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Contents No. 151 • May/June 2018

44 36

50 EMBARK

18 Wish you were here Ireng River, Guyana

21 Datebook

Events around the Caribbean in May and June, from the first-ever Carnival in Guyana to Trinidad’s North Coast Jazz Festival

28 Word of Mouth

Japan’s springtime cherry blossom festival reminds a visiting Trini of poui season at home

30 Bookshelf and playlist

This month’s reading and listening picks

32 Cookup

Some like it hot It may be the quintessential Trini condiment, and many can’t imagine a meal without pepper sauce. Franka Philip investigates how T&T’s hot peppers have become internationally famous for their delicious sear 10

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IMMERSE

36 closeup

Full free Haitian artist Tessa Mars is influenced by her country’s revolutionary history as much as her own family’s intellectual tradition, and her lifelong fascination with riddles. Her colourful paintings often feature a semiautobiographical character named Tessalines — and deal in complex ideas about identity and freedom.

Shereen Ali finds out more

42 snapshot

Caribbean by proxy For sports fans around the world, the arrival of June means the start of the 2018 FIFA World Cup finals. No Caribbean team qualified this year, James Ferguson writes, but that doesn’t mean our region won’t be represented

44 backstory

The story of a city A childhood encounter with a touring

steelband began Stephen Stuempfle’s connection with Trinidad. Now the US scholar has written an illuminating history of Port of Spain in the era before Independence. As Judy Raymond learns, Stuempfle’s research has only deepened his love for T&T’s capital ARRIVE

50 round trip

Love is in the air For many lovebirds around the world, the idea of a Caribbean wedding — making vows on the beach, with a backdrop of glimmering blue sea — seems like a dream. And it easily comes true

58 neighbourhood

Kralendijk, Bonaire The gateway for dive tourists drawn to Bonaire’s pristine waters, the island’s capital has a relaxed charm, and touches of colourful history

Caribbean CaribbeanBeat An MEP publication

60 personal tour

“Just drive all around the island” Artist Suelin Low Chew Tung shares her Grenada favourites — beaches, restaurants, relaxation spots, and where to find the best local chocolate ENGAGE

66 plugin

Tech to the people Founded by scholar Schuyler Esprit, Dominica’s Create Caribbean was well on its way to making tech tools for education available to all. Then Hurricane Maria hit. Lisa AllenAgostini discovers how the digital humanities project is putting the pieces back together

Editor Nicholas Laughlin General manager Halcyon Salazar Design artists Kevon Webster & Bridget van Dongen Web editor Caroline Taylor Editorial assistant Shelly-Ann Inniss

Business Development Manager, Tobago and International Evelyn Chung T: (868) 684 4409 E: evelyn@meppublishers.com

Business Development Representative, Trinidad Mark-Jason Ramesar T: (868) 775 6110 E: mark@meppublishers.com

Barbados Sales Representative Shelly-Ann Inniss T: (246) 232 5517 E: shelly@meppublishers.com

68 discover

uncovering a kingdom It’s one of the Caribbean’s most resonant historic sites, but surprisingly little is known about the true history of Sans-Souci, the palace of Henri Christophe, writes Erline Andrews.

Now a multinational team of archaeologists are using high-tech tools to resurvey the site, and perhaps rewrite Haitian history

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

Read and save issues of Caribbean Beat on your smartphone, tablet, computer, and favourite digital devices!

70 on this day

sin city It was once known as “the Sodom of the New World” — until a catastropic earthquake sent it tumbling into the sea. On the 500th anniversary of its founding, James Ferguson recalls the history of Jamaica’s infamous Port Royal

72 puzzles

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 2018. 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

Enjoy our crossword, sudoku, and other brain-teasers!

80 classic

A dip into Caribbean Beat’s archives: Attillah Springer’s explanation of the art of the meggie

The Caribbean Airlines logo shows a hummingbird in flight. Native to the Caribbean, the hummingbird represents flight, travel, vibrancy, and colour. It encompasses the spirit of both the region and Caribbean Airlines.

WWW.CARIBBEAN-AIRLINES.COM

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Cover Caribbean weddings come in all styles and traditions — like this Hindu ceremony, with the bride garbed in auspicious red Photo IVASHstudio/ Shutterstock.com

This issue’s contributors include: Shereen Ali (“Full free”, page 36) is a freelance writer who has covered cultural and social issues in Trinidad since the 1990s as a reporter for three national newspapers. She enjoys making masks for Carnival and loves the creative arts in all their forms. She is also a graphic designer and illustrator.

Writer and journalist Lisa Allen-Agostini (“Tech to the people”, page 66) co-edited the crime fiction collection Trinidad Noir (2008) and is the author of the poetry collection Swallowing the Sky (2015) and the young adult novel The Chalice Project (2008). Her latest novel, Home Home, published this year, was a winner of the 2017 CODE Burt Award for Young Adult Literature.

Suzanne Bhagan (“A tale of two flowers”, page 28) is a writer from Trinidad and Tobago. She also blogs about books and meaningful travel at Hot Foot Trini (hotfoottrini.com).

Franka Philip (“Some like it hot”, page 32) loves to find the story behind the story in the food industry. A journalist for more than twenty years, she has worked in print, online, and radio in Trinidad and at the BBC in London. At the start of 2018, Franka co-founded Trini Good Media, a website that hosts the podcast Talk ’Bout Us. Judy Raymond (“The story of a city”, page 44) is a writer and the editor-in-chief of the T&T Newsday, as well as a former editor of Caribbean Beat. Her most recent book is The Colour of Shadows: Images of Caribbean Slavery (2016).

Crown Point, Tobago Casino/Bar: 868 631-0044/0500 Jade Cafe: 868 6398361 WWW.CARIBBEAN-AIRLINES.COM

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A MESSAGE From OUR CEO

Andrea De Silva/andreadesilva@gmail.com

Havana, Caribbean Airlines’ newest destination

Dear Caribbean Airlines passengers, I have been with Caribbean Airlines for just over six months. In that time, I’ve met with employees face to face throughout our entire network. The interactions have been enlightening, and the reception from the teams truly reflected the professionalism of our people. As we move forward, we will undertake even greater innovation which will enable us to better serve our valued customers and to attract new customers to experience the warmth of the Caribbean.

As the airline that knows the Caribbean best, we actively support culture in the region and beyond.

So far for 2018, we were the official airline of the Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago Carnivals. We intend to partner with stakeholders in the destinations we serve, to be the official airline of Carnivals and other festivals there.

Please see our Datebook (on page 21) for a list of Carnivals, festivals and other events in May and June. Datebook is a standard feature of this magazine, and the information is also available online at www.caribbean-beat.com. Fly with us to the many events taking place in the coming months!

In addition to these activities, we are focused on product development. To this end, we have introduced Caribbean Explorer — a fare which allows you to explore multiple destinations on one ticket. You may travel using Caribbean Explorer until 15 June, and again from

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mid-September, when the fare will return. This gives you enough time to plan which islands you will visit!

As you explore, you can do so in greater comfort using Caribbean Plus.

This extra leg room product within the economy cabin of the B-737 will afford you the opportunity to pre-book and pay for seats with a bit more space. On the ATR aircraft, you can pre-book and pay for seats in rows 15 and 16. In addition to extra leg room, Caribbean Plus gives you the benefits of earlier boarding, earlier access to overhead bins, extra room to recline — and you exit faster on arrival at your destination.

We are also excited to introduce Caribbean Upgrade. This easy-touse service allows economy class ticket holders to bid for travel on available Business Class seats. All eligible customers will receive a Caribbean Upgrade email seven days prior to departure, inviting them to bid for available Business Class seats. All passengers who bid will be advised 24 to 28 hours before their scheduled departure whether the bid was successful. Once the bid is won, the credit card on file will be charged the relevant amount.

These are some of our value-added offers to enhance your travel experience. There will be other promotions as the year enfolds.

In other news, our “HELLO CARIBBEAN” campaign, which highlights the uniqueness of the destinations we serve, won several advertising awards

from the Caribbean Advertising Federation (CAF). The CAF awards are the first leg to competing at the American Advertising Awards (ADDY) — the world’s largest advertising competition.

Our Cuba route continues to enjoy healthy passenger loads, and we are consistently providing desirable offers.

To experience more of Cuba, you may also take advantage of tour packages through our network of travel agents.

We are also working with retail partners in Trinidad and Tobago and Guyana, where visitors from Cuba can enjoy special discounts.

Caribbean Airlines is in transition, and through the above-mentioned and other initiatives we will focus on enhancing customer experience, managing costs, and enhancing revenue through innovation and improved value.

Please visit our website at www. caribbean-airlines.com, become a fan by liking us on Facebook at www. facebook.com/caribbeanairlines, and follow us on Twitter @iflycaribbean.

Thank you for choosing Caribbean Airlines — we value your business, and it is our privilege to serve you!

Garvin Medera Chief Executive Officer

ADVERTORIAL

Caribbean Yard Campus Disrupting the motor of history

F

rom outside, the view of the Caribbean is of a single space strewn with islands across the blue ocean between Europe and the Americas. But from within, the Caribbean is Derek Walcott’s broken vase, shards of a fractured past in need of love and understanding for reassembling the fragments of a region blown apart by European battles for territory, conquest, and domination.

More than five hundred years later, the modern Caribbean still bears the scars of the cataclysmic encounter between Europe and the Americas from which it was born. It’s there in the outward gaze tied to the old social and economic European order, in siloed neighbours still strangers to each other, and in the languages that separate its people behind the barriers

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of English, Spanish, French, Dutch, and the many Caribbean creoles spawned by their intimacy with the languages of the First Nation peoples of the region, of West Africa and of India, among others.

And yet, beneath the division is a longing for belonging to a united Caribbean at peace with its past and in harmony with itself.

The quest for integration has been an uphill battle against a colonial infrastructure that has proven extraordinarily resistant to change. Disrupting the divisive motor of Caribbean history is the challenge that the Trinidad and Tobago-based Caribbean Yard Campus (CYC) has set itself.

For Caribbean Yard Campus, self-knowledge is the starting point of change in the Caribbean. In approaching the challenge, it confronts the hierarchical structure of the region’s educational system with its design of a decentralised network of traditional knowledge systems.

Launched at a regional gathering of partners last year at the Lloyd Best Institute in Tunapuna, Trinidad, CYC is the brainchild of Rawle Gibbons, arts educator and one of the Caribbean’s foremost playwright/directors. At the heart of the CYC model is the communal “yard.”

“In the movement of peoples throughout the Americas, the Yard has been at the core of a lifelong learning space — from womb to wake — and represents, therefore, a valuable repository of traditional knowledge which, if tapped, could contribute significantly to a culturally coherent path for Caribbean development,” explained Gibbons.

By creating intersections between traditional knowledge systems/experts and academic workers,

“In the movement of peoples throughout the Americas, the Yard has been at the core of a lifelong learning space” Caribbean Yard Campus aims to produce culturally relevant approaches to development challenges in the region. This interface involves areas of educational content, methodology, ownership, authority, and, ultimately, empowerment in a knowledge-based society.

At its launch last year, CYC established a network of partnerships with people representing communal yards across the region. These included Mireille and Louis Marcelin (Sanba Zao) of Lekol San Basilo in Portau-Prince, Haiti; Amina Meeks, Jamaican storyteller; Ifna Vrede of the Saramaca Maroon community in Suriname; and Ovid Williams of the of the Patamona First Peoples community of Guyana. Among member-yards in

Trinidad and Tobago are the Keylemanjahro School for the Arts, the Original Whip Masters, Bois Academy, the National Ramleela Council, Studio 66 Community Arts Workshop, Agronomics Institute, Pembroke Saraka Yard of Tobago, and Jouvay Ayiti.

One year into its programme, Caribbean Yard Campus has established a slate of short courses. These include “Now You See Me . . . Preserving Community Memory”, in partnership with the National Archives of Trinidad and Tobago; “Mas Design and Construction”; a course on traditional medicine titled “Sweet Broom and Bitter Bush”; two Caribbean languages, Spanish and Kweyol; and a hands-on holistic agricultural course titled “Planting People”.

In line with its mandate to deepen the links between Caribbean people, CYC has scheduled educational tours to Cuba and St Lucia in July this year. It will host its next Caribbean Convois, a gathering of Caribbean yards, in Haiti in 2020.

For more information, visit www.caribbeanyardcampus.org or write to info@caribbeanyardcampus.com

Photography by Michael London Opposite page School children are introduced to a range of medicinal plants and craft items produced by the Santa Rosa First Nations People of T&T by Cristo Adonis, peyai of its community Above Jamaican storyteller Amina Meeks-Blackwood, left, encounters two characters from the Ramleela Council of T&T at the opening event of the Caribbean Convois in March last year Above right Ovid Williams, a member of the Patamona First Peoples of Guyana, in a presentation about his community during Caribbean Convois 2017 Right Members of the Original Jab Jabs of Couva, Trinidad, put on a demonstration of their artform during Caribbean Yard Campus’s regional launch in Trinidad

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pete oxford

wish you were here

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WWW.CARIBBEAN-BEAT.COM

Ireng River, Guyana The smooth, dark waters of the Ireng flow from the Pakaraima Mountains down through the great savannahs of Guyana and Brazil, forming the boundary between the two countries. Eventually it joins Brazil’s Rio Branco, which in turn flows into the Rio Negro, one of the main tributaries of the Amazon.

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@eldoradorums

eldorado_rum

@eldoradorums

datebook

Design Pics Inc/Alamy

Your guide to Caribbean events in May and June, from Guyana’s debut Carnival to a pineapple festival in the Bahamas

Don’t miss . . .

Indian Arrival Day 5 June Suriname On this day in 1873, the first East Indian immigrants disembarked from the Lalla Rookh and set foot in Dutch Guiana — now called Suriname. For over forty years, until 1916, more than 34,000 “Hindustani” labourers travelled to Suriname, many of them remaining after the period of their indentureship. Over a century later, Indo-Surinamese preserve their cultural

traditions and celebrate the arrival of their forefathers. Concerts of baithak gana songs, the sharing of Indian cuisine, and the laying of wreaths and flowers at the Babi and Mai monument in Paramaribo — memorialising the mythical first “father and mother” to come to Suriname — are just some of the festivities.

Indian Arrival Day is also commemorated in Guyana (5 May) and Trinidad and Tobago (30 May): important occasions to contemplate where our ancestors came from, and where we are going.

WWW.CARIBBEAN-AIRLINES.COM

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datebook

If you’re in . . .

MIAMI

Miami Film Month Venues around Miami 1 to 30 June

courtesy triniscene.com

Miami seems to have it all: beautiful beaches, vivacious nightlife, historic architecture, and a vibrant arts scene.

Each month of the year is dedicated to a tempting activity, too. In June, moviegoers can enjoy discounted admission at participating cinemas, as the city celebrates Film Month. Movies made in Miami and by local filmmakers will grace the big screens. Are you a filmmaker yourself? This might be the perfect time to shoot or pitch your film project. Industry stakeholders, film crews, and executives will be within reach.

During the year, Miami hosts many film festivals. Just in time for film month, for example, the American Black Film Festival runs from 13 to 17 June. Imagine five action-packed days of red carpet premieres, masterclasses, celebrity conversations, tech talks, exclusive parties, and more, as AfricanAmerican culture is celebrated through film. Lights, camera, action!

North Coast Jazz Festival Blanchisseuse 26 May northcoastjazz.com A two-hour drive from Port of Spain through the verdant hills of the Northern Range will take you to the quaint coastal village of Blanchisseuse.

On the surface, the burgeoning bedand-breakfast community seems quiet, but it’s a hub for adventure — hikes, fishing trips, kayaking, and also the annual North Coast Jazz Festival.

With the slogan “Born Here, Play Here,” some of T&T’s best musical acts will perform on stage at the Blanchisseuse Recreational Ground.

An eclectic combination of artistes including acoustic bands, soca stars, jazz sensations, and gospel artistes will showcase their creativity. Look out for local favourites Arthur Marcial, Xavier Strings, Dean Williams and Friends, the Michael Dingwell Band, Kay Alleyne, Nyiida Andrews, and Olatunji.

Former Port of Spain mayor Louis Lee Sing, one of the organisers, says Blanchisseuse has a lot to offer visitors.

He recommends supporting the art and craft of the village artisans, trying Mr Gilbert’s pumpkin ice cream, and of course taking in the rugged beauty of the north coast. So, jazz enthusiasts: if you’re looking for a beach excursion or weekend getaway, the friendly villagers await.

guruXOX/shutterstock.com

TRINIDAD

GUYANA

Carnival Venues around Guyana 18 to 27 May Blacqbook/shutterstock.com

In the beginning there was Mashramani — and it was so nice they’re doing it twice? Not quite. Guyana’s inaugural Carnival will hit the streets of Georgetown this May. Although similar to Mash — the traditional “celebration after hard work” following Christmas 22

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and culminating on Republic Day (23 February) — Guyana Carival will be its own thing, with an exuberant array of all-inclusive parties, concerts, and boat rides. Of course, jamming behind the music trucks on a magnificent day filled with fun, frolic, and attractive costumes is an inevitable part of the experience. Prepare to be hooked!

Event previews by Shelly-Ann Inniss

datebook

Marvellous May

Grenada Chocolate Festival

Grand Bahama Junior International Rugby Festival Sea Wave/shutterstock.com

Freeport, the Bahamas Players aged eight to eighteen engage in a fun-filled weekend of friendly competition [11-14 May]

grenadachocolatefest.com It’s the food of the gods.

Experience the infinite possibilities of the island’s delicious organically produced cocoa and chocolate

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Segway Polo in Paradise

IMASUB Underwater Photography Contest

Barbados segwaypoloclubbarbados.org Teams from various countries participate in the traditional sport with a modern twist [18-21 May] Andrew Bickell courtesy the Segway Polo Club of Barbados

maria fernanda gonzalez

Cuba The beauty of aquatic life is captured in Cuba’s spectacular marine waters [29 May – 2 June]

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Pineapple Festival Bahamas Gregory Town, North Eleuthera Four days of pineapple-themed activities: eating and cooking contests, pineapple-crazy sports, traditional games, and more [31 May – 3 June]

Ends 2 June

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datebook

Joy of June Marc Bruxelle/shutterstock.com

Calabash Literary Festival Treasure Beach, Jamaica calabashfestival.org Music, readings, and storytelling have inspired roots in Jamaica, with branches extending to the wider world [1-3 June]

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Placencia Belize Lobsterfest

Pride Toronto

Over fifty booths will serve up mouthwatering Belizean cuisine, including an extensive menu of lobster dishes [22-24 June]

pridetoronto.com A special Family Pride programme, Trans Pride, the Dyke March, and the fabulous Pride Parade are in store at one of the largest Pride celebrations in the world [22-24 June]

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St Kitts Music Festival

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teeography courtesy question mark entertainment

Venues around St Kitts stkittsmusicfestival.net A magical extravaganza of music, featuring Chakademus & Pliers, Patti Labelle, Fetty Wap, Nailah Blackman, Kes the Band, and more stellar artistes [27 June - 1 July]

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WORD OF MOUTH

Shuttertong/shutterstock.com

Dispatches from our correspondents around the Caribbean and further afield

A tale of two flowers On the other side of the world from T&T, Suzanne Bhagan experiences the Japanese cherry blossom spring festival, and remembers the golden poui trees that bloom at home

I

n the Caribbean, we often take the flowers for granted. They seem to be always there: hibiscus, bougainvillea, or frangipani blending incongruously into the tropical landscape. I only realised how much I missed them during the long, bleak winter months I spent teaching English in Japan.

The Japanese are obsessed with hana, or flowers. Although cherry blossoms can be found in many temperate regions of the world, they tend to be synonymous with the land of the rising sun. Every spring, hanami or cherry blossom viewing becomes a national ritual, and an almost religious experience.

In almost every newspaper or website, you will find meteorological reports

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tracking the sakura zensen or cherry blossom front across the Japanese islands, starting in Okinawa to the south and ending in Hokkaido to the north.

Hanami is an old Japanese custom that stretches back to the Nara period (710–794), when it was enjoyed primarily by members of the Imperial Court. However, by the Edo period (1603–1868), cherry blossom mania had caught on, and it became a popular pastime for regular Japanese people. During hanami season, locals flock to parks, castles, and gardens and spread giant blue tarpaulin sheets under the trees’ frothy petals. Even when rain and wind scatter the petals and the ground is drizzled with pink, people still sit under the cherry trees, opening up limitededition bento boxes for picnics and guzzling sakura-flavoured beer.

The cherry blossom obsession runs deep in Japanese culture and tradition, embodying the Japanese concept of mono no aware, a gentle acceptance of the fleeting nature of things. The flower’s ephemeral beauty has inspired countless haiku poems and paintings, including the popular folk song “Sakura, Sakura”:

sakura sakura noyama mo sato mo mi-watasu kagiri kasumi ka kumo ka asahi ni niou sakura sakura hana zakari Cherry blossoms, cherry blossoms, In fields, mountains, and villages As far as the eye can see.

Is it mist, or clouds?

Fragrant in the morning sun.

Cherry blossoms, cherry blossoms, Flowers in full bloom.

Sakura is also significant in Japan because it marks the beginning of the fiscal and school year. The first day of the school year at my high school in Tottori prefecture brought new students with flushed faces, swishy haircuts, and pressed uniforms. The flowers promised them a fresh slate, with a host of new friends and new teachers.

When I observed these students, I remembered my own high school days in Trinidad and Tobago. I remembered that in the Caribbean we also have a tree that blooms during April and May every year: the poui.

Jamaican poet Lorna Goodison captures the essence of the poui, likening it to a woman who blooms briefly for a man who swiftly deflowers her. In “Poui”, she writes: She doesn’t put out for anyone.

She waits for HIM and in the high august heat he takes her and their celestial mating is so intense that for weeks her rose-gold dress lies tangled round her feet and she doesn’t even notice Like Japan’s sakura, the Caribbean poui shines briefly before the rainy season’s dow npours sweep across the islands and ruin the bright petals. However, unlike the sakura’s promise of a new beginning, the poui’s yellow or pink petals indicate an end. Goodbye to the dry season: sun-browned grass, the smell of burned sugarcane, kiteflying, cricket matches, and picnics under intense blue skies.

In particular, the poui is like a death knoll for Caribbean high school students, signifying the end of carefree days of liming and the beginning of cramming for CSEC, CAPE, and final exams in May and June.

Although the Japanese cherry blossom and Caribbean poui are found in two distinct pockets of the world, both remind us of the transition of the seasons and the fragility of life. If we don’t stop to appreciate them, they disappear before we realise it — and we forever lose the message. n

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bookshelf Tell No-One About This

Infidelities

by Jacob Ross (Peepal Tree Press, 360 pp, ISBN 9781845233525)

by Sonia Farmer (Poinciana Paper Press, 69 pp, ISBN 9780998915005)

In these collected short stories, written from 1975 to 2017, G r e n a d a - b o r n , U K- b a s e d Jacob Ross draws us into deep contemplations of the changeable human spirit. His work reveals a stalwartly feminist heart: most of the stories busy themselves with the suffering and exultation of women.

Some of the best stories layer intersecting female voices. In “And There Were No Fireflies”, Mariana, a bellicose schoolgirl, is dragged to Morne Riposte by her domineering Aunt Dalene, a woman who has the remedy to the trouble brewing in bellies and hearts. The women in Ross’s fictions know there is more than one way to sell love, to secure or jettison children, to keep gods in their prayers and deeds. Tell No-One About This knits narratives with subtle grace: Ross pays attention, and omits nothing in his keen sight.

Bahamian Sonia Farmer’s poems take to the high seas, and take us along for the journey, giddy and lustily breathless. Infamous Irish pirate Anne Bonny, who plied her trade in the Caribbean ocean, is immortalised herein: “She will / let them ask all the wrong questions because she will be better at / killing. She will learn to live in first person.” In these poems, there are powerful intimations of women’s grief, women’s erotic navigations, and women’s uncivilian needs. The songs of seductresses, pioneers, and untethered souls spill into the recesses this book carves: to receive it is to drink deep from a well of naked wanting. With her hands on the captain’s wheel, Farmer steers Infidelities towards any reader who has, like Jean Rhys’s Antoinette, asked, “Do you think . . . that I have slept too long in the moonlight?”

Brother

Sans Espoir

by David Chariandy (McClelland & Stewart, 192 pp, ISBN 9780771022906)

by Kimelene Carr (Sherell Bernard, 94 pp, ISBN 9789768271235)

The tremulous gentleness and juddering rage of masculinity lies beneath the surface of David Chariandy’s Brother, a novel executed with uncommon carefulness and quiet dynamism.

Brothers Michael and Francis come of age in Toronto’s Scarborough, a community of immigrant bodies, a place in which violence and love jostle for supremacy. Francis, who narrates Brother, flips the reader back and forth in time, revealing staggering loss and consummate tenderness with the language of a man who has both gained and lost fortune. Winner of the 2017 Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize, Brother is a novel that crucibles and elevates the urgencies of our time.

In language that is measured as grains of rice counted out for hungry mouths, Chariandy presents the truth of Canadian survival for people of colour, linking Canada to the Caribbean in roads of abandonment and return.

Trinidadian Kimelene Carr ushers her reader into the vibrant, titillating unpredictability of life in sweet, sweet T&T. Sans Espoir explores intersecting vignettes of machismo, sexual obsession, religious fervour, and the tempestuous madness stirring at the root of so much human behaviour. Racing through plot developments with the breakneck speed of an illegal drag race, Carr’s novella aims for high emotional stakes, combining intrigue, tabanca, and enough commess to sustain a Caribbean soap opera. Simmering beneath the predictable plotlines of this tragicomic tale are an unspoken discontent with the failures of public office, and resignation to the status quo: both potent lived realities of everyday Trinbagonians. As the six principal characters of this slender drama converge at the fictitious Hope Street Hospital, their movements mirror the sojourns of so many T&T citizens, hoping for some respite from criminality and injustice.

Reviews by Shivanee Ramlochan, Bookshelf editor

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playlist This Is Me Jeanine S. Ruiz (self-released) Young Trinidadian keyboardist Jeanine Ruiz releases her first EP as a musical autobiography of a life recently begun, and a testament to her emotional journey thus far. Going through the song titles — “Ambitious”, “Overthinker”, “Impulsive”, “Temperamental”, and “Dreamer” — one can gauge how far she has come and how far she may go. Listening to the music, one can hear the subtle influences of style that

Singles Spotlight

Bayo Michael Brun featuring Strong G, Baky, and J. Perry (Kid Coconut) “Bayo” in Haitian Kweyol means “to give,” and with this new single from Haiti-born EDM DJ Michael Brun, Haiti is giving the world a lesson in what the country is and what it represents today. A spoken phrase in the song’s music video translates to “Haiti is like a pulse for the rest of the world,” and this new wave of music talent from the first black republic has taken

GEBE Wuk Up King Kembe (self-released) Sint Maarten Carnival will happen in May, and “neither hurricane, nor rain, nor heat, nor darkness” — with apologies to Herodotus — will stop the celebrations on the island nation in its post–Hurricane Irma recovery. And part of that celebration is the release of new songs that reflect the Windward Islands’ and Dutch Caribbean’s take on soca, driven by a high beatsper-minute rhythm and urgent authentic vibe

Don’t Make Me Wait Sting and Shaggy (A&M Records) Sting, frontman for seminal 1980s band The Police, joins Mr Boombastic himself, Shaggy, for a collaboration that has super hit potential written all over it. This first single off the forthcoming new joint album 44/876 oozes with a sure-fire confidence and sonic familiarity that suggests these two stars are on the right path for crossover success on the reggae and pop charts. “Don’t Make Me Wait” has the feeling of Marley’s “Waiting in Vain” — resisting waiting

have touched her compositions: world fusion has a new advocate. Admittedly influenced by Japanese jazz pianist Hiromi Uehara, Ruiz has a sure-handedness in her playing and a keen sense of timing and cinematic breath in her arrangements, which catch a number of genres without being confusing. This is more than jazz-influenced trio playing — this debut signals a potential to inspire a waning instrumental music-listening audience, here and there, to stick around to track Ruiz’s continuing musical journey.

that statement to heart. Brun, who has a Haitian father and Guyanese mother, along with fellow Haitian MCs Strong G, Baky, and J. Perry, also represents the multi-hued reality of the people of the island. Not that it matters much, but this celebratory dance music fused with elements of indigenous rara and konpa gives an updated look and sound to an island that has been a centre of African diaspora culture for centuries. It recalibrates our concept of modern Haiti. “Bayo” is that beauty and potential “sonified.”

devoid of over-sampled electronic sounds.

“GEBE Wuk Up” is a funny ditty about the unsure and unfortunate encounters of a couple dancing right through a seemingly familiar occurrence of electricity blackouts on the island — GEBE is the government-owned electricity company. Nothing stops the “wuk up” in the dark! Reference to regular power cuts in this season of renewal in Sint Maarten, when the power company admits to “doing its best to restore some normality,” is the wry prod that makes this song unforgettable. must be a Jamaican preoccupation — but the song lyrics channel the feeling that love can’t be rushed, and when the time is ripe, good things will come. Sting’s voice has that timbre that whispers sexily and rises to pierce at the higher registers, while Shaggy’s swinging dancehall chatting has a commanding presence that makes you listen up and sing along. The result is a duet that responds positively to the modern empathetic understanding that all men have to #WaitForLove.

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cookup

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Some like it hot

For many Trinis — and others in the Caribbean — a meal isn’t complete without one essential condiment: pepper sauce. And T&T’s hot peppers have become world famous for their tongue-searing heat.

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ertie Steuart was an affable Trinidadian salesman whose passion was sport. He played cricket, football, table tennis, and tennis. At the famous Queen’s Park Cricket Club, where he was a member, he was known as “Sporting Sam,” and in his youth he represented Trinidad and Tobago at hockey. But there was a side to Bertie Steuart that even his wife didn’t know until they’d been married for a long while — he was a very good cook.

“Bertie had a sweet hand,” says his wife Allana. “I didn’t even know he could cook until fifteen years into our marriage.” It was this sweet hand that led Bertie to experiment with making the product that would come to define his legacy: a tasty pepper sauce.

It was by accident that Bertie started selling his pepper sauce in the mid-2000s. When he hired Wayne, a man from his neighbourhood, as a gardener, he found out he did not have a refrigerator at home. This bothered Bertie, who decided his family should raise funds by selling his pepper sauce to buy a fridge for Wayne.

Many hot peppers and three blenders later, Bertie and Allana realised they were on to something, and decided to start a small business selling pepper sauce. At first, friends and family were the main customers, then one day a big restaurant came calling.

“We started by going to small specialty shops, people started calling us and saying, gosh, I really like the pepper sauce. It was only when a guy from the American restaurant chain Tony Roma’s came to us and said, ‘I like this pepper sauce and I’d like it in the restaurant,’ that we realised how good it really was.”

After Bertie died in 2016, Allana kept the business going.

Nowadays, the Steuarts’ three products — Original Pepper Sauce, Scorpion Pepper Sauce, and Pimento Sauce — are found in supermarkets and gourmet food shops across T&T. Bertie’s is becoming a popular choice for Trinis who live abroad, too, as more of them take the products back home to colder climes.

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ost pepper sauce makers in T&T use Scotch Bonnet, Scorpion, and Moruga Red peppers. This country’s hot peppers have a fantastic reputation, not just for their heat, but for their deep flavour.

One farmer who has won international plaudits for his peppers is Nawaz Karim. The thirty-four-year-old, who supplies pepper makers like Bertie’s, has won awards in North America for his produce. In a 2016 interview with the T&T Guardian, he explained the reach of his crop. “Hot peppers from our farm in Trinidad were voted by buyers as the best in New York and Miami. Buyers there had also been importing peppers from Mexico and Costa Rica. We ship out between two hundred and three hundred forty-pound bags of peppers twice a week. Our aim is to increase this to between eight hundred and 1,200 bags.”

The Moruga Red is a creation of the Caribbean Agricultural Research and Development Institute (CARDI), which is dedicated to improving and diversifying strains of agricultural products in the Caribbean. Karim’s Moruga Reds have about one quarter the heat of the Scorpion, which is listed among the world’s hottest peppers. Karim says they are popular because of their “nice sting and strong flavour.”

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Some of the world’s hottest peppers originate in Trinidad. Websites for hot pepper specialists like Pepperhead.com and Pepperscale.com have listed the Moruga Scorpion, Seven-Pot Barrackpore, Seven-Pot Jonah, Seven-Pot Brain Strain, and Seven-Pot Douglah (a.k.a. Chocolate Seven-Pot) varieties as among the world’s fiercest. Many of these peppers are not sold to the public, as they’re used as components of products like pepper spray and barnacle-resistant paints for the marine industry.

But Trinidad’s peppers are also a huge draw for pepper sauce makers in other countries, like the UK. Hot and spicy peppers have been a longtime obsession for Mark Gevaux, the East Londoner known as “The Ribman.” I first met Gevaux in London around 2010, on a trip to Brick Lane in search of the legendary Jewishstyle bagel filled with hot salt beef. I got my bagel, but I also discovered Gevaux’s stall, where he sells pulled pork sandwiches and tasty ribs every Sunday. What I wasn’t prepared for was his exceptional pepper sauce, with the cheeky name Holy F*ck. It was one of the best I’d ever tasted.

Some of the world’s hottest peppers originate in Trinidad. Websites for hot pepper specialists have listed the Moruga Scorpion and other varieties as among the world’s fiercest “Most of the time I felt like I was born in the wrong country,” says Gevaux of his hot pepper obsession. “I’ve always liked hot stuff, but when I was growing up thirty-five years ago, there wasn’t that much around. You had to go to an Indian restaurant to get your spice kick.”

Gevaux started his business after being let go from his butchery job. He started selling his slow-cooked ribs at farmers’ markets, and began making hot sauces when he couldn’t find a good store-bought option. He disliked what he describes as the overuse of vinegar in most of the sauces on the shelf, and the taste he was after was simple: pepper and spices.

By trial and error, he eventually found the right formula, and the perfect combination of peppers.

That was the product he called Holy F*ck, named because Gevaux noticed it was “one of the first

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How hot is hot?

The Scoville Scale is a measure, named after Wilbur L. Scoville, of the chilli pepper’s heat. Put simply, it measures the concentration of the chemical compound capsaicin. Capsaicin is the beautiful natural chemical that brings the heat and makes your forehead sweat, your tongue burn, and your stomach ache. To measure the concentration of capsaicin, a solution of a chilli pepper’s extract is diluted in sugar water until the “heat” is no longer detectable to a panel of tasters. A rating of zero Scoville Heat Units (SHUs) means there is no heat detectable.

To illustrate how hot some peppers are, pure capsaicin is 16,000,000 SHU. Relative to that, the Moruga Scorpion measures 2,009,231 SHU and the Scotch Bonnet comes in with a rating of 325,000 SHU.

things customers would say after tasting it for the first time.”

As his popularity grew, Gevaux needed to quickly find an alternative venue for making his sauce. “I used to make it at home, about twenty or thirty bottles at a time. I had to stop, because my neighbours would complain — they’d be coughing up their lungs in the lift, the pepper was so strong,” he says with a laugh.

Over the years, The Ribman has produced three more pepper sauces, Christ on a Bike, Holy Mother of God, and Judas Is Scary Hot — the latter two eliciting raised eyebrows from his Roman Catholic wife. And, of course, Gevaux uses Caribbean peppers as the base for his sauces.

“The best peppers for many sauces are Scotch Bonnets, because of the fruity heat. It’s just amazing, I love it,” he says. “I think most people can tolerate it if cooked right. Scotch Bonnets are a fantastic and beautiful pepper.” He also uses Trinidad’s Moruga Scorpions, Dorset Nagas, and Carolina Reapers.

Gevaux says a lot of his customers are from pepper-loving cultures — Indians, Africans, and West Indians. He hopes to reach a wider audience, as his sauces will soon be distributed to butchers’ shops all across the UK.

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ervicing the diaspora is a tempting prospect for the folks at Bertie’s also, but at the moment they have enough of a challenge to keep the domestic market satisfied.

In 2017, the supply of fresh peppers in Trinidad was compromised by flooding caused by Tropical Storm Bret in June and other freak flooding incidents later in the year. There is also a shortage of foreign exchange that has affected glass bottle manufacturers.

“If we were lucky enough to get into another market, and they said they liked the product and wanted a container a month, it’s not only the peppers — where are we getting the bottles, the caps? We would now have to buy years’ supplies of that,” Allana Steuart says. “We have to organise ourselves within this small territory to make sure we have it covered, and start working more closely with farmers when we see the opportunity.”

So for now, foreign-based pepper sauce connoisseurs will just have to ask for someone to throw a couple of bottles in their suitcase if they want their Bertie’s fix. n

courtesy tessa mars

Immerse

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Full free

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Caribbean by proxy

Backstory 44 The story of

a city

Pi Piti, by Tessa Mars (2017, mixed media on canvas, 20.32 cm x 15.24 cm)

closeup

Full free The bright colours and apparently quirky characters in her paintings belie the complicated ideas — about identity, history, and freedom — explored by Haitian artist Tessa Mars. Her country’s revolutionary history and her own family’s intellectual heritage inform Mars’s work, writes Shereen Ali, as does her obsession with solving problems and riddles

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deas ripple like silent barracudas beneath the surface of Tessa Mars’s paintings.

And those ideas — about identity, womanhood, and Haitian culture — are challenging some conventions of what it means to be a free woman in Haiti.

In one painting (Dream of Freedom, Dream of Death, 2016), a naked woman with red horns and blue-green scales on her arms and legs stares at you squarely in the face, while she holds a machete plunged between her own breasts. Mysterious stars radiate from behind her back. This startling image is perhaps Mars’s best known. The figure, whom Tessa calls “Tessalines”, is based on a stylised, magical version of the artist herself, merged with Vodou references and memories of the revolutionary figure of Jean-Jacques Dessalines (1758–1806), the first ruler of an independent Haiti. And you’d better beware: because Tessalines is a free warrior woman, with two enormous bull’s horns on her head, wielding a sharp cutlass she is unafraid to use.

“This character of Tessalines I first created in Trinidad, where I spent three months at a residency at Alice Yard in 2015,” says Mars, speaking via Skype from her home in Port-au-Prince. “Tessalines is an alter ego, a fusion of myself and characteristics of the father of the Haitian revolution, Dessalines. So she is about finding my hero, my revolutionary side, and trying to place myself in Haitian history”, Mars explains.

“But in this painting, my starting point was the Declaration of Independence, when the formerly enslaved people were declaring that they would rather live free or die. And I was interested in what that might mean for us today.

“What does freedom mean for us in contemporary Haitian society?” asks Mars.

“We have historical freedom from the coloniser, but we are facing new forms of dependency from outside, whether economic or political . . . I also started to think about the freedom of self-expression, which is the freedom to express your identity to the fullest, and the risks that are associated with that, because whatever you may

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Courtesy Tessa Mars

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courtesy wikimedia

choose to express that is outside of what people consider the norms, there is potential for [a kind of] death to come with it, due to misunderstandings or rejection of what you show to the world.”

It can be a social death, or a very literal death, the artist says, because you can still die in Haiti today for expressing political views. She mentions corruption, and how much easier it is to just go with the flow than to be critical of things that are going wrong. She says although everyone knows about some issues, people are afraid to discuss them out loud. She notes that although Haitian politicians of today often try to identify with Haiti’s heroic past, it can also be a way to avoid talking about real issues: patriotic discourse can often mask issues of present-day poverty and misery.

She asks: “What does Independence translate to for the youth of Haiti right now? Although we are fighters, many Haitians are fleeing from the island, fleeing from the first black republic.”

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espite this, Mars feels great pride in her Haitian identity, and in the proud legacy of freedom-fighting: Haiti is the only country in modern times where enslaved people successfully took their freedom by force, during the Revolution between 1791 and 1804.

“I was born and raised in Haiti,” says Mars. “I grew up in Port-au-Prince. I still live in the same home where I was born, which has been in our family for multiple generations. I grew up in a family of thinkers in Haiti, and the family name is associated with literature.”

Her mother is the celebrated Haitian poet and novelist Kettly Mars, whose 2010 novel Saisons

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courtesy haitian history blog

Courtesy Tessa Mars

Previous page Converstion with Hector H (2015, acrylic on canvas, 65.3 x 65.3 cm) Above Tessa Mars at work in her studio Above right The artist’s mother, writer Kettly Mars Right Tessa Mars’s greatgrandfather, Jean-Price Mars

sauvages (Savage Seasons) explores the malevolent dictatorship of François Duvalier. Meanwhile, the famous Haitian ethnographer, doctor, politician, and diplomat Jean Price-Mars (1876–1969), who championed the Négritude movement in Haiti and was the first prominent defender of Vodou as a religion, was Tessa Mars’s great-grandfather on her father’s side.

“The need to connect with the African/ black part of our cultural heritage was one of the most important aspects of his legacy for me,” Mars says, speaking of his influence. “Jean Price-Mars studied and did research as a scientist, while my approach is more intuitive. I am interested in learning more and understanding where the traditions come from, and their meaning, but I’ve gone ‘native’ in a way, and I am more interested in exploring and experiencing them for myself, and translating this for others through visual means.”

This family heritage profoundly shaped how Mars grew up, how she saw the world, and how she chose to become an artist at the age of seventeen. She credits her willingness to explore and

We Are Here II: Dieunie Taking Root (2016, acrylic on canvas, 40 x 30 cm)

experiment to the intellectual openness of her upbringing. “I grew up with the freedom of reading whatever material I found. I could discover and understand things for myself. My parents always encouraged any creative activity, although I didn’t really decide to be an artist until my last day of high school.”

As a child, Mars recalls, she’d always liked making and fixing things. “I just liked doing things with my hands . . . If my bicycle was broken, I would find different tools to make it work. It was never a good repair, but the bike still worked! I liked to find solutions to physical problems, and make my own answers to those riddles.”

One of the biggest riddles she addresses in her artwork is the riddle of her own identity: as a Haitian, as a woman, as a Vodou believer, and as an Afro-Caribbean person living in a society fractured by colonialism and often obsessed with emigration. Her work through visual metaphors often confronts thorny issues such as violence, the

need to preserve memories, the risks of expressing your opinions freely, or the contrast between Haitians’ historical dream of freedom and current realities.

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e Are Here II: Dieunie Taking Root is a painting Mars made in 2016. It shows a clothed woman suspended underground next to large, deep-probing roots.

Tiny shoots emerge from these massive roots, just starting to sprout. While the woman’s head is barely above the ground, the rest of her body is still buried beneath the surface. It has a scary, surreal, drowning feel to it.

This painting happened after Tessa Mars got to know a Haitian immigrant struggling to make a new life for herself in Aruba: “She was cleaning a lady’s house where I was doing a residency. I asked her about her life.” The encounter led Mars to reflect on the challenges of being uprooted, and the struggle to put down new roots in another

Courtesy Tessa Mars

The character of “Tessalines” is a free warrior woman, with two enormous bull’s horns on her head, wielding a sharp cutlass she is unafraid to use society. “It can be like you are drowning . . . Just keeping your head above water [is difficult],” she comments.

There are upbeat paintings, too. Mars’s 2015 painting Nan Rara (with Marching Band) has a far more playful, cheeky feel, with a happy, naked woman celebrating herself — all she wears is a colourful cloth snake/penis, a shak-shak, a pair of sunglasses, and a toothy grin. She could be any happy reveller during Carnival, except for the fact that she dispenses with a costume, and bares it all.

She seems like a happy, modern, Haitian version of the Stone Age Venus of Willendorf statuette, a universal symbol of fertility, confidence, and creative possibility. Mars says taking pleasure in the flesh can be part of celebrating a joyful appreciation of yourself, of taking power, and being whoever you want to be.

Mars admires other young contemporary artists from the Caribbean, such as Jamaican Ebony Patterson, Sheena Rose from Barbados, and Kelly Sinnapah Mary from Guadeloupe. She’s also influenced by Haitian precursors. Another of

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her paintings with beautiful colours and a sense of magical realism is Conversation with Hector H, from 2015. It is Mars’s homage to one of her favourite artists, Hector Hyppolite (1894–1948), who painted Maitresse Erzulie in 1948. Hyppolite was a third-generation Vodou priest who worked as a shoemaker and house painter before taking up fine art. Mars’s painting portrays herself connecting with nature and the spirit world through a magical-looking tree, on which mysterious, brightly coloured birds and insects rest.

Mars’s formal art career began with a degree in visual arts from Université Rennes 2 in France, in 2006. She then worked as a cultural projects coordinator in Haiti at Fondation AfricAméricA. Her first exhibit was in 2009, at the Georges Liautaud Museum in Port-au-Prince, and since

then her work has been shown in Canada, France, Italy, and the United States. Since 2013 she has focused on her own artistic career, with recent work questioning the role of history, customs, and beliefs in building an individual’s identity. She says her work now also questions notions of patriotism and sovereignty in Haiti.

“What does Independence translate to for the youth of Haiti right now?” asks Tessa Mars. “Although we are fighters, many Haitians are fleeing from the island, fleeing from the first black republic”

Above left Grann A (2017, mixed media on canvas, 20.32 x 20.32 cm) Above right Grann U (2017, mixed media on canvas, 20.32 x 20.32 cm) Below left Papa (2017, mixed media on canvas, 20.32 x 15.24 cm)

Courtesy Tessa Mars

Below right Papa R (2017, mixed media on canvas, 20.32 x 15.24 cm) All from the series Those I Know, Those I Don’t Know: Dead Aunts and Uncles

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Courtesy Tessa Mars Courtesy Tessa Mars

yellow ochres, and Caribbean blues. She uses acrylic paints on canvas in a broadly figurative, flat, symbolic style, with nods to conventional volume techniques through light shading. Sometimes her paintings are made of contour shapes filled with flat, bright areas of contrasting colours or textures, rather like a jigsaw puzzle, or even a quilt stitched together from different elements. At other times, her images — generally of an individual on a huge blank or mono-coloured background — are cartoon-like and graphic, with Vodou, historical, and personal symbolism converging to declare an attitude or express a feeling or visual comment.

These paintings summon themes that range from the very personal need to feel beautiful in one’s own skin, whatever shape or colour that might

Detail and installation view of Dress Rehearsal (2017, mixed media on paper, dimensions variable)

She has benefitted from five short-term arts residencies in Aruba, Port of Spain, Quebec, Paris, and New York, which helped her develop her ideas.

Right now, her big project is working towards a November 2018 solo exhibition in Port-au-Prince, to showcase work made during foreign residencies.

In March and April 2018, Mars took part in a group show in Brooklyn, showing work she made during her New York residency. Among the pieces she showed there was her Dress Rehearsal, made of paper-doll versions of Tessalines in different poses, as she gets ready to wage war. Mars says this work celebrates the Battle of Vertières, the last major battle of the Second War of Haitian Independence, fought on 18 November, 1803, between formerly enslaved African people and Napoleon’s French forces. But Dress Rehearsal is also about bringing that heritage into one’s own home and daily life, as we wage our daily battles: “You have the duty of memory. It is a way of empowering yourself.”

Many of Mars’s paintings share vibrant reds,

These paintings summon themes that range from the very personal need to feel beautiful in one’s own skin, to ideas about courage and overcoming past or present trauma be, to ideas about courage and overcoming past or present trauma. “What interests me about Tessa,” says veteran artist and arts writer Christopher Cozier of Trinidad, “is her use of her body and self as image and sign/symbol to tell her own stories . . . I think many women in the region have done this in the past, like, for example, Irénée Shaw’s earlier work that caused so much consternation and anxiety in the early 1990s. I am interested in that struggle for women artists, since the time of Sybil Atteck [1911–1975] here in Trinidad.” Cozier asks: “What happens when women take back their representation on their own terms?”

For Tessa Mars, the answer is clear: art is her way to tell stories of female empowerment, as well as to question the status quo and creatively interrogate her world. n

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snapshot

As the 2018 FIFA World Cup opens in June — and despite recent international controversies with host Russia — football fans across the Caribbean will be tuned in. Except this year there’s no Caribbean team to root for — but there’ll certainly be Caribbean players, writes James Ferguson

Caribbean by proxy Photography by AGIF/Shutterstock.com

Born in Jamaica, Raheem Sterling played for England in the 2014 FIFA World Cup

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his year’s FIFA World Cup finals in Russia have almost everything: eight groups of four nations playing at twelve venues spread across the world’s largest country, the prospect of controversial video assistant referee technology, and, finally, a strong whiff of resurrected Cold War tensions. Only one thing, arguably, is missing — a standard bearer from the Caribbean.

But, in truth, it has been a while since the region had a representative at a final — in the shape of Trinidad and Tobago in 2006. And I suppose it’s also worth admitting that participation by Caribbean nations in World Cup finals has been rather patchy. Cuba was present in France eighty years ago, in 1938 (and received an 8–0 thrashing from Sweden), while Haiti made it to West Germany in 1974 and briefly led Italy by a goal to nil before losing 3–1 and then succumbing by 7–0 to Poland. It then took twenty-four years for Jamaica’s Reggae Boyz to qualify for France 1998, ending with a creditable

2–1 victory over Japan, followed by the Soca Warriors, who did well to hold Sweden to a goalless draw before losing twice.

But with no Caribbean nation present in Russia, there is certainly no shortage of Caribbean influence among those nations that have reached the final stages. This is largely a question of history, with the countries that once possessed colonies in the region or who maintain overseas territories there benefitting from a pool of Caribbean or Caribbean-descended footballing talent.

Take England, for example. Although, at the time of writing, the World Cup squad has not been officially announced, it’s quite probable that at least six of the final twenty-three-man group will be of Caribbean heritage. Manchester City’s Raheem Sterling is one of the few players to have been born there, originating from the tough Maverley district of Jamaica’s capital, Kingston, before moving with his mother to London, aged five. More common is the experience of a player such as Daniel Sturridge, currently on loan at West Bromwich Albion from Liverpool.

All four of his grandparents were Jamaicaborn, and came to the UK as part of the “Windrush generation” of Caribbean migrants who settled in the 1950s and 60s.

Family links remain strong, and Sturridge is a frequent visitor to Jamaica, where he has played an important part in funding an educational charity in Portmore.

The Jamaican football authorities have sometimes tried to recruit distant but eligible sons and grandsons into the national team, as was the case with Robbie Earle and Jason Euell in the 1998 World Cup finals. But all too often, the lure of playing for England is too strong, as when in 2015 left back Danny Rose declined such an invitation from the Jamaican Football Federation. He and Kyler Walker, also of Jamaican heritage, will probably have a part to play in Russia. But if Jamaica leads the way in boasting links to the current England squad — Theo Walcott, Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain, and Nathan Redmond are just a few more with such connections — other Caribbean nations can also lay claim to generational footballing pedigree. Liverpool’s Nathaniel Clyne, for instance, is of Grenadian ancestry, while Ruben Loftus-Cheek, whose father

migrated from Guyana, is part of a larger footballing family including half-brothers Carl and Leon Cort, who played for the Guyana national team.

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here would French football be, you might ask, without the input over the years of Caribbean-born or Caribbean-descended players such as Thierry Henry, Lilian Thuram, and William Gallas? Like England, France was a major protagonist in the transatlantic slave economy, but rather than granting its former colonies independence, it incorporated them into the French nation as overseas departments. Players born in Martinique, Guadeloupe, and Guyane, or with parents or grandparents from these territories, are hence French, many of the latter growing up in the gritty working-

If most of the Caribbean’s footballing diaspora is concentrated in Europe, there are still small and sometimes strange outposts nearer to home class suburbs that surround Paris. Anthony Martial, who plays for Manchester United, is of Guadeloupean descent and was born in the suburb of Massy, not far from Thierry Henry’s hometown of Les Ulis, where the local football club has turned out a succession of stars, including Henry, Martial, and Senegal-born Patrice Evra.

The current crop of French Caribbean footballers originates from all over the French mainland, with most of them now second-generation migrants from the overseas departments. Real Madrid centre-back Raphaël Varane was born in the northern city of Lille after his father Gaston left Martinique in search of work in 1976. Alexandre Lacazette, who currently plies his trade at Arsenal, is known by friends as “Gwada”, in tribute to the island of Guadeloupe, from which

his parents Alfred and Rose migrated to Lyon. But in a more recent development, players with French Caribbean roots are now facing increased competition from those descended from other parts of France’s former empire. Likely starters in Russia will be a formidable combination of Paul Pogba (Guinea), Kylian Mbappé (Cameroon), and N’Golo Kanté (Mali).

Holland’s unexpected failure to qualify means that spectators will miss out on that country’s plethora of Caribbeandescended talent. Of Surinamese background are Giorginio Wijnaldum (Liverpool) and Michel Vorm (Tottenham), while Leroy Fer (Swansea) has parents from Curaçao. They follow in an illustrious line of footballers from Suriname that includes names such as Edgar Davids, Frank Rijkaard, and Ruud Gullitt.

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f most of the Caribbean’s footballing diaspora is concentrated in Europe, there are still small and sometimes strange outposts nearer to home. Firsttime Central American qualifiers Panama have recently featured players with such non-Latin surnames as Harold Cummings, Armando Cooper, and Alfredo Stephens.

These are the descendants of Jamaicans who moved to the isthmus in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries to work on the construction of the Panama Canal. While many of the estimated 100,000 labourers returned home, some remained, and became integrated into Panamanian society. And next door, Costa Rica’s 2018 squad is likely to include ex-Arsenal forward Joel Campbell and Rodney Wallace, names that look back to the nineteenth-century migration of thousands of Jamaicans to work on a railway project.

So while there may be no Caribbean team in Russia this year, there are many players whose roots lie in the region, and its long history of movement and migration. Whoever wins the cup — and France is among the favourites — there will be much to interest viewers across the region, and many will of course support Brazil. But perhaps we should also not forget that it was Trinidad and Tobago’s 2–1 qualifying round victory that put the superpower United States out of the finals for the first time in thirty-two years . . . n

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backstory

The story of a city Stephen Stuempfle’s connection to Port of Spain began with a chance childhood encounter with a touring steelband. Now, decades later, the US scholar has published an ambitious and highly readable account of Trinidad and Tobago’s capital from the late nineteenth century to Independence.

As Judy Raymond learns, Stuempfle sees Port of Spain as a cultural hotbed full of potential 44

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n the twilight, wild deer tiptoe between the trees outside Stephen Stuempfle’s suburban home in Bloomington, not far from the sprawling, equally leafy campus of the University of Indiana, where he works as an ethnomusicologist.

But in his head, Stuempfle walks the streets of Port of Spain. He’s written a book about the city, published in April by the University of the West Indies Press: Port of Spain: The Construction of a Caribbean City, 1888–1962. Almost five hundred pages long, it covers the period from Trinidad’s cocoa boom to Independence, an era that stretched, he explains, from “the height of British power at the turn of the twentieth century through decolonisation.” Thus Port of Spain’s evolution into a modern capital city “was interrelated, both practically and symbolically, with the building of a society and a new nation-state.”

Though Stuempfle is an academic — and he does include some theorising about cities and development — this book is

courtesy stephen stuempfle

courtesy historymiami museum/stephen stuempfle

Eastern downtown Port of Spain from the Laventille Hills, in the cocoa boom era. Prince Street leads to Brunswick (later renamed Woodford) Square, with Trinity Cathedral to the left. Postcard published

by G.G. Belgrave

Stuempfle knows Port of Spain well: he lived in Calcutta Street, in the city’s western St James district, from 1987, while researching his PhD thesis on steelpan hugely readable. It’s a compilation of deliciously detailed portraits of the people, areas, buildings, and events that featured in Port of Spain’s growth and change in that period, such as the American army taking over King George V Park as a camp in the Second World War, and the campaign promoting the ultramodern building materials (reinforced concrete, aluminium

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courtesy Alma Jordan Library, University of the West Indies/stephen stuempfle

Many of the buildings Stuempfle writes about have been torn down or merely ignored to the point where they collapse from sheer neglect; his book is, inadvertently, a memorial to many

louvres, and tiled floors!) of Diamond Vale to lure house-buyers to this spanking-new dormitory suburb. All these vivid minutiae are set against the social and political events of the day that led to them.

Stuempfle records, for instance, how engaged the people of Port of Spain were with plans for a war memorial, eventually erected in 1924. First came a debate — from 1916 — over placing it downtown on Broadway or uptown in the “Little Savannah” (the latter won out; it’s now Memorial Park). Then there were squabbles over whether a black sentry (from the West India Regiment) or white (from the Merchants’ and Planters’ Above Marine (later Independence) Square at Frederick Street, before 1895. Postcard published

by Muir, Marshall and Company Right Plan of barrack yards inside the block of Queen, Charlotte, and George Streets, below the Eastern Market. Detail from sheet eight of Insurance Plan of Port of Spain, Trinidad, by Chas. E. Goad

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Contingent) should be posted at a more prominent corner for the unveiling (the latter almost refused to turn up at all if not given pride of place, but eventually conceded). Later there was ardent discussion of whether citizens should salute or lift their hats as they passed: the inhabitants, of all classes, were enormously proud of the memorial.

Stuempfle resurrects the forgotten career of architect Herbert Brinsley, who changed the city as dramatically as George Brown before him and Colin Laird afterwards. Brinsley, who flourished in the 1930s, designed the Globe Cinema, a new hall for Bishop Anstey High School, the Neal and Massy Garage, the Alston Building, the Treasury Building, the Electricity Board’s transfer station at Frederick and Park Streets, and many houses. The

stories of Queen’s Hall, the city’s cinemas, the Art Deco renovation of the Queen’s Park Hotel, the deep-water harbour, the city corporation’s 1914 silver jubilee celebrations — Stuempfle tells all with a zeal that makes them fascinating.

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courtesy Digital Library of the Caribbean/stephen stuempfle

e himself knows Port of Spain well: he lived in Calcutta Street, in the city’s western St James district, from 1987, while researching his PhD thesis on steelpan. He enjoyed the liveliness of the neighbourhood, “from the late-night food on the Western Main Road to the annual observance of Hosay.” He got around by taxi, careful to learn the protocols: “I worked hard to gain competence as a taxi passenger: learning the names of spots along the road, knowing when to request a drop (not too soon, not too late), and understanding when to proffer payment (depending on the size of your bill and other factors).” He also met his future wife, Denise, during his eighteen months in Trinidad, and though they live in the US, they return regularly to visit family and friends.

Stuempfle’s first, indirect encounter with Trinidad came much earlier, through steelpan: when he was about ten, Tripoli came to perform in his home town of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. Though not particularly musically talented himself, he was fascinated. He later began visiting Brooklyn for the Labour Day Carnival, did a course in the folklore department of the University of Pennsylvania that included Caribbean music, and discovered that Tobagonian folklorist and anthropologist J.D. Elder had done his doctorate on Trinidadian music there.

Stuempfle himself studied the social dynamics and symbolism of pan; a version of his doctoral thesis was published in 1995 as The Steelband Movement: The Forging of a National Art in Trinidad and Tobago. In what reads now like a harbinger of this new

book, it begins with an affectionate description of Laventille Hill and its view over the city, in the days when Desperadoes’ panyard was still perched near the summit, and the panmen — once regarded as badjohns themselves — hadn’t yet fled their own territory for fear of gang-related crime.

That book is more academic than this one, though Stuempfle was a curator at the Historical Museum of Southern Florida in Miami for over a decade, and has been at the University of Indiana since 2008: it’s the headquarters of the Society for Ethnomusicology, of which he is executive director.

But Port of Spain, though scholarly, is a labour of love.

Stuempfle began researching it (in his own time and at his own expense) in 2005. At that time, the city was changing rapidly, and “like many people, I was astonished by the disappearance of large portions of the built environment. I then tried to figure out how to write a book that would capture something of the city’s unique geography, architecture, and way of life.”

During his earlier sojourn in Trinidad, Stuempfle had spent time in panyards, gone to steelband events, and interviewed panmen. The years of work on this book entailed walking the city streets taking photos, as well as documentary research at the National Archives, the University of the West Indies, and the National Library. Military sources at the US National Archives and the New York Public Library enriched his account of how the Americans commandeered large chunks of the capital, as well as the better-remembered airbases in northeast Trinidad and the naval base at the northwestern peninsula of Chaguaramas.

He draws extensively, too, on local newspapers and on fiction

by V.S. Naipaul, Samuel Selvon, and Ralph de Boissière, as well as nineteenth-century visitors such as Anthony Trollope and Charles Kingsley.

Stuempfle began writing in 2012, making time for this private passion alongside his job on campus. His next project is on an even grander scale: “a study of general patterns in Trinidad’s basic landscapes, including forests, plantations, villages, and towns,” and examining, as he did with the capital city, how its people regarded and shaped their environments during the twentieth century.

The most surprising part of his research, he says, was the “rhetoric of progress . . . shared by people of very different socioeconomic backgrounds and political views. Many people believed they could improve themselves in the city and also improve the city itself,” he found. “There was a strong sense of civic consciousness and pride.”

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courtesy Alma Jordan Library, University of the West Indies/ stephen stuempfle

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Above Port of Spain’s New City Hall, completed 1961. Postcard published by H.O. Thomas Below Queen’s Park Hotel, with the Art Deco central addition completed 1939. Postcard published by Y. De Lima & Co.

Stuempfle’s own favourite area is Belmont, in the nineteenth century the home of free Africans, and later a respectable working-class district

courtesy stephen stuempfle

hat optimism is also the most surprising thing about the book. Although not a native, Stuempfle shares much of its past inhabitants’ feeling about the city — probably more than many of those who live or work in it now, or the conservationists close to despair over successive governments’ indifference to the city’s and the country’s built heritage. Many of the buildings Stuempfle writes about have been torn down or merely ignored to the point where they collapse from sheer neglect; his book is, inadvertently, a memorial to many. Yet he still sees Port of Spain as “a city of extraordinary cultural vitality,” and writes of it with an undaunted, infectious enthusiasm.

His own favourite area is Belmont, in the nineteenth century the home of free Africans, and later a respectable working-class district. Stuempfle admires “its long history of communitybuilding and its dense landscape of houses and narrow streets, which helps foster social interaction. Also, my wife grew up there during the 1950s and 1960s, and I love listening to her stories about her home on Erthig Road, the neighbourhood families, the local shops, and the Carnival masquerades.”

He also “greatly appreciates” the Botanic Gardens, established over two hundred years ago by Governor Sir Ralph Woodford, once a source of great pride, and even now quietly

cherished. “The gardens’ botanists and caretakers do excellent work,” he says — perhaps overstating the case a little — and adding, significantly, “the grounds remain the quietest place in Port of Spain.”

Stuempf le retains his touching faith in the city’s people and the theory that, sometimes consciously, sometimes not, they shaped Port of Spain to suit their needs and desires.

That view of its history also extends to its future. His own love of the city, he says, “continues to deepen the more I

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learn about it,” although he understands why living in it year-round can be stressful (he doesn’t list the reasons, such as crime, potholes, lack of parking space, traffic, inadequate drainage, an erratic water supply . . . the list can seem endless). Stuempf le even believes Port of Spain’s future is brighter than its past.

“The goodwill and resourcefulness of the city’s inhabitants,” he says, “will eventually prevail over the violence and destructiveness.” n

Oscar C. Williams/shutterstock.com

ARRIVE

Round Trip 50 Love is in the air

Neighbourhood 58 Kralendijk, Bonaire

Personal Tour 60

“Just drive all around

the island�

Grenada, the Spice Island, is increasingly famous for its cocoa and chocolate, too

round trip

Love is in the air A wedding on the beach, an island honeymoon — for many people, they sound like a dream. But in the Caribbean, it’s a dream that easily comes true

Historic Fort King George overlooking Scarborough in Tobago makes a regal setting for any couple’s wedding photos

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relatestudios.com

warm breeze blows off the sea, and the brilliant blue water is fringed by gently crashing waves.

Barefoot, sand between your toes, you gaze into the eyes of your beloved, and say “I do.”

Your friends and family cheer, the rum punch starts to flow, and you dance the night away under a canopy of tropical stars.

It may sound too good to be true, but here in the Caribbean, it’s not. Wedding tourism is growing across the islands, and sometimes locals also want the fullblown romantic experience of reciting their vows against the backdrop of the glittering Caribbean Sea. Luckily, there’s any number of hotels and resorts that can throw you a dream wedding, professional planners who can create your own unique special day, designers to provide dresses and suits — or bikinis and trunks, if you take a less formal route — and caterers to keep you fed and watered, island style.

Then when the big day — and the big night! — are over, you have your pick of honeymoon experiences. Maybe you want to explore a historic city full of music and art, or get out into nature, or snuggle into an island cruise. Or maybe you just want to lock yourself away in your cabana, answering the door only for room service. There are so many ways to make your romantic dream come true.

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Barbados Tourism Marketing Inc/ visitbarbados.org

Seventeenth-century St Nicholas Abbey in Barbados is a storybook backdrop for an unexpected proposal

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Kason Stephenson/Kase Studios

That diamond sparkles even brighter under the golden Jamaican sun. Syrece Francis and her bridesmaids Monique Donaldson, Keisha Amato, and Marsha-Lee Hutchinson share the excitement in Kingston’s Hope Gardens

JoshoJosho /shutterstock.com

A candlelit dinner for two, on the beach in Antigua — no better way to start the honeymoon

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IVASHstudio /shutterstock.com

Most Caribbean countries welcome wedding tourists, but as you plan your big day, make sure you investigate the formal requirements to be legally wed, which vary from country to country.

Your travel agent or the local tourist board should be able to provide all the information you need, including necessary documents. n

The historic palaces of Old Havana, alive with the sound of Cuban music, are even more exciting to explore with the right company

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Paulo MIguel costa/shutterstock.com

neighbourhood

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Kralendijk, Bonaire Built around a seventeenth-century fort, Bonaire’s capital is as quiet as it is colourful, and a gateway for visitors drawn to the island’s extraordinary dive sites Streetscape With a population of just over three thousand and few buildings over two storeys tall, Kralendijk has an atmosphere some call sleepy, others call laidback. The downtown area — “Playa,” to most locals — is a short stretch of often brightly painted buildings with shops and offices. On the seafront, Wilheminaplein — Wilhemina Square, named for the former Dutch queen — looks over the turquoise waters of the harbour, and

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Saturday excursion is also the location of a small vegetable market with austere columns and arches.

The town lighthouse and the Catholic church, St Bernard’s, are painted the same eye-catching orange. Just beside the church, the Terramar Museum gives a concise overview of Bonaire’s history, including archaeological artefacts.

Saturday is market day in many parts of the Caribbean, and for Bonaireans that means heading to the small inland town of Rincon, about seven miles north of Kralendijk (above left). The weekly market is a cornucopia of fruits and vegetables, local delicacies and crafts, flowers and garden plants, and much more.

When you’re done shopping, explore the town, Bonaire’s oldest surviving settlement (founded in the sixteenth century).

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jung hsuan/shutterstock.com

Take the plunge

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Look up An absence of smoke-spewing heavy industry and relatively little light pollution mean Bonaire has unusually clear night skies — so much so that locals talk about their “Sky Park,” the nightly overhead display of heavenly bodies. The undeveloped eastern side of the island is the best place for stargazing, and Bonaire’s location near the equator means that, depending on the time of year, you can see both Northern and Southern Hemisphere stars in a single night. So walk with your star chart — or the digital equivalent on your smartphone.

A pinch of salt The perfect Bonaire souvenir? Locally produced sea salt, from the salt pans on the coast south of Kralendijk (above). You can buy it coarse or finely ground, in jars, pouches or boxes — and if you’re too useless in the kitchen even to boil water, you can also find sea salt–infused bath and body products, too. Long after your visit, you can fill your tub at home and pretend you’re soaking in Bonaire’s crystal waters.

History Inhabited since about 1,000 CE by the indigenous Caiquetios — whose intriguing petroglyphs and rock paintings are still to be found in caves around the island — Bonaire was first visited by the Spanish in 1499. Seizing the island in 1636, Dutch settlers built Fort Oranje to protect their new colony, and the town of Kralendijk — “coral dyke” — grew up around it. For generations, the harvesting of sea salt was the leading industry, with backbreaking labour provided by enslaved Africans, under grim conditions, until Emancipation in 1862.

During the Second Word War, Bonaire was the location of a US air base and internment camp for Germans, and many locals worked as sailors on board oil tankers. A war memorial in Kralendijk honours those who lost their lives in U-boat attacks. After the war, like many other Caribbean islands, Bonaire turned towards tourism, with a special focus on diving.

gail johnson/shutterstock.com

The pristine waters surrounding the island — sometimes described as ginclear — and its coral reefs teeming with marine species, heavily protected since the early 1970s, make Bonaire one of the world’s top dive sites, on every scuba enthusiast’s bucket list. Numerous dive shops in Kralendijk offer equipment, lessons, and tours — and, of course, snorkelling is a good option for those who prefer to stick to the surface. There are amazing dive experiences to be had even within sight of the Kralendijk waterfront.

And if you’re a sociable diver, there’s no better time to get wet than during the annual Bonaire Dive Week, running from 26 May to 2 June this year, with a nonstop programme of activities in and out of the water.

Co-ordinates 12.1º N 68.25º W Sea level

BONAIRE

Kralendijk

Caribbean Airlines operates daily flights to and from its headquarters at Piarco International Airport in Trinidad, with connections on other airlines to Flamingo International Airport in Bonaire WWW.CARIBBEAN-AIRLINES.COM

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personal tour

“Just drive all around the island”

charles hossle, courtesy suelin low chew tung

Artist Suelin Low Chew Tung offers a tour of her home island, Grenada, from beaches to hiking to the best place to buy local chocolate

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orn and bred in Trinidad, artist and writer Suelin Low Chew Tung moved to Grenada in 1988, and has become a mover and shaker in the art scene of her adopted home.

As a Caribbean person of mixed heritage — Chinese, African, and Iberian — Low Chew Tung makes artworks that revolve around questions of identity,

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culture, history, and tradition, and take the form of mixed media painting, drawings, and collages. She also illustrates children’s books.

A lover of travel, Low Chew Tung has participated in artist’s residencies all over the world, where she has successfully introduced Grenadian art and culture to broader audiences. One particular trip proved life-changing: in 2013, on a residency in Haiti, Low Chew Tung met the Haitian artist Jean Renel Pierre Louis (a.k.a. Prensnelo). Inspired to start her own residency programme in Grenada, Low Chew Tung invited Prensnelo, who ended up extending his stay — and the pair were married in July 2014.

Together they now run San Souci Arts Studio (SSAS), which provides learning space, a gallery, and self-directed artists’ residencies, ranging in length from two weeks to a month. These residencies help promote transnational creative exchanges, and allow visiting artists time to undertake new work in visual arts and writing.

In her spare time, Low Chew Tung attempts to grow pakchoi, and enjoys getting together with her family (all thirty of them) for marathon lunches.

Here’s her personal tour of Grenada.

Start with a swim Wilmar Photography/Alamy

“I prefer to swim at Morne Rouge — the smaller bay is close to the world-famous Grand Anse, but I prefer its serenity for recharging.

“Other beaches I love: La Sagesse, with its black sand, and Paradise Beach in Carriacou.”

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courtesy art fabrik

Treat yourself “The best place to buy a special Grenadian gift is Art Fabrik on Young Street, in St George’s. Or, for chocoholics, there’s the Grenada House of Chocolate across the street.

“To see and buy contemporary art, Art Upstairs Gallery, the Susan Mains Gallery, and the Grenada Arts Council all offer shows and events. And of course my studio, the Sans Souci Arts Studio, is where people can see and buy my own work.”

Adventure time

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meagan marchant/shutterstock.com

“For a day-trip adventure, I recommend hashing with the Hash House Harriers on Saturdays. It’s a cross-country run-walk that offers many opportunities for photos of flora, fauna, hidden treasures, and far-flung places, as well of people falling into rivers and streams — and, at the end of the course, drinking your fill of beer at a village rumshop. I’ve done this trek three times!

“For the not-so-athletic: a tour of our three or four chocolate factories, and the few ad hoc parish museums, including the one at the Westerhall rum distillery — with tastings!”

Hungry yet?

credit

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“For a simple lunch, try the special soup from Chopstix in Grand Anse. Belmont Estate does a fantastic buffet, and Good Food in Grenville makes a great take-away oil down.

“My favourites for a sumptuous dinner: Le Phare Bleu, Le Chateau, and Coconut Beach restaurants.”

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Time to unwind “When I had a car, my favourite way to de-stress was to just drive all around the island, stopping to take photos, and buy a drink from the area rumshop — lots of those! I found that refreshed my spirit and helped me to reconnect with my island.

“These days I take the local bus to Grand Etang Forest Reserve, to sit by the lake or walk in the rainforest, then have tea with my sister, who lives nearby. She raises chickens, rabbits, and goats, while her husband makes artisanal bread baked in a wood-burning oven that they both designed and built.

“When I’m really in need of a total break, I take the ferry to Carriacou.” n

Caribbean Airlines operates daily flights to Maurice Bishop International Airport in Grenada, with connections to other destinations in the Caribbean and North America

We can make your dreams of owning a home in Grenada a Reality.

T. +1 473 440 5227 M. +1 473 415 5228 E. paula@c21grenada.com C21GRENADA.COM

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Grand Anse, St. George, Grenada

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ENGAGE

Plugin 66 Tech to the people

Discover 68 Uncovering a kingdom

This Day 70 On Sin city

The palace of Sans-Souci in Haiti, one of the Caribbean’s most significant historical sites

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Tech to the people

Create Caribbean, a digital humanities project based in Dominica, works to make tech tools for education and research available to all. When Hurricane Maria hit in September 2017, the project lost its headquarters and equipment — but with many helping hands, founder Schuyler Esprit is putting the pieces back together.

Lisa Allen-Agostini reports Photograph courtesy Schuyler Esprit

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igital humanities are a blossoming field in the Caribbean. In projects like Anthurium, an open-access online Caribbean studies journal, and sx archipelagos, a publishing, review, and scholarship project of the print journal Small Axe, scholars have been steadily increasing their use of technology in the study and dissemination of literature, art, history, and other areas in the humanities.

In Dominica, for example, Create Caribbean has been doing its part to use tech to further goals in teaching and cultural preservation. Dr Schuyler Esprit

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founded the NGO at Dominica State College, and since 2014 it has been a part of the educational landscape in her home island and the wider region.

Esprit, who holds a PhD in English literature from a US university, baffled her family and friends when she walked away f rom her promising teaching career in Washington, DC, to return to her homeland after thirteen years away.

But the work she’s managed to do in the intervening years has converted them — as well as ordinary Dominicans, and the government, too.

Create Caribbean’s projects include developing apps, games, and technological solutions to share research and educational

work. Take, for example, the multimedia Dominica History web project. It targets users who are in primary and secondary school, telling stories of Dominica’s heritage with colourful digital artwork and tools like an interactive timeline. There’s also Create and Code, a camp to teach children between ages seven and sixteen how to write code, do digital research, and use the Internet responsibly. Another project is Carisealand, a collaboration with Grenadabased writer Oonya Kempadoo, which seeks to bring together research on the Caribbean environment and preservation.

Create Ca r ibbea n a lso prov ides research support to the public (for a fee), and to Dominica State College students, faculty, and staff (for free), plus grantwriting, documentation, copywriting, web development, and design as part of the services it offers to the public. And all this work is done with interns, who are active, highly visible team members.

Esprit teaches digital humanities research at Dominica State College, where Create Caribbean is housed, and where she is also registrar and dean of academic affairs. She says Create Caribbean has also been drawing community support, particularly from her alma mater, Convent High School.

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hen September 2017 brought an immense setback, as Hurricane Maria struck Dominica, damaging or destroying ninety-five per cent of the island’s buildings, including the Create Caribbean office. It also destroyed equipment Esprit had paid for out of her own pocket — the organisation is largely self-funded. Create Caribbean suffered US$30,000 in damage, all told.

“When Maria happened and our building got severely damaged,” Esprit recalls, “Convent High School opened their doors to me and the Create team, and allowed me to spend time with the students, getting [us] back on our feet psychologically and emotionally, and to motivate us to get back to our work as part of the recovery and rebuilding process. We used space at the school for about six consecutive weeks after

the storm for our basic operations, and we continue to use their space for our programming and showcasing of our projects.”

Students feel the love, Esprit explains.

“The relationship between Create Caribbean and that school is so strong that one of my current research interns began her journey to the programme by meeting me in the hallway during her very first week of school at Dominica State Col-

research process, and the presentation.

She felt empowered that she could be on that stage presenting a project one day.”

The result? “She now does much of our animation work at Create Caribbean.”

Esprit’s family and friends are over the shock, and fully supportive of her mission now. “Once I knew what Create Caribbean was, what it would look like and how it would work, they were right on board.

All of Create Caribbean’s work is done with interns, who are active, highly visible team members lege, and asking to become part of what we do. I asked her what she knew about us. Although she was not sure exactly what digital humanities was or how we tackle research, she was excited by her experience of seeing the work presented when she was a student in our audience at high school. She was especially fascinated by the way the student interns had full control of their content, design,

Both my parents were actively involved.

My father built furniture and volunteered as tour guide on our history/nature hikes, my mother cooked for our Create and Code camps, my aunts with whom I was raised spent a lot of money ensuring that I had many of the material resources I needed to make this work, including hosting a group of seven at their home in New York City for our college tour and culture exchange trip

Create Caribbean’s comprehensive web site will include a “Support Us” page by the time this article is in print. Following Hurricane Maria, they need to replace all their furniture and equipment. The organisation welcomes donations of cash and in kind. To give or to find out more about its work, visit createcaribbean.org.

in 2016. My siblings are moral support of the best kind, and my sisters have provided material and emotional support as I go through the growing pains.”

She adds, “At no time has anyone in my family questioned my desire to study literature, my desire to work for a cause like cultural preservation, that is so important and passionate to me, or my choice to live and work in the Caribbean, even when they were worried and afraid.

And I am immensely grateful for a family that has proven it’s possible to break the Caribbean stereotype by which parents measure their children’s success — doctor, lawyer, businessman.” n

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discover

Uncovering a kingdom The ruined palace of Sans-Souci near Haiti’s north coast is one of the Caribbean’s most momentous historical sites — and surprisingly little is known about life there under King Henri Christophe in the early nineteenth century. But now a multinational team of archaeologists are using high-tech tools to completely resurvey the site, and potentially rewrite a chapter of Haitian history. Erline Andrews finds out more Image courtesy Katie Simon, Centre for Advanced Spatial Technology, University of Arkansas

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aiti may have the most intriguing history of all the Caribbean islands.

Evidence of this is in the ruins of lavish architecture — a palace and a fortress — strewn across the landscape of its far north, near the city of Cap-Haïtien.

T he Sans-Souci palace stretches along rolling hills above the town of

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Milot. It’s one of nine palaces built by Henri Christophe, the second of three post-Revolution Haitian monarchs in the nineteenth century, who fought alongside Haitian liberator Toussaint L’Ouverture before establishing the State of Haiti in the north after the country was split by civil war. (The Republic of Haiti in the south was governed by his nemesis Alexandre Pétion.)

Christophe — or Henri I, as he renamed himself — set up a feudal system with its own nobility, and amassed immense wealth for himself and his kingdom, before a stroke weakened his ability to maintain his iron-fist control and he committed suicide in 1820.

Dur ing Chr istophe’s shor t reign, Sans-Souci was the site of elaborate gardens decorated with opulent fountains and Grecian statues, magnificent balls attended by splendidly dressed people, wide and winding staircases, expansive terraces, ornate furnishings, a large library with tens of thousands of books (even though it’s said that Christophe was illiterate), a prince’s residence, a network of administrative buildings, stables, a hospital, and a prison. They were all the elements one would have seen in the royal palaces of Europe. But most of the residents of Sans-Souci were black.

Muc h h a s b e e n w r it t e n a b o u t Christophe and post-revolutionary Haiti.

He was the subject of the first play written

by Derek Walcott. But many facts remain disputed, and there’s still a lot to learn.

“It’s a surprisingly poorly understood period of Haiti’s history,” says Professor J. Cameron Monroe of the University of California, Santa Cruz. “I say surprising because it’s the moment right after the Revolution — the most momentous event in the history of the Western hemisphere.”

Monroe is leading a team of archaeologists who are currently working to add to the world’s knowledge about that pivotal period in the first nation to be governed by the formerly enslaved. “I’m not the only person who’s interested in the kingdom of Haiti right now,” he says. “There are many historians who are starting to really comb through the archives for evidence that people have ignored for quite some time.”

The work has more than academic importance. Sans-Souci and another of Christophe’s edifices, the imposing Citadelle — located atop the mountain behind the palace and accessible by hiking or horseback — were designated UNESCO World Heritage sites in 1982, and are key parts of plans to develop the country’s tourism.

Monroe — who specialises in West Africa and the African diaspora around the colonial period — was looking for a new project after wrapping up years of work on the Dahomey kingdom in Benin, and pitched a project on Sans-Souci to Haitian authorities.

“I said, I don’t do tourism.

That’s not my skill set. But what I can do is help you understand the site,” he explains. “I can go in and map the site and document the site, and we can excavate in targeted places. That would give you a sense of what’s there — so, for example, if you want to develop the site, if you want to put in the ticket booth, if you want to put in toilets for tourists, [you’ll know] where to dig or not to dig.”

to wear these elaborate European-style military uniforms and styles of dress,” says Monroe, explaining one seeming contraction in Christophe’s behaviour.

“He’s bringing European music into his court. He really is sending the message to everybody around the Atlantic world that Haiti is a modern nation state on par with all of its contemporaries.

“But when nobody’s looking,” Monroe adds, “he’s eating Afro-Caribbean cuisine. They’re cooking food in clay pots and they’re cooking the kinds of food that people of Afro-Caribbean heritage would immediately identify as familiar.”

The team’s work so far — building on archaeological surveys done in the 1980s

by Haiti’s Institute for Protection of the National Patrimony — has also uncovered different layers of construction, which suggest parts of the palace were built, broken down, and rebuilt. “The

have to dig so much. It’s a very costeffective way of going to a site, scanning it for subsurface remains, and then you can be very targeted in where you excavate. Otherwise, you sort of have to dig all over the place to make sure there’s nothing there.”

T he idea of a k i ngdom i n t he Caribbean may now seem strange and egomaniacal, but at the time it was what formerly enslaved Haitians were most familiar with, both from observing their past European masters and from how societies had been organised in Africa.

“At the time, republics were kind of a weird idea. There were kingdoms everywhere!” says Monroe. “Napoleon was an emperor. We don’t turn our noses up at Napoleon for choosing to be an emperor and for getting rid of the French Republic.”

Christophe’s suicide was the end of his monarchy, and the beginning of the end of the great structures he built. The palace was ransacked, parts of it burned and otherwise destroyed, tiles and other decorative pieces of architecture carted off. An earthquake in 1842 inflicted even more damage. Monroe found that for all Christophe’s obsession with buildings, he didn’t build them to withstand strong quakes. “One of the biggest problems we found is the foundations are incredibly shallow.

“We were excavating one room — it was a two-storey building, probably twenty feet high — and the foundation went down about five centimetres,” Monroe says. “It was literally just built on top of a pile of rubble that was used to flatten the surface, and then they built a tiny, little foundation and put massive walls on top of that. So an earthquake hits that and it’s just going to jiggle like jello and the whole thing falls over.”

This made the building vulnerable then — and now. The destruction of the magnificent National Palace, the president’s residence in Port-au-Prince, by the 2010 earthquake spurred an interest in protecting the country’s monuments that helped make Monroe’s efforts welcome.

“I’m terrified what would happen if Cap-Haïtien gets struck by an earthquake like the one in Port-au-Prince,” he says.

“The site might not exist in ten years.

That’s a worry of mine.” n

Much has been written about Henri Christophe and postrevolutionary Haiti. But many facts remain disputed, and there’s still a lot to learn

S

ince 2015, Monroe’s team of around six — made up of Americans and Haitians— has been working through funding from US research grants.

It was important to him, Monroe says, that he didn’t look like one of the many opportunists who descended on the country after the 2010 earthquake to “make a buck.”

The team have collected more than fourteen thousand artefact fragments and around 1,300 animal bone fragments, pieces of an archaeological puzzle that, once analysed, will throw light on the lives of Christophe and his subjects.

“He’s building this European-style palace and he’s encouraging everybody

impression I get is that this is a man who could not stop building, and who could not be satisfied with anything,” Monroe says of Christophe. “He built something, changed his mind, built over it, and changed his mind again. That impresses me — the fact that he’s able to coordinate enough labour and enough resources to invest in this massive effort.”

In additional to traditional excavation, Monroe and his team, in collaboration with experts from the University of Arkansas, have used technology that facilitates “non-invasive” archaeology — that is, no excavating. It’s called ground penetrating radar, or GPR. “It sends a high-density radar wave into the earth, and then if you find any walls or foundations or trash pits or floors — anything archaeological — under the surface, it bounces back. Then you can process that radar data into a map that shows you anomalies across the site,” Monroe explains.

“We use that strategy so that we don’t

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on this day

Sin city Five hundred years ago, in 1518, Spanish colonisers in Jamaica established a settlement on the sand spit protecting Kingston Harbour — and thus began the story of Port Royal, “the Sodom of the New World.” James Ferguson recalls its dramatic history Illustration by Rohan Mitchell

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forty-minute drive or ferry ride takes you from Jamaica’s hectic capital of Kingston to a very different “city.” This is Port Royal, today a sleepy and slightly scruffy fishing village, where half-ruined brick-built forts and warehouses stand among modest homes and wharves for vessels both humble and luxurious. It is situated on the tip of the nine-mile sand spit known as the Palisadoes, which offers natural protection to Kingston’s harbour by almost entirely closing it off from the Caribbean Sea. It is this strategic position, controlling access to the city and its port, that has determined Port Royal’s history as a naval base and pirates’ lair, and it is its geological situation on a narrow sandbar that determined its catastrophic demise.

Indigenous Taino communities had established fishing settlements on what they called Caguay or Caguaya from time immemorial, but with the arrival of Christopher Columbus in 1494 and ensuing Spanish colonisation, they were virtually extinct within two centuries. The Spanish recognised that the Palisadoes was an ideal location for repairing and cleaning boats’ hulls (a process known as careening), and so in 1518 — precisely five hundred years ago — the site of presentday Port Royal was officially founded as Cayo de Carena, probably little more than a cluster of timber warehouses.

Spain’s colonial plans for Jamaica were distinctly unambitious, especially

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when none of the hoped-for gold was to be found. There was some agriculture and small-scale African slavery was introduced, but the island’s main role was as a refitting and supply base for the more lucrative colonies on the South American mainland. It was hence no great surprise that the small Spanish population put up scant resistance to an English invasion in May 1655, led by General Robert Venables, whose earlier attack on more populous Spanish Santo Domingo had been easily repulsed. Jamaica was second

later six forts were in place to defend the town from Spanish reprisals and French invasion. From a population of 740 in 1662, the town had expanded to house some seven thousand people, including 2,500 slaves. According to UNESCO: Centred on the slave trade as well as export of sugar and raw materials, Port Royal became the mercantile hub of the Caribbean and the most economically important English port in the Americas.

The city boasted merchants, artisans,

State-sponsored criminality fuelled the spectacular rise of Port Royal, attracting merchants and conmen as well as pirates from many nations best within the terms of Oliver Cromwell’s land-grabbing “Western Design,” but it gave the English an important toehold in the New World, and in 1670 the Treaty of Madrid ceded the island to England.

The arrival of the English rapidly and dramatically changed the face of the tiny Spanish settlement on the sand spit. At first, they anglicised its Taino name to Cagway (there is still a Cagway Street), but soon after Cromwell’s death in 1658 it was renamed Port Royal. By 1659, there were reportedly about two hundred shops, houses, and warehouses built around a central fort, and thirty years

t r ade s me n, c aptain s , s la ve s , and notorious pirates who all participated in an expansive business network. It had a governor’s house, king’s house (court of chancery), four churches, and a cathedral.

Effectively the capital of Jamaica (Kingston was still open countryside), Port Royal also enjoyed a less than salubrious reputation. This was largely because the town’s authorities actively encouraged privateers or buccaneers to operate from the protected port, attacking and looting Spanish, French, or

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Dutch ships. Piracy was hence officially sanctioned by England, and the booty was shared between the Crown and the town’s resident buccaneers. One notorious pirate, Henry Morgan, led successful assaults on Spanish settlements such as Portobello on the mainland, returning with huge amounts of money and valuables. He was rewarded by being made lieutenant governor of Jamaica.

State-sponsored criminality fuelled the spectacular r ise of Port Royal, attracting merchants and conmen as well as pirates from many nations.

Writing in 1682, Francis Hanson was amazed at the wealth he observed: “bars and cakes of Gold, wedges and pigs of Silver, Pistoles, Pieces of Eight and several other Coyns of both Mettles, with store of wrought Plate, Jewels, rich Pearl Necklaces and of Pearl unsorted or undrill’d several Bushels . . .” Needless to say, such ostentatious opulence did little to promote good behaviour, and the town became a byword for immorality

and decadence, “the Sodom of the New World,” filled with cutthroats and prostitutes. A disapproving historian, Charles Leslie, noted of the privateers: Wine and women drained their wealth to such a degree that . . . some of them became reduced to beggary. They have been known to spend 2 or 3,000 pieces of eight in one night; and one gave a strumpet 500 to see her naked. They used to buy a pipe of wine, place it in the street, and oblige everyone that passed to drink.

With the appointment of Henry Morgan as lieutenant governor, pirate culture ironically began to decline, and antipiracy legislation was harshly enforced with the hangings of Calico Jack and others. The slave trade became increasingly important as privateering diminished, while the arrival of facilities for the Royal Navy suggested that Port Royal was facing a very different future.

ature, it seemed, had other ideas.

On 7 June, 1672, a massive earthquake hit the whole of Jamaica, causing extensive damage and loss of life. But Port Royal, on its sand spit, was particularly vulnerable, as the quake was followed by a violent tsunami which swept through the town. The heavy brick buildings whose foundations stood on sand often collapsed as large parts of the Palisadoes were washed away.

In what scientists call liquefaction, the ground became a saturated quicksand, as a survivor reported: “I saw the earth open and swallow a multitude of people; and the sea mounting in upon us over the fortification.” At least three thousand people perished immediately, with perhaps as many again in ensuing epidemics. Only a third of the town remained unsubmerged.

Many believed that divine retribution had been visited on the “wickedest city on earth.” Whatever the case, the disaster was certainly exacerbated by an unstable geological situation, overcrowding, and inappropriate architecture. Port Royal was quite literally built on shifting sands. As a result, the focus of urban development shifted to the more solid site of Kingston, founded that year as a tented camp for homeless survivors. By 1716, it was the largest town in Jamaica, and in 1872 it became the island’s capital.

Attempts to rebuild Port Royal were obstructed by fire, hurricanes, and cholera. The Royal Navy, however, viewed the site as strategically important, and a dockyard, hospital, and warehouses were built in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. But the end came on 14 January, 1907, with another earthquake, which shattered the remaining buildings, shaking one — the so-called Giddy House — into a bizarre tilted posture.

Today, half a millennium after its founding, Port Royal remains a rather melancholy place, but a treasure trove for underwater archaeologists. It may have failed in its bid to become a UNESCO World Heritage Site, but its historic associations and aura of nefariousness remain compelling. n

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puzzles 1 6

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Spot the Difference

by James Hackett There are 10 differences between these two pictures. How many can you spot?

Spot the Difference andswers The colours of the roof are different; there are more details on the rooftop; the porch has different colour paint; there are details on the banana leaves; there are more plants in the image on the right; there is more detail on one of the porch doors; the rain is falling in different directions; one of the bushes on the right has more texture; the clouds in the background are different; there is a line below the porch in the image on the left.

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Meggie 101 Illustration by James Hackett

M

y name is Attillah, and I love to give meggies. Don’t look surprised. I’m not the only one. Meggiemania is alive and well in Trinidad, and spreading across the Trini diaspora — and also infecting those unfortunate foreign souls who find themselves liming with meggie masters like myself.

If you don’t know what a meggie is, take a look at the illustration. The meggie is a gesture produced by bringing the tips of the thumb and four slightly arched fingers together, which is then pointed in the direction of the recipient — a simple yet deadly tool of subterfuge and derision.

Trinidad and Tobago is a country that seems obsessed with insults, considering the many words we have to describe various forms of put-down: picong, fatigue, mamaguy. But in the face of robber talk and rum shop antics, the meggie stands out as a means of effectively silencing your opponent — or at least refocusing the laughter away from your bad hair day, or the toothless granny who is giving you all her attention. In other words, sticks and stones can break your bones, and sometimes words can hurt too. But a perfectly-timed meggie — well, that can just be a stroke of pure genius.

As the megg-er, the aim is to make the megg-ee (that is, the person being megged) actually look at your hand — take the meggie right in the face. This only sounds easy. New ways must be found to catch a master of the meggie arts, the professional always on the lookout for a surprise meg.

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A dip into the magazine archives: first published in May/June 2004, here’s Attillah Springer on the art of the meggie What I especially love to do is meg someone who hasn’t been megged in a while (perhaps their friends are not cool enough, or perhaps they’ve lived away from other idle Trinis for way too long). They are easy targets. You can catch them with the simplest of lines. “Aye, this is yours?”

You look a little concerned, gesture with your head, and position your hand in a way suggesting that they have forgotten a particularly valuable possession. Then bam!

They catch sight of the meg formation.

There is a fleeting look of shock, their mouths form perfect “O”s, and you can

almost see their minds flashing back to their last meggie, which they probably got from a little girl with two plaits in a schoolyard.

They may say, in a particularly annoying imitation of a seven-year-old voice, “That’s four fingers and a thumb, and that’s dumb,” but they don’t really mean it.

Secretly, they are plotting revenge, thinking of ways to get you back.

If you know what a meggie is, you’d assume that I’d have left this unhealthy obsession behind when I graduated from primary school. In fact, it was when I came into the working world that the

meggie became an invaluable form of entertainment and solace, a harmless enough way to get back at colleagues and also infuriate friends.

A fellow meggie master in London advised me the other day that I needed to find out more about the origins of my pastime. For some mysterious reason, there seems to be no serious academic research into the meggie phenomenon.

Perhaps someone at UWI needs to rectify this. What’s certain is that, considering the demographics of most meggie masters, the meg evolved in some Trini schoolyard sometime in the 1970s, and by the 1980s was universally recognised by undertwenties. And chances are that anywhere a few idle young Trinbagonians are gathered you will find an outbreak of meggies.

Apart from the ordinary meggie, there are interesting hybrids. Meggie-bysatellite and super-meggie, as well as the more eclectic meggie-doing-sit-ups-on-amirror, or meggie-drinking-orange-juicethrough-a-straw. Meggies have gone tech too. There are text-megs, e-megs, and I’ve just finished drafting a letter lobbying for a meggie emoticon.

I’ve also decided that the meggie needs to tour the world, and am in the process of photographing it at major landmarks. So far I have meggie climbs the Great Wall of China, meggie sails the Adriatic, meggie does Habana Vieja, meggie on the cycle track at the Queen’s Park Oval, meggie in Halfway Tree, and meggie on the London Underground.

One thing, though — they can make you a little paranoid. Forget worms and viruses. I’m loath to open attachments lest there be a meggie lurking within. n