Caribbean Beat — March/April 2022 (#169)

®

A Message

from our CEO As promised, 2022 got off to a remarkable start, with the launch of our Reset Expectations campaign and the entry into service of our spanking new 737-8 aircraft.

Some of you may already have experienced our reimagined travel experience with the introduction of pre-order meals, which you can reserve up to thirty-six hours before your flight departure. Imagine, Caribbean Airlines is the only airline in the world where, when flying, you can enjoy authentic Caribbean food like doubles (bara and chickpeas), bake and fish, and other unique delicacies. Even better, in the coming months we will re-introduce Caribbean Café, our on-board snack cart filled with goodies from across the region. We will update you when this service re-starts.

We have also expanded Caribbean Layaway to include all destinations in our network, except domestic services between Trinidad and Tobago. This interest-free layaway plan allows passengers travelling within a two- to twelve-month period the opportunity to pay for flights on a phased basis.

Customers also have the added advantage of holding a reservation with as little as a twenty-five per cent deposit and paying the balance at later specified dates and times. Once full payment is made, the ticket is issued.

#REcalibrated

In addition to these new and refreshed products, our existing suite of services remains available for your use, including: ·

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Your Space — where economy passengers have the option to pay for the seat next to them, or the entire row, from as low as US$20, depending on the route Caribbean Upgrade — where eligible passengers can bid to upgrade to Business Class and enjoy a more premium travel experience Caribbean Plus — where customers can pay for extra legroom in the economy cabin of our jet aircraft on all destinations except for domestic flights between T&T

In keeping with the renewed focus on the customer experience on the passenger side of the business, our Cargo Team is demonstrating a fierce commitment to improved customer service as well.

One major enhancement is Caribbean Airlines Cargo’s live presence on the platform www.CargoAi.co. Distributing our worldwide capacity offering on CargoAi allows us to offer customers a more tailored and streamlined approach to their shipping requirements. We have our own e-booking system, and CargoAi has the ability to leverage sales.

Being connected to CargoAi and benefiting from this additional distribution channel is a boost to our

cargo operations. For CargoAi users, this means extra connections between the Caribbean and North America, in line with the existing user growth that the platform is currently witnessing.

In tandem with this development, we continue to make shipping between Asia and the Caribbean easier and more convenient. Our partnership with General Sales and Services Agent Megacap S.A. Limited means you can transport furniture, apparel, machinery, and tons more from Hong Kong, Shenzhen, Narita, Singapore, and Shanghai to several Caribbean destinations. And later this year, we will be introducing a gamechanging cargo product to satisfy even more of your shipping needs.

We have much more in store for you in 2022, and remain optimistic about the coming months. We are investing in innovative technology and focusing on process improvements to re-emerge as the leader in Caribbean aviation — more efficient than before, and serving our customers better than ever. Stay informed through our social media platforms as we REignite your love for travel!

Regards, Garvin

CaribbeanAirlines

Contents No. 169 • March/April 2022

22 40 10 EMBARK

8 Wish you were here

Bottom Bay, Barbados

10 Need to know

Make the most of March and April, even during the time of COVID-19 — from Phagwah in Guyana to Carnival in Sint Maarten

20 Bookshelf and playlist

This month’s reading and listening picks ARRIVE

22 Destination

Home Sweet home This issue of Caribbean Beat marks the magazine’s thirtieth anniversary.

Over the years, we’ve covered many amazing places across the region — but the islands of Trinidad and Tobago have always had a special place in our pages. Here are just a few glimpses of the natural beauty of our home country

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40 own words

Opening the door Ayanna Lloyd Banwo grew up surrounded by stories. Now, as the Trinidadian writer publishes her already acclaimed debut novel, she tells Shivanee Ramlochan how family and home have indelibly shaped her writing

“I never worked so hard in my life” T&T-born Tonya Villafana on her love for science, her work developing a COVID-19 vaccine at AstraZeneca, and keeping grounded in midpandemic — as told to Marvin Espinoza

38 Backstory

48 DID you even know

When images speak For sibling filmmakers Audrey and Maxime Jean-Baptiste, their family history in French Guiana and historic image archives were equally important sources for their latest film project.

Jonathan Ali learns more

It’s a thirtieth anniversary edition of our triva quiz! Test your knowledge of some of the vibrant people and places who have appeared on the cover of Caribbean Beat

Caribbean Beat An MEP publication

Editor Nicholas Laughlin General manager Halcyon Salazar Design artist Kevon Webster Production manager Jacqueline Smith Web editor Caroline Taylor Editorial assistants Shelly-Ann Inniss, Kristine De Abreu

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

Media & Editorial Projects Ltd. 6 Prospect Avenue, Long Circular, Maraval 120111, Trinidad and Tobago T: (868) 622 3821/6138 E: caribbean-beat@meppublishers.com Website: www.meppublishers.com

Cover A glorious sunrise over Manzanilla Bay on Trinidad’s east coast marks the start of another adventurefilled day Photo Jason C. Audain

Printed by SCRIP-J, Trinidad and Tobago

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

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 2022. 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

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Reinventing A Message our culture

from our CEO

C

aribbean culture is as diverse as its people and history.

The islands that make up this slice of paradise have an abundance of characters, traditions, mysteries, and their own unique ways of entertaining audiences. One thing that remains constant across all the territories, however, is the way we entertain: all events, parties, fetes, concerts, and shows are designed and produced for live audiences and patrons who actively participate in the event. Caribbean people are never passive spectators — we are colourful, animated, loud, and we love to move. If you ever are in doubt, just go to any international cricket or football match — there is as much of a party in the stands as there is play on the field.

In the last two years of the COVID-19 pandemic, however, event managers and promoters have had to reimagine their productions. Given the many health restrictions that came with the pandemic, large live audiences had to be replaced with virtual viewers, and while in the past there was some livestreaming of events, in this case the audience at home became the primary focus. Now every decision had to be based on how this would translate on camera to be streamed to a plethora of home and mobile devices.

In Jamaica, we saw the popular “verzus” format used to stream a virtual “battle of the hits” concert between dancehall superstars Beenie Man and Bounty Killa in May 2020, very early in the pandemic, during the first “lockdown” for many of the region’s territories. According to DanceHallMag.com, the online event created over one billion impressions for Brand Jamaica, and almost half a million fans took in the live show on Instagram. Other published reports estimate a 216 per cent increase in the artists’ catalogues and streaming. The battle attracted a number of notable audience members, including A-list celebrities like Rihanna and Idris Elba.

Across in Trinidad and Tobago, Tribe Carnival — the company responsible for producing six bands with an estimated 20,000 masqueraders for that country’s Carnival — used their creative talents to produce their first feature film, called Lavway. Telling the story of T&T’s Carnival through music, poetry, and dramatic imagery and choreography, it was a critical success. The film was shown in theatres and was also broadcast on one of the nation’s major television networks in prime time. It allowed many of T&T’s mas designers, Carnival performers, and soca artists the opportunity to present their talents in a reimagined form. They literally took mas, dance, characters, music, and traditions from the

#REcalibrated

streets and reimagined them all within a film.

Tribe managing director Dean Ackin noted the lessons learned from the experience. “We saw everything we did before from a new perspective,” he said. “What works in person does not always resonate on camera. Team members created with fresh eyes, having to learn how this would present on film, how the movement would be captured. Performers had to understand how to catch the light, how to angle their bodies and create expressions, bearing in mind the audience was now seeing them through a screen. There are many elements from this experience that will inform how we do all of our presentations moving forward, from band launch to the final presentation on Carnival Tuesday. The pandemic highlighted the real potential for taking our Carnival beyond the streets and the stands to a new global audience virtually.”

The biggest recalibration, however, seems to be among the region’s people, particularly those content creators on social media platforms. On TikTok in particular, many Caribbean artists have seen their music used in various challenges. Spice, Denise Belfon, Terri Lyons, Patrice Roberts, and Shenseea have seen their regional hits go globally viral on the social media giant. However, it is Caribbean content creators who have allowed the classic hits to have a resurgence on TikTok through the “don’t react/dance dancehall/ soca edition” and “know/don’t know soca/reggae” challenges, to name a few. In total, combined Caribbean music or song hashtag videos have had over three billion views across TikTok, and this does not include the millions of additional views for videos exported or shared to other social media networks like Instagram, Facebook, or YouTube.

Indeed, Caribbean people can be some of the most creative and entertaining characters on the planet.

In the end, it boils down to the fact that, in the midst of a global challenge, Caribbean people were not only resilient, they were also dynamic and creative. Culture, events, and great times will always be reimagined, recalibrated, and reinforced though all the generations, and remain a critical part of our identity and our way of life.

ADRIAN RAYMOND is a culture lover, and can often be found singing and dancing in his car while in traffic on the streets of Port of Spain

CaribbeanAirlines

wish you were here

Bottom Bay, Barbados What’s the best beach in Barbados? That’s a question to start an argument, and there’s no shortage of candidates along the island’s sixty miles of coast. But locals will tell you there’s something special about Bottom Bay, near Barbados’s easternmost tip. Coral limestone cliffs rise above a wide swath of perfect sand, coconut trees rustle and twist in the Atlantic breeze, and the sea is an endless palette of blues stretching out to the horizon. For early risers, there may be no better place to welcome a new day, as rosy dawn eases into clear cerulean morning, and the rhythm of breaking waves calms your mind and spirit.

Photography by Jon Arnold Images Ltd/Alamy Stock Photo

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NEED TO KNOW

Amanda Richards courtesy Guyana Tourism Authority

Essential info to help you make the most of March and April — even in the middle of a pandemic

Don’t Miss Festival of colour 10

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A kaleidoscope of hues, pulsating tassa drums, and the melodies of chowtals emanate from homes and Hindu temples throughout Guyana, Suriname, and Trinidad and Tobago during Phagwah. Also known as Holi (falling on 18 March this year), this festival of colour signifies the triumph of good over evil and a bountiful harvest. In Guyana, Phagwah is a national holiday and a jubilant opportunity for cultural intertwining, as everyone participates. A festive spirit fills the air, with sprinkled abeer — a pink or purple dye — staining once-white garments. Due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, 2022 Phagwah celebrations may be limited, but renewed goodwill and unity are abundant.

Shelly-Ann Inniss

HERE FOR YOU At Caribbean Housing Limited, where we have been building energetic communities for more than 50 years, we’ve always known that Brentwood—our most recent development in central Trinidad—was destined to be more than a mall.

Brentwood for anything you need, helping to make your daily routine easy, enjoyable and more convenient.

In the midst of a pandemic, it will become the safe and trusted mainstay of an ever-evolving district that supports everyone who lives and works there, offering connection and a sense of belonging at a time when so much feels uncertain.

From an array of innovative food choices on the mall’s north side to stores on the south that have exactly what you want (including essential grocery, financial, medical and communications services), Brentwood brings something special to the neighbourhood—and there’s much more to come! We’re already putting things in place for the next phase of Brentwood Mall’s development, enhancing your experience in a multipurpose space that offers an even wider lineup of stores and services.

With several stores already open to serve the needs of its surrounding community and a full launch on schedule for the second quarter of 2022, you can rely on

That’s because our inspiration has always been YOU: the people who give the communities we create a heart and soul. Welcome to Brentwood, the mall that gives its all.

Be a part of it.

Tel: Email: Web:

(868) 235-HOME (4663) le w

ADVERTORIAL

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need to know

All About Tobago’s Easter races Here in the Caribbean, it’s not just Olympic athletes who like to go fast. And in the race to victory, the competitors can include some unusual creatures. For instance, each year at Easter time, Tobago becomes the goat and crab racing capital of the world. Shelly-Ann Inniss learns more To the uninitiated, a barefoot “jockey” racing alongside a goat might be an unusual sight. But in Tobago’s villages of Buccoo and Mount Pleasant, it is one of the main attractions on the Tuesday after Easter. Almost one century ago, Barbadian migrant Samuel Callender started the Buccoo Goat Race to entertain the local villagers, since horse racing was the main entertainment for the upper class. (Goat racing was once a popular attraction during “ole time” Crop Over festivities in his homeland Barbados.) After that, Easter Monday in Tobago was dedicated to horse racing, while Easter Tuesday (19 April this year) was declared for goat and crab races.

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There’s no guarantee that a bubbling pot with an enticing curry aroma is not on anyone’s mind during the events, but what’s certain is that stamina, speed, and strength dominate the tracks. Similar to preparing horses for competitive racing, a lot of work goes into getting the goats — typically billy goats — ready. At least two months prior to race day, they get into the thick of training. They swim to build muscle, walk, and then run, with the aim of running ahead of their trainers. In fact, the human jockeys must be faster than their charges, because if a goat should outrun his jockey, that’s grounds for disqualification.

Come race day, Buccoo is abuzz

with activity. The goats and jockeys parade through the village and commentators identify which goats are potential frontrunners. Following a cultural programme and brief formal ceremony, it’s showtime. Decorated in bold colourful numbers and wearing leashes, the goats wait behind the starting gate. The heat is on as they dash ahead of their jockeys along the 110-metre track to the delight of families cheering them on.

While the goat race gets hearts pounding, the accompanying crab race — competitors are often hermit crabs — takes the excitement to different level, as the crustaceans scuttle haphazardly towards the finish line with some coaxing from their jockeys.

Crab racing is also popular in parts of the Bahamas and Jamaica, while goat racing occurs internationally in places as far afield as Kenya and Uganda, the United States, Britain, and Australia.

A huge street party ends Easter Tuesday in Tobago, but if you missed the goat and crab races — or want to experience them once more — they usually happen again at the Tobago Heritage Festival in July.

A WORLD of CHOICES

IMPORTED WINES & CHEESES Bar Hop In, Shirvan Road, Tobago

770–9747

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Sean Drakes/Alamy Stock Photo

need to know

Must Try SXM Carnival returns

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After two years of cooling their heels during the COVID-19 pandemic — with festivals across the Caribbean cancelled or downsized — fete-goers and Carnival lovers can finally show off their best moves at the 2022 Sint Maarten Carnival, running from 16 April to 3 May. Finally, here’s a chance to connect your body with music’s harmonies, for a whole nineteen days.

The energy, passion, and community spirit of Carnival are unmistakable.

Thousands of visitors join in the celebrations, which run day and night, at venues across the Dutch side of this idyllic island. The centre of the action is Philipsburg’s Carnival Village, an open-air venue for concerts and other major events, and the main stage for masqueraders.

There’s a plethora of fetes and lively music to choose from, including a steelpan explosion. The schedule features eleven locally themed events, six international shows, and three

parades. Staples include options for every musical taste: the Night of the Hit Makers, Caribbean Flag Fest, the One Love Reggae Concert, Bacchanal Sunday, Noche Latina, and Soulful Company. And you can top it all off with delicious Caribbean food from the friendly vendors in the Carnival Village, to keep you fuelled throughout the season.

Due to COVID-19 protocols, a few events — like J’Ouvert — are still on hiatus this year. This just might give masqueraders extra energy for the item ranked number one on any Carnival’s must-do list. For 2022, the Children’s and Grand Carnival Parades will be combined into one big spectacular street parade: a colourful procession of dancers, floats, bikinis, feathers, and elaborate costumes.

Come and soak up the effervescent vibes as you create new memories — and forget the COVID blues.

SAI

need to know Olive Senior

Nobel laureate Derek Walcott touted John Robert Lee as a “scrupulous” poet. Hailing from St Lucia — a paradise for poets and the backdrop for much of both writers’ work — Lee has nurtured a dedication to poetry for over four decades, and his poems, characterised by his Christian faith, have been collected in several books — most recently Pierrot — plus international anthologies and periodicals. To borrow his own poetic words, crafted in City Remembrances, Lee is “beyond talent, beyond award, beyond tomorrow’s tomorrow.”

Caroline Forbes courtesy Peepal Tree Press

Jamaica-born Shara McCallum comes from a nation with literary heavyweights, known to profoundly inscribe their talent in readers’ minds. The appointed Penn State University Laureate for 2021– 2022 and author of six poetry books, McCallum often examines the paradoxes and complexities of her subjects with penetrating insight. Her most recent book, No Ruined Stone, is “lyrical, wrestling with colonialism, racism, and the knotted legacy of slavery.”

A Guyanese poet based in the United Kingdom, Grace Nichols was recently awarded the 2021 Queen’s Gold Medal for Poetry — just the latest of her honours and accolades. She views poetry as a “way into those parts of yourself that are beyond words.”

Mythology and history, dreams and landscape are all explored in her illustrious work. Her collections are for all ages, and her latest release, Passport to Here and There, was a UK Poetry Book Society Special Commendation.

Take Five Caribbean poets to the world For decades, Caribbean poets have transformed the registers of our existence into daring, passionate verse. You probably know the work of St Lucian Nobel laureate Derek Walcott, Jamaican Louise Bennett-Coverley, and Barbadian Kamau Brathwaite — now, as we mark World Poetry Day on 21 March, here are five extraordinary contemporary Caribbean poets to add to your reading list

Literary talent reverberates throughout Trinidad and Tobago, a hotbed of creative expression. Shivanee Ramlochan’s poetry is generally a work of witness, touching difficult topics or deep human experiences unapologetically and without compromise. Simply put, she occupies perspectives of resistance which investigate what happens when you push the envelope too far. Lean into her debut book Everyone Knows I’m a Haunting, and look out for her second book, Unkillable (due in 2023), a nonfiction narrative on Indo-Caribbean women’s disobedience.

If you have preconceived notions about how poetry should sound or be crafted, Olive Senior — Jamaica’s current poet laureate — makes you think twice. She effortlessly unearths history, tradition, and culture with impeccable artistry of language. This internationally acclaimed literary luminary is also a famed writer of fiction and non-fiction, and her newest book, Hurricane Watch, brings new poems together with favourites from her collected past volumes. These poems are described as “delicate, formally playful, and always finely observed, whether responding to Jamaican birdlife, the larger natural world, or the traces of a complicated historical inheritance.”

SAI

To see and hear even more extraordinary Caribbean writers, tune into the 2022 NGC Bocas Lit Fest —Trinidad and Tobago’s annual literary festival — running from 28 April to 1 May, once again in a virtual format. All events are free, and streamed via YouTube, Facebook, and the festival website, www.bocaslitfest.com

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need to know countries, in front of thirty thousand screaming spectators.

It’s electric!

Gilbert Bellamy/PhotosbyBellamy.com

Were Jamaica’s revered 2020 Olympic gold, silver, and bronze medalists Champs stars in their day?

Shericka Jackson was a star athlete for Vere Technical during her time competing at Champs, winning several medals and building a reputation as one of Jamaica’s most talented youngsters. Of course she has since gone on to replicate that success on the international stage, with Olympic and World Championships medals in the 100m and 400m. The path was much different for Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce and Elaine Thompson Herah, who were definitely below the radar during their days competing at Champs, and really didn’t stand out to many while they were in high school. Of course they have both matriculated into becoming two of the greatest sprinters of all time.

Ashanti Moore, rising star sprinter

On the Field Future Champs After Jamaica’s historic clean sweep in the Women’s 100m race at the Tokyo 2020 Olympics, expectations are running even higher at Jamaica’s annual ISSA/Grace Kennedy Boys and Girls Athletics Championships — better known as Champs — from 5 to 9 April. Multiple-award-winning sports journalist and sports editor Andre Lowe shares his thoughts on past Champs athletes with promising international futures Did you participate in Champs while growing up in Jamaica?

I didn’t participate as an athlete, but I’ve covered it for many years. In fact, after covering four Olympic Games and five World Championships, I can safely say that nothing compares to experiencing the Boys and Girls Athletics Championships in Jamaica on a Saturday evening, with youngsters breaking record after record, in some cases putting down times that are the national records for some 18

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High school loyalties are strong at Champs. Which schools have legacy athletes, and do these schools also rank high during the competition?

Traditionally, there are quite a few teams that have developed a strong history of success at Champs. Over the years the likes of Kingston College, Calabar High, Jamaica College, Vere Technical, St Jago High, Holmwood Technical, and Edwin Allen High have been the most consistent winners of the respective girls’ and boys’ titles. However, and particularly in more recent times, Jamaica’s wealth of talent in athletics is witnessed here, with a lot of non-traditional track and field heavyweights developing top athletes and coaches, who have not only had success at Champs, but have gone on to win medals and impress at the international youth and senior levels.

Which current and recent Champs athletes should we look out for on the international stage?

Seventeen-year-old Tina Clayton is one of the hottest properties in international youth athletics. The Edwin Allen High School student made headlines when she won the world Under-20 100m title in 11.09 seconds last year, and many expect her to go on to achieve great things in the sport.

Ashanti Moore is a former star athlete at Hydel High School. At twenty-one years old, she is now a pro, and is expected to follow in the strides of the great Jamaican women sprinters before her. Just last year she ran 11.10 in the 100m, and is expected to continue her development and establish herself on the senior international stage soon.

Former Edwin Allen flag-bearer Kevona Davis is a twentyyear-old former World Under-18 100m bronze medal winner. Currently a student at the University of Texas, she has a personal best of 11.16 in the 100m and 22.72 in the 200m. She is also regarded as one of the island’s brightest prospects at the senior level.

As told to Shelly-Ann Inniss

?

Thinking of advertising

Halcyon Salazar

General Manager Media & Editorial Projects Ltd. T: (868) 622 3821/6138 E: hsalazar@meppublishers.com

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bookshelf

This month’s reading picks from the Caribbean Reviews by Shivanee Ramlochan, Bookshelf editor

The Bread the Devil Knead

by Lisa Allen-Agostini (Myriad Editions, 256 pp, ISBN 9781912408993) On the cusp of her fortieth birthday, Alethea Lopez appears to have it all: a promising career, an ebullient circle of friends, a sense of style and panache that rivals haute couturiers in Paris ateliers. Beneath the surface, Allie is the victim of domestic abuse. The Bread the Devil Knead shows readers how permeable those distinctions between our private and public lives truly are, particularly when the secrets we’ve worked so hard to keep begin slipping through the fissures. Lisa Allen-Agostini, awardwinning writer and co-editor of the popular Trinidad Noir anthology, delivers a searing narrative, tightly paced with moments of absolute mirth studded in between the necessary pain. Allie’s choices may often seem incomprehensible, until you realise they’re ones any fallible, real-life person might make. This is fiction that truly connects, difficult to face or forget.

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Easily Fooled

by H. Nigel Thomas (Guernica Editions, 303 pp, ISBN 9781771835817) St Vincent-born, Montrealbased writer H. Nigel Thomas returns with the third in a quartet of novels exploring the tempests and tendernesses of queer Caribbean-Canadian masculinity. We rejoin Jay and Paul, gay brothers in pursuit of more from life than closeted misery, and learn more about the significant others in the frameworks of their romantic and platonic intimacies.

Migration and displacement are crucial to the world of Easily Fooled: as Thomas’s prose proves, arriving in “a safer place” is only the beginning of another, no less thorny journey. Amid reams of bureaucratic paperwork for citizenship, marriage certificates, failing domestic unions, and crumbling respectability, the central figure of the novel — Jay’s husband, Millington — navigates uneasy topographies of the body, head, and heart.

All the emotional intricacy of the first two offerings in the quartet are enshrined and deepened herein.

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Pandemic Poems: First Wave

by Olive Senior (selfpublished, 110 pp, ISBN 9781777452308) It began in lockdown. Like countless others around the globe, Olive Senior found herself contending with the shock, alienation, and unheimlich experience of being in strict quarantine during 2020 as the coronavirus pandemic surged, crippling healthcare systems and exposing systemic medical inequities. How to respond to the helplessness, the almost violent nature of this loss?

Senior put it in poetry. Less a rigorous abecedarian than a fluid alphabet, presented delightfully out of order, Pandemic Poems makes no didactic pronouncements about how we should survive this, only that if we are fortunate and strive together, we just might make it, while holding each other’s hands.

These poems praise essential workers, small pleasures now lost (like unmasked embraces between strangers), taking inventory of everything we’ve been forced to forfeit, gaze trained stubbornly to the horizon with something like hope.

The Gift of Music and Song: Interviews with Jamaican Women Writers

by Jacqueline Bishop (Peepal Tree Press, 240 pp, ISBN 9781845234768) Constructing a living archive requires diligence and unswerving devotion: Jacqueline Bishop, herself an artist of renown, displays both in these interviews.

From Marcia Douglas’s experimental hybrid fictions, to Tanya Shirley’s radically sensuous poetics, Bishop’s skill as an interviewer is evident: each of these eighteen conversations foregrounds then builds upon the importance of Jamaica as a creative cradle.

Celebrating the well-known, such as former and current Jamaican poets laureate Lorna Goodison and Olive Senior, while exhuming the influence of largely-forgotten literary stars (namely the fascinating herstory of lesbian novelist and poet Eliot Bliss), The Gift of Music and Song is generous in its reach.

It ought to be of interest not only to Caribbean writers, but to anyone who believes women’s writing lives should be celebrated.

playlist

This month’s listening picks from the Caribbean Reviews by Nigel A. Campbell

Single Spotlight

The Triquetra of Love

The Capitol Session ’73

ALCOA Sessions

Keep Moving

Dechode Mode (Mark Made Group)

Bob Marley and The Wailers (Mercury Studios)

Charlie Halloran (ArtistShare)

Levi Silvanie (self-released)

The Trinidadian husband and wife duo of Dechode Mode — decoding the echo — have been making a kind of dreamy electronica music that explores emotions.

Their metaphorical lyrics suggest that relationships are sometimes complex character studies in search of definition and explication.

This short three-song EP, we are told, represents “a story of love in practice [exploring] a scenario in which love either thrives or dies.” Collectively, the impact is powerful if one is tuned into deciphering how songs, when well written, can expand our understanding of the human psyche, good, bad, or ugly. Individually, the song lyrics paint a storyline of how love works in a real world outside the fantasy of manufactured romance, and how one can read the truth of a relationship. The presence of this candid recording among the plethora of island options on the subject of love gives hope that new voices are coming to the fore to smash stereotypes.

For the avid collector or “completist” in search of everything by the legend, this album chronicling a performance of early Island Records–era Wailers music is another gem in the crown that is reggae. (The band would not be credited as “Bob Marley and The Wailers” until 1974). Circumstance and serendipity together often play a part in how music is created, and how we as listeners are blessed to receive it. This is the soundtrack to a recently unearthed filmed in-studio concert by the band that had been “chucked off” the 1973 Sly and the Family Stone tour for either being too good or just misunderstood by the audiences.

“Get Up, Stand Up”, “Duppy Conqueror”, “Stir It Up”, and other songs from the Catch a Fire and Burnin’ albums provide snapshots of a time before reggae’s eventual global spread. On the US West Coast, seeds were planted then that today reveal the template and legacy of great songcraft and eternal musical allure.

Before quick airline travel to the sunny Caribbean was both utilitarian and a vital part of the tourism product, cruising from ports north to the islands was an adventure in itself that required patience and a tropical assimilation. Hailing from New Orleans, a kind of cultural Caribbean North Pole, Charlie Halloran has reimagined the zeitgeist of the era and recreated “the musical experience aboard cruises run by the Alcoa Steamship Co. out of New Orleans from 1949 to 1959.” A broad dance music repertoire from Trinidad, Guadeloupe, New Orleans, and Venezuela gives the listener an appreciation of what the Caribbean aesthetic sounded and looked like to foreign tourism execs.

Calypso, beguine, and joropo are played energetically and well. The songs of Trinidadians Lionel Belasco and Pat Castagne are given new life as the idea of cruising “down to the Spanish main” becomes not so much a bygone dream, but a way of restoring majesty to local music.

The psychological impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, now at the two-year mark, and the effects of quarantine and isolation have brought on anxiety and fear among many people worldwide.

Curaçaon singer-songwriter Levi Silvanie offers a song with a message of encouragement for uneasy souls and a remedy for the doldrums. His lyrics share uplifting support and altruistic action: “Paralysed by emotions / You barely feel a thing / Your fire’s burning out / And all hope is running out / I’m here with you / Making sure you see it through.”

The melody moves from a wistful slow pulse towards a crescendo, from a minor key to major, all reflecting ascent towards hope and probable breakthrough. Silvanie has connected this song with an advocacy effort on his part to assuage mental health issues among his fans. The assertion that “you gotta keep on moving” is advice that should be heeded in this time, in any language.

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destination

For three decades, Caribbean Beat has taken readers far and wide across the region, from the savannahs of Guyana to the cays of the Bahamas. But, as much as we love to explore the incredible riches of the Caribbean, there’s always been a special place in our pages for our home base, the vibrant twin islands of Trinidad and Tobago. As we mark our thirtieth anniversary, let us give you a glimpse of the natural beauty that makes T&T truly special — with some tips from the magazine staff about our home favourites 22

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Chris Anderson

Home sweet home

Even the busiest and most bustling parts of Trinidad are never far from a touch of the wild — like the forested peaks of the Northern Range, the backdrop to Port of Spain and the urbanised East-West Corridor.

Just eight miles east of the capital, Maracas Valley is famed for its three-hundred-foot waterfall cascading down a sheer slope

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Tarique Eastman

On Trinidad’s east coast, Atlantic breakers meet the miles-long beach of Manzanilla Bay. Thousands of coconut trees line the road that heads north to Matura and Toco or south to Mayaro, and just inland are the protected mangroves and flooded palm forests of Nariva Swamp, home to manatees, monkeys, and two species of colourful macaw

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ImageBROKER/Alamy Stock Photo

A scuba diver’s paradise, Tobago is surrounded by nutrient-rich seas, reefs teeming with sponges and multicoloured fish, dramatic underwater rock formations and cliffs, and even wrecks awaiting exploration. There are dive sites all around the island, with popular clusters around Speyside on the Atlantic coast, Mt Irvine on the island’s Caribbean side, and Crown Point at Tobago’s southwestern tip

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Our favourites

Members of the Caribbean Beat team share some of their personal tips and recommendations for a memorable visit to the magazine’s home territory

Ziad Joseph

Port of Spain’s Queen’s Park Savannah — the city’s largest park, a showplace for architectural heritage and annual Carnival celebrations alike — is a green expanse during the rainy season, and a study in gold and pink in the dry season, as numerous poui trees come into bloom

If you’re looking for a close, green getaway from the noise of Port of Spain, Tucker Valley in Chaguaramas National Park has got you covered.

Head to the Bamboo Cathedral and Tracking Station trail for some heartpumping cardio, incredible scenery, and compelling Cold War history. Afterwards, make sure to pop by Macqueripe Bay for a refreshing dip. On your way out, feel free to stop by the U-Pick farm for a delicious organic lunch and an ambient dining experience in the lush greenery.

Kristine De Abreu

One of my favorite places is Icacos in south Trinidad. It’s literally at the end of the island, and it feels like you’re in a different country. Driving through vast coconut plantations creates the fantasy of a safari: cattle cross the road, quicksand lurks among the mangroves, and scarlet ibis seem to guide you to the beach where fisherfolk are bringing in their catch of the day. The villagers are chatty and they make the best homemade ice-cream I’ve ever tasted in Trinidad, too — soursop, barbadine, coconut, they have it!

Shelly-Ann Inniss

It was the location of my first official birdwatching outing, and it would set the seal on an enduring passion. Hollis Reservoir is the oldest man-made dam in Trinidad, but despite its manufactured origins, it can compete with the most bucolic of beauties. Cradled in the foothills of the Northern Range, it is home to ninety species of bird. There is no end to the bewitching avian colours and diverse cadences of birdcalls that will keep your binoculars glued to your face.

Tracy Farrag

The Queen’s Park Savannah Night Market is my go-to spot when I want to eat out. Located in the area called “The Strip” — just across from the National Academy of Performing Arts — are most varieties of local street food, conveniently in one spot. From doubles and corn soup to fruit punches and ice cream — I’m always certain to find something to satisfy my cravings.

Kevon Webster

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Cotton Bay on Tobago’s Leeward Coast is accessible only by boat. You can enjoy the scenic coastline on a visit to this untouched, secluded beach, cooling off with a swim or snorkel in the clear blue water, or lazing on the sand under a towering green mountain. Another of my favourite Tobago beaches is Back Bay — less visited, but easily accessible.

I really don’t understand why more people don’t come here, but I’m not complaining, as I love it so. For surfing, if you’re looking for a great point break, Mt Irvine is the place to go. I also love this bay for kayaking and paddleboarding.

Evelyn Chung

One of my favourite things to do in Trinidad (and Tobago, too) is a roundthe-island tour. Trinidad is tough to do in a day, unless you start really early and limit your stops. But even if you tackle different sides of the island on different days, it’s worth it, given how much Trinidad’s human and physical geography vary from coast to coast. One of my favourite experiences is to walk out onto the rocky outcrop at Galera Point, at the northeastern tip of the island. To one side crashes the navy blue surf of the Atlantic Ocean; to the other, the gentler turquoise water of the Caribbean Sea. Here the two bodies of water meet, with a distinct demarcation in colour.

Caroline Taylor

BLUE WATERS INN SPEYSIDE, TOBAGO WWW.BLUEWATERSINN.COM

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Darryl Hernandez

Trinidad and Tobago are renowned in the birding world for a multiplicity of species — 487 between the two islands — across diverse habitats, from cloud forest to mangrove swamp, from rocky offshore islets to open grassland. Rainforest species like this trogon are found in the heights of Tobago’s Main Ridge and Trinidad’s Northern Range, while the spectacular scarlet ibis shares the lagoons of the Caroni Swamp with flamingoes, herons, and egrets

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beyond ordinary...

...Explore the extraordinary Caribbean island.

Unspoilt, untouched, undiscovered Tobago TobagoBeyond.com | #101ReasonsTobago

Tobago boasts many beaches more remote, rugged, and dramatic, but there’s more than one reason Pigeon Point appears on so many postcards.

At the end of another blissful day, what better place to watch the sun set over the warm, glistening sea, setting the horizon ablaze?

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Nadia Sanowar Photography

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snapshot

Opening the door From her grandmother’s tales to her favourite childhood novels, Ayanna Lloyd Banwo grew up surrounded by the power of stories. Her journey as a writer was not always straightforward, writes Shivanee Ramlochan, and it took the deaths of Lloyd Banwo’s parents to finally open the door to her vocation. Now the Trinidadian writer is poised for acclaim with the publication of her debut novel When We Were Birds

Photography courtesy Ayanna Lloyd Banwo

I

t begins, Ayanna Lloyd Banwo tells me, as so many stories do: in Belmont.

When We Were Birds, her debut novel, sits at the peak of highlyanticipated lists from international publications like the UK Observer, Buzzfeed, The Irish Times, and Good Housekeeping. Robert Jones, Jr., author of The Prophets, calls it “the kind of story that makes you want to spread your arms open wide, embrace the sky, and take flight.”

Sold at auction to publishers in the United Kingdom, United States, and Canada in 2020, the novel seems to have followed a gilt-paved path to success, destined to win a ravenous audience: as Hamish Hamilton editor Hermione Thompson says, when it comes to Ayanna Lloyd Banwo, “resistance is futile — prepare to discover your new favourite writer.”

Let’s go back to Belmont, first. As Lloyd Banwo reveals, this urban cultural hub in northeast Port of Spain cradled her childhood love of storytelling. “I was always writing because I was always reading, someone was always telling me a story: my grandmother told stories like breathing,” she says, conjuring memories

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of a fictional realm her grandmother invented, where fruit of every provenance grew magically to the perfect height for diminutively statured devourers.

Interwoven with fantasy realms were Granny Yolande Granderson’s very real anecdotes of a Belmont of yore: tales from the 1920s and 30s, the maps of which often loomed larger than life. Trips back from Diamond Vale Government Primary School in Diego Martin led to Yolande’s house, where story was dispensed as both reward and refuge, a practice as instinctive as breathing.

When she was eleven years old, in the house of her other grandmother, Patricia Lloyd, Lloyd Banwo discovered Earl Lovelace’s novel The Dragon Can’t Dance.

What followed, aptly, was astonishment.

“I was utterly amazed that language could do this in a book,” she remembers. Other titles in her voracious reading life, certainly, had left their impressions — The Island of Blue Dolphins, Harriet’s Daughter, Crick Crack, Monkey — and Lovelace’s Dragon set the whole territory of this creative imagining ablaze. In the stories she was herself writing, Lloyd Banwo would

chase this freedom, this joyful audacity in which creative permission wasn’t something you needed to apply for: you only had to dare it into being.

Still, pragmatism and not literary passion typified her early pursuits in career and education alike. Shortly after graduation from Bishop Anstey High School, Lloyd Banwo returned as a teacher herself, instructing her charges in geography, and later English literature.

Nestled in between teaching stints was an overwhelmingly positive undergraduate experience at the University of the West Indies, St Augustine. “I might not have become a writer if I hadn’t gone to UWI,” she says, crediting the pedagogy of professors Gordon Rohlehr and Paula Morgan, as much as the strengths of the university’s robust Literatures in English degree programme itself. Writing as a career, however, lingered in the hazy distance as a nebulous concept, too out of reach for someone so solidly rooted in Trinidad. At the time, it seemed that literary careers were largely made through emigration, through a necessary uprooting from one’s terrain. Lloyd Banwo tended the topsoil of life at home instead, as a teacher and student, with careers that took tributaries into corporate communications and advertising.

Yet writing, as almost anyone with a pen-nib in this world knows, often insists on itself. In the midst of her careers, her education, and her rootedness, writing as an impetus never vanished. At around the same time she took up a blogging mantle in earnest, Trinidad’s NGC Bocas Lit Fest was also emerging. Lloyd Banwo attended her first Bocas in 2012, and thus began another incursion into this life: the enabling of a community. “Bocas was the

“I was always writing because I was always reading, someone was always telling me a story: my grandmother told stories like breathing,” Ayanna Lloyd Banwo says first time I met actual writers, and had a pathway towards getting better at writing,” she reflects, summoning a workshop with David Dabydeen as one of her earliest and most pivotal festival experiences.

It was at the festival, too, that she met and later attended the writing workshops of Monique Roffey, in which a robust cohort of fiction and poetry writers — including Ira Mathur, Alake Pilgrim, Jannine Horsford, Desiree Seebaran, Hadassah Williams, and the late Colin Robinson — would exchange and critique new drafts.

I

f living freely enables a certain kind of writing life to flourish, then Ayanna Lloyd Banwo will be the first to tell you that so, too, does death. The passing of both her parents — mother Gale first, followed by her father Ronnie, ten months after — “shook everything.” The space cleared by her parents’ deaths “opened a door,” Lloyd Banwo says, “showing you that life is very sudden, very short. If you’re going to do this thing that you always felt like you should be doing, then good lord, you should probably make serious steps to figure out how.” The circuitous

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As with most labours of intense imagination, power, and love, it’s hard for Lloyd Banwo to pinpoint the precise moment her novel bloomed in her mind smell the candle residue, read the fading inscriptions on the headstones, walk the graveyard’s gridwork bordered by colonial-era mausoleums and proletarian dirt plots alike.

The writer’s craft is both ceremonial and immediate in this way, working on you like an ancient spell to which you know the words, and the ancient sounds beneath their language. The novel is both a love story and a genealogy of dispossession, a death diary folded into the pages of a magically real Trinidad here called Port Angeles. The birds in this world are harbingers of death and what lies beyond it.

“I but determined path she cut from that point led her to the UK’s University of East Anglia, where she earned an MA in creative writing and is currently a creative and critical writing PhD student.

When We Were Birds, previously known in its manuscript iteration as “The Gatekeepers”, is a debut many years in the making. As with most labours of intense imagination, power, and love, it’s hard for Lloyd Banwo to pinpoint the precise moment it bloomed in her mind. Long before the death of her mother, she knew she had business with Port of Spain’s Lapeyrouse Cemetery, where much of her family line is interred. Lapeyrouse is a symbolic fulcrum in When We Were Birds, barely cloaked under the alternative name of Fidelis. Make no mistake, though — as you read, you’ll be able to

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’ve somehow managed to finesse a kind of a life: I don’t know how I did it,” Lloyd Banwo says of her current situation. “It really feels like a great fortune, the ultimate luxury.” She now resides in London with her husband, and is able to devote the bulk of her time to the work of writing. Yet none of it, as in matters of survival and dying, has come easily or outside of its own rhythms. Lloyd Banwo likens the duality of her many states — in between books, a citizen of one country resident in another, an “emerging” writer who is not necessarily “new” — as an Eshu-like straddling, one foot in the world of the living, the other deftly positioned in the land of the departed.

Depend upon it, however: in Lloyd Banwo’s fiction, those who are dead are not asleep. As for the writer’s gaze, it doesn’t crave the approval of the foreign publishing markets in which her hardcovers are set to dominate: she turns her fidelity towards home. “Is this a Trinidad my people will recognise?” Lloyd Banwo muses out loud. The answer, old as time and just as dread, is yes. n

A TASTE ABOVE THE REST

backstory

When images speak Photography courtesy Audrey and Maxime Jean-Baptiste

W

e open with blackness, the screen pinpricked with scattered dots of flickering starlight, like fireflies glowing in the night. The sounds we hear are of a tropical forest, a nocturnal tapestry of animal cries and calls. Cut to film footage — hissing, warm, slightly worn with age — of an elongated white object shooting up into the dark night sky.

A man’s voice comes up over the scene. Speaking in French, he bears witness to extraordinary events from over fifty years ago in Kourou, French Guiana, on the northeastern shoulder of South America. That was when France established a space centre there, a momentous undertaking in the life of the overseas department, the start of a new chapter in its history.

So begins Listen to the Beat of Our Images, a short documentary by siblings Audrey and Maxime Jean-Baptiste about the Kourou space centre. But this remarkable film — a mere fifteen minutes long — is not what you might think. Here is no uplifting story of human progress, no clichéd tale of slipping surly bonds and going where no one had before. Instead, the film uncovers a hidden narrative, the dark history of the forced uprooting and resettlement of the people who had been living for generations on the land at Kourou, and the raising of a new town for the space centre’s workers and their families coming in from mainland France.

An experimental work comprised almost entirely of pre-existing archival footage, Listen to the Beat of Our Images is not a conventional telling of the facts, the documentary as Wikipedia entry.

Rather, this poetic, political film is a meditation, an elegy on loss and its resulting trauma, and the

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In their poetic documentary Listen to the Beat of Our Images, sibling filmmakers Audrey and Maxime Jean-Baptiste draw on historic archives of the Kourou space centre in French Guiana and their own family history to explore questions of collective memory and loss. How to use archival images ethically was a primary concern, writes Jonathan Ali importance of both individual and collective memory when it comes to the past and its importance to the present. It’s also a formally attentive film, going about its work with care, repeatedly deploying the black screen of its opening in lieu of possibly distressing and exploitative images. The film becomes interactive, the viewer invited to imagine what the filmmakers scrupulously refuse to show.

Listen to the Beat of Our Images is a significant achievement, a quietly powerful indictment of colonial misrule that gives voice to, and helps reclaim agency for, people traditionally on the margins of history, its victims. (It’s also a stunning piece of art.) Since its premiere just over a year ago, it has been selected for numerous film festivals, winning praise across the globe. (Full disclosure: I programmed the film at a festival, and was on the jury of another that awarded it a prize.) So it might be surprising to learn that this was no long-gestating passion project for its creators, but instead had its beginnings in a call by France’s National Centre for Space Studies, CNES, for filmmakers to make an original film using the centre’s archives.

Siblings Maxime and Audrey Jean-Baptiste

A still from Listen to the Beat of Our Images

“W

e both heard about the open call during a lockdown,” says Audrey Jean-Baptiste, who is based in Paris.

“I was in post-production of a complicated movie. I was very interested in this project, but I didn’t have enough energy to write something. Maxime said to me, ‘We should write something together.’ I thought, ‘Yes, why not?’ I really liked the idea of making of a movie with him.”

From the outset, the siblings were clear about how they would proceed in realising the film, with a character, a woman, leading the narrative through voiceover. “We had a long reflection on which images would be on screen while the voice is telling the story,” the Jean-Baptistes say in a joint response. “We wanted to avoid as much as possible using the images in an illustrative way, to show directly what was happening.”

This led to a judicious, even ethical selection of footage. “In the archives CNES gave us, we found some images of the villages that were destroyed. But we had an issue with them. We felt uncomfortable with the way people were filmed. We had the feeling that they didn’t really give their consent,” they explain. “We decided that those images wouldn’t be a part of the movie.” That further led to the memorable use of the black screen. “We thought that these black screens with animated stars were the best images with which to listen to the story,” they say. “Through these black screens, the audience could physically experience the loss being described.”

Audrey and Maxime Jean-Baptiste were born in Melun, a suburb to the southeast of Paris, to a Guianese father and a French mother. As children of the diaspora, they grew up in the 1990s and early 2000s with particular memories — as Maxime, who is based between Paris and Brussels, but responding

to my questions from Cayenne in French Guiana, recalls. “Our father’s friends . . . come over on Sundays for a meal, where they argue in Creole, where the frustrations of the week and the experiences of racism come out, with rum and red wine.” There was also violence. “But not just any violence. The violence of smiles, of behaving ‘well,’ being good immigrants, good French people.”

“What I remember most is spending my time explaining where French Guiana is on the map of the world,” says Audrey, whose first film, Fabulous, is about the queer community in French Guiana. “Here in France, a lot of people ignore the fact that French Guiana exists. Being part of the Guianese diaspora means doing a lot of pedagogy.”

Listen to the Beat of Our Images is a quietly powerful indictment of colonial misrule that gives voice to people traditionally on the margins of history The Jean-Baptistes are by no means pedagogical filmmakers, though an ongoing desire to interrogate the place many French people call “Green Hell” clearly animates their work. In Listen to the Beat of Our Images, this meant not only complicating the official version of history, but subverting the archives of CNES to do so. “It was not so easy for them to receive our point of view of French space conquest,” the siblings say. “The story of the Kourou expropriations is still taboo.”

The filmmakers are now at work on new projects, separately and together.

Maxime’s latest is a short, Moune Ô, which takes as its starting point a historical drama from thirty years ago, Jean Galmont, Adventurer, about a Frenchman who became a hero of the Guianese people. Their father had a bit role in that film, and while Moune Ô is partly autobiographical, it also incorporates poems by Martin Carter and Derek Walcott, signalling a desire to expand the filmmaker’s gaze beyond French Guiana to the rest of the Caribbean. “Our family is originally from St Lucia,” Maxime says of his use of Walcott’s poem “Air” (“there is too much nothing here”). He adds, “Detaching myself from the French language was a way to return to other roots in our family.” n

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own words

Trinidad and Tobagoborn Tonya Villafana, global franchise head for vaccines at AstraZeneca, on her early love of science, developing the COVID-19 vaccine, and how her family keeps her grounded — as told to Marvin Espinoza

I

grew up in Trinidad, and it was a wonderful experience to grow up on a Caribbean island in the 1970s and 80s. My love for science began with my schooling, particularly when I went to high school at St Joseph’s Convent, Port of Spain. I was really encouraged to follow my passion, science. I did that all through high school and was supported in developing all of my interests in the scientific field from a very early age, both at home by my parents and also at school.

As an undergraduate I became more interested in the field of immunology.

The field was blossoming at the time, particularly with the HIV pandemic, which helped to push the boundaries of science and what we understood about the immune system. As an undergrad, I had the opportunity to study and work in a laboratory where we were learning about HIV and other retroviruses, and where we were in the early stages of developing DNA vaccine technology.

W he n t he t i me c a me t o go t o graduate school, I wanted to focus on immunology as my foundational area of expertise and training. During my training and in my career, I have focused on how the immune system works, in states of health and disease, and specifically

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“I never worked so hard in my life” Photography courtesy AstraZeneca

in the fields of rheumatology and infectious disease.

Around 2001, I moved to sub-Saharan Africa to work on HIV vaccine development. I worked on setting up some of the first Phase 1 vaccine studies in the region. I was based in Botswana, and I did that for about five years. Towards the end of my time there, I joined a group that was developing a malaria vaccine in sub-Saharan Africa. I’m really excited about where that vaccine is today. In October 2021, the vaccine was endorsed by the World Health Organisation for “broad use” in children, making it the first malaria vaccine candidate to receive this recommendation.

T

he early days of the COVID-19 pandemic were exhausting and exhilarating. At AstraZeneca, we were committed to helping, and we were dedicated to making a difference in the pandemic. And so I had the opportunity to lead the R&D efforts of our vaccine in collaboration with Oxford University.

I don’t think I’ve ever worked as hard in my life, and I’ve never worked with a group of people who were so passionate, dedicated, and resilient to get this done.

We were working 24/7. I mean, it was like fifteen- to twenty-hour days. Some

days, I would sleep for a few hours and get up and just start working again. So it was really an intense period as we got all the studies up and running around the world for the vaccine programme in collaboration with the Oxford team.

I remember we decided very early on that we wanted to develop a vaccine for the world, and we wanted to do it not for profit during the pandemic. This was our commitment with Oxford. We worked so closely between our teams at Oxford and AstraZeneca. Our teams are all over the world, and adjusting to virtual meetings and being on with each other constantly was also a huge change in our normal ways of working. As we were planning and conducting clinical studies, my colleagues in our operations and manufacturing groups were in parallel scaling up manufacturing across the world to ensure that we could supply in all regions around the world. It was really intense and very exciting. We felt like we were racing against the clock.

When the vaccine was finally developed, the feeling was overwhelming, just overwhelming pride that we did this, that we were going to help so many people, and that I knew my family would get it. I knew that people in T&T, and my family in Africa — my husband is from Senegal

“The early days of the COVID-19 pandemic were exhausting and exhilarating. We were committed to helping, and we were dedicated to making a difference” — would have access to this vaccine and that we could help so many people around the world. My first meeting in 2021 was at four in the morning preparing for the vaccine rollout.

It’s still quite busy, because the COVID-19 pandemic continues and we need to keep getting vaccines into the

arms of people. Vaccines are the most important public health interventions that have occurred in the past two centuries. I think it’s really important to understand and to inform yourself of how vaccines work and the potential to really protect people from having the most severe outcomes related to disease.

Scientists and public health leaders need to do a better job of educating people about the importance of vaccines.

Think what the world would be like if we didn’t have vaccines for smallpox, for polio, for measles, mumps, rubella, and many of the vaccines we routinely give to children today.

I believe getting vaccinated against COV ID -19 is rea l ly f u nd a menta l ly important to stopping the pandemic, and that vaccines are making a difference.

Most importantly, vaccines prevent the worst outcomes of COVID-19 and

the most severe disease. We owe it to ourselves and to our communities to be vaccinated so we can all return to our everyday lives.

W hen I’m not work ing, I spend time with my family. I love to travel.

I love to cook. I spend time with my daughter, my husband, and my mom. I enjoy eating great meals, going to dance performances, listening to live music, and I’m looking forward to coming back home and enjoying some sun and sea in the Caribbean. I haven’t been able to do much of it in the past two years.

Pre-pandemic, I was home at least once a year. My family is incredibly supportive and very proud, and they have all been vaccinated. I am lucky. They’ve always encouraged me to pursue my passion. They tell me how things are going in Trinidad, and what people think. They keep me grounded. n

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did you even know

A thirtyyear-quiz This issue of Caribbean Beat marks our thirtieth anniversary — a good moment to share a special version of our regular trivia quiz, this time testing your knowledge of some of the Caribbean people, places, and culture we’ve featured on our vibrant covers over the past three decades. Check your score in the answers below — and if you need a few hints, visit our online cover gallery at www.caribbean-beat.com/content/archive

1. The first calypsonian to appear on the cover of

Caribbean Beat broke longstanding tradition by performing under his own name (rather than a sobriquet), and won T&T’s Calypso Monarch title in 1986. Who is he?

The Martiniquan filmmaker Euzhan Palcy appeared on the covers of Caribbean Beat's first issue in 1992 and our twentyfifth anniversary issue in 2017

2. What magnificently iconic Guyanese waterfall has appeared on the cover on two occasions, nineteen years apart?

3. The July/August 2012 cover, coinciding with the London Olympics, prophetically featured the Grenadian athlete who would win his country’s first-ever Olympic gold medal. Who is he?

5. The May/June 2014 cover depicted a scuba diver

exploring a flooded limestone cavern on the largest island of the Bahamas — what’s that island’s name?

6. The first Barbadian to appear on the cover was the lead singer for the popular soca band krosfyah — what’s his name?

7. Our second issue depicted a space-bound rocket

blasting off from what location in the Caribbean region?

8 Oonya Kempadoo (March/April 2002) 9 No-Maddz (May/June 2013) 10 Calypso Rose, a.k.a. Linda McArtha SandyLewis (November/December 2016) WWW.CARIBBEAN-BEAT.COM

UK to Guyanese parents, currently living in Grenada, and the author of the debut novel Buxton Spice. Who is she?

9. What’s the name of the Jamaican reggae poetry band who won acclaim for their theatrical production Breadfruit Is the New Bread, Baby the year they appeared on the cover?

10. Our oldest-ever cover subject is a musical legend from Tobago whose sixty-year career enjoyed a remarkable international revival in 2016 — who is she?

4 El Tucuche (July/August 2011) 5 Andros 6 Edwin Yearwood (September/October 1997) 7 The Centre Spatial Guyanais in Kourou, French Guiana (Summer 1992)

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8. Only one writer has appeared on the cover — born in the

Answers: 1 David Rudder (on the cover of the Spring 1994 issue) 2 Kaieteur Falls (March/April 1996 and March/ April 2015) 3 Kirani James

4. Over the years, the magazine’s covers have featured wildlife including several birds, a jaguar, a trio of monkeys — but only one amphibian, a tree frog from the slopes of Trinidad’s second-highest mountain. What’s the name of this peak?

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