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ExxonMobil and Guyana In May 2015, a world class oil discovery, Liza, was made offshore Guyana in the Stabroek Block. Since then, 12 discoveries have been made including Payara, Liza Deep, Snoek, Turbot, Ranger, Pacora, Longtail, Hammerhead, Pluma, Tilapia, Haimara and most recently in April 2019, Yellowtail. The recoverable resource for the Stabroek Block is estimated to be more than 5.5 billion oil-equivalent barrels. Exploration for more recoverable resources continues.
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LOCALLY DEVELOPED. GLOBALLY COMPETITIVE ExxonMobil’s approach to Local Content is a coordinated and focused effort to enhance the economic and social opportunities associated with our activities – with tangible results for people, communities and businesses. ExxonMobil is committed to working collaboratively with Guyana to develop opportunities for Guyanese nationals and businesses in a structured and sustainable way. Liza will be developed in two phases.
Liza Phase 1 & Phase 2 Projects
Phase 1 includes a floating, production, storage and offloading (FPSO) vessel called Liza Destiny, and related subsea equipment; umbilical, risers and flowlines. It is designed to produce up to 120,000 barrels of oil per day from 17 wells in total: eight production wells, six water injection wells, and three gas injection wells. First oil is expected by early 2020. Phase 2 is similar with a second floating, production, storage and offloading vessel (FPSO) called Liza Unity. It will produce up to 220,000 barrels of oil per day from 30 wells, including 15 production, 9 water injection and 6 gas injection wells. Liza Phase 2 startup is expected in mid-2022.
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Supplier Development ExxonMobil supports Local Content initiatives that assist in the development of local capabilities. The Centre for Local Business Development, established in July 2017, provides a space for Guyanese companies to learn about opportunities in the oil and gas sector, strengthen their competitiveness and prepare them to join the oil and gas supply chain. Learn more at www.clbdguyana.com
At ExxonMobil, prevention is our number one priority. We have multiple spill prevention measures in place that we frequently test to prevent an event from occurring. In the unlikely event of a spill of any size, we use a three-tiered system to respond. Each tier uses local resources and, if necessary, calls on additional support within the region and internationally.
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Contents No. 159 • September/October 2019
62
74 50
EMBARK
18 Wish you were here
IMMERSE
44 Closeup
Essential info to help you make the most of September and October across the Caribbean — from a new literature festival in Brooklyn to Divali in T&T, Guyana, and Suriname
The reinvention of poetry Born in Trinidad and based in Canada, writer Dionne Brand has spent decades exploring the transgressive possibilities of poetry, says Shivanee Ramlochan — breaking through boundaries of genre in her quest to understand the shapeshifting self
34 Bookshelf and playlist
50 Snapshot
Annandale Falls, Grenada
20 Need to know
Our reading and listening picks
38 screenshots
Barbadian filmmaker Lisa Harewood talks about her new virtual reality project exploring families separated by migration
40 Cookup
A feast for all The Hindu festival of lights is a time of hospitality and generosity, writes Franka Philip — from welcoming friends and family into your home to helping those affected by misfortune 10
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Racing for the hit When T&T’s men’s 4x400-metre team won gold at the 2019 World Relays last May, it was thanks to a “finish for the ages” by Machel Cedenio. As Sheldon Waithe reports, the young athlete grounds himself with family support and mental preparation long before he even takes to the track
56 Portfolio
Riddles of survival Working across mediums, Guadeloupean artist Kelly Sinnapah Mary creates images with a
fairytale quality, mingling cruelty and enchantment, as she explores postcolonial dilemmas and the resistance of self-invention, writes Shereen Ann Ali ARRIVE
62 Explore
Jamaica on the road A rambling road trip is one of the best ways to explore the diverse landscapes of Jamaica — from forested mountains to valleys and villages, from the cliffs of Negril to the waterfalls of Ocho Rios
72 Neighbourhood
OtroBanda, Curaçao The “other side” of Willemstad, capital of Curaçao, is a neighbourhood of historic buildings and street art
CaribbeanBeat CaribbeanBeat An MEP publication Editor Nicholas Laughlin General manager Halcyon Salazar Design artists Kevon Webster, Kriston Chen Production manager Jacqueline Smith Web editor Caroline Taylor Editorial assistants Shelly-Ann Inniss, Kristine De Abreu
74 Destination
Five days in Barbados Heading to Barbados? Of course you’ll hit the beach. But there’s much more to this island of twenty-one by fourteen miles — as this itinerary compiled by Shelly-Ann Inniss makes clear. Get ready for adventures on the hiking trail, underground, on a historic railway — and that’s just to start
Business Development Manager, Tobago and International Evelyn Chung T: (868) 684 4409 E: evelyn@meppublishers.com
Business Development Representative, Trinidad Tracy Farrag T: (868) 318 1996 E: tracy@meppublishers.com
Barbados Sales Representative Shelly-Ann Inniss T: (246) 232 5517 E: shelly@meppublishers.com
82 Bucket List
Rainforests of Suriname To experience nature at its wildest, head inland from Paramaribo to one of Suriname’s extraordinary rainforest lodges ENGAGE
84 Green
The climate change countdown For decades, climate scientists have warned us about the consequences of global warming — and small island states like those in the Caribbean are especially vulnerable. 2017’s Hurricane Maria was just a taste of what the coming decades will bring, reports Erline Andrews, unless significant resources get directed to efforts to protect threatened coastlines and reefs
88 puzzles
Enjoy our crossword and other fun brain-teasers!
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Read and save issues of Caribbean Beat on your smartphone, tablet, computer, and favourite digital devices!
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 2019. 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
96 classic
A dip into Caribbean Beat’s archives: Adanna Austin always assumed a Trini accent was easy to understand — then she arrived in Barbados and discovered otherwise
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.
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Cover Seeking serenity at Animal Flower Cave near the northernmost point of Barbados Photo Courtesy Barbados Tourism Marketing Inc.
This issue’s contributors include: Shereen Ann Ali (“Riddles of survival”, page 56) is a freelance writer who has covered cultural and social issues in Trinidad since the 1990s as a reporter for three national newspapers. Shivanee Ramlochan (“The reinvention of poetry”, page 44) is a Trinidadian poet — author of Everyone Knows I Am a Haunting — arts reporter, and Bookshelf editor for Caribbean Beat. Julián Sánchez González (“On view”, page 28) is a PhD student in art history at Columbia University. His current research project analyses the influence of diasporic and non-hegemonic spiritualities on artistic modernism in the 1970s in selected countries in Latin America and the Caribbean, particularly through the lens of witchcraft. Writing with glee on sport, politics, and culture, Sheldon Waithe (“Racing for the hit”, page 50) fuses these facets into articles for both Caribbean and European websites and magazines. He also is the editor of Parkite Sports.
In our July/August 2019 issue, the cover photograph of Naomi Osaka was incorrectly published without a credit. It should have been credited to Adam Pretty/ Getty Images WWW.CARIBBEAN-AIRLINES.COM
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Andrea Da Silva, courtesy Caribbean airlines
A MESSAGE From OUR CEO
Caribbean Airlines has a clear vision to connect the region, which is a major element in strengthening our Caribbean identity. Far too often we have heard from our customers how difficult, inconvenient and expensive it is to travel within the Caribbean. Thankfully, this is changing, as Caribbean Airlines is actively improving regional connectivity, with the introduction of new routes and increased services. In August, we added Curaçao, our twentyfirst destination, to our network. And in the coming weeks and months, you will hear and see more islands connected from north to south and east to west, as we close the distances within the Caribbean archipelago. There is significant interest among Caribbean people to develop and strengthen relations in the region, and there is great potential and opportunity for increased trade and tourism. Our twice-weekly service to Curaçao, every Monday and Friday, facilitates easy connections to other Caribbean Airlines destinations like Barbados, Grenada, Guyana, and New York City. We also offer cargo service to Curaçao, which is a welcome addition for our business travellers who utilise the free-zones on the island. We encourage you to visit Curacao and “feel it for yourself”! Our network expansion also includes the development of Kingston, Jamaica,
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as a northern hub. Soon we will start twice-weekly service between Kingston and Grand Cayman, and Kingston and Havana, Cuba. Along with our developing network, we are transforming the way we connect with our customers. Our customer experience improvement took a quantum leap with the launch of the Caribbean Airlines Mobile App. Your response to the app has been phenomenal, and more features will be added as we move forward. Now, in the palm of your hand you can easily manage your travel experience, including paying for travel between Trinidad and Tobago in TT dollars, buying Caribbean Plus Seats, checking your flight status — including the exclusive ability to check your standby status if travelling on the domestic air bridge between Trinidad and Tobago — and much more. Try the app for yourself, and enjoy all the convenient features it provides. In September and October, there continue to be numerous exciting events throughout Caribbean Airlines destinations, including the Hero CPL T20 Caribbean Premier League Series, which takes place from 4 September to 12 October. As the Official Airline sponsor, we will connect cricket fans and teams to attend the games. We are also the Official Airline for
Miami Carnival, which takes place from 10 to 14 October. Caribbean Airlines operates daily between Trinidad and Tobago and Miami International Airport; five times each week to Hollywood International Airport in Fort Lauderdale in the off-peak, and daily for the period 19 July to 10 September; and three times weekly to Orlando International Airport — with seamless connections to Guyana, Suriname, and other regional destinations. We also fly daily between Fort Lauderdale and Kingston, Jamaica. Miami and South Florida are significant markets for Caribbean Airlines, and being the Official Airline for Miami Carnival is a natural partnership which fits squarely into our Caribbean Identity brand story. Please check the Need to Know section of the magazine, starting on page 20, for details of these and other events, and how Caribbean Airlines can get you there. Download the Mobile App — which gives you access and information like never before! Thank you for choosing Caribbean Airlines — we value your business, and look forward to serving you throughout our twenty-one-destination network.
Garvin Medera Chief Executive Officer
Art is Identity By John Robert Lee
I
n the 1960s and early 70s, when protests in Jamaica and Canada and daily marches in Port of Spain were headline news, when the West Indies cricket team wreaked anti-colonial vengeance on imperial powers, latenight student conversations over coffee and fried chicken were inevitably about Caribbean identity and culture. Those were the years of the poetry of Kamau Brathwaite, Derek Walcott, and Martin Carter, the novels of George Lamming, Roger Mais, and Earl Lovelace, the dance of Rex Nettleford’s Jamaica Company, new soca, zouk, Bob Marley and reggae. In Gordon Rohlehr’s book Perfected Fables Now (Peepal Tree Press, 2019), the chapter “Preserving Caribbean cultural identity in the face of globalisation” begins: “The subject of this address has preoccupied Caribbean thinkers for more than five decades now, surfacing as a concern of nationalist movements throughout the region since the 1920s and 1930s, and becoming a central feature of the early post-Independence years, when new Caribbean nations were faced with the necessity of either defining national identities, or identifying foundational values upon which such identities could be constructed.” Rohlehr’s essay discusses efforts through seven UNESCO conferences to develop cultural policies. He writes, “the deepest and most difficult issue contested at the Bogotá Conference in 1978 was that of the paradoxical nature of Caribbean and Latin American cultural identities, the contradictory forces that had brought those identities into being . . . Wrestling with the ethnic and cultural pluralism of the region, the delegates concluded that cultural identity lay in the interface of ‘several mutually enriched differences.’” Are we nearer to clarifying Caribbean identity after our youthful attempts at cultural revolution? Add the resurgence of neo-globalisation in the 1990s, various forms of recolonisation, commodification, consumerisation, the rejection of “perennial philosophies” gleaned by earlier generations from various spiritualities, a cosmopolitan community spread over large swathes of diaspora — and I wonder whether “Caribbean identity” is an important imperative for a new generation. For many young citizens who are more familiar with inner cities of North America and Europe than their island hinter-
lands, racial identity — given the threats to non-whites in those metropolises — is more important than some nebulous Caribbean identity. They take their Caribbean-ness for granted. In the words of Sunity Maharaj in the previous instalment of this column, “geography is re-contoured into a place of the mind.” Possible definitions of Caribbean identity are always at the forefront during Carifesta, the Caribbean Festival of Arts, which now runs biennially. The most recent iteration, Carifesta XIV, was held in August 2019 in Trinidad and Tobago, but its roots go back almost half a century. In an absorbing memoir, Georgetown Journal (New Beacon, 1972), Andrew Salkey described the meeting of the Writers’ and Artists’ Convention in Georgetown in February 1970, when plans were made for staging the inaugural Carifesta two years later. The names of the participants are a who’s who of leading writers of the time. Everyone was concerned with Caribbean cultural identity, the political movement from colonial past to true Independence, and certain we had an identifiable Caribbean character. They believed our culture would be seen most clearly in the arts. They would provide a distillation of the best of our lives, shaped out of the cauldron of our complicated, brutal history. The convention recommended: “The Caribbean Arts Festival should be representative of our multi-lingual Caribbean plantation culture, including the varied cultural contributions from Cuba in the north to Guyana in the south . . . should be entertaining, inspirational, educational, and completely related to the cultural matrix of the masses of our people in the Caribbean.” Every generation formulates its identity, creates its coordinates of cultural expression. Today’s Caribbean map encloses within its borders islands, cities, continents. Being Caribbean is as much a state of mind as a conglomeration of political states. I propose that Carifesta, presenting the best of literary, visual, and performing arts, the continuing intellectual explorations of our thinkers in symposia, open to the public, thoughtfully planned, can help maintain a space in which we Caribbeans, and friends from other cultures, can see: that’s us, there is what we have learned, through multicultural generations, against daunting challenges. There is a visible representation of our identity. John Robert Lee is a St Lucian writer. His Collected Poems 1975–2015 is published by Peepal Tree Press (2017). His Saint Lucian Writers and Writing: An Author Index is published by Papillote Press (2019) This essay is part of a series written by eminent thinkers from across the region, reflecting on The Caribbean Identity and what it is and can be
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wish you were here
Annandale Falls, Grenada A short drive north from St George’s, Grenada’s capital, the waterfall at Annandale is a refreshing escape when the weather turns sultry. Lush foliage surrounds the thirty-foot cascade, which plunges into a deep pool of mesmerising emerald, reaching under a natural rock grotto.
Photography by mauritius images GmbH/ Alamy Stock Photo
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NEED TO KNOW
Jason Audain
Essential info to help you make the most of September and October: what to do, where to go, what to see!
Don’t Miss Hosay At the Battle of Karbala, in the year 680, the grandson of the Prophet Mohammad was killed. For centuries, this event has been remembered by Shia Muslims as the holy day of Ashura — better known in Trinidad as Hosay. Falling on 10 September this year, Ashura is preceded by ten days of prayers and commemorations which have
evolved to combine South Asian and Caribbean influences, culminating in four days of street processions in the neighbourhoods of St James, Tunapuna, and Cedros. On the seventh night, Flag Night, devotees bear multicoloured flags. The eighth night is even more colourful, as familyand community-based groups carry tadjahs — ornate floats representing the tomb of the Prophet’s grandson — through the streets. On the ninth night, heavy red and green moon effigies are carried on the shoulders of the faithful, the task of “dancing” them a form of ritual penance. The insistent sound of tassa drums fills the streets, and onlookers of all faiths witness the spectacle. At the finale, the tadjahs are immersed in the sea.
How to get there? Caribbean Airlines operates numerous flights each day to its base at Piarco International Airport in Trinidad from destinations across the Caribbean and North and South America 20
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Importing or Exporting in the Caribbean? We can make it seamless, more efficient and more profitable for you. Doing business in the Caribbean requires a logistics partner that can offer you flexible, scalable, agile solutions to reduce friction points in the supply chain while helping to speed your cargo to market, creating a competitive advantage and leaving you with higher profits. If you are using multiple transportation and logistics providers to import your goods from around the world, you have friction in your supply chain. That complexity increases the risk that something could go wrong, and it adds cost. Crowley can help make your supply chain seamless and more cost efficient with a full suite of integrated transportation and logistics solutions – all provided under a single source of accountability. No matter the size or quantity of your cargo – from a single barrel, to pallets of goods, to time-definite and/ or valuable air freight, to full container loads – Crowley can tailor a logistics package to meet your needs. For a free consultation, call 1.800.CROWLEY today, or visit crowley.com/beat for more information.
need to know Mervyn Taylor Jamaica Kincaid
A Trinidadian poet based in Brooklyn, Taylor has won praise from no less a figure than Nobel laureate Derek Walcott, who lauded his “admirable degree of subtlety.” Voices Carry, his most recent book of poems, shifts between the island of his birth and the city of his current residence, exploring the complicated links between love and belonging, past and present.
Kei Miller
agence opale/alamy stock photo
Considered one of the leading Caribbean poets of his generation, Jamaica-born Miller has also made a name for himself as a novelist and essayist, and has the awards to prove it. His latest book of poems, In Nearby Bushes — hot off the press! — is a disturbing but arresting exploration of violence in the landscape of Jamaica, both historical and contemporary.
Elizabeth Nunez
Top Five Caribbean writers in Brooklyn Each year in early September, Caribbean people residing all over the world converge in Brooklyn, New York. The West Indian American Day Carnival Parade — also known as the Labour Day Parade, and running for over half a century — is the reason, but this year there’s a new festival in town, with the Caribbean squarely in focus. The inaugural Brooklyn Caribbean Literary Festival, from 6 to 8 September, is eager to encourage, inspire, and thrill culture enthusiasts with a lineup of star Caribbean writers. Here are our picks for five talents you can’t miss.
Jamaica Kincaid
Betrayal, loss, and division as a consequence of colonisation and the disempowerment of women — these are all major themes in the work of the Antigua-born writer, whose novels Annie John and Lucy are considered modern Caribbean classics. Named Elaine Potter Richardson by her parents, Kincaid adopted her nom de plume to write fiercely personal material, and renaming recurs in her works as a metaphor for conquest and colonial domination. 22
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Known equally as a novelist and literary scholar, Trinidad-born Nunez is a Distinguished Professor at Hunter College, CUNY. Her novels include Boundaries (nominated for a NAACP Image Award), Bruised Hibiscus (American Book Award), and Beyond the Limbo Silence (Independent Publishers Book Award), plus her memoir Not for Everyday Use won the 2015 Hurston Wright Legacy Award and is an Oprah online book club selection. For more information, and the Brooklyn Caribbean Literary Festival’s programme, visit bklyncbeanlitfest. com
Barbara Jenkins
Following a full career as a secondary school geography teacher, Jenkins discovered her proclivity for writing late in life — and has made up for lost time. Her award-winning short story collection Sic Transit Wagon was followed last year by her novel De Rightest Place, an episodic comic novel set in a Port of Spain rumshop that’s been favourably compared to the fiction of Samuel Selvon.
If you miss the Brooklyn Caribbean Literary Festival in early September, you’ll have a second chance to catch some of the hottest names in Caribbean literature at the Brooklyn Book Festival, running from 16 to 23 September. Look out for Booker Prizewinner Marlon James, Edwidge Danticat, Alex Wheatle, Nicole Dennis-Benn, and more.
need to know
Word of Mouth Divali lights Shelly-Ann Inniss meets one of the traditional potters who make thousands of deyas for Trinidad’s annual Divali celebrations
Anupam Lotlikar/Shutterstock.com
My introduction to Divali, the Hindu festival of lights, actually came in Jamaica, when I was a university student. That night, the walk to my flat was unusually dark, except for tiny, flickering lamps in parallel rows along the pathway. I thought a romantic marriage proposal was in progress. Then some Trinidadian friends beckoned me over. I noticed henna designs on the girls’ hands, a feast of food I didn’t recognise, and my Hindu hallmates dressed up and celebrating like it was someone’s birthday. They told me the deyas — the small clay lamps — represent the body, their wicks symbolise the mind, and the oil is a symbol of love. There seemed to be a never-ending supply of deyas in that courtyard, and I wondered where they came from. Years later, now living in Trinidad, I found out. Several family-run potteries in central Trinidad use local clay to make wares ranging from vases to plant pots year-round — and many thousands of deyas for Divali. Andy Benny, a third-generation potter from Radika’s Pottery Shop, answered my questions.
What material are deyas made from, exactly?
Clay is dug from underground, processed, and refined to make them. Everything is done by hand. We use an old-fashioned kiln — a big oven with wood fire — to bake them, as electricity is too costly.
Are they easy to make?
When you start, clay and water will be everywhere. Once you get the hang of it, you have more control over the clay. My mum, Radika, inspired people to go behind the wheel and practice. Pottery is for everyone. Anyone can get a tabletop wheel and have a pottery studio at home. Pot, clay, and kiln, that’s the process. If you’re skilled, a deya takes a second or two.
Can people come to your workshop and make their own deyas?
The nice thing about pottery is that it has all the elements — clay from the earth, water to mix the clay, airflow to push the fire. Making stuff from clay makes 24
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us resourceful. Schools from preschool upwards come here for sessions, as well as families. They love to watch and participate in making the deyas. Everyone gets really excited when the kiln is fully lit, and the fire is raging.
Some people still use bamboo, others lay the deyas on the floor. Traditionally, the bamboo is cut and stripped down and the deyas are placed in the joints.
How many deyas do you manufacture annually?
Anywhere there is a Hindu community, but Chaguanas and Felicity are very popular. Some people have an electrical lighting system, and it’s a big attraction. People sit in traffic for hours just to see the lights.
Approximately four hundred thousand over a six-month period.
How do you prepare the deya for lighting?
It is a simple process: pour oil, get some wick and extend it to the length of the deya just beyond the little lip, and light it. Wax candles save time for people who don’t want to pour oil. Above all, safety is key, so place deyas carefully around your home.
And how do you arrange the lit deyas? In my younger days, bamboo was bent to form the structures. There was a bamboo-bending competition and the more intricate and ornate your style, the better your chances of winning.
Where is the best place in Trinidad to see Divali lights?
How do you feel when you see the deyas lit on Divali night?
It’s rewarding, as it’s the fruit of your labour and people get the joy of what they’re celebrating, and the symbolism. Divali, falling on 27 October this year, is a public holiday in Trinidad and Tobago, Guyana, and Suriname. For more information about Radika’s Pottery Shop, visit facebook.com/radikaspottery/
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Luis Echeverri Urrea/Shutterstock.com
need to know
Must Try Cassava five ways To most of us, cassava is simply a tasty ground provision. But in Guyana, it is a treasure of an indigenous culinary tradition, a key staple of First Peoples for thousands of years. Unsurprisingly, considering that long history, Guyanese have created numerous ways to prepare the starch. As Guyana celebrates Indigenous Heritage Month in September, here are a few dishes and by-products of cassava to get you acquainted.
Metemgee
Cassareep
Guyana’s national dish is a zesty mix of stewed meat, cassareep, peppers, and spices. Traditionally, the pot is periodically replenished with fresh meat and cassareep, which has preservative qualities. There’s a local rumour that the Georgetown Club has had a pepperpot bubbling for over seventy-five years. Talk about a dish with a history . . .
This condiment is used in numerous stews and sauces — including the national dish, pepperpot (see below). To make cassareep, peel the cassava and grate it to a pulp. Wring the juices from the pulp — traditionally, this was done with a matapee, a woven tubular sieve. Boil the juice, constantly skimming the scum from the surface, until the liquid is thick, sticky, and dark brown like molasses. 26
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Kasiri/parikari
Here’s another way to use cassava juice: ferment it into a sweet heady beer, known by various names among different indigenous peoples.
Cassava bread
This fried bread cooked with a dash of oil is one of the best ways to introduce gluten-free fare to the healthconscious. The Guyanese method is to cook it in a cake tray above a frying pan.
This coconut-milk-based soup includes cassava, sweet potatoes, plantains, and salted meat — delicious garnished with a fried banga mary fish.
Pepperpot
SAI
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Paula Court, courtesy the Whitney Museum of American Art
need to know
On View 2019 Whitney Biennial Julián Sánchez González on the spiritual and historic concerns of Puerto Rican artists represented in this major biennial survey of contemporary American art Since its first iteration in 1932, the Whitney Biennial, one of the most important surveys of contemporary American art, has traditionally given little attention to artists based in Puerto Rico. However, this year’s five Puerto Rican artists, together with the previous selection from the biennial of 2017, continue to tell an excitingly different story. As an unincorporated United States territory with no electoral voting rights, dealing with the aftermath of Hurricane Maria sweeping through the Caribbean and a recent surge of political protests, Puerto Rico’s presence in the show is a timely and poignant commentary on neocolonial politics in the Caribbean. In addition to the participation of artists nibia pastrana santiago and Sofía Gallisá-Muriente, pieces by Daniel Lind-Ramos and Las Nietas de Nonó address these issues through innovative proposals in installation and performance formats. 28
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Under the curatorial lens of Jane Panetta and Rujeko Hockley, this selection of Caribbean artists followed a lengthy process which included over three hundred studio visits across twenty-five locations in the United States. In general terms, the curators have tended to favour topics related to new readings of history, questions on race and gender, the vulnerability of the body, and community engagement, among others. In addition to these transversal topics, the five Boricua creators’ presence in the Biennial signals an ongoing interest of the Whitney Museum in furthering their Latinx curatorial and educational initiative. The recent hiring of curator Marcela Guerrero and the 2018 show Pacha, Llaqta, Wasichay: Indigenous Space, Modern Architecture, New Art, for example, aim to further provide underrepresented communities with a louder voice and greater agency within the museum’s space. More specifically, the Biennial works by Lind-Ramos and Las Nietas de Nonó bring to the fore concerns about the retrieval of ancestral knowledge and spiritual practices, and the diasporic experience of Afro-Puerto Rican communities. According to Holland Cotter, art critic for the New York Times, one of the most transgressive and effective contributions of the 2019 Whitney Biennial is its emphasis on spiritual practices, including the work of Daniel Lind-Ramos, born in 1953 in Loíza, the northeastern stronghold of AfroPuerto Rican culture. Lind-Ramos’s most recent practice focuses on the creation of large-scale sculptural pieces made from found materials, both industrial and organic.
Ron Amstutz, courtesy the Whitney Museum of American Art
His piece Maria-Maria (2019) is notorious for conflating spirituality with assemblage techniques in an original and striking composition employing coconuts, bubble wrap, and — most critically — FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) blue tarps. Still lingering on rooftops in Loíza two years after Hurricane Maria, this waterproof material speaks directly to a story of political strife, unresponsiveness, and neglect towards the socioeconomic recovery of Puerto Rico after the island’s financial and natural catastrophes. Moreover, the totem-like structure of this piece and the use of the blue tarps recall a Madonna’s draping veil, and reflect on local hybridised altar-making practices serving as primordial sources for mental endurance and communitybuilding in times of distress. Spirituality and craft aesthetics speak to each other here in a candid, unmediated way, a curatorial avenue that Panetta and Hockley investigated and pursued as a working paradigm for this Biennial. Overall, this piece, together with Lind-Ramos’s similarly breathtaking installation Centinelas (2013), speaks of the survival of African diasporic spiritualities and culture despite the longstanding presence of colonialist, oppressive structures in racial configurations and social relations in the Caribbean. Also attempting to make a statement on the importance of traditional knowledge systems, Las Nietas de Nonó — a sister-duo of performers, Lydela (born 1979) and Michel (1982) Nonó — performed Ilustraciones de la Mecánica at the Whitney on three occasions in June. Previously
presented at the 2018 Berlin Biennial, this sinister and dystopian performance work confronts the viewer with a gory reenactment of a sterilisation procedure that Lydela, dressed as a white doctor, performs on her sister Michel as she covers her face with her skirt upside down. Leaving the viewer little room for assessing the patient’s expressions, beyond a disfigured body that is violated with scientific curiosity and self-indulgent desire, Ilustraciones refers to a series of hysterectomies performed illegally on black women from rural Puerto Rico between the 1930s and 1980s, encouraged by mainland authorities. The staging of this act is reinforced by the use of mirrors placed on the ceiling, a gesture forcing the viewer to engage in a voyeuristic attitude. Further confining the patient’s body into, for instance, fragmented legs or a mock-up open belly made of vegetable leather, the still images from these reflected views constitute a powerful compositional choice that speaks of the artists’ interest in investigating violence against black bodies in their subjection to experimentation in hospitals, schools, and prisons. Ultimately, this confrontational work denounces the overriding of the role of healers or curanderas/os by Western medical practices. Focusing on compartmentalised specialisation rather than holistic approaches, modern medicine neglects a fundamental aspect of healing, namely our relationship to various elements and cycles of the natural world. This concern is a growing trend in the work of contemporary artists living in diasporic conditions, such as a recent performance by Guadalupe Maravilla, Walk on Water, at the Queens Museum. By referencing events critical to the survival of their communities through the lens of spirituality and ancestral heritage, Lind-Ramos and Las Nietas de Nonó put forward a distinct and unique voice into the plethora of political and social claims brought together under the same roof at the Whitney Biennial. While deeply entrenched in the Caribbean’s recent and distant histories, their works transgress boundaries of time and space as they approach with aesthetic finesse the challenges of moving forward into new, more sustainable paradigms for collective behaviour and thinking.
Opposite page Performance by Las Nietas de Nonó, 28 June, 2019, at the Whitney Biennial 2019, Whitney Museum of American Art Left Centinelas (Sentinels) (2013), by Daniel LindRamos, installed in the Whitney Biennial 2019
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need to know
Great Outdoors Volcano hopping Spectacular waterfalls, verdant rainforests, beautiful birds, and an active four-thousand-foot volcano make St Vincent a paradise for lovers of nature and adventure. La Soufrière, one of the most studied volcanoes in the world, last erupted forty years ago, between April and October 1979. And while scientists keep a close eye on its status, the steep slopes leading up to the crater offer a thrilling hike with the payoff of incredible views. Vincentian photographer, hotelier, and adventure-seeker Stephan Hornsey sees his homeland as a playground and has an innate calling to explore — which includes several memorable ascents of La Soufrière, and one very stormy night
Are you a daredevil at heart?
I wouldn’t define myself as intentionally reckless, but perhaps an accidental daredevil, considering some of the situations I find myself in. If I decide to do something potentially dangerous, I always plan ahead incessantly.
How often do you go hiking?
Not terribly often, but when I do, it tends to be something personally challenging, and a new experience.
When did you first hike La Soufrière?
One of my earliest memories as a kid was my father holding my arm at the edge of the volcano. He was making sure the winds didn’t take me into the steep crater as I peeped over. These days, the reason is based on a sense of adventure — it’s a volcano, and very cool.
How difficult is the trail?
It’s a well-trodden trail, as the volcano is a hiking highway for many locals. Countless visitors make the trek as a milestone in their vacation. Recently I’ve taken the windward route, which is closer to my home. I’m most comfortable with this route and would recommend it for both time and ease. If I’m gunning it, then it may take an hour or less from the “base camp.” For most that I have observed or hiked with, it may take an hour and a half or two.
How fit do you need to be?
I’ve seen individuals who considered themselves unfit complete the entire trek from bottom to top and back. It’s totally up to you, as long as you can get back.
Can you describe the views?
The trail is a snaking path through a tropical rainforest, filled with bamboo, ferns, and other plants. As you ascend further, you are teased with little breaks in the foliage allowing you to 30
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see how far you have come. It’s truly motivating. After a short time, you emerge onto the face of the volcano. I am truly in awe of the landscape. It’s hard to imagine without seeing it. As you ascend, there is one point where you break out of the canopy of trees and the sounds of the rainforest disappear in sudden silence. This is when you realise you are on a volcano, as you turn around to see the coastline far in the distance.
What was your biggest adventure on La Soufrière?
There was a thunderstorm while we were camping inside the crater last year. We had a sub-optimal-size tent to withstand heavy winds and the temperature. The tent was just under six feet, which allowed it to catch the winds constantly tugging on our anchors. At one point it started to dip down to where it touched our chests flat on the floor of the tent. The space made most of our heat escape quickly, which became especially noticeable between 2 and 6 am, as the temperatures dropped to violently shivering conditions.
Stephan Hornsey
How did you manage?
I vividly remember staring at the inside of our tent watching it fight to hold itself together from the wind, and thinking, “This really sucks right now, don’t forget it.” The thing about St Vincent is that after a thunderstorm comes the clearest weather and best visibility. The hike that morning came with some very positive thoughts. I have never been scared of La Soufrière, but when we camped in the storm, I was uneasy at some moments.
Have you ever hiked La Soufrière alone?
I challenged myself to solo hike the volcano from sunset into nightfall. At dusk, having just watched the sunset from the southern tip of the crater, I was descending down the open face and suddenly I realised I had to walk all the way home by myself in the dark.
How do you prepare for the hike?
I always set a very specific goal, whether it’s to see sunset, or camp, or just walk up and down. This helps to keep things
in perspective, for both preparing and the actual hike itself. Conditions can all change at a moment’s notice. Whenever I go, I take more than I need so that I can share if necessary, and more importantly, so that I’m not underprepared. Take essentials like water, food, lights, first aid kits, etc. Comfortable feet make a happy hike. Ensure you wear shoes that are tried and tested in wet, hot, cold, and long treks. Ascending is hotter than you think, but it’s cold at the top. The weather changes very quickly, so spend at least thirty minutes sitting, looking into the crater, waiting for the clouds to dance in or out.
What makes La Soufrière unforgettable?
This particular hike is challenging, and it immerses you in nature. Yet it never feels far from home for me. This combination of feeling at home while experiencing something so majestic truly makes it a memory to share. As told to Shelly-Ann Inniss WWW.CARIBBEAN-AIRLINES.COM
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Courtesy CPL T20 Ltd 2019
need to know
Datebook More highlights of September and October across the Caribbean
Caribbean Premier League cricket
4 September to 12 October, venues around the Caribbean Explore the region through world-class cricket played in an extremely festive atmosphere: music, flag-waving, cheering, and non-stop fun. It’s no surprise cricket fans — and those who just love the party — return each year. cplt20.com
Curaçao Pride
World Creole Music Festival
Pure Grenada Dive Fest
Jamaica Food and Drink Festival
25 to 29 September Five thrilling days filled with parties and performances by local and international artistes, celebrating the LGBTQ community. A Pride Walk, Pride Happy Hours, a beach party, and boat party are some of the highlights. curacaopride.com 28 September to 4 October Grenada’s underwater wonderland has something for everyone, whether you’re a beginner or an advanced diver. Famous wrecks and diverse marine life await. Jump in! puredivinggrenada.com 32
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25 to 27 October, Dominica A cavalcade of star power emanating from the Caribbean, Africa and North America, arranged to thrill the seasoned festival-goer and novice alike. Don’t miss Nigerian singer Davido, soca artistes Mr Killa from Grenada and Bunji Garlin, Fay Ann Lyons, and Patrice Roberts from T&T, alongside bouyon artistes Asa Bantan, Tasha P, the Signal Band, and Triple K from Dominica. discoverdominica.com 26 October to 3 November Depart from the ordinary and join over sixty talented chefs as they turn Kingston into the culinary epicentre of Jamaica. Fusions of local and international cuisine are served with distinct grit and urban edge. jafoodanddrink.com
bookshelf Unraveling by Karen Lord (DAW/Penguin Random House, 304 pp, ISBN 9780756415204) What would you weave if you could walk through the labyrinth of another’s mind? Spiderlike, summoning slippery cunning and an Anansi’s web laced with whodunit flair, Karen Lord maps the world of Unraveling, her newest novel of psychological intrigue and startling suspense. At the centre of this sphere, forensic therapist Dr Miranda Ecouvo is snatched sideways out of her ordered City life to help solve a mystery behind a mystery. Can she work alongside supernatural, demi-human agents to help pin down the menacing figure behind serial killer Walther Grey? Flanked by the not-quite-mortal brothers Chance and the Trickster, Miranda walks cerebral mazes, labyrinths of the lives of others. It’s a shadow-and-ink realm where her metaphysical motions echo with deliberate repercussions in real life, dangerously teeming. Lord, whose speculative fiction novels Redemption in Indigo, The Best of All Possible Worlds, and The Galaxy
Now/After
Game serve up worlds that feel both fantastical and immediate, is poised at the pinnacle of her mastery in Unraveling. Here is a challenging, thorny narrative that requires attentive reading and rewards careful scrutiny, a reality wherein “humans are not only permitted but encouraged to change destiny.” The deeper Miranda progresses into the labyrinth, flanked by grisly and gruesome remnants of the murders she has probed, the tighter we tug on the storytelling string binding her fate to ours: the more fully, completely we are invited to start walking the rings of our own mazes. “Humans would look for a pattern in anything — a face in the clouds, a voice in the wind, and a reason in chaos,” muses Miranda’s right hand sojourner, Chance. What a densely alive cipher of a novel Lord has bestowed on us: our own diligent fascination is the key to unlocking it.
Slave Old Man
by Anton Nimblett (Peepal Tree Press, 142 pp, ISBN 9781845234423)
by Patrick Chamoiseau, translated by Linda Coverdale (The New Press, 176 pp, ISBN 9781620975886)
In his second short story collection (following 2009’s Sections of an Orange), Trinidadborn Anton Nimblett takes us into the private reading rooms of bibliophilic desires. Not content with the casting of supposedly well-known characters from Lamming and Melville? You can find their stories upended in Now/ After, in moving, often tender acts of reclamation. Here, the origin story of Moby Dick’s Queequeg is a decidedly different tale, one that renders the South Pacific Islander animist as far more than a “sober cannibal” in the eyes of Ishmael. A studied, deliberate rearchiving of the canon is afoot: hear the Mighty Shadow’s Bassman speak in “Farrell”, declaring “I mean all of we connected to the bass, connected like a pulse linking mother and child, continent and island.” Each story in Now/After is an object lesson in listening to secret rhythms.
A runaway slave flees into a densely thicketed wilderness, with his plantation master’s feral hellhound hot on his heels. This is the plot of Martinican Patrick Chamoiseau’s Slave Old Man, translated from French and Creole by Linda Coverdale (for which the book received a 2019 French-American Foundation Translation Prize). In the ancient woodlands that cradle the terrified, elderly slave, “everything shivered shapeless, vulva dark, carnal opacity, odours of weary eternity and famished life. The forest interior was still in the grip of a millenary night.” Into this world of densely compacted imageries Chamoiseau steals us, guaranteeing that we are changed — our awareness amplified — when we emerge on the other side of such alchemical prose.
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Skin Can Hold by Vahni Capildeo (Carcanet Press, 128 pp, ISBN 9781784107314) Vahni Capildeo’s pen does more than take no prisoners: it implicates the reader with an intelligence so searing you could fry fish on its patina. Consider the disgusted beautician in “Shame”, who handles brown skin during a waxing appointment with a torturer’s cruelty: “The skin was stripped and festered and / purpled and scarred. The ancient and worshipful triangle of mystery / became the record of an intimate war.” Alongside this purposeful rage — never reactionary, always a feat of polyglottal blistering — lies true, invitational playfulness. Harnessing the invocations of late Guyanese poet Martin Carter’s “I Am No Soldier”, Capildeo presents “syntax poems” in response, described as “rearrangeable elements for future experiments,” best activated by bodies in motion. On your feet, then, the syntax poems sing, dismantling the traditional audience-speaker receivership of performed, and read, poetry. There are revolutions to dingolay.
Gardening in Trinidad and Tobago: Our Style by Chancy Bachan-Moll (The Garden Club of Trinidad, 170 pp, ISBN 9789768255822) Whether your thumb is green, or you can’t cultivate a cactus, there’s no denying that a verdant world blooms between the pages of this more-than-a-coffee-table-book. Founded in 1993, the Garden Club of Trinidad has spread its modest tendrils, from an intimate gathering of friends growing greenery, to a bountiful organisation committed to holistic preservation of T&T’s natural landscapes. Even if the science of bromeliads and other plant families eludes you, an evening of reflective contemplation spent with Gardening in Trinidad and Tobago: Our Style has the power to enliven, educate, and inspire. Every curated garden photographed herein, be it modest or expansive, is stunningly presented, with love glistening from each leaf. Reviews by Shivanee Ramlochan, Bookshelf editor
Enter the World of Hardears Jouvert Island. Home to flying buses piloted by giant fish, defended by landships — vessels built of ancestral memory: here’s a realm where everything depends on the essential life force called “vibez.” It’s a world informed, and inhabited, by the indisputably Caribbean. Here shines a contemporary graphic novel series as ambitious and fully realised as anything emerging from larger metropolitan studios. The world of Hardears is masterminded by Barbados-based Beyond Publishing, helmed by Matthew Clarke (creator/story/ art) and Nigel Lynch (story/script). Alongside fellow creators Aguinaldo Belgrave and Tristan Roach, who oversee other projects, Beyond Publishing is on the frontlines of what’s achievable in comic books of the current era: these titles are as politically charged as they are packed with feats of super heroism and special effects. In Hardears Volumes 1 through 4, Jouvert Island braces against a baleful anthropomorphised super storm, confronts the corporate face of hyper-mechanised industrialisation, and takes us into the clouds on the soaring wings of a landship,
piloted to the tattoo of tuk band music. Our principal hero, Bolo, King of the Crop, Champion of the Agri Guild, works stubbornly to thwart the postcolonial power of Mr Hardin, alongside resolute heroine Zahra. There’s even a diminutive, tangerine-hued animal sidekick, Duppy, last of the Barbados Raccoons, who supplies picong and pithy observances. From moko jumbies to stern nautical empresses, Clarke and Lynch have poured rapt, fascinated attention into the Hardears world: a tradesman, speaking no lines but magnificently bedizened, is given perfectly calibrated room to cavort on the page alongside a crafty, faceless villain. These are islands made for multiple memorable returns: it’s impossible not to be compelled by this impeccably imagined romp of a graphic novel. You’ll find that steeping yourself in its pages produces ample vibez. To order the Hardears series, visit www.beyondpublishingcaribbean.com WWW.CARIBBEAN-AIRLINES.COM
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playlist Global Godwin Louis (Blue Room Music) When wanderlust coincides with discovery, great things can happen. When it is your job to travel to perform, it should be your duty to discover all that you are in the context of new vistas. Saxophone sideman to the stars Godwin Louis has travelled to over one hundred countries, and focused his discovery on the history of African and diaspora music across the world. His aptly titled debut album Global, a two-CD package,
The Gospel of Romance Stephen John (self-released) The idea of love in modern popular music oftentimes veers towards lust. Romance becomes raunch, with a funky beat as the rhythm for tales of “getting down.” Trinidadian contemporary gospel singer Stephen John has decided that romance must be the antithesis of that popular view, by making a thoroughly contemporary-sounding EP of love songs that play with the notion of love as altruistic, sacred, and uplifting. “Patient, kind,
MDR Jonathan Michel (Imani Records) Haitian-American bassist Jonathan Michel calls his debut album MDR “an entry into the world of music as me. I think it’s a great representation.” And with that declaration, Michel, along with drummer Jeremy Dutton and vibraphonist Joel Ross, plays trio-based jazz that becomes an extension of the live gig scene this musician has been a part of for much of his career. The album touches on a range of genres that identify
Cimarrón Josean Jacobo & Tumbao (E7 Studios) Pianist Josean Jacobo has been heralded as the “Ambassador of Afro-Dominican Jazz,” and with that understanding, the listener must negotiate a minefield of ideas and ideologies on “Dominicanness” and the image of the island as a tourist playground. On Cimarrón, Jacobo, along with the band Tumbao — a unique combo of two saxes, drums, and percussion — present a solid interface of music born in the American melting pot of New Orleans and traditional
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features “compositions that emerged out of research that he performed in Africa and Latin America on the music exported out of Africa, to the rest of the world via the transatlantic slave trade.” Audacious in scope, adept in execution, this Haitian-American has compiled a record featuring jazz syncopation that juxtaposes with African rhythm and Latin American voices and Antillean grooves, making this a testament to the idea of connectedness in modern music. By joining all the musical dots, Louis spiritually finds his way home. forgiving. / Sounds like love to me,” is a refrain repeated in his “Overture” before John thanks Jesus for his lady. And with that opening, we chart the many ways love can be expressed by mere mortals in awe of heavenly inspiration. With slick production values and vocals that may remind listeners of R&B crooner Maxwell, these songs have an appeal beyond an audience in search of divine reinforcement. With lyrics that juxtapose practical and joyous attraction with admonitions based on the Word, this EP resets the bar for love songs. Desire and doctrine are one. with the Caribbean-born in the diaspora. Jazz, spirituals, Haitian folk songs, R&B are all distilled through that enhanced prism with small-unit playing; bass and drum anchor a space for the vibraphone to resonate. The bass is never far away, and we hear why Michel is the leader on this album, with the old Negro spiritual “Wade in the Water” taking a frenetic spin in tandem with the improvisations of the vibraphone. Fellow Haitian child-of-the-diaspora Melanie Charles adds her soul-inspired voice on the bookend tracks. folkloric rhythms from African-descended natives of Hispaniola. His piano soars and floats on the ten songs here, while the polyrhythms of the hand drums and other percussion give credence to a history of solid representation of the music of African souls who have mingled and transformed Spanish-derived sounds to create what we today know as salve, congos, bachata, and more. The language of jazz has broadened in this context, and this album is a distinctive beginning for new listeners. Reviews by Nigel A. Campbell
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screenshots
Courtesy Lisa Harewood
“Having many tools only makes my storytelling stronger”
Is there something about the medium that makes virtual reality (VR) especially suited to this subject? VR has some unique affordances. Some of the people I’ve interviewed for Barrel Stories have used the recordings they made to start conversations with their loved ones. So I wanted to extend that and ask whether I could inspire more conversations if I could literally have you walk in a parent’s or child’s shoes as they talk about what they went through — getting barrels of goodies, parenting through phone calls, the grind of working several jobs to save up money for immigration procedures, being cared for by someone else. This is a piece of work meant to bridge the experience gap between Caribbean migrant parents and their children. What is working with VR like? I came in as a sceptic. VR felt so far removed from what I was doing. It’s also a technology that isn’t widely distributed and costs a lot to make, so there were barriers to even trying it out. Fortuitously, there was some research funding available for new voices in VR. I was encouraged to apply and was awarded 38
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Love and seawater don’t mix, goes the Caribbean saying — a reflection of the experiences of generations of economic migrants and the ones they’ve often been forced to leave behind. Love and Seawater is also the name of a new virtual-reality project by Lisa Harewood, the latest in a series of works by the Barbadian filmmaker on the often fraught issue of parental separation by migration. Harewood first approached this subject in the acclaimed short fiction film Auntie (2013), about a woman who must reckon with the day when the child she has spent years caring for in Barbados leaves to be reunited with her mother in England. This was followed by Barrel Stories (2015), a series of digital-audio testimonies from people affected by economic migration — the name comes from the shipping barrels filled with goods sent back to the Caribbean as a means of support for those left behind. Harewood, who currently lives in London, spoke with Jonathan Ali about Love and Seawater and embracing new technology to further her storytelling.
one of three commissions. I now believe we have to really engage with new kinds of technology to tell our stories, as Caribbean people. We have to engage with these tools so we can continue to have ownership of our narrative. How is Love and Seawater progressing, and how will people be able to access it when it’s done? In June, we were selected to pitch the project at the Sheffield Documentary Festival. We then completed and presented at a showcase in Bristol a prototype of the first chapter of what will ultimately be a three-chapter experience. The feedback was very positive, and we’re eager to do some user testing with the Caribbean community here in the UK before making a plan for building out the full experience. We want to do a library and community centre tour of the piece, and we’ve designed it for one of the relatively affordable VR headsets to enable more people to access it. Has working across different creative forms — film, digital audio, and now VR — endeared you to one particular form?
Working in Barbados for most of my career, I had to become a Jack-of-alltrades. I used to see that as a weakness. I didn’t even know what to call myself professionally. But now I know that having as many tools in my arsenal as possible only makes my storytelling stronger. Are you interested in telling longerform stories on this subject? I see Barrel Stories as a database that will constantly be replenished with new material, and then as we sift through that material it will be possible to extract specific oral histories and give them a longer treatment in other formats. But at heart I’m a filmmaker. I would love to do an observational documentary with families currently separated or about to be reunited. I’d love to show our resilience in the face of the difficult physical and emotional journey that so many Caribbean people continue to make.
Find out more at loveandseawater.com and barrelstories.org
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cookup
A feast for all
Divali, the festival of light and prosperity, is celebrated by Hindus around the world — and in the Caribbean. It’s a time of hospitality and generosity, writes Franka Philip, whether that means welcoming friends and neighbours into your home — or helping those affected by catastrophe, like the devastating floods in central and south Trinidad in 2018. And the joy of sharing good food is at the heart of it all
Illustration by Shalini Seereeram
T
rinidad and Tobago is a complex and beautiful place. In our national anthem, the standout line is “where every creed and race find an equal place.” Because of our multicultural society, Trinidadians are very embracing of traditions and celebrations from different communities. One of the best examples of this is Divali. This Hindu festival celebrates the triumph of darkness over light, and is a festival of renewal for Hindus all over the world, and right here in T&T. On the day before Divali, at offices and banks across the nation, it’s normal to see employees of
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all races wearing traditional Indian garb, and if you’re lucky, there will be a service representative at the door handing out bags of Indian sweet treats to customers. One of the beautiful things about Divali is the outpouring of love and generosity shown by members of the Hindu community as they welcome relatives and friends to their homes on the holiday. My first proper experience of Divali in a Hindu household came in my mid-twenties, when I visited my friend Ricky at his home in Penal in south Trinidad. Not that I hadn’t had a traditional Indian meal before, eaten with my hands from a banana leaf — I’d experienced that at an Indian wedding— but Divali was special, because of the spectacle of the many illuminated deyas all around the house. Ricky’s mother, a short, busy lady with twinkly eyes and a welcoming smile, took pride in letting us light some deyas, too, which we placed on a handmade bamboo bird. Ricky’s mother had a humble upbringing. but now that she had her own family and a beautiful home, built after years of hard work, she was happy to entertain friends and family at a time when community and togetherness come first. My friends and I couldn’t help but notice the scent of curry wafting from the kitchen. Admittedly, I hadn’t eaten much that day, so I could totally enjoy the epic meal that was in prospect. “Our family takes Divali like Christians take Christmas,” Ricky explained. “Since earlier, people have been coming around to eat, and my parents love it. Mummy also makes sweets for the temple, and they give them out to kids and the people who come to worship.” I was amazed at the lavish spread that evening. There were delicacies like samosas, saheena, and baiganee to start. This was followed by a host of delicious vegetarian dishes: tomato choka (smoked tomato that’s mashed and served with fresh herbs
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If you visit Trinidad in the days leading up to Divali, you must visit the Divali Nagar, a ten-day event that showcases the best of Indo-Trinidadian culture. It’s a full-on experience, because of the number of exhibits, tents, and the sheer volume of people there. Obviously, the lines are longest at the food stalls, many of which sell freshly made dishes — like legendary pepper roti. As the name implies, pepper roti is extremely spicy. But it’s not just about the heat, it’s also bursting with flavour. This type of roti is not widely available in commercial roti shops — it’s generally found in homes where mothers and aunties have the special knack for cooking it. Pepper roti dough is made to be stiffer, with a texture akin to flaky paratha roti. One round of dough is rolled out and covered in a vegetable mix that includes mashed potatoes, carrots, hot roasted peppers, and pimento peppers, seasoned with garlic and chadon beni. The vegetable mix is then covered with a layer of grated cheddar cheese and another rolled-out round of dough is placed on top of that before the whole thing is cooked on a hot tawah or griddle. Making pepper roti is truly a labour of love, and for some, the excitement of seeing the cooks in action makes the long wait for a slice of cheesy pepperiness truly worthwhile.
like cilantro and parsley), curried spinach, pumpkin (roasted, mashed, and generously seasoned with geera and garam masala), curried chataigne (a chestnut-like seed), curried channa, potato, carailli (bitter melon), all served with silky paratha roti and huge helpings of salad. As I was eating, I wondered, is it just me or does eating with my fingers from a banana leaf make the food taste better and earthier?
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ivali is meant to be an extremely happy event, but there are times when circumstances prevent that. Because the holiday occurs during the rainy season, it’s not unusual for heavy rains to affect the celebrations.
One of the beautiful things about Divali in T&T is the outpouring of love and generosity shown by members of the Hindu community
In 2018, some parts of rural Trinidad were literally washed away when the equivalent of a typical month’s rain fell over a three-day period just two weeks before Divali. Many homes were extensively damaged, and some people lost everything. What happens then? In Penal, the Penal Debe Foundation, a community group started by some civic-minded friends, was able to bring cheer to families who were affected, with the aid of generous donations from the public. “Our group is four years old. We are a group of friends who wanted to do more for the community,” says Khemraj Seecharan, a member of the foundation. “We’ve done various projects with schools and for people who needed assistance. “Where there were floods in 2017, we were first responders and we got a lot of help, so it was no surprise when the devastation took place in 2018 that we would be there. The same people, plus more, donated to the cause,” Seecharan explains. “For Divali, we recognised that many people were not going to be able to cook, so we made meals that included buss up shut [paratha roti], channa, pumpkin, and mango talkari.” In addition to the food distributed on the day, the Penal Debe Foundation organised a Divali celebration at the Bakal Recreation Ground, which was like “an oasis” from the destruction of the floods. “We had the celebration in the heart of the flooding, and did everything including food and sweets like kurma and prasad. Over a thousand people came — we even had pepper roti. It was well received,” Seecharan adds. He explains that the celebration will take place again this year, but they’re praying — of course — for no rain. So in one celebration, you have the perfect demonstration of the Trinidadian spirit of generosity, and a true triumph of light over the darkness of catastrophe. n
The Penal Debe Foundation has partnered with the Living Water Community to help rebuild homes in their community. So far, nine houses have been rebuilt. If you’re interested in assisting, visit their Facebook page for more information: www.facebook.com/thepdf 42
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courtesy kelly sinnapah mary
Immerse
Closeup 44 The reinvention
of poetry: Dionne Brand breaks through literary boundaries
Snapshot 50 Racing for the hit:
T&T’s track star Machel Cedenio
Notebook of No Return, Jungle (photo montage, variable size, 2016), by Kelly Sinnapah Mary
Portfolio 56 Riddles of survival:
the fairytale images of Guadeloupean artist Kelly Sinnapah Mary
closeup
The reinvention of poetry For writer Dionne Brand — born in Trinidad and now based in Canada — the shapeshifting, transgressive possibilities of poetry are essential to understanding the self, the world, history, and politics. Over a forty-year career, she has pushed past boundaries of convention and genre — creating something “unparalleled,” writes Shivanee Ramlochan Photography by Cole Burston
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on’t take it personally, but Dionne Brand isn’t gushing to tell you her life story. The reason for this is its own poetry. “My biography is my books,” she tells me — and anyone who’s read her, across multiple genres, spanning decades of poetry, fiction, essays, and hybrid forms, is nodding and saying yes. Her newest books, The Blue Clerk: Ars Poetica in 59 Versos and Theory, were launched on the same day in September 2018. How’s that for prolific? Both books are radical genre-defiers, challenging a collective Western understanding of what poetic and prose forms can offer. They are audacious, shocking, and revealing in the best possible way. Brand, who lives and works in Ontario, Canada, has been publishing this kind of work, writing woven with threads of the brightly
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transgressive, since her first collection of poems, Fore Day Morning, published in 1978. Before all of these stories were written, a young girl stood before a field blazing with bright orange blooms in Guayaguayare, in Trinidad’s southeastern county of Mayaro. Many Trinidadians would be hard-pressed to tell you how to drive there, but for Brand, the village’s urgency as a site of childhood imagination has never faded. “I remember as a kid walking from the house,” she says, “trying to get to these heliconia flowers, this sea of orange, repeatedly trying to walk towards it, never being able to get there, getting halfway there and crying.” When she returned to visit as a young woman, in her twenties, a part of her, one rooted in her earliest memories, was astonished at not being able to locate that field of flowers. That heliconia orange has “accrued significance as something unreachable, but quite beautiful.”
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A Dionne Brand dozen A reading list of twelve key books from the many published by the author over the past four decades: Fore Day Morning: Poems (1978) Winter Epigrams: &, Epigrams to Ernesto Cardenal in Defense of Claudia (1983) No Language Is Neutral (1990) Land to Light On (1997) At the Full and Change of the Moon (1999) A Map to the Door of No Return: Notes to Belonging (2001) thirsty (2002), shortlisted for the 2003 Canadian Griffin Poetry Prize What We All Long For (2005) Ossuaries (2010), winner of the 2011 Canadian Griffin Poetry Prize Love Enough (2014) The Blue Clerk (2018), shortlisted for the 2019 Canadian Griffin Poetry Prize Theory (2018), winner of the 2019 OCM Bocas Prize for Fiction
The writer took this blazing palette with her, departing Trinidad at age seventeen for Canada, where she attended the University of Toronto, graduating in 1975 with a BA in philosophy and English. An MA in the philosophy of education from the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education followed. Academia has been one rudder by which Brand has steered her legendary path: she is currently a professor at the School of English and Theatre Studies at the University of Guelph, and her name is invoked in scholarly circles with awe, frank admiration, and more than a little starry-eyed wonder. If universities appointed rock stars, Brand would command the stage with a six-string guitar, pealing out poetry.
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hy verse first? You feel this vivid poetic gaze at work in Brand’s oeuvre, no matter the genre. In fact, poetry called to her before anything else. Brand’s relationship to the form is a bridge to how she began writing in other genres. “I like its complexity, its unstillness, its forward momentum,” she says of poetry, “its ability to shift you forward or backward, its aggression. I love the aggression of poetry. Then I thought, can I do that in any genre? Can I mean triply, plow forward and apply an aggressive imprint to a page in any genre?” The short answer: yes. The more circuitous response: look to her living body of books, the place where she says all the answers lie waiting. No matter the form, you will find worlds within worlds, spaces of hunger and longing, sites of reclamation and remembrance, oceans as ineffable as the seas lapping on the Guayaguayare shore. Brand’s characters strive for an understanding of the world that surpasses dictionary definitions: there is no finer example of this than the character of Marie Ursule in At the Full and Change of the Moon (1999), a woman radically committed to the idea of her freedom, even in unspeakable bondage. We first meet Marie Ursule in 1824, Trinidad, on the verge of unfurling a quietly defiant mass suicide: a way to refuse slavery at its rotten ideological core. As Brand tells me, this is Marie
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Ursule saying, “If I can’t live in this world, then I won’t.” To trace the genealogies of this warrior queen, Brand steeped herself in research, in a profound examination of the archive. There she found Thisbe, a Trinidadian enslaved woman who, at the point of her execution by hanging in 1802, reportedly declared, “This is but a drink of water to what I have already suffered.” In Thisbe’s last, resolute drink of water, Brand’s Marie Ursule was born. Archival research revealed, in details that rival all the horrors of the imagination, how black people had the humanity extracted out of them through the punishments and systems of slavery. One example: a ball and chain around the leg for three years, as disciplinary action against revolt. Brand knows anything you can grotesquely imagine has been perpetrated against the black self: there is fire in her eyes and a nearly combative glee to the cast of her mouth when she says, “I don’t do black spectacularity. I just don’t.”
“I like its complexity, its unstillness, its forward momentum,” Dionne Brand says of poetry, “its ability to shift you forward or backward” If this is one of the central covenants of Brand’s scholarship and activism, then it has served her writing well. The prizebestowing academies all think so. Brand has won Canada’s Governor General’s Award for Poetry, the Pat Lowther Award, the City of Toronto Book Award, the Harbourfront Festival Prize, the Griffin Poetry Prize, and holds honorary degrees from Thorneloe University and the University of Windsor. Earlier this year, she received the OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature in the Fiction category, for Theory; the Trillium Book Award, for
The Blue Clerk; and the Blue Metropolis Violet Prize, given in celebration of an established LGBTQ+ writer’s career. Yet these laurels aren’t quite what Dionne Brand is after. They don’t define the anatomy of her days at the writing desk, and there is nothing of the formulaic in them. Just ask her if she’s ever written odes for the newborn babies of Canadian politicians, during her three-year tenure as Toronto’s third Poet Laureate, and gales of laughter will greet you. Instead, Brand focused on bringing poetry to the working, breathing world of the everyday, with a project called Poetry is Public is Poetry. In an address given to mark the first permanent pavement installation of a poem by Rosemary Sullivan, Brand said, “Poetry beautifies public space, pays respect to the intelligence of the citizenry, gives respite from the grind of daily living, and engages the city’s humanistic ideals.” Cast in bronze, embedded in the sidewalk leading to the Cedarbae Branch of the Toronto Public Library, Sullivan’s lines read: “a man packed a country / in a suitcase with his shoes / and left.”
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onsider this: there is poetry pulsing under your very feet, if you walk through Toronto, and Dionne Brand was pivotal in putting it there. It’s a vital sign of Brand’s preoccupation with the city, a relationship as loving and symbiotic as a house built with adoration and concern. Her novels What We All Long For (2005) and Love Enough (2014) offer the reader dynamic, unsettled (and therefore unsettling), imaginatively robust characters contending with themselves and each other throughout Toronto. Anyone who considers Toronto nebulous in the global literary imagination will find it mapped with a living curiosity here. Better still, Brand seats everyone at the table: people of First Nations communities, immigrants, refugees, queer citizens, alongside everyone. Brand’s work recognises that they are everyone, too. Ferocious inclusivity articulates Brand’s politics and life in activism. You couldn’t separate this political animus from
Brand’s work if you tried — in every genre, her commitment to her peoples, her places, would shun any smaller analysis. Brand returned to the Caribbean in 1983 to serve on the intellectual and corporeal frontlines of the Grenada Revolution, as information and communications officer for the Agency for Rural Transformation. Upon her return to Canada, critics noted a sea swell in her poems, published in Winter Epigrams: &, Epigrams to Ernesto Cardenal in Defense of Claudia (1983). The language seemed to spark off the page, to incandesce. As a teacher, community
Poetry called to her before anything else. Brand’s relationship to the form is a bridge to how she began writing in other genres organiser, and radical animator, Brand’s language has continued to fan flames, and generate them, enveloping generations of students, activists, mentees, and readers. As the St Lucia-born, Ontario-based poet Canisia Lubrin says, “Dionne Brand is just the greatest magician of language to me.” It takes intentional, muscular crafting, to be certain, to release two books on the same day — and to have both those books be extraordinary, perched on the vanguard of the literary possible. Shazia Hafiz Ramji, writing for the Hamilton Review of Books, says of Theory that “Brand has continued to reinvent herself while staying true to an uncompromising vision that gestures towards the potency of the novel in the real world.” Ramji’s right: at every page turn of Theory, I felt I was reading a new form, generating itself. Teoria, the intellectually brilliant, interpersonally challenged narrator of the book, is often stumped by “love’s austere and lonely offices,” to channel Robert Hayden.
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The difficult processes through which Teoria comes to a series of understandings — about her three very different women lovers, about her unwieldy thesis — every stage of this journey, was an intentional mapping. “It has to be her judging herself. She had to be self-aware, but she also had to fail,” says Brand, adding, “The actual thesis needed to layer itself in, too. It’s like kneading flour, like kneading a dhalpuri. I enjoyed writing that, incredibly, because she was so ridiculous, and so smart. Each of the chapters became a kind of theory and then the academic work became layered atop of it.” Brand pauses,
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then concludes her thought, saying, “To approach a new book is to approach a new method — not to repeat, but to reinvent the shape — so too with poetry.” The Blue Clerk is precisely that — a remodelling of the poetic form. Brand doesn’t claim to have invented the essay poem form, but the unmistakable spirit of an archival ingenuity powers it. Certainly, the Trillium Book Award jury citation isn’t shy in crowning Brand a trailblazer for what she’s made here: “At once an epic poem, polemic, fragmentary novel, creation story, and grimoire, The Blue Clerk suggests an entirely new literary
Dionne Brand at home in Toronto
swiftly realised “It’s my work. It’s what I’ve been collecting.” Despite her own adherence to blistering candour in her poetry, Brand found that the project of mapping the clerk and her author exacted a ruthless, often painful honesty beyond what she had known. The project of the clerk is to expose the author-poet, who burdens the clerk with constant raw material, then charges her with keeping everything, everything, everything. Brand says, “It was quite the fight in my own head, leaving the verse not smoothed and raw, leaving it unspo-
Ferocious inclusivity articulates Brand’s politics and life in activism. You couldn’t separate this political animus from her work if you tried
form, a magnificent literary achievement.” In this book, a sustained and complicated, complicating conversation between two personae unfurls. One, the blue clerk, keeps a ledger in minutiae of everything the second persona — the author — has collected. The clerk functions as shadow curatrix, as restless and hypervigilant accounts notary: in her own words, “I am the clerk, overwhelmed by the left-hand pages. Each blooming quire contains a thought selected out of many reams of thoughts and stripped by me, then presented to the author.” Composing The Blue Clerk began in 2012. Brand says she
ken. The book was difficult to lay out and difficult to finish.” There was urgency, too, in ending The Blue Clerk with a prime number — the 59 Versos of the subtitle — which required an engineering of specific mathematics, atop the book’s already remarkable form. It succeeds, in all its coruscating ambition — math and metaphysics dovetailing to create something unparalleled in poetry. Yet Brand’s gaze is not, one senses, driven by the celebration of her ego. She’s too busy being hungry for more work, more poems, to bask in her own glow. In 2017, she was appointed poetry editor for McClelland and Stewart, the venerable Canadian publishing house. Her eye is trained to the rise of other voices, not hers. Of her acquisition ethic, she says, “My hope is to bring a bunch of new voices representative of living now. There is a real chorus of people talking into the world we’re living in.” These are the current and future biographies of others, their lives and the lives of their subjects, laid out in poems. In Brand’s hands, they will be much more than safe. Under her unflinching stewardship, they will be allowed to remain dangerous. n
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Roger Sedres/Shutterstock.com
snapshot
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Racing for the hit
He shares a name with T&T’s soca superstar, but athlete Machel Cedenio has more than a claim to his own fame. After anchoring T&T’s winning team at the 2019 World Relays event in an astonishing “finish for the ages,” the twenty-threeyear-old 400-metre specialist is heading into September’s World Athletics Championships with a hunger for gold. And his mental preparation is as rigorous as his physical training, reports Sheldon Waithe
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“A finish for the ages,” said the commentators: Machel Cedenio on the final leg of the men’s 4x400-metre event at the 2019 World Relays championship in Yokohama, Japan
ondon Stadium, August 2017. The hallowed lanes paved with greatness at the 2012 Summer Olympics are once again being bestowed with glory, as the stadium hosts the World Athletics Championships. As ever, the very last event is the men’s 4x400-metre relay final; as ever, the USA are red-hot favourites to add to their medal tally in the discipline. But while the Americans have unparalleled dominance in the relay, Trinidad and Tobago also has an uncanny pedigree, dating back to the 1950s and represented now by a quartet that does that lineage proud. Two short years earlier, the T&T team secured gold at the Pan Am Games in Toronto, when their youngest member — already with a silver medal from the individual 400-metre event — turned on his trademark after-burners in the final stretch, and took T&T from also-rans to champions. For good measure, two weeks later he anchored the relay team to a silver medal at the 2015 World Athletics Championships in Beijing. Now that man — Machel Cedenio — and his three teammates, are seeking to go one step higher on the winners’ podium.
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Roger Sedres/Shutterstock.com
Cedenio with teammate Jereem Richards, after winning the 4x400-metre race at the 2019 World Relays
The USA leads comfortably from the very beginning, until T&T’s Jereem Richards and then Cedenio close the gap, to place Lalonde Gordon in a position to do the unthinkable and beat the Americans. As Gordon disappears under two of his countrymen in the wild abandonment of celebration, Cedenio’s face is the epitome of initial shock, requiring an answer to his probable question: did this really just happen? It soon wears off and he joins the celebrations, now blissfully aware that this is the latest addition to a long line of achievements in his brief twentyone years.
Machel Cedenio is completely relaxed on the track simply because he knows it is exactly where he belongs
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edenio is purpose-built for his profession: he has the classic rangy make-up of the one-lap specialist, with a relaxed attitude reflected in an easy-looking stride which belies the incredible amount of work being converted into raw speed. You’d be hard-pressed to find a photo of him grimacing from the effort of catching and passing competitors. He displays none of the facial antics commonly equated with supreme focus among world-class athletes. You could say he is somewhere in the middle of the athlete attitude spectrum, but it’s more likely that Machel Cedenio is completely relaxed on the track simply
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because he knows it is exactly where he belongs. It is “home.” Familiarity allows for calm, and Cedenio has been acquainted with victory on a rising scale since the age of fifteen, when — like so many Caribbean track and field stars — he burst through to prominence with gold-medal performances at the Carifta Games. The fuse was lit. “At that point, I thought, I have some talent, maybe I should stick with this sport,” Cedenio recalls. “When I first started, I used to run the 100 metres, but I used to come fourth or fifth. But the first national team I made was for the 400, so from there I realised it was my event.” Natural progression saw him expand his regional tally at the Junior Central American and Caribbean Championships before stamping his authority globally with the big one: the individual 400-metre title at 2014’s World Junior Championships. By now, it was evident that he needed to further his potential in the unofficial athletic finishing school that is the US track and field circuit. “After secondary school,” he says, “my parents and coach [Lance Braumann] decided that we will dedicate everything to running.” Moving to Orlando, he continued to blossom as part of Braumann’s training group, and set his sights on senior titles.
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Richard Heathcote/Getty Images
Despite concerns about living away from his family, Cedenio made a seamless transition into the senior ranks. He was still only twenty years old when the Rio Olympics came along, so the emphasis — according to observers, at least — was on gaining experience. But Cedenio took to the competition with a zest that saw him into the 400-metre final, only to finish just out of the medals in fourth place as the winner broke the world record. With his scintillating form, he joined his relay companions in the continued search for precious metal. Then, disaster. T&T were disqualified for stepping outside their lane in their very first heat. The 2016 Olympic dream was over, representing the first real setback of Cedenio’s career. The twin aspects of family support and deep patriotism remain entrenched in his psyche and, aligned to his work ethic, make the Point Fortin man even hungrier for success. When the Trinidad and Tobago Olympic Committee launched a campaign for ten Olympic gold medals by the year 2024 (#10Golds24), Cedenio was the first athlete to pledge his dedication to the cause. “I’m working every day to help achieve this goal for my country,” he said. Reinforcing that he’s acutely aware of what it takes to get to the top, he portrayed his viewpoint with the clichéd “You’re only as good as your last race,” before adding his own mantra: “I don’t believe in days off.”
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edenio’s composure may have its roots in his relationship with his greatest supporters, his family. He speaks regularly about the need to get back to T&T to spend time with them. “I’m close to both my parents and my three sisters,” he says. “Any time something goes bad in track and field, I go to my mom or God, and it ends up all being good.” That support was crucial when Cedenio experienced the negative side of celebrity in late 2018, as he was called in by the police for questioning over a road accident in Tobago, being cleared once the investigation was completed. He took umbrage at the media’s reporting of the incident, releasing a social media comment: “They were happy to report I walked into a police
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Lalonde Gordon, Machel Cedenio, Jereem Richards, and Jarrin Solomon on the winners’ podium at the 2017 World Athletics Championships in London
station with my lawyer for questioning etc, but they weren’t as eager to report I walked out uncharged with a clear name.” It marked the end of a troublesome year, with no medals at the 2018 Commonwealth Games and injury forcing him out of the CAC Games. It was time to rebound. In his own words, “If you lose, it’s not a reason to give up, it’s a reason to go forward.” Which is exactly what Cedenio has done in 2019, with a slew of steady performances that culminated in a performance dubbed “the run of his life” at the World Relays
In his own words, “If you lose, it’s not a reason to give up, it’s a reason to go forward.” Which is exactly what Cedenio has done in 2019 event in Yokohoma, Japan, this past May. The USA once again had a commanding lead, with T&T in third place as Cedenio was handed the baton on the final leg. Amazingly, he closed the seemingly impossible gap to catch his American opponent on the line by the smallest of margins. Commentators were floored: “Cedenio with a finish for the ages!” Now twenty-three years old and entering the peak years of an athlete, Cedenio faces a crucial stepping-stone — the 2019 IAAF World Championships in Doha — towards the one medal missing from his collection: Olympic. The Pan Am Games in Peru this past August brought a setback. Cedenio stopped before the line in the individual 400 metres, feeling the onset of cramp. In the relay, he was neck and neck with his Colombian counterpart and about to turn on those trademark afterburners when he inexplicably faded to third place. The reserved Cedenio offered no explanation, but there are bigger targets on the immediate horizon, with Doha looming. There’s enough time for Cedenio to tweak things before lining up on his favourite hunting ground at the World Championships. “Going up on the podium and hearing the national anthem, that’s when it really hit me,” Cedenio said after his two World titles. Prepare to be hit again, Machel. n
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portfolio
Riddles of survival
Scenes of otherworldly violence often occur in the work of Guadeloupean artist Kelly Sinnapah Mary, with a fairytale quality that mingles cruelty and enchantment. As Shereen Ann Ali learns, these riddling images explore dismembered identities in a world shaped by colonialism — as well as the selfreinvention that allows both resistance and survival Photography courtesy Kelly Sinnapah Mary
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raided cloth, flowered bedsheets, stuffed cushions — these are the unlikely materials from which Kelly Sinnapah Mary makes art. She combines such soft, “feminine” crafting materials and surreal, subversive techniques to raise hard issues: the reality of violence against women, for instance, or institutionalised violence against colonised cultures. What do such invasive experiences of domination do to the people who must endure them? How have people changed themselves in order to survive? These themes sound heavy indeed, but the range of Sinnapah Mary’s approaches makes her art a constant adventure. Born in Guadeloupe in 1981, the descendant of Indian indentured labourers, the artist embraces her own ethnic heritage, sexuality, love of crafting, and keen sense of social injustice to make art objects, installations depicting mini-worlds, and two-dimensional images which often have unexpected science fiction or fairy tale echoes. She paints, draws, takes photographs, makes occasional videos, and also enjoys sewing up a storm of handmade objects with appliqued graffiti and drawn or collaged symbols, as she lets her imagination loose on ideas.
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With degrees in visual art from the prestigious Université Toulouse-Jean Jaurès (2004) and from the University of the French West Indies and Guiana in Martinique (2005), Sinnapah Mary has shown her work widely. The list of exhibitions includes her provocative 2012 show Vagina at Galerie T&T in Guadeloupe; the 2014 group show Caribbean: Crossroads of the World at the Pérez Art Museum in Miami; the 2015 show Field Notes at the Museum of Contemporary African Diaspora Arts (MoCADA) in downtown Brooklyn; the 2017 show The Expansion of Fantasies at the Maelle Gallerie in Paris; and most recently Present Passing: South by Southeast, presented by the Osage Foundation in Hong Kong this year. She works mostly in a dedicated studio, but says sometimes she also likes to make art at home — “Because I like hearing my son play and talk in the background.” She also listens to music as she creates — right now she’s into Haitian-Canadian DJ Kaytranada, she says. “When I was a child, I always liked drawing, doodling characters from tales or cartoons: Mickey, Donald, Goldilocks, Cinderella,” says Sinnapah
Notebook of No Return, Land Owner (drawing on paper, 2017)
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Detail of installation Notebook of No Return, Alice & Goliath (painting on tapestry, wooden bench, and fabric knots on wall, 2019)
Mary, in an email interview translated from her native French. “I could also spend hours and hours colouring. My mother liked working directly with cloth: she was a seamstress, and I think I inherited this hands-on approach from her.” One of her grandfathers was a Hindu priest. All her grandparents followed both Hinduism and Catholicism, as many Indian families did in Guadeloupe, says Sinnapah Mary, but her own parents became Jehovah’s Witnesses and were uninterested in Indian diaspora issues. As Sinnapah Mary grew up, she gradually realised that both Afro- and Indo-Caribbeans are victims of a terrible uprooting, and this consciousness would help shape her future art.
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er artworks today involve subtle or graphic statements and visual stories that can be a bit like puzzles or riddles: you have to experience them and take the time to decode them. That is not to say that many of her pieces don’t have an immediate visceral power: just look at the animal-
As Kelly Sinnapah Mary grew up, she realised that both Afro- and IndoCaribbeans are victims of a terrible uprooting, and this consciousness would help shape her future art 58
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istic image of a hairy mother cradling a newborn (a photo-drawing collage from Hot Milk 2), which seems bestially primeval, or the macabre images of a long-haired, faceless woman with a huge redcushioned open maw where her face should be, part of the 2013–14 Vagina installation. The scary Vagina woman-monster-mouth image may remind some people of the 1990s X-Files character the Flukeman, a genetic humanworm mutant who evolved from human pollution, living in sewers and eating people to survive and breed. Sinnapah Mary succeeds in creating her own unique interpretation of the monstrous: a cushioned red mouth orifice suggests both the vulnerability of female apertures and the dangers of woman unleashed, who may swallow you whole if you’re not careful. What inspired that red-mouthed figure was Sinnapah Mary’s deeply felt reaction to the brutal 2012 gang rape and death of a twenty-three-yearold woman named Jyoti Singh Pandey by a gang of men on a bus in Delhi, which made international headlines and sparked public protests in India
that year. Sinnapah Mary’s art in the wake of this horrendous crime became a meditation on rape, resistance, and the mutation of assaulted bodies and psyches into ghoulish personas and sometimes monstrous survival strategies.
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innapah Mary’s creative process often begins with reading literary works, and then proceeds to a series of sketches as she fleshes out her ideas. At the time of this interview, she’s busy reading books by V.S. Naipaul and James Baldwin. “I am very influenced by Caribbean literature,” she explains. “For example, in the series Notebook of No Return” — a 2018 installation — “I’d been reading about transcultural concepts as expressed in ‘Coolitude’ by the French Mauritian poet Khal Torabully, as well as ideas on the Négritude movement as expressed by Aimé Césaire. Both writers addressed themes of oppression.” Sinnapah Mary often uses photo-editing and
collage approaches to help in composing her paintings, doing a series of tests before committing to the final work. She works on several projects simultaneously, with inspiration coming from anywhere at all: “Anything can inspire me: a book, a meeting, an odour, a sensation, a movie . . .” There is a fairytale quality of magical enchantment and cruel brutality to some of Sinnapah Mary’s work. In Notebook of No Return, one painting depicts a mysterious, somewhat zombie-like young woman in a ballooning white colonial-era dress with her arms and feet cut off, against a painted background of soft feathery leaves. Strange white spikes grow from her skin. This image of severed limbs and a spiky body is disturbing: it’s gory, but can also suggest other kinds of dismemberment, such as the cutting up of women’s identities, or the cultural amputations of Indian migrants to the Caribbean, who must keep some parts of themselves, lop off other bits, and grow new body-armours in their struggle to adapt and create new identities in alienating new lands. “Yes, there is both the idea of enchantment and brutality in this work,” says Sinnapah Mary, referring to the group exhibition Désir Cannibale — which ran in mid-2018 at the Fondation Clément in Martinique — in which her dismembered spiky women featured in her Notebook of No Return to a Native Land works. The title of this series references Martinican writer Aimé
This image of severed limbs and a spiky body is disturbing: it’s gory, but can also suggest other kinds of dismemberment, such as the cutting up of women’s identities
Left Detail of Vagina (sewing and embroidery on cushion, 2014) Above The artist at work in her studio
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Paintings from Notebook of No Return (acrylic on canvas, 100 x 100 cm, 2018). Courtesy of Fondation Clement, Martinique
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Césaire’s celebrated 1939 poem Cahier d’un retour au pays natal (Journal of a Homecoming), about the cultural identity of black Africans in a colonial setting. Sinnapah Mary sees some commonalities, and says for Indians in the Caribbean, there was no real going back to any ancestral home. She explains that her spiky amputated women figures are indeed mutated selves: they shed or moult old skin to make way for new growth, essential to the rebirth of Indian emigrants in their adopted lands: “The spikes on their skin are like the quills of sea urchins. These women are marked with traces of the crossing of the waters and the curse of the black waters of the Kala Pani” — cursed to perpetual wandering. Some of Mary’s Notebook of No Return images evoke a primordial, even cannibalistic quality in order to defy “the violent intentions of the colonial insult,” as Trinidadian-Canadian writer Andil Gosine notes in an article on her work. “Sinnapah Mary creates visual images which both assert the presence of an underrepresented people and reveal the spaces in which pleasure and violence are simultaneously generated and entwined.” The hint of cannibalism also recalls the Brazilian modernist poet Oswald de Andrade’s 1928 Manifesto Antropófago, advancing a playful theory of cultural cannibalism: the New World must eat up the creations of the Old World, digest them, and transform them to create its own reality. Another intriguing motif in Sinnapah Mary’s work is a long skein of plaited hair. In one series of black and white drawings, all the images are formed from hair. Sinnapah Mary says this references survival mechanisms of indentured Indians who encountered deplorable working conditions on French plantations. For most, there was no question of a return to a former home, to a motherland, or to former notions of “purity”: “They had to rebuild their identity in the global context of French, Caribbean, African, and Indian cultures.” So in the plaiting together of different strands of hair, Sinnapah Mary f inds an apt visual metaphor for how Indian diaspora people had to reconstruct and weave together new realities and creolised identities from whatever was available to them in these new landscapes — and an equally apt metaphor for those Caribbean artists, like herself, who create bold, unforgettable images exploring these elements of personal and collective history. n
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ARRIVE
Explore 62 Jamaica on the road
Destination 74 Five days in Barbados
Neighbourhood 72 Otrobanda, Curaรงao
Bucket List 82 Rainforests of
Suriname
On the wild east coast of Barbados, Atlantic breakers meet limestone cliffs
explore
Jamaica on the road Almost 150 miles from Negril in the west to Morant Point in the east, Jamaica is an island of mountains and lush valleys, rivers and forests, sheer cliffs and gentle coasts. And the best way to explore it is a road trip. Whether you’re based in bustling Kingston or a laid-back north coast resort, assemble some friends, grab a car, pull up a map, and head out on an adventure on the road 62
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Said to have been first planted in the seventeenth century, Bamboo Alley in St Elizabeth Parish stretches for two and a half miles between the villages of Lacovia and Middle Quarters — a sun-dappled tunnel of green along the road to the south coast
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A fresh coconut from a roadside fruit stall — like this one in St Mary Parish — is the best thirst-quencher on a long country drive
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Limestone cliffs mark Jamaica’s westernmost tip, close to Negril
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Montego Bay Hanover
Ocho Rios St James
Trelawny St Ann
Negril
St Mary
Westmoreland
Clarendon
Bamboo Alley
Portland
St Catherine St Andrew
Manchester
St Elizabeth
St Thomas KINGSTON
Your Hotels of Choice in
(876) 936 - 3570 www.courtleigh.com sales@courtleigh.com
(876) 929 - 1000 www.knutsfordcourt.com sales@knutsfordcourt.com
Kingston (876) 926 - 3691-9 www.jamaicapegasus.com reservations@jamaicapegasus.com
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The view is all green on the drive through the hills of St Ann Parish
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No better dan yard A colourful new mural at Kingston’s Norman Manley International Airport, commissioned by Caribbean Airlines, celebrates Jamaican culture and travel
The warmth, energy, and defining personality of Jamaica and the humorous side of travel are captured bigger than life size in a new mural at Kingston’s Norman Manley International Airport, commissioned by Caribbean Airlines and unveiled on 1 July, 2019. Located in the departure concourse of the airport, the fourteen-panel mural was designed by up-and-coming Jamaican illustrator George Hay. Featuring Hay’s signature cartoon illustration style, the mural spans 3,600 square feet and depicts the Jamaican experience from three perspectives: resident Jamaicans, visitors, and the many Jamaicans who live abroad and for whom Jamaica is home. “No weh no better dan yard,” declares one panel: there’s no place like home. “This mural is a grand canvas celebrating a few of the signature elements that make Jamaica special,” said Caribbean Airlines Chief Executive Officer Garvin Medera, speaking at the unveiling, “showcasing moments that everyone, whether born here or abroad, will love. This masterful work reflects the core of the Jamaican Identity, which is integral to our Caribbean Identity, and we are pleased to share George’s masterpiece with the world.” “I am honoured to have been a part of this project,” said the artist. “As a proud Jamaican and Caribbean national, it gave me great joy to team up with Caribbean Airlines to showcase to the world these illustrative views into our culture and Caribbean lifestyles.” A graduate of Kingston’s Edna Manley College of the Visual and Performing Arts, Hay is also considered one of Jamaica’s best animators, and is a multiple award winner at Kingstoon, Kingston’s cartoon and animation festival. The Kingston airport mural is his most prominent work to day — every passenger flying out of the airport will experience Hay’s images as they head to the departure gates. It makes for a colourful farewell — and an invitation to return.
From left: Caribbean Airlines Director Zachary Harding; Caribbean Airlines Executive Manager Marketing & Loyalty, Alicia Cabrera; Joe Bogdanovich, CEO, Downsound Entertainment, owner and producer of Reggae Sumfest; and Caribbean Airlines CEO Garvin Medera
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Fresh water meets salt near Ocho Rios on the north coast, as a small river plunges into the crystal sea
Caribbean Airlines operates daily return flights to Norman Manley International Airport in Kingston and Sangster International Airport in Montego Bay from destinations in the Caribbean and North America 70
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neighbourhood
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Otrobanda, Curaçao The “other side” of Curaçao’s capital, across the harbour from Punda, may be the island’s most vibrant, historic, and arts-focused area
Willemstad, founded in 1634 by Dutch colonists, began as a settlement on a small promontory, today known as Punda. By the eighteenth century, as the population swelled, Willemstad’s residents began building houses across St Anna Bay, and the district of Otrobanda — Papiamento for “the other side” — was born. Connected to Punda by the landmark floating Queen Emma Bridge since 1888, Otrobanda has become the buzzier half of Curaçao’s capital, known for its arts scene and restored historic buildings.
Living art Curaçao’s street art movement took off in the 1980s, following the growing popularity of graffiti art in the United States and Europe. At the time, Otrobanda was not the most picturesque of areas, but its many abandoned walls and lonely alleyways offered a canvas for both young and
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seasoned artists to send messages of love for their city. Today, concerted restoration projects have made Otrobanda almost as neat and polished as Punda across the bay, but the neighbourhood’s informal art scene still thrives. Look out for stunning murals depicting nature, political satire, and even thought-provoking philosophical questions, as you explore the streets and blocks.
Gail Johnson/Shutterstock.com
History
Breedestraat Don’t be confused by Willemstad’s multiple Breedestraats. “Broad Street,” as the name translates in English, refers to a main shopping avenue. Otrobanda’s Breedestraat isn’t occupied by famous international names like Punda’s — here you’ll find local businesses, restaurants, and family-run hotels housed in picturesque nineteenthand early-twentieth-century buildings, offering crafts and local fashion. Explore them for a more intimate look at Curaçao’s everyday life. Some of the smaller establishments are the size of closets, yet hold so much character — from the people who run them to the patrons who visit.
Green rum?
Pawel Kazmierczak/Shutterstock.com Courtesy Curaçao Tourism Board
Courtesy Curaçao Tourism Board
Curaçao takes its liquor very seriously: much time and effort are devoted to concocting some of the most unusual drinks in the Caribbean. Blue Curaçao — with its vivid turquoise hue and orange flavour — is a world-famous cocktail staple, but it has a local rival with an equally vivid colour and growing popularity. On Otrobanda’s Breedestraat is a hole-in-the-wall establishment with a special reputation. The Netto Bar (opened in 1954) is where you’ll find the notorious Rom Berde — green rum. Yes, green. Very sweet, sickly green, potion-like, and a hit with both locals and visitors. But what makes this drink so special and gives it this startling colour? The recipe is strictly confidential, bringing bold tipplers back for more.
Back in time
Head out
Shopping, art, proximity to beaches — Otrobanda has all of those, but can also offer a — sometimes sobering — history lesson, via two of Curaçao’s most important museums, the Kura Hulanda and Rif Fort. Both tell stories of maritime warfare and the enslavement of Africans on colonial plantations, which shaped present-day Curaçao. On display at the Kura Hulanda Museum are chilling artifacts of the slavery era, such as chains, torture implements, and model ships. Other galleries explore the broader context of Caribbean, American, and African history, making them one of the best exhibits of the region’s colonial past, and a vital educational tool for islanders and visitors alike. Nearby Rif Fort — which translates as “Reef Fort” — is located at the entrance of St Anna Bay and the Otrobanda quarter. In 1828, King William I of the Netherlands ordered the fort’s construction, as part of a restoration of the island’s defences. During the Second World War, outfitted with machine guns, it protected the island from enemy vessels. Later the fort turned into a police station, and in its present incarnation it houses a popular shopping mall within its historic stone walls.
When you’re ready to explore the rest of Curaçao, the island’s beaches are obvious day-trip goals, but for a deeper experience, plunge into the quiet mystery of the Grotten van Hato —the Hato Caves — north of Willemstad near the airport. These 300,000-year-old rock formations have been a popular site with visitors since they opened to the public in 1991. The millenia-long erosion of coral limestone by salt water created these impressive caverns, which were once used by indigenous Amerindians for shelter and later as a place of refuge by escapees from Curaçao’s colonial slave plantations. On the glittering cave walls are petroglyphs of animals long extinct, and among the stalactites and stalagmites your guide will point out fanciful “faces” and shapes of all kinds.
Caribbean Airlines operates two return flights weekly to Curaçao International Airport from Trinidad, with connections to other destinations in the Caribbean and North and South America
Coordinates 12.1° N, 68.9° W Sea level
CURAÇAO
Otrobanda
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destination
Five days in Barbados
Barbados may be world-famous for its beaches, for good reason, but there’s much more to this island than brilliant blue water and shimmering white sand. Shelly-Ann Inniss suggests a five-day itinerary to explore the twenty-one by fourteen miles of Bim — ranging from hills and gullies to deep underground, and then some 74
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Courtesy Barbados Tourism Marketing Inc
Forget the reputation for being laid-back: time never seems to stand still in Barbados. Just when you think all the items are checked off your action-packed travel itinerary, another eye-catching adventure appears. This island east of the Caribbean chain is proof that good things come in small packages, with one exciting activity after another invoking happiness at a supersonic rate. And with a bit of planning, you can cram a month of thrills into an action-packed week.
Day one Start by getting to know the landscapes, wildlife, and overall essence of the island the old-fashioned way: on foot. Long walks on the beach are one thing, but hiking up the steep hills of Barbados’s east coast, or through the rivers and gullies, or along the old train line, is hardcore. The island is predominantly flat, compared to its neighbours, but the right hike can be both challenging and very enjoyable. Hackleton’s Cliff in St Joseph Parish rises to approximately one thousand feet above sea level, and the summit offers luscious views, from Pico Tenerife in the north to Rugged Point in the south-east. Or explore Coco Hill Forest in
St Joseph, a fifty-three-acre reserve filled with bamboo, royal palms, fruit trees, and more. Its mission is heritage preservation and food security through permaculture and other forms of farming. The Barbados National Trust hosts three-hour hikes every Sunday, with grades for each fitness level. There’s Stop ’n Stare (averaging six miles), Slow Medium and Fast Medium (approximately nine miles), and Grin ’n Bear (roughly twelve challenging miles) — with an occasional moonlight hike too, if you’re a night person.
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Day two You’ve experienced the Bajan landscape on foot. Now it’s time to hit the road, or even get off the road, in a go-kart or ATV. Rainy days are perfect for off-roading if you don’t mind getting dirty — water, mud, and good vibes may almost remind you of J’Ouvert celebrations during Crop Over. A tour from Off Road Fury Barbados will take you through miles of mud and dirt tracks, kart roads, hills and inclines, through vegetation thick and thin. In the kart, drivers and their navigators thunder across thrilling trails. You can take your turn at the wheel as long as you’ve got a valid driver’s license. Some of Barbados’s country roads and canefields aren’t the usual places you see in guidebooks, but when you’re in a go-kart, you can zoom from bush to wonderland with beguiling panoramic views. Or head for the Bushy Park motor track. Year-round, professional racers and instructors encourage you to hear, feel, and see what a race car can do when thrust to its limits. It’ll completely redefine your idea of driving. Start by riding with the pros, then it’s your turn to take the wheel: you have the opportunity to “fly solo” along the circuit. On your mark!
Day three Yes, this itinerary obviously includes a trip to the beach. Beach days are every day in Barbados, some would say. And from sunrise to sunset and beyond, there are beach activities ranging from the merely relaxing to the highly invigorating, on the sand or in the water. On the serene side, check out tiny Shark Hole Beach in St Philip. From the roadside, the entrance to the beach is unassuming — navigational apps on mobile phones can’t even detect it. But as you head down the path which gives way to the beach and ruins nearby, you involuntarily give thanks for creation. This naturally funnel-shaped cove unfolds as steep rock cliffs lead to a patch of sand — quiet, breezy, impeccably clean, a picturesque hidden treasure. The crystal-clear blue waters, relative calm, and balmy temperature — sea temperatures usually linger between twentyone and twenty-six degrees Celsius throughout the year — of Barbados’s west and south coasts make them ideal for jet ski, kayak, and surf sessions. Needhams Point, Dover Beach, Brandons Beach, and Paynes Bay are all favourite spots for water sports. Kite surfing might become your latest craze at Silver Sands Beach or Long Beach, with the right winds. And have you tried stand-up paddleboarding (SUP), or maybe the exhilarating JetBlade experience? SUP is exactly what the name suggests: standing and paddling on a surf-style board. It’s a cross between surfing and kayaking, and relatively low impact. The hydro flight JetBlade, on the other hand, means adrenaline thrills at electrifying levels. Newbies always have an unforgettable experience as water jet propulsion literally skyrockets them into the air. This extreme water sport gives you a natural high — and chances are you won’t want to come down.
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Courtesy Barbados Tourism Marketing Inc
Day four Back to nature! And this time, go deep. You may have heard of Harrison’s Cave long before you set foot on Barbadian soil. This limestone cave system officially opened to the general public in 1981, after seven years of excavation and building works to accommodate underground trams. The tram tour is the most common way to visit, but if you’d like to go back in time and experience the cave as the early explorers did, gear up with a headlamp and some knee guards for an eco-adventure tour. Harrison’s Cave is more than a walk-through type of cave. Climbing, squeezing, contorting, jumping, and perhaps crab walking are all required. The Harrison’s Cave system is approximately 2.3 kilometres long, with its largest cavern, the Great Hall, soaring fifteen metres high. This is a very active geological feature, as water continues to flow through the limestone, with stalagmites and stalactites still slowly growing to form amazing columns. The secrets of the Harrison’s Cave await you — but try not to lose a shoe during the taxing but marvellous trek, like one friend of mine.
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Advertorials Massy Realty With our diverse team of experienced and knowledgeable real estate agents, we cater to a wide variety of clients in both residential and commercial rentals and sales. With our “no charge” advertising, your property gets maximum worldwide exposure. Whether you’re looking to buy, rent, or sell, our agents are eager to put their skills to use for you. Massy Realty, your dream . . . our mission. Barbados Tourism Marketing Inc. Craving excitement while relaxing in the Caribbean? Discover the many non-traditional holiday experiences for fun-seekers available in Barbados. The island appeals to soft adventure lovers in a wide variety of activities. From surfing to horseback riding along the east coast, or even
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bike riding into the sunset — you’re sure to find something to satisfy your adventure cravings. Guided tours and hikes will also take you through the trails and hills along our stunning coastal stretches. Sights such as incredible rock formations, the waterfalls at Harrison’s Cave, and our enchanting botanical gullies are all waiting to be explored. Of course, your holiday to Barbados would not be complete if you didn’t swim or snorkel on one of our amazing catamaran cruises. Whether you’re exploring our rich and local history, relaxing on our breathtaking shorelines, or traversing through our serene coasts, Barbados offers enough soft adventure to last a lifetime. For more information, visit www.visitbarbados.org
Courtesy St Nicholas Abbey
While exploring Barbados, don’t forget your tastebuds. The Barbados Food and Rum Festival, running from 24 to 27 October this year, serves up gastronomic adventures featuring local and international chefs and mixologists, in culture-rich style.
Day five All aboard for a history lesson, and a journey through time on the St Nicholas Abbey Heritage Railway. As the locomotive chugs through plantation fields, mahogany woods, and a limestone quarry, tour guides share historical tidbits to exercise your imagination. For instance, did you know that every familiar landmark for hundreds of acres along the east coast collapsed and disappeared during the Great Landslip of 1901? It left those gorgeous views near Cherry Tree Hill. There’s also a chance to get hands-on by manually turning the train around on the turntable as the tour returns to the abbey. St Nicholas Abbey, built in 1658, is one of only three Jacobean mansions in the Western Hemisphere, and now serves as a museum of eighteenthcentury plantation life. For another slice of Barbados history, head into the capital, Bridgetown. Hiding in plain sight, the Blackwoods Screw Dock in Cavans Lane is another historic gem: this is the only screw dock of its kind remaining in the world. This type of drydock uses powerful screw-lifting mechanisms to raise boats out of
the water for repairs and cleaning. The adjoining Historical Maritime Centre features unique and attention-grabbing artefacts, photos, and exhibits of nineteenth- and twentieth-century Barbados. Further into the city, history, architecture, and art can be found round every corner. A walking food tour is a fascinating way to see off-the-beaten-path parts of the capital, and satisfy the appetite you’re bound to work up. Or pay a visit to UNION at Beckwith, a collective of designers, artisans, and entrepreneurs transforming the Beckwith Mall shopping centre with pop-up galleries, studios, and stores, offering innovative local products, from fashion to food to artworks. n
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bucket list
Rainforests of Suriname SURINAME
FRENCH GUIANA
GUYANA
BRAZIL
L
Less than an hour’s flight from Suriname’s capital, the country’s immense rainforest offers an accessible immersion in nature at its most lush and wild
ike neighbouring Guyana and French Guiana, Suriname — with its population of 570,000 concentrated near the Atlantic coast — retains vast areas of wilderness, with eighty per cent of the country still covered with tropical rainforest — a canopy of green stretching as far as the eye can see, home to uncounted species of flora and fauna, threaded with hundreds of rivers. This wilderness region is also home to indigenous Amerindian and Maroon settlements, and a handful of rustic lodges — some of them community-run — where visitors
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can experience both the thrill and the calm of nature at its most intense, less than an hour’s flight from Paramaribo. n
Caribbean Airlines operates daily return flights to Johan Pengel International Airport in Paramaribo from Trinidad, with connections to other destinations in the Caribbean and North and South America
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ENGAGE
Green 84 The climate change
countdown
Puzzles 88 Enjoy our crossword and
other brain teasers!
At 1.5 degrees Celsius of global warming, scientists predict, up to ninety per cent of tropical coral reefs may die
green
The climate change countdown Global warming isn’t a theory — it’s a fact, and scientists are clear about its impact on countries around the world. Small island states like those in the Caribbean are especially vulnerable. Erline Andrews reports on the predicted consequences of climate change in the Caribbean — and explains why efforts to adapt are lagging behind Image by lavizzara/Shutterstock.com
I
n 2017, Hurricane Maria swept across the eastern Caribbean island of Dominica, taking lives, destroying homes, and damaging the natural landscape that sustains the tourism industry which the 270-square-mile island relies on. The storm’s overall cost to Dominica was an estimated US$930 million, almost double the country’s GDP. Maria went on to cause havoc in Puerto Rico, directly and indirectly killing more than 2,900 people. It was the deadliest storm Puerto Rico and Dominica had experienced in more than a century. Just two weeks prior, both islands had been hit by Irma, which became a Category 5 hurricane during its lifecycle. More than one hurricane of that magnitude in the same season had previously been unheard of. In recent years, the Caribbean has seen its hurricane season — from June to November — become more destructive. The change has been attributed to global warming due to climate change, a crisis that many have been warning for decades could have particularly devastating effects for the Caribbean. With the glaring evidence of crushed infrastructure, homes, and lives, more people seemed prepared to listen and take action. But much of the increase in global temperatures seems irreversible, and effects will get worse. What experts and activists hope for now is that temperatures won’t rise to
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a point where they threaten the very existence of small islands like Dominica. “I come to you straight from the front lines of the war on climate change,” said Dominica’s Prime Minister Roosevelt Skerrit in a heartfelt appeal to the UN General Assembly, shortly after Maria’s passage. “We as a country and as a region did not start this war against nature. We did not provoke it. The war has come to us. There is no more time for conversation. There is little time left for action.” The global mean temperature (GMT) has been increasing rapidly following the Industrial Revolution, largely due to carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases generated by humans’ use of fossil fuels. By 2030, it is predicted to increase by one degree Celsius over what it was in 1880. The repercussions of that are already being felt.
Among them: stronger storms, rising sea levels that cause coastal erosion, droughts that reduce the water supply and crop yields, and the acidification of the ocean, killing coral reefs — which are habitats for fish, and major tourist attractions. Beyond 2030, the GMT is inevitably going to increase by at least 1.5 degrees Celsius, and international bodies and scientists are racing against time to keep it there, through various efforts — called mitigation — to reduce the production of greenhouse gases. In the landmark 2015 Paris Agreement, 197 countries agreed to do all they could to keep global warming well below two degrees Celsius and
What experts and activists hope for now is that temperatures won’t rise to a point where they threaten the very existence of small islands
to regularly report their progress. But countries not only have to work on mitigation, they have to pursue adaptations that make them less vulnerable to the effects of global warming. Those adaptations are particularly important for small, poor, sea-dependent countries. “Countries are going to disappear if we don’t take action,” says Carlos Fuller, a senior official with the Caribbean Community Climate Change Centre, or 5Cs, the regional body set up in 2002 to help climate change efforts in the region. It’s a source of project funding, research, advice, and consultation. “Our coral reefs will not be able to survive, and so our fish will migrate out of the Caribbean,” says Fuller. “And if our coral reefs die, why are tourists going to come into the Caribbean?”
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T
he Caribbean Community as a body has pledged to draw almost half of its energy from renewable instead of fossil fuel sources by 2030. Individual countries have pledged more. And adaptation efforts have slowly been getting off the ground — too slowly. For example, two American environmental entrepreneurs are experimenting with land-based coral farms to grow warming-resilient corals to replenish decimated reefs. Conservationists have been growing corals in sea-based nurseries in Grenada, Bonaire, Curaçao, the Cayman Islands, and elsewhere in the region. But the sea exposes them to same harm faced by naturally grown coral. On land, corals can be farmed in large numbers. “There is hope that we can make a significant difference. I’ve watched reefs come back to life from reef restoration,” one of the entrepreneurs, twentynine-year-old Gator Halpern, said in a video posted online by UN Environment, after he was named Young Champion of the Earth for Latin America and the Caribbean last year. In another climate adaptation project, a US$27 million water facility was launched in Barbados last May, which uses solar energy and is built to be more resistant to natural disasters. “The project will provide a replicable framework for countries of the Eastern Caribbean,” said Wilfred Abrahams, the Barbados minister of energy and water resources, at the launch ceremony. In Dominica, meanwhile, five thousand new homes are being constructed to be hurricane-resistant. Housing complexes will be built with underground utility lines and infrastructure made of reinforced concrete and hurricaneimpact glass.“The housing programmes have new designs where not even a Category 5 hurricane would significantly impact it,” Joseph Isaac, Dominica’s environment minister, told a reporter. The housing project is being financed by Dominica’s Citizenship by Investment programme, which offers citizenship to those who can afford to pay the
How climate change will affect the Caribbean: a timeline • Between 2030 and 2050, climate change is expected to cause approximately 250,000 additional deaths per year, from malnutrition, malaria, diarrhea, and heat stress. • Seventy to ninety per cent of coral reefs will die at 1.5 degrees Celsius of warming, which is expected to happen by 2030; 99 per cent of coral reefs will die at two degrees Celsius of warming, which could happen by the end of the century. • Major coastal defence projects will be required to protect hundreds of kilometres of vulnerable coastlines by 2050. • By that year, significant relocation of people and existing coastal infrastructure will be necessary. • World Bank estimates suggest the annual damage to countries within the Caribbean community caused by climate change will rise to US$11 billion by 2080 — eleven per cent of the region’s collective GDP. • The sea level in the Caribbean is expected to rise by more than 1 metre by 2100, putting many coastal towns and cities — including most Caribbean capitals — at risk of being submerged.
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price. Money for the Barbados water project came from the Green Climate Fund, set up by the UN and coordinated in Caricom by the 5Cs. Seven more projects in other countries in the region are to be implemented through the fund. And large-scale coral restoration — still far from reality — is going to have a large price tag. Weakened by debt and recession, countries in the Caribbean have to rely on funding from international aid agencies and wealthy countries for their adaptation projects. The money — experts believe — hasn’t been enough so far. “The Green Climate Fund that was created to assist in putting mitigation measures in place and to assist the victims of climate change is commendable,” Prime Minister Skerritt told the UN General Assembly. “But much more must be done to assist countries that continue to bear the brunt of the impact of climate change.” Dr Riad Nurmohamed, a climate change researcher and member of parliament in Suriname, was equally unequivocal. He believes regional representatives need to strike the same tone at international meetings about the issue. “We have to be very clear on this: the Caribbean is not responsible for the climate change. So indeed the world needs to support the Caribbean more,” says Nurmohamed. In addition to a lack of financing, many Caribbean countries are distracted by social problems, as Brown University researcher Stacy-Ann Robinson found in a paper looking at limitations Caribbean countries face in adapting to climate change. “The cost of crime is 7.5 per cent of the country’s GDP,” said a Jamaican official, one of the twenty-six policymakers Robinson spoke to for her study. “A hurricane costs two per cent of GDP every couple or few years, but the high probability–high impact events are crime and corruption. These do more harm than any other threat.” The main limitation in the region, others say, may be overall poor governance. “Finance is not our major impediment,” said another policymaker. “If we are not properly structured internally — our institutions are too politicised or they are not working the way they ought to work — then it doesn’t matter how much money we pour or throw at the problem, the problem will not be solved.” The 5Cs is working to improve the prospects of the Caribbean Community on all fronts, negotiating with international agencies and advising regional governments. Fuller hopes to get more people — including the average citizen — to grasp the urgency of the problem. “If we keep to 1.5 degrees Celsius, we have a sixty per cent chance to adapt,” he says of global warming. “If we go to two degrees, our ability to adapt is cut down to ten per cent. We only have a small window of opportunity to survive.” n
ADVERTORIAL
Joining the fight against pancreatic cancer A family’s tragedy inspires the launch of the John E. Sabga Foundation
I
n January 2017, after a ten-month battle with pancreatic cancer, John E. Sabga succumbed to this dreaded disease. Sabga, a businessman and sporting enthusiast, was well known in Trinidad and Tobago for his amicable personality, joie de vivre, and love for his family and country. His passing was an enormous blow to his family, staff, friends, and colleagues. For his wife Natalie Sabga, who had walked the journey with her husband, the overarching questions that still haunt her are why John, and why were there no early detection methods and no cure. What more could have been done for him? How could she now find a way to change things for others? As Natalie says, “I am still looking for a cure for John.” Her questioning became desperation, which turned into determination. Three
months later, in her living room with her family, the first draft of the mission and vision statement for the John E. Sabga Foundation for Pancreatic Cancer was written. In June 2017, the JESF was formed with the initial mandate to raise US$1 million to assist with funding a clinical research trial in partnership with the Translational Genomics Research Institute (TGen) in Phoenix, Arizona, headed by Professor Daniel Von Hoff. The foundation, through its affiliation with Prof. Von Hoff and ongoing donations to TGen, has managed to acquire the opportunity to bring to Trinidad and Tobago a • • •
•
• •
Pancreatic Cancer Phase 2 pilot study named the JES1 Trinidad Trial. This is the first-ever clinical trial to be conducted in Trinidad and Tobago, as well as the entire Caribbean. It is a massive undertaking on the foundation’s part, but with the support of an exceptional team of doctors, headed by Professor Dilip Dan, the JESF is forging forward with excitement and renewed energy in the relentless race for a cure. The trial has now been given both US FDA and local approval through the T&T Ministry of Health’s Ethics Committee, and is due to start in October 2019. In addition, the JESF has expanded its activities to include:
A range of much-needed support for pancreatic cancer patients and their families through a Patient Nurse Navigator Programme with the CCRI A quarterly patient and family support group and patient daily access call-infor-assistance line Public awareness and education through an ongoing publicity campaign and a range of brochures now available at health centres and online at the JESF’s website and Facebook page Advocacy for better health care and resources for cancer patients with the government of T&T and other NGOs, health care professionals, and organisations Association with international organisations for capacity building. The foundation is a member of the World Pancreatic Cancer Coalition The hosting of a distinguished lecture series with world-renowned medical specialists to share best practices with our local medical community.
Donations can be made to the continued work of the John E. Sabga Foundation through the website at johnsabga.com, and by calling (868) 789 7930, or via private message on the foundation’s Facebook page at https://www.facebook. com/jesfoundation/
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Spot the Difference by James Hackett There are 10 differences between these two pictures. How many can you spot?
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21 Symptom of the creeps [7] 22 What makes different voices unique [7] 23 Blends [7] 27 Pre-eruption lava [5] 29 Dentist’s offering [4] 31 Small cozy space, similar to a cranny [4]
If the puzzle you want to do has already been filled in, just ask your flight attendant for a new copy of the magazine!
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The clouds are different; the sail on the second boat has different designs; there is one extra wave in the water; one bird is lower; there is a dot missing in the boat name on the left; there are more rocks in the image on the right; the first boat has different hull details; the second boat has a different-coloured hull; there is a shell in the image on the right; the first sailboat has different sail details.
WIRELESS INFLIGHT ENTERTAINMENT Welcome to
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1. Switch Wi-Fi off and on 2. Power the device off and on and repeat step 1 Unable to view content 1. Close and restart the browser and type www.caribbean-airlines.com 2. If this does not work, try an alternate browser and type in www.caribbean-airlines.com 3. Power the device off and on and try steps 1 and 2 again Note: Chrome is the recommended browser for laptops.
• *Content is available only on flights over two hours. • Content is available only during flight. • Access to content is only available above 10,000 feet. • Access to content will stop before the end of the flight. • You may not have sufficient time during the flight to watch the entirety of some content. Viewing information: Please choose your viewing appropriately. Note: Some content may not be suitable for younger viewers, so please choose appropriate content where children will be watching. Please ensure headphones are used at all times for playback of media content, unless muted.
• It may take a short time for a video or other content to start. • Please note that we are not responsible for any data loss or damage to devices that may occur while/after using our services. • Onboard battery charging facilities are not available. Safety information: • We may pause or stop our inflight entertainment system for safety or other reasons. Security information: • This service is provided using wireless LAN technology. Please be aware that it is a public network. • It is each user’s responsibility to have an up-to-date security system (e.g. firewall, anti-virus, anti-malware) for their device.
James Hackett
classic
What accent? Everyone knows a Trini accent is easy to understand, right? Adanna Austin went to Barbados and discovered otherwise. Originally published in our September/October 2004 issue
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magine my shock on landing in Barbados when I, speaking in my normal Trini accent, was misunderstood by a Bajan customs officer. It was my first time out of Trinidad, and my first encounter face to face with a Bajan, but my shock was unbelievable. Trinis speak in a very sing-song dialect, but I never thought anyone would have trouble understanding me. I should have known my journey would be difficult after the numerous phone calls I had made weeks before to the University of the West Indies Cave Hill campus, where I was about to start my degree. The lady on the other end kept asking me to repeat myself. In my naivety, I thought we had a bad connection. Only now as I stood in the airport did I realise she really had not understood a word I was saying. That morning at the airport, sum-
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moning all my patience, I spoke as slowly as I could to the officer, until he understood what I needed. Exasperated and exhausted from my thirty-f iveminute flight (yes, I was exhausted after just thirty-five minutes — I’m scared of heights, so I was tired from anxiety), I made my way to Cave Hill and my hall of residence — only to be further accosted by accents from Jamaica, St Lucia, St Kitts, and Montserrat. What a day I was having. Apparently these people had been there for a while and had already got to know each other — and each other’s dialects. I, on the other hand, sat back quietly in my room and listened to the accents drifting in and out of the windows above and beyond me. As any true Trini would tell you, it was not long before I was in the mix of the thing, mingling, laughing, and cajoling every which way with my own unique
accent. Here was St Lucian Davis cussing us in patois under her breath while she stirred her bouillon; there was Jamaican Simone yapping in a dialect we could only understand when she stopped laughing, and showing her annoyance by hollering “cha,” the Jamaican version of a good steups. As for me, everyone begged me to speak more slowly. When they called for me and I replied, “Look meh,” they all laughed in unison. Apparently that was the funniest thing they ever heard. The American exchange student (who was actually from the Philippines) was more intrigued by our various dialects than by the classes offered at UWI. At the end of the year, she dubbed herself a “trinipino,” because she believed she had to be part Trini, part Filipino. Our accents stood us apart and brought us together at the same time. We named ourselves “Bashment Block 8.” The block itself suffered the consequences of housing so many West Indians. One week it suffered a “tabanca” and by the next it was the “Love Boat.” St Lucian Faye insisted we were all “makaks” (monkeys), and shouted “heeeeeeeee salop” if you made the terrible mistake of falling or tripping in front of her. Others who did not fit our mould were given nicknames to match their demeanour. Hence on our block of sixteen girls we had a “Silence of the Lambs,” a “Pillsbury Dough Girl,” and a “Cockroach” — all appropriately named after their special oddities. For Block Week, when we had to showcase our respective talents, we proceeded to sing a rendition of The Bassman by Shadow — in our own words and accents, of course. A culinary competition found us climbing over each other in the kitchen, trying to concoct sugar apple juice, mango cheesecake, and split peas soup. When I made my trip back to Trinidad for the Christmas holidays, it was no wonder my family could not understand my stories of the “rat bat” flying through the dorm, or why I asked them to pass the i-run (that’s how “iron” is pronounced in Barbados). My exclamations of “guh bleh” astonished them. Yes, I had lost my Trini accent, to some extent, but I had come home with a Caribbean accent all my own. To me, there was no reason for them to be “corn-fused.” n
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