Contrary word [7]

31 Free time at last [7]

32 Studious fellow [4]

33 Keepers of the flames [10]

Down

1 Guyana’s biggest river [9]

2 Huge hoisting machine [5]

3 Acquire knowledge [5]

4 Visitor to a shrine [7]

5 A perfect society? [6]

7 Entertainment with acts [4]

8 Crisp salty snack [5]

9 How oil gets from here to there [8]

15 Length by breadth [4]

12 13 14

16 17 18 19 20

22 23 24

25 26 27 28

29

30 31

32 33

17 Black gemstone [4]

18 Rolling savannahs of south Guyana [8]

20 Biblical wife of King David [9]

21 Set with stones [8]

23 Iron tablets are the treatment [7]

25 Coach some coaches [5]

27 Whirl, twirl, curl [5]

28 Tiny morsel [5]

29 The sun, for example [4]

21

15

If the puzzle you want to do has already been filled in, just ask your flight

attendant for a new copy of the magazine!

Sunshine Solutions

Caribbean Crossword

Word Search

Spot the Difference

E M U R D T S I R E L L A G C

J A S T S I L A C O V H N N L

U T S A S U R F I N G U X R I

E R U T N E V D A S B Y T B M

J R S H E D Y W U L O F S A A

E

1

S

10

Q

12

I

16

O

22

T

25

U 2 C A 3 L Y 4 P T 5 U S 6 E

7 P I 8

C

9

L H

S R E I T P

E R D 33 C A N D E L A B R A

E A W A L L 11 O R I G A M I

E N R G P P Y P

U E E N 13 R A I D E R U

U I A L 15

A

14 S

W 17 O K 18 R A M A 19 M I D R I 20

B

B N U 21 J N E A

L Y M P I A

23 E

24 L E G A N T

X U N W H

26

O I N V A D E 27 S O 28 C K S

R 29 S U E L W R H

A

30

N T O N Y M 31 L E I S U R E

I A I I E R M B

N

32

A U R T R R A D S L R O A N T

V O E U H E P V I I D L F A E

E T V O Q Q G G I H E K K N F

L I I S E L H A A D R L A A R

I T R T I T G C T H C O E T A

N T I A H R O X V T R R R U U

Fish team’s uniform has changed colour from purple to green;

lady fish’s bonnet has changed colour from pink to purple; lady

fish’s smartphone is bigger; sun is lower; second sailboat is

added in the background; name of fish team’s boat is changed

from Carib Queen to Carib Queue; starfish’s checkered flag is

larger; colours of squares on checkered flag are swapped; colours

of starfish’s float are swapped; pirate crab’s hook on right

arm is smaller; a patch is added to pirate crab’s left eye; pirate

crab’s beer mug is replaced with a bottle; skull and crossbones

icon on side of pirate crab’s boat is removed.

B K S O O N R E T S A E B B G

E E D V Y E N R U O J Z Z A J

A U U O C I H O L I B O F E A

C S V H E R U T P L U C S D J


105

WIRELESS INFLIGHT ENTERTAINMENT

Welcome to

The NEW way to be entertained!

Use your personal device to stream Blockbuster movies, TV shows,

games and more Caribbean content while in the air.

How to access Caribbean View during your flight

To enjoy Movies and TV, please simply download our free Caribbean View app via the

Google Play Store and Apple App Store.

Steps

Enjoy free

entertainment on

your flight!

Content is available only on selected flights*

1. Ensure your device is in

Airplane Mode

2. Enable your Wi-Fi and select the caribbean_view network

OR

In preparation

for your flight

Download

Get our free

Caribbean View app

before you travel,

available via the Google

Play Store and Apple

App Store

Charge

Before boarding,

ensure your device is

fully charged

3. Launch the Caribbean View App

OR

Open the browser on your device and enter

www.caribbean-view.net into the address bar.

Note: The Caribbean View App is required for playback of

Movies and TV shows once using a smartphone or tablet.

Scan the code

Headphones

Bring your

personal headphones

to enjoy our selection

of entertainment

Troubleshooting

Unable to connect

1. Switch Wi-Fi off and on

2. Power the device off and on and repeat step 1

Unable to view content

1. Close and restart the browser and type

www.caribbean-airlines.com

2. If this does not work, try an alternate browser

and type in www.caribbean-airlines.com

3. Power the device off and on and try steps 1

and 2 again

Note: Chrome is the recommended browser

for laptops.

Terms and Conditions

By using the system, you accept the following

terms and conditions:

• *Content is available only on flights over two hours.

• Content is available only during flight.

• Access to content is only available above 10,000 feet.

• Access to content will stop before the end of the flight.

• You may not have sufficient time during the flight to

watch the entirety of some content.

Viewing information:

Please choose your viewing appropriately. Note: Some

content may not be suitable for younger viewers, so

please choose appropriate content where children will

be watching.

Please ensure headphones are used at all times for

playback of media content, unless muted.

• It may take a short time for a video or other content

to start.

• Please note that we are not responsible for any data

loss or damage to devices that may occur while/after

using our services.

• Onboard battery charging facilities are not available.

Safety information:

• We may pause or stop our inflight entertainment

system for safety or other reasons.

Security information:

• This service is provided using wireless LAN technology.

Please be aware that it is a public network.

• It is each user’s responsibility to have an up-to-date

security system (e.g. firewall, anti-virus, anti-malware)

for their device.

did you even know

Easter in the

islands

You think you’re an expert on Caribbean culture? Test your

knowledge in our trivia quiz, and see how much you know

about Easter traditions — and seasonal delicacies — across the

region. Answers are at the bottom of the page.

1. What is the traditional accompaniment for Jamaica’s

popular Easter bun?

Butter

Cheese

Guava jam

A slice of ham

2. In Guyana’s border town Lethem, in the Rupununi

Savannah, what annual sporting event is scheduled for

Easter weekend?

A boat race

A track and field tournament

A rodeo

A hot-air balloon rally

3. What common leisure activity do many Caribbean

people avoid on Good Friday, following a long-held

superstition?

6. On Good Friday, some Trinidadians keep up the custom

of beating a bobolee — an effigy representing which

historical figure?

Pontius Pilate

Judas Iscariot

Julius Caesar

Napoleon Bonaparte

cgterminal/shutterstock.com

7. Easter weekend brings a highly popular fish festival to

which coastal community in Barbados?

Drinking alcohol

A family meal

Playing cards

Going to the beach

Speightstown

Holetown

Oistins

Bathsheba

4. Tobago’s Easter traditions include racing which of

these creatures?

8. What traditional toy have generations of Caribbean

children made at Eastertime?

Goats

Dogs

Rabbits

Tortoises

A puppet

A spinning top

A boat

A kite

5. What is the key ingredient of matoutou, the spicy stew

enjoyed on Easter weekend in Martinique?

9. What exactly is penepis, the sweet treat St Lucians

enjoy for Easter?

Lamb

Chicken

Pork

Crab

A kind of custard

A ginger-flavoured biscuit

Coconut bread

A pineapple tart

Answers: 1 Cheese — from a tin 2 A rodeo 3 Going to the beach — swimming on Good Friday is reputed to turn you into a fish 4 Goats 5 Crab 6 Pontius

Pilate 7 Oistins 8 A kite 9 A ginger-flavoured biscuit — penepis is the Kwéyòl version of French pain d’épices


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Caribbean Beat — March/April 2020 (#162)

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