Caribbean Beat — July/August 2018 (#152)

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Contents 

No. 152 • July/August 2018 

68 

46 

52 

EMBARK 

16 Wish you were here 

Balandra Bay, Trinidad 

19 Datebook 

Events around the Caribbean in July 

and August, from Emancipation 

commemorations to St Lucia’s 

Chocolate Heritage Month 

26 Word of Mouth 

Barbados’s AnimeKon is one of the 

Caribbean’s biggest festivals of 

comics and animation 

28 Be well 

A new generation of mothers-to-be 

are opting for natural birthing centres 

like Trinidad’s Mamatoto 

32 Bookshelf and playlist 

This month’s reading and listening 

picks 

34 screenshots 

A Q&A with Matthew Smith, director 

of a new Walter Rodney documentary 

32 Cookup 

Good to goat 

From homestyle stews to spicy 

curries, goat is a popular Caribbean 

favourite — but how do diners and 

chefs feel about a more upscale 

version? Franka Philip investigates 

IMMERSE 

40 Panorama 

turn of the tide 

The sometimes submerged forces of 

history and culture that connect the 

islands of the Caribbean archipelago 

are the guiding theme of an exhibition 

that opened in Los Angeles last year, 

and has now moved to New York City. 

Presenting a portfolio of artists from 

Relational Undercurrents 

46 snapshot 

Welcome to the evolution 

Few people can boast such a big 

dose of musical DNA. It’s no surprise, 

then, that Nailah Blackman — 

granddaughter of the late Ras Short 

I — barely out of her teens, is one of 

the hottest new musical talents in 

Trinidad and Tobago, with her sights 

set on an international career. Laura 

Dowrich-Phillips learns about 

Blackman’s breakthrough at Carnival 

2017, and her ambitions to push 

soca — the musical genre invented by 

her grandfather — to a new stage of 

evolution 

ARRIVE 

52 round trip 

Head for heights 

There’s nothing like the thrill of a 

higher perspective, far above the 

ground — from ziplining to rockclimbing 

to floating in a hot-air 

balloon. Get ready to soar 

60 neighbourhood 

Charlestown, Nevis 

The capital of St Kitts’s sister 

isle boasts historic architecture, 

museums, and proximity to one of the 

Caribbean’s most famous beaches 

8 WWW.CARIBBEAN-BEAT.COM

CaribbeanBeat 

An MEP publication 

62 escape 

Clearing the trail 

Dominica’s Waitukubuli National 

Trail is the jewel in the Nature Isle’s 

ecotourism crown. 2017’s Hurricane 

Maria devastated the trail — along 

with the rest of Dominica — but now 

an unusual breed of “voluntourists” 

are helping restore it. Paul Crask 

meets two of them 

ENGAGE 

66 Discover 

Eye on the sky 

For five decades, one of the world’s 

most important radio telescopes, 

gathering essential information about 

outer space, has operated from Puerto 

Rico’s Arecibo, at the heart of the 

Caribbean, writes Erline Andrews 

68 Inspire 

OK to be proud 

Six years ago, the tragic suicide of a 

teenager motivated the launch of an 

initiative to support young LGBTQ 

people in Trinidad and Tobago. Bridget 

van Dongen reports on the Silver Lining 

Foundation, and how they work to 

protect the vulnerable 

Editor Nicholas Laughlin 

General manager Halcyon Salazar 

Design artists Kevon Webster & Bridget van Dongen 

Business Development Manager, 

Tobago and International 

Evelyn Chung 

T: (868) 684 4409 

E: evelyn@meppublishers.com 

Web editor Caroline Taylor 

Editorial assistant Shelly-Ann Inniss 

Barbados Sales Representative 

Shelly-Ann Inniss 

T: (246) 232 5517 

E: shelly@meppublishers.com 

Media & Editorial Projects Ltd. 

Business Development 

Representative, Trinidad 

Mark-Jason Ramesar 

T: (868) 775 6110 

E: mark@meppublishers.com 

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

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

E: caribbean-beat@meppublishers.com 

Website: www.meppublishers.com 

Read and save issues of Caribbean Beat on your smartphone, 

tablet, computer, and favourite digital devices! 

70 on this day 

Long before bolt 

Usain Bolt may be Jamaica’s most 

famous Olympic medallist — but he 

was far from the first. James Ferguson 

looks back at the life of Arthur Wint and 

his extraordinary achievements both on 

and off the track 

72 puzzles 

Enjoy our crossword, sudoku, and 

other brain-teasers! 

Printed by Solo Printing Inc., Miami, Florida 

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

subscription. Copyright © Caribbean Airlines 2018. All rights reserved. ISSN 1680–6158. No part of this magazine may be 

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

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

Website: www.caribbean-airlines.com 

80 classic 

A dip into Caribbean Beat’s archives: 

Dylan Kerrigan goes “looking for 

horn” 

The Caribbean Airlines logo shows a hummingbird in flight. Native to the Caribbean, the hummingbird represents 

flight, travel, vibrancy, and colour. It encompasses the spirit of both the region and Caribbean Airlines. 

WWW.CARIBBEAN-AIRLINES.COM 

9

Cover Across the 

Caribbean, “August 

holidays” mean a chance to 

kick back, relax with friends 

and family, and maybe head 

to the beach 

Photo Santypan/Istock. 

com 

This issue’s contributors 

include: 

Erline Andrews (“Eye on the sky”, page 66) is an 

award-winning Trinidadian journalist. She is a regular 

contributor to Caribbean Beat and her work has 

also appeared in other publications in T&T and the 

US, including the Chicago Tribune and the Christian 

Science Monitor. 

Born in Britain and resident in Dominica since 

2005, Paul Crask (“Clearing the trail”, page 62) is an 

independent writer, photographer, and magazine 

publisher. He is the author of two Bradt travel guides 

and the creator of Dominica Traveller magazine: 

www.dominicatraveller.com 

Laura Dowrich-Phillips (“Welcome to the evolution”, 

page 46) is the content manager for Looptt.com, a 

news website and app based in Trinidad and Tobago. 

Franka Philip (“Good to goat”, page 32) loves to find the 

story behind the story in the food industry. A journalist for 

more than twenty years, she has worked in print, online, 

and radio in Trinidad and at the BBC in London. At the 

start of 2018, Franka co-founded Trini Good Media, a 

website that hosts the podcast Talk ’Bout Us. 

Robert Edison Sandiford (“Welcome to the 

multiverse”, page 26) is a Canada-born Barbadian 

fiction writer, and co-founder of ArtsEtc, a periodical 

devoted to culture in Barbados. 

Bridget van Dongen (“OK to be proud”, page 68) is a 

member of Caribbean Beat’s editorial team. Born in 

South Africa and formerly based in Zimbabwe, Britain, 

and Antigua, she’s now at home in Trinidad and Tobago. 

Crown Point, Tobago 

Casino/Bar: 868 631-0044/0500 

Jade Cafe: 868 6398361 


11

A MESSAGE From OUR CEO 

Dear Caribbean Airlines passengers, 

We are halfway through 2018, and we 

have much good news to share with 

you. This year got off to a great start, 

and we have seen how prudent cost 

management, along with strong passenger 

demand and increased cargo business, 

resulted in enhanced revenue. 

Our results for the first two quarters 

show revenue and earnings that are 

ahead of budget and which reflect 

a significant improvement over the 

same period in 2017. The first quarter, 

which traditionally is our most difficult, 

revealed increases on some of our top 

routes. What is even more encouraging 

are the strides we made in introducing 

products and services that have 

enhanced the customer experience. 

So far, this year Caribbean Airlines 

has: 

• started service to Havana, Cuba, 

and the route continues to enjoy 

healthy load factors 

• introduced non-stop service from 

St Vincent and the Grenadines to 

JFK, New York 

• unveiled Caribbean Plus, a new 

a product which offers extra leg 

room within the economy cabin 

of the Boeing 737 jet aircraft 

• launched Caribbean Explorer, 

which gives travellers the ability 

to go to several islands on one 

affordable fare. Look out for this 

fantastic offer, which returns in 

September! 

• initiated Webchat and WhatsApp 

Chat for business 

• activated Caribbean Miles online 

miles redemption 

There are also many exciting developments 

on the way, such as FREE wireless 

inflight entertainment, which will 

allow you to stream movies, games, 

magazines, and more to your personal 

device via a browser. This service will be 

available from August. 

Additionally, as part of our Festival to 

Festival campaign, Caribbean Airlines 

is the official airline partner for Carnival 

icemanphotos/shutterstock.com 

celebrations throughout the region, and 

we have rolled out airport activations in 

many of the destinations we serve to 

support this important initiative. 

You can fly with us to enjoy Carnivals 

throughout the region in July and 

August: 

• Vincy Mas, St Vincent and the 

Grenadines: 2 July 

• St Lucia: 16 and 17 July 

• Crop Over, Barbados: 6 August 

• Antigua and Barbuda: 7 August 

• Spice Mas, Grenada: 13 and 14 

August 

In addition to the Carnivals, you can 

also take part in the Tobago Heritage 

Festival, running from mid July to early 

August, and a variety of music festivals 

and other events in bustling New York 

City, where Caribbean Airlines offers 

multiple daily services to Terminal 4 at 

John F. Kennedy International Airport. 

Our network also includes flights 

from the Caribbean to south Florida — 

specifically, Orlando, Fort Lauderdale, and 

Miami. The entire family can have fun at 

world-famous theme parks and resorts. 

The shopping scene is awesome, with an 

array of malls and outlets which offer great 

value, and you can use Caribbean Airlines 

cargo services to safely and affordably 

ship your items. 

We know the July/August vacation 

period is a special time for families to 

get much-needed relaxation, and with 

twenty destinations to choose from, 

there is something for everyone. 

For the fifth consecutive year, 

Caribbean Airlines is the Official Airline 

sponsor for the Caribbean Premier 

League 20/20 (CPLT20) Series, which 

takes place from 8 August to 16 

September. It is our pleasure to connect 

cricket fans and teams throughout 

the Caribbean and North and South 

America to enjoy the excitement of this 

premier cricket league. 

Please see our Datebook on page 

19 for a full list of Carnivals, festivals, 

and other events in July and August. 

Datebook is a standard feature of this 

magazine and the information is also 

available online at www.caribbeanbeat.com. 

As 2018 unfolds, we will share the 

latest news and developments with 

you. At Caribbean Airlines, it is our 

privilege to serve you — thank you for 

choosing to fly with us! 

Please visit our website at www. 

caribbean-airlines.com; become a 

fan by liking us on Facebook at www. 

facebook.com/caribbeanairlines; and 

follow us on Twitter @iflycaribbean. 

Garvin Medera 

Chief Executive Officer 

12 WWW.CARIBBEAN-AIRLINES.COM

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datebook 

Your guide to Caribbean events in July and August, from CPL 

cricket across the islands to Emancipation commemorations 

Rodney Legall / Alamy Stock Photo 

Crop Over celebrations 

in Barbados 

Don’t miss . . . 

Carnival 

July and August 

Across the Caribbean 

If there’s one celebration known to unite the 

region, it’s Carnival. It pushes us to celebrate 

both our similarities and our differences, 

explore creative self-expression, and see the 

world through a different lens. Almost every 

Caribbean island has its own version, and all 

are unique — with a slew of Carnivals unfolding 

during the months of July and August. Get 

ready to wear out the soles of your shoes in 

St Lucia, Grenada, Barbados, Antigua, Sint 

Eustatius, St Vincent and the Grenadines, 

Nevis, Anguilla, Santiago de Cuba — plus 

Toronto’s Caribana and London’s Notting Hill 

Carnival, too. It’s time to wine! 


19

datebook 

If you’re in . . . 

St Lucia 

Chocolate Heritage Month 


Jamaica 

Reggae Sumfest 

Venues around Montego Bay 

15 to 21 July 

The success of Bob Marley and the 

Wailers back in the 1970s made reggae 

a worldwide phenomenon. And with a 

vital reggae and dancehall industry, the 

music never stops in Jamaica. Every 

year, thousands gather for festivals 

like Sumfest to reignite their love 

of the sound. A sea of smiling faces 

singing along with the performers fills 

the grounds at each venue. Fusions 

of reggae continue to happen also. 

Remember the top song for summer 

2017? The Puerto Rican reggaeton hit 

“Despacito” lasted sixteen weeks as 

number one on the Billboard charts. 

Genre-specific music festivals aren’t 

always authentic, but at Sumfest, 

a bona fide reggae- and dancehallcentric 

line-up is guaranteed. Sumfest 

celebrates its twenty-fifth anniversary 

this year, and continues to rock steady. 

Beach parties, a reggae industry 

symposium, and other exciting preevents 

lead up to the climax on Friday 

and Saturday: two exciting nights 

aiming to rival top international music 

festivals. Lookout for celebrated 

Jamaican performers like Popcaan, 

Aidonia, Bounty Killer, Spice, Sizzla, 

Damian “Jr Gong” Marley, Maxi Priest, 

Cappleton, Beres Hammond, and many 

more. 

Tobago 

courtesy Downsound Entertainment Production 

Hans Geel /shutterstock.com 

Whatever the question, chocolate is 

the answer. What keeps you young? 

Chocolate. What’s starring in estate 

tours highlighting the history and 

tradition of a thriving industry dating 

back to the eighteenth century? 

Chocolate. What makes your sweet 

tooth happy? Chocolate. There’s no 

doubt chocolate has a rich legacy. And 

St Lucia is harnessing it. The island’s 

native cocoa is a key ingredient in local 

spa treatments, culinary works of art, 

cosmetic production, and agriculture 

products. As St Lucia celebrates 

Chocolate Heritage Month this August, 

cocoa-related activities, specials and 

packages will all be on offer. You can 

get a close-up view of the bean-to-bar 

process at Jade Mountain’s Emerald 

Estate. And if you eat too much and 

want to work up a sweat, try polishing 

the cocoa beans by dancing on 

them at Morne Coubaril Estate, La 

Dauphine Estate, or Fond Doux Holiday 

Plantation. 

Tyler Hendy/pexels.com 

THTI Golf Classic 

Magdalena Grand Beach and Golf Resort 

14 and 15 July 

If you’re a sports enthusiast with a 

hearty appetite and a passion for 

culture, Tobago is the destination 

this July. The Tobago Hospitality and 

Tourism Institute (THTI)’s inaugural Golf 

Classic aims to be an annual fixture on 

the Caribbean golf calendar. You’ll have 

a weekend of golfing teamed up with 

an exciting showcase of local flair and 

innovation in culinary arts and hospitality. 

And the tournament also coincides 

with the start of the two-week Tobago 

Heritage Festival: golfers and spectators 

can relish gourmet food, live culinary and 

mixology demos, product sampling, and 

plenty Tobagonian culture. 

Event previews by Shelly-Ann Inniss 


@eldoradorums 

eldorado_rum 

@eldoradorums

datebook 

Jamming 

in July 

Dive Fest Barbados 

Venues around Barbados 

divefestbarbados.com 

Water awareness 

programmes, beach cleanups, 

lionfish hunting and 

tasting, as well as scuba 

dives all over the island: don’t 

miss out on your chance to 

discover what lies beneath 

Barbados’s beautiful seas! 

[4 to 8 July] 

Nevis Mango and Food 

Festival 

Venues around Nevis 

nevismangofest.com 

UK Iron Chef Judy Joo, New York– 

based award-winning celebrity 

chef Seamus Mullen, and top 

Caribbean chef Michael Harrison 

of Barbados will join Nevisian 

colleagues to embrace an epic 

culinary challenge dedicated to 

the luscious mango 

[5 to 8 July] 

Bessfest: Taste of Trinidad and Tobago 

Queen’s Park Savannah, Port of Spain 

bessguide.com 

From the sweet sounds of steelpan and tassa to 

the display of traditional moko jumbies, experience 

the blended pot of T&T’s diverse cuisine and 

culture with over fifty vendors 

[7 July] 

courtesy bessguide.com 

30 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14 15 

30 

16 

01 

17 1 

16 

17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 

31 


Bequia Fisherman’s Day 

Venues around Bequia 

bequiatourism.com 

Fisher folk and spectators 

assemble before dawn, in 

hopes of having the biggest 

and heaviest catch by early 

afternoon. Cheer on the 

fishermen or simply savour a 

meal prepared with the catch 

of the day 

[7 July] 

rj lerich/shutterstock.com 

30 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14 15 

16 

17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 

31 


23

datebook 

Awesome 


Emancipation Day 

Jamaica, Barbados, Trinidad and Tobago 

Bells of freedom will peal, and re-enactments will be 

performed at Emancipation parks and monuments, as the 

abolition of slavery is commemorated 

[1 August] 

Cudjoe Head Fest 

Montserrat 

visitmontserrat.com 

To celebrate its strong African 

heritage, Cudjoe Head village hosts 

a five-mile bike and road race, plus 

a cultural extravaganza showcasing 

masqueraders, local performers, and 

dance competitions 

[3 to 4 August] 

courtesy the emancipation committee of t&T 

Caribbean Premier League (CPL) 

Around the Caribbean 

cplt20.com 

Caribbean favourites alongside 

international cricket superstars play in one 

of the most exhilarating tournaments in 

world cricket 

[8 August to 16 September] 

courtesy cplt20 ltd 2018 

30 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14 15 

30 

16 

01 

17 1 

16 

17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 

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Caribbean Broadcast Union 

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Assembly 

Kingston, Jamaica 

caribroadcastunion.org 

Highly relevant sessions for the 

regional media sector, along with 

the best media offerings from the 

Caribbean will be celebrated under 

the theme “Building Resilience 

to Climate Change: Business, 

Technology, and Content Options 

for Caribbean Media” 

[13 to 15 August] 

Gianfranco Vivi/shutterstock.com 

30 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14 15 

Ends 16 September 

16 

17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 

31 

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25

WORD OF MOUTH 

Dispatches from our correspondents around the Caribbean and further afield 

andrew browne photography courtesy animekon 

Welcome 

to the 

multiverse 

Robert Edison Sandiford visits Barbados’s 

annual AnimeKon and finds everything from 

cosplay to sci-fi writers and video games 

My fairy daughter is getting a henna tattoo, accompanied 

by a godsister witch, her black pointy hat a giveaway. 

Catwoman and a member of Team Rocket slink by. 

We point at their costumes, gawk as if they’re the real deal. 

Soon I’ll be running into a number of Barbados Community 

College BFA students I’ve taught. Selling their own brand of 

chocolate chip cookies. Inviting patrons to test-drive their video 

game based on Caribbean mythology. Sketching under the banner 

of Bajan-based Beyond Comics. 

Since its first edition, AnimeKon has sought a niche beyond 

Barbados’s calendar of events. Billed as “the Eastern Caribbean’s 

BEST pop-culture convention and the ultimate Geekcation,” it’s 

also an alternative showcase of regional talent in media arts. 

AnimeKon was founded by Omar Kennedy and Melissa 

Young in 2010. Bigging-up indigenous creative industries was 

always part of their vision. “We wanted to bring the comic con 

experience to the Caribbean for people our age,” says Young, 

now thirty-four. She and Kennedy, who turns forty this August, 

knew that could be engineered in a top-class way by involving 

local costume and fashion designers, graphic artists, fine artists, 

makeup artists, and gaming developers. “Giving them all the 

opportunity to unleash their imagination, as well as to network.” 

Held at Barbados’s premier conference facility, the Lloyd 

Erskine Sandiford Centre, AnimeKon started out as a single day. 

Second time out, it grew to two. This year, it’s officially four days, 

16 to 19 August. Says Young: “The fans just wanted more.” 

That includes a cosplay catamaran cruise aimed at “those 

eighteen to thirty” on the opening Thursday. The pop-up 

playground on the Friday is more family-oriented, with games 

like Quidditch. Saturday and Sunday anchor the festival, with 

exhibitors, competitions, gaming, Japanese maid cafés, panel 

discussions, fitness challenges, and an authors’ lounge. 

Among past guest writers have been Grenadian Tobias 

Buckell and Barbadian Karen Lord. (In 2011, I joined them on a 

panel looking at Caribbean speculative fiction.) Comics creators 

Paris Cullins (of both DC and Marvel) and Randy Stradley (Dark 

Horse Comics) have stopped by to talk about art and the challenges 

of breaking into the industry. LeVar Burton (of both Star 

Trek: The Next Generation and Roots) headlined the inaugural con. 

Actors, educators, performers — from St Lucia, Trinidad 

and Tobago, Jamaica, and elseworlds — all have come to share 

their enthusiasm for the pop-culture multiverse. The theme for 

2018 is “World of Wonder.” “We’ve already revealed two of our 

guests: the actors Manu Bennet [Arrow, Spartacus] and Olivia 

Olson [Love Actually, Adventure Time]. We have three more guests 

to announce,” says Young, “one, we hope, from the Marvel 

Cinematic Universe.” 

The headiness of the catamaran cruise aside, a highlight of 

the convention is the cosplay competition for all ages, on dry 

land. AnimeKon has hosted internationally renowned cosplayers 

Yaya Han, Hannah of Hanime’s Cosplay, and Knightmage. 

I expect more than a few of my former charges will be walking 

around this year’s con as Black Panther, Deadpool, or Thanos. 

There may even be a heartman, djablès, or baccou among 

them, which makes me smile. Now wouldn’t that be daring to 

disturb the pop-culture multiverse? n 

For more information, 

visit animekonexpo.com 


e well 

nadine eversley photography 

For centuries, Caribbean 

women delivered their 

babies with the help of 

traditional midwives. 

Now a new generation of 

mothers are opting for 

natural birthing centres 

like Trinidad and Tobago’s 

Mamatoto, reports 

Shelly-Ann Inniss 

Photography courtesy 

Mamatoto 

Mother 

knows best 

Their scent and the snug 

fit of your finger in their 

tiny hands tug at your 

heartstrings. Their bright 

eyes captivate and cast 

you into a spell of baby 

babble. But before you know it, mum and 

dad are reaching back for their infant, and 

you’re left longing. 

Many adults enjoy the process of conceiving 

a baby. Better yet are the adoration 

and joy that consume you when you 

hold a newborn. But the journey to their 

debut requires utmost prudence. 

The twentieth century was a new era 

of medicine. Healthcare became more 

accessible, medical procedures rapidly 

advanced, and stricter health regulations 

were enforced. In the Caribbean, childbirth 

at home assisted by midwives — or 

granny midwives — became a rare event. 

Hospital deliveries replaced them, with 

midwives working alongside physicians 

in maternity units. 

But as much as hospitals provide 

an enhanced experience, many 


mums-to-be still desire a more nurturing 

atmosphere that feels — and looks — 

like home. This ambiance, coupled with 

strong physical and emotional support, is 

said to make the birth process smoother. 

Determined to be in control of their 

bodies and labour, today’s expectant 

mums create and engage in online support 

forums, and some seek alternatives. 

Natural birthing centres shine like a 

beacon. They’ve also been instrumental 

in converting women who were once 

apprehensive about labour. 

In Swahili, “mamatoto” means “mother 

baby.” The concept is that they function 

as one: whatever affects mum directly 

impacts baby. The Mothers and Midwives 

Alliance of Trinidad and Tobago — more 

commonly known as Mamatoto — 

are firm advocates of this philosophy. 

Mamatoto is currently the only freestanding 

birthing centre in the English-speaking 

Caribbean, but they weren’t always 

alone. For over ten years, Barbados had a 

private facility called the Family Birthing 

Centre. Lacking support, it eventually 

closed in 2011. But this hasn’t deterred 

some Barbadians. A charity called Better 

Birthing in Bim, focused on creating 

positive change for childbirth, is aiming 

to launch a non-profit birthing centre 

with a focus on water births. Midwife and 

advocate Andrea Jordan admits they’re 

hoping to follow the Mamatoto model. 

Mamatoto is an NGO focused on 

principles of education and safety. 

Owned and operated by midwives with 

the assistance of doulas, they enlighten 

expectant mothers with the resources 

they need to make informed decisions 

about childbirth. Even if you don’t intend 

to use the centre for your birth, they 

impart information enabling you to ask 

appropriate questions at your doctor’s 

office or hospital visit. The centre offers 

free childbirth classes, prenatal yoga 

classes, breastfeeding support, postnatal 

support, a fathers’ group, and other 

programmes. Midwives and interns from 

around the world have also made this 

centre a stepping-stone in their career. 

Pregnant women find a relaxed, 

comfortable “mother-friendly” environment. 

As you enter the Mamatoto foyer, 

you can’t help but feel settled. A tree of 

life mural covers the walls and bears 

the names of Mamatoto children. Blue 

droplets indicate water births, small red 

houses symbolise babies born on the way 

or in some instances in the Mamatoto 

driveway, and green leaves illustrate the 

over three hundred babies who’ve been 

delivered at the birthing centre. There 

are bedrooms with queen-size beds and 

light dimmers, a kitchen, a recreational 

area — it’s literally a home away from 

home, but with a few Jacuzzis. Expectant 

mums can eat, drink, walk around, and 

use the tub or shower during labour, too. 

Additionally, the baby’s father and other 

loved ones are welcome in the labour 

rooms. Because birth centres are focused 

on the holistic relationship between mum 

and baby, there is no separation of child 

from mother after the delivery, either. 

Babies are placed on mummy for that 

skin-to-skin connection, and breastfed 

almost immediately. 

Birthing centres like Mamatoto 

emphasise low to no use of medical 

intervention, such as epidurals and 

enemas. “Medication affects your birth, 

Whatever affects mum directly impacts baby. 

Mamatoto are firm advocates of this philosophy 

mind, and hormones,” says co-founder 

Marilyn Stollmeyer. She adds, “If you 

aren’t numbed, you can feel the passage 

of the baby, consequently making the 

birth a little easier through your own 

movement.” And each freestanding 

birthing centre follows very strict criteria 

to ensure safety — therefore, expectant 

mums with multiple births (such as 

twins), or medical conditions that may be 

deemed high-risk, are referred to other 

medical centres for care. 

According to Stollmeyer, mummiesto-be 

can rock on birth balls, have a 

nice massage, be calmed by the scent of 

aromatherapy oils, and if necessary transcutaneous 

electrical nerve stimulation 

(TENS) can be applied for pain management. 

A confidence boost from your doula 

and partner always helps, too. 

No one knows your body better than 

you do. Education, empowerment, and 

support seem to be key. Once you’ve had 

a positive birthing centre experience, 

chances are you’ll prefer to have your 

future babies delivered at one. n 

For more information, 

visit mamatoto.net 


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ookshelf 

De Rightest Place 

by Barbara Jenkins (Peepal Tree Press, 278 pp, 

ISBN 9781845234225) 

In her debut novel, Trinidadian 

author Barbara Jenkins banishes 

uptight associations of the 

rumshop as a creative wasteland. 

The Belmont bar from which the 

novel takes its title is the home 

of jilted yet pluckily resourceful 

Indira Gabriel, a woman who 

measures out her resolve in selfhelp 

books, her mettle spiced 

with designer perfumes. Together 

with stoic, secretive Bostic, they 

run De Rightest Place from strength to strength, battling 

romantic contretemps, whistleblowing members of the 

clergy, greasy-palmed councillors, and entrepreneurial 

barbecue infringements. If it sounds like a simmering 

sancoche of a tale, that’s because soup is never far from 

De Rightest Place: in literal, steaming bowls, and in the 

figurative melange of picong, pastiche, and political 

peppering that is confidently stirred in Jenkins’s prose. 

Indira’s surprising versatility as a narrator drives home this 

exquisitely orchestrated ode to Belmont. 

Madwoman 

by Shara McCallum (Peepal Tree Press, 72 pp, 

ISBN 9781845233396) 

“You think / I’m gristle, begging 

to be chewed? / No, my love: I’m 

bone.” The poem “Memory” from 

Shara McCallum’s powerful fifth 

collection, Madwoman, is a map 

for this firebrand-feminist body of 

work. In verse that layers strident 

girlhood over transgressive 

woman’s magic, the poet reveals 

stations of obsession; bittersweet 

education in Jamaica’s rich, 

revelatory setting; calcifying loss mixed with rapturous 

self-discovery. Of motherhood and mutability do these 

poems summon their multiple significances: they keep 

their own counsel, studying the clearly demarcated roles 

assigned to women, blasting them open to mine richer and 

stranger meanings. Winner of the 2018 OCM Bocas Prize 

for Poetry, Madwoman is a reading of womanhood as both 

mysterious codex and traceable vault: McCallum takes us, 

with an expeditioner’s bravery, to the origins of things. She 

shows us that the centre is female. 

Mouths Don’t Speak 

by Katia D. Ulysse (Akashic Books, 224 pp, ISBN 

9781617755927) 

“You’re not Haitian unless your 

umbilical stamp is buried under 

a tree in this country — this 

country. Who knows what you 

did with my grandchild’s lonbrit?” 

Annette asks this of her daughter 

Jacqueline, in Katia D. Ulysse’s 

Mouths Don’t Speak, a novel that 

conjures the ever-present dead 

alongside those who survive in the 

face of calamities, be they natural 

disasters or man-made terrors. 

The devastation of the 2010 Haiti earthquake is its own 

character in this tightly-plotted story, exacting deaths 

that extend even beyond the initial toll of a quarter million. 

Ulysse dedicates herself to mapping these emotional 

deaths, these sunderings of human spirit from heart, as 

she peers into the fissuring domestic tableau of a Haitian- 

American family: Jacqueline, Kevin, and their threeyear-old 

daughter, Amber. The reading isn’t easy, but this 

tenderly heartbreaking novel resonates. 

Ordinary Beast 

by Nicole Sealey (Ecco, 80 pp, ISBN 

9780062688804) 

The Virgin Islands-born poet Nicole 

Sealey stuns, in movements of 

technical deftness, with her debut 

full-length collection, Ordinary 

Beast. Not content to merely 

master existing forms, Sealey 

forges her own, as in “candelabra 

with heads,” a poem of reversals, 

called an obverse, in which malign 

dread sidles up to bolstered selfpossession. 

Sealey’s verse chants 

down the empire of American 

whiteness, singing revolutionary anti-hymns, survival 

songs of the black body’s capacity both to regenerate and 

to reject colonial visitations of pain. Nor is form the sole 

accomplishment of Ordinary Beast: the multiple registers 

of these poems simultaneously convince and discomfit, 

drawing the reader into an uneasy, vagabond trust. See the 

second poem, “a violence”, for proof: “A body, I’ve read, can 

sustain / its own sick burning, its own hell, for hours. / It’s 

the mind. It’s the mind that cannot.” 

Reviews by Shivanee Ramlochan, Bookshelf editor 


playlist 

From Trinidad . . . With Love 

jointpop (Northern Range Records) 

The renegades of Caribbean rock and roll after 

two decades are still telling stories from their 

Trinidad and Tobago perch above the din of 

the annual Carnival music. Gary Hector and the 

jointpop boys have fine-tuned the aesthetic 

of the jam band into a raucous sing-along of 

pleasant ditties that eschew the angst of 

their earlier Clash impersonation for a melding 

with the kind of singable melodies that Oasis 

would suggest. Rock music in the Caribbean 

is not an incongruity, but a signal to the many 

elements that musicians have at their fingertips 

to translate local life stories, observations, and 

obsessions into universally known soundscapes 

with access to many. The dry witticisms of singer 

Hector replete with simple rhyming couplets 

give the listener an idea of how we tackle 

controversies here, with mordant commentary 

honed by a keen eye towards the ironies of island 

life — calypso-style lyricism refined. This is love, 

Trinidad style. 

Believe 

Kellie Cadogan (self-released) 

Bajan songstress Kellie Cadogan oozes charm 

on this album, with songs that flirt with the sonic 

qualities of soul-jazz and gospel. This long-ingestation 

project includes half of the ten-song 

album composed by Cadogan, who, with these 

tunes, displays an ear for contemporary popular 

songcraft. You can make a range of comparisons: 

from the sound of a reborn Anita Baker to 

an intimate acoustic Ella Fitzgerald duet. 

Songwriting and performance aside, Believe acts 

as a calling card for a performer who can thrill with 

a voice that signifies more than just a tropical 

hotel lounge entertainer, but a singer in touch 

with a wider palette of sounds. The title tune 

hangs on a set of lyrics that reflect a positivity 

and faith that act as a kind of spiritual testimony. 

The juxtaposition of these original songs — 

uplifting odes all — and twentieth-century jazz 

standards makes this album an interesting listen, 

and a pleasant reminder that Caribbean singers 

stride many worlds effortlessly. 

CooBago Jazz 

John Arnold (self-released) 

Tobagonian pianist John Arnold has a knack 

for writing music that finds its resonance in 

the heartbeat of Caribbean life. Songcraft 

more than execution is highlighted here on 

this nine-song album, with tunes running the 

gamut from modern piano jazz to contemporary 

jazz-influenced hip-hop. A longtime pinnacle of 

Tobago’s music scene and its jazz experience, 

Arnold continues with his approach of selfsufficiency 

in creating music that is an extension 

of the idea of the real Caribbean. Tobago sells 

itself as a laid-back paradise, the yin to Trinidad’s 

yang. That counterpoint to the energy of 

Trinidad’s music is reflected in the soft ostinato 

grooves of Arnold’s tunes — a repetition that 

isn’t boring, but that forces the ear to hear what 

is played on top of the groove. Funky piano and 

saxophone riffs help the listener discover the 

intended goal of the album: to define a cool 

Tobago sound in a sea of smooth jazz. 

Got a Light? 

Jeremy Ledbetter Trio (Alma Records) 

Canadian keyboardist Jeremy Ledbetter is no 

stranger to island ears and aesthetics, having 

helmed the successful Caribbean Latin jazz 

ensemble CaneFire since 2005. With his new 

trio, featuring Larnell Lewis on drums and Rich 

Brown on bass — of Kittitian and Jamaican 

heritage, respectively — the West Indian cred 

is solid. Any fleeting ideas that Canada is a 

wasteland devoid of multiculturalism’s ethos 

of integration is abandoned on a first listen to 

this new album, featuring Ledbetter’s supple 

performance sharing space with that solid 

rhythm section. Lewis’s drums play inside and 

outside time signatures and showcase rhythm 

unhinged from the metronome-like quality 

of drum machines. It has to be so, as the nine 

tunes here echo the beat and harmonic sense 

of a rediscovered Caribbean transformed by 

virtuosity. The sound is hushed yet potent, the 

mood is languid yet dynamic. “Her New Wings”, 

sung by Eliana Cuevas, is perfection. This album 

is a revelation of possibilities. 

Reviews by Nigel A. Campbell 

WWW.CARIBBEAN-AIRLINES.COM 33

screenshots 

courtesy matthew smith 

Matthew Smith, director of The Past Is 

Not Our Future 

“I wanted the film to 

capture a moment in time” 

Almost four decades after his assassination in 1980, Walter Rodney remains one 

of the modern Caribbean’s most vital figures. Seeking to collapse the distinction 

between action and thought, Rodney was both a scholar who wrote such seminal 

books as How Europe Underdeveloped Africa (1972) and a radical activist intent 

on bringing socio-economic justice and multiracial democracy to his native 

Guyana and beyond. 

An engaging new documentary, The Past Is Not Our Future: Walter Rodney’s 

Student Years — the phrase is from a Mervyn Morris poem — seeks to go beyond 

the mythic persona. Directed by Matthew Smith, professor of history at the Mona, 

Jamaica, campus of the University of the West Indies, it explores the time Rodney 

himself spent at Mona as an undergraduate reading history, in those heady early 

years of the 1960s. In this Q&A with Jonathan Ali, Smith explains the challenges 

of immersing viewers in the world of 1960s Jamaica. 

You’re an academic, a published 

historian. Where did the idea to make 

a film come from? 

I had never worked on a film as a 

filmmaker. The idea was sparked by a 

long-standing attachment to Walter 

Rodney’s life, which marked my early 

intellectual development. I believed the 

story could best be represented by a 

film. 

What led you to focus on Walter 

Rodney’s three years as a student at 

Mona? 

In the Caribbean, academics in the 

humanities — with good reason — 

lament student drift away from the arts 

towards the sciences. For me, having 

been educated in Jamaica, I am troubled 

by the separation younger people have 

from the stories of their predecessors. 

People like Walter Rodney, when they 

are considered, appear larger than life, 

as if they were iconic from birth. So I 

wanted to explore how Rodney began, 

his undergraduate years, when — like so 

many then and now — he came to learn 

about the world and his place in it. 

The film also distinguishes itself in 

terms of the formal approach to its 

subject. How did you decide on this 

strategy? 

I was clear going in that I wanted the film 

to capture a moment in time without 

the interruption of the present. I 

wanted audiences to be immersed in 

the world of the early 1960s Caribbean. 

For this reason, I eschewed talking 

heads completely. All the interviews 

that are used are gently introduced and 

are more retrospective recollections of 

young Rodney and the time he came of 

age by people who knew him then, and 

less interpretations that consciously 

searched out connections between 

his younger self and the celebrated 

revolutionary he would later become. 

The style in which the present-day 

footage of Mona campus is shot is 

also striking. 

Gareth Cobran, director of photography 

for the film, thought through with 

me how to present the campus in 

a different way than it’s ever been 

represented. I wanted the sense of 

emptiness, of the camera floating like 

a spirit, hovering through the corridors 

that Rodney walked, over the campus 

itself, and in the library. That approach is 

intended to give the setting a sense of 

timelessness and invite reflections on 

continuity within change. 

How challenging was it sourcing the 

archival material? 

It was difficult. But fortunately we have 

good records at the UWI Mona library, 

and with patient and skilful digging we 

were able to recover essays Rodney 

wrote over half a century ago that were 

largely forgotten. For the photographs 

we uncovered, they were sourced by 

going through every extant photograph 

of students we could find and looking for 

young Rodney in each. From this we found 

quite a few, which appear in the film. 

Through all of your research, writing 

and filming, did you discover anything 

about Rodney that particularly 

struck you? 

What was striking was how prolific he 

was during his undergraduate years. 

He wrote a great deal, expressing his 

thoughts on politics, society, history, 

and the Caribbean itself in numerous 

student papers and even in national 

newspapers. We recovered a lot of this 

in research, but also became aware 

of other writings that have probably 

been lost to time. That high level 

of engagement was extraordinary. I 

was always aware that Rodney was a 

highly driven person, but I didn’t fully 

appreciate how deep this was until 

working on the film. 

The Past Is Not Our Future: Walter 

Rodney’s Student Years 

Director: Matthew Smith 

Jamaica, 2017 

45 minutes 

34 

WWW.CARIBBEAN-BEAT.COM

cookup 

Goat meat is a Caribbean 

favourite — usually served 

curried or stewed, home-style. 

But could the humble goat ever 

go upscale? Franka Philip talks 

to the experts, from a chef to 

a farmer, and discovers there’s 

an appetite for goat products 

waiting to be satisfied 

Good 

to goat 

Illustration by Shalini Seereeram 

Like most Caribbean foodies, 

I love a hearty goat curry, 

sumptuous stew goat, or a 

juicy goat roti. In fact, those 

are the only ways a lot of 

Caribbean people have 

ever eaten goat. Some years ago, I came 

across a few recipes for barbecued goat, 

roast leg of goat, and goat chops that got 

me extremely excited. So off I went to find 

a butcher in London who would sell me a 

leg of goat. I tried about five butchers, but 

they only sold goat already cut up. When I 

was about to give up, I found one who had 

the leg, but here’s the catch: I had to buy 

half of a goat. 

What should I do? I’d already set my 

mind on having this great leg of goat, but 

half a goat was a bit much. Eventually, I 

called a few friends and convinced them to 

buy some of the goat meat from me. 


I lovingly seasoned the leg of goat with rosemary, garlic, 

smoked paprika, and other spices. Slow roasting goat brings 

out a more nuanced flavour profile. I thought it would be 

slightly gamey, but it wasn’t. It was very earthy and unbelievably 

rich for such a lean meat. Also, because it’s so lean, you 

have to baste the leg occasionally and roast the goat at a low 

temperature — about 150 degrees Fahrenheit or 300 Celsius 

— for a few hours. Since that time, I’ve longed to cook with 

different cuts of goat, but here in Trinidad the art of butchering 

goat is a rare one. 

What got me thinking again about gourmet-style goat 

was a slew of articles in foreign food publications talking 

about a newfound appreciation for the meat and its increasing 

visibility on menus in more upscale restaurants. To see 

whether this was the case here — since foodie trends in the 

metropole don’t take long to hit the Caribbean — I had a 

chat with award-winning Trinidadian chef Khalid Mohammed, 

the owner of Chaud, a fine-dining restaurant in the 

Port of Spain suburb of St Ann’s. 

“I used to have goat on my menu at Chaud,” Mohammed 

says. “If you go into a three-star Michelin restaurant now, 

you’ll get goat, but it’s not a Trinidad thing, it’s a trend that’s 

going on out there. It’s also big in Italian cuisine. 

“Goat in Trinidad is like what beef clod was twenty years 

ago,” Mohammed goes on. A couple decades ago, the only 

beef most people would try cooking with was clod, so you 

braised it, curried it, or stewed it. 

Mohammed once had a dish called Goat Dougla on the 

Chaud menu. Dougla is a term used to describe a person 

of mixed African and Indian heritage, so in Mohammed’s 

kitchen, the Goat Dougla recipe entailed marinating the goat 

as you would for curry, but cooking in a burned sugar–based 

stew that’s typical of Afro-Creole cooking in T&T. Mohammed 

also once owned a restaurant called Chaud Creole, 

where he experimented with a high-end menu using mainly 

local ingredients, including goat. 

“I used to have a rack of goat on the Chaud Creole 

menu,” he recalls. “I had a local supplier doing rack of 

goat for me. The problem was that you couldn’t get it one 

week, and one day the eye of the rack was big, on another 

day it was small. It wasn’t consistent. But that’s definitely 

the way I was going a few years ago. I absolutely think 

goat should be more on our menus. I went to an Italian 

restaurant abroad and I saw goat ragout and goat ravioli,” 

he says with excitement. 

“In the big picture, I think we should be very close to 

accepting goat in a variety of ways on our menus. Having 

said that, however, and based on my experience with Chaud 

Creole, I believe Trinis think there are certain foods that 

should be cheap. I’m not sure — especially these days — too 

many people would pay top dollar for a rack of goat. More 

people probably need to understand the cuts, and that you 

have prime cuts and off cuts — some are cheaper and some 

are more expensive. To get rack of goat and leg of goat now, 

there would have to be an artisan farmer who is breeding 

the goats specially and offering a consistent product to 

restaurants.” 


37

There’s a lot of goat in the local markets, 

but, surprisingly, not much of it is actually 

produced here. In T&T, local goat accounts 

for just about four per cent, with the rest coming 

from Australia. 

Local goat is not produced on an industrial 

scale in Trinidad, and there is a demand for the 

meat at a particular price, says John Borely, head 

of Small Ruminant Research at T&T’s Ministry 

of Agriculture. In T&T, at the moment, 

imported goat from Australia retails 

for around US$4 a pound, while 

locally produced goat goes for 

about US$6 a pound. “People 

who run roti shops, or sell 

food on a commercial 

scale, go for the imported 

goat,” Borely says. 

In Jamaica, where 

the consumption of 

delicacies like curry 

goat and mannish water 

(a soup that is reputed to 

have aphrodisiac qualities) 

is extremely high, 

local production accounts 

for fifteen per cent of the total 

goat consumed, says Kenneth 

King, president of the Small Ruminants 

Association of Jamaica. “The 

local goats are a traditional market in 

Jamaica. Goats come in very handy. If your child 

was born today, you’d kill a goat. If the child was 

christened, you’d kill a goat. When that child 

passes an exam, you’d kill a goat,” King explains. 

“At every occasion, you have curry goat. The 

demand is really high.” 

In other parts of the world, goats are more 

prized for their milk and cheese. Goat’s milk has 

been called a superfood by a lot of health and nutrition 

experts. One website, healthyfocus.org, says 

“Drinking goat’s milk will give you a healthy dose 

of the minerals and vitamins that your body needs. 

It contains thirty-three per cent of your recommended 

daily value of calcium as well as large 

amounts of magnesium, phosphorus, potassium, 

copper, zinc, and selenium. It is also a great source 

of vitamins A, C, D, and B2 or Riboflavin.” 

People with lactose intolerance often turn to 

goat’s milk as an alternative, but it’s expensive 

and, in some places, not consistently available. It’s 

easier to find goat’s cheese, a favourite for chefs, 

caterers, and home cooks. With that awareness, 

goat farmers are investing in milk herds to supply 

the increased demand for milk — not just for regular 

consumers, but for niche markets like artisan 

cheesemakers. 

In the Caribbean, goat farmers — being aware 

of the demand for products like goat’s cheese and 

milk — have been investing in dairy herds and 

looking at more opportunities for value-added 

products. King, who himself has a small herd in 

Falmouth, Jamaica, explained that more farmers 

are looking beyond curry goat and mannish water. 

“Farmers realised that if you started using cuts, 

you get more value for the carcass. What they’ve 

also discovered is that the cheapest part of the 

goat chain is the meat,” he says. “The skin, for 

example, can be used for leather — very expensive 

leather. And the milk can be used for so many other 

products, like yogurts, cheeses, cosmetics, soap, 

and stuff like that. People are now looking more at 

intensive-type operations, thinking about how to 

maximise the value of the herds.” 

King explains that the Jamaica government has 

been encouraging the growth of milking herds. 

“Our native goats here are a good mixture of 

Nubians, Alpines, Boers — and those are primarily 

for meat purposes. The government is in the 

process of helping with breeds like the Saanen that 

will make an impact on improving the quantity 

of milk. That is being actively pursued. There are 

some Jamaicans who are making cheeses, yogurts, 

and things like that. It will be taking off, I’d say, in 

the next year or so, because the challenge now is 

the availability of milk. There’s not enough milk at 

the moment.” 

What got me thinking again 

about gourmet-style goat 

was a slew of articles in 

foreign food publications 

talking about a newfound 

appreciation for the meat 

King is boosting his own herd with some 

Saanen goats, so he can bring his milk yield up 

to six litres per goat, from four litres at present. 

“I think in about a year’s time we will have 

twenty or thirty farmers who are making more 

of that value added from the milk,” he says. It’s 

the same in Trinidad, where some farmers are 

now able to supply small specialty groceries and 

supermarkets with milk. 

So goat-rearing is on the up and up, and more 

people are getting involved as they see the benefits. 

Whether it’s for high-end cuts of meat or dairy, the 

market is wide open — and this is yet another thing 

we can make distinctively Caribbean. n 

38 

WWW.CARIBBEAN-BEAT.COM

Immerse 

Courtesy of the artist and David Castillo Gallery, Miami 

40 Panorama 

Turn of the tide 

46 Snapshot 

Welcome to the evolution 

From The Fold series (2016, mixed media installation), by Adler Guerrier, from the exhibition Relational Undercurrents

panorama 

Still from Water and Dreams (2014, digital 

video, 06:14), by David Gumbs 


Turn of 

the tide 

A new exhibition of contemporary artists 

explores the “submarine” links among the 

islands of the Caribbean archipelago. A portfolio 

of artworks from Relational Undercurrents, 

now on view in New York City 

Courtesy of the artist 


41

“ 

The unity is submarine,” writes the Barbadian poet Kamau 

Brathwaite of the Caribbean archipelago — referring not 

to underwater topography but to the currents of history, 

language, culture, and memory that connect our far-flung 

arc of islands. It’s the defining concept behind Relational 

Undercurrents, a major exhibition of contemporary 

Caribbean artists, currently on view in New York City. As the curators write, 

unlike other recent shows which emphasise “the linguistic divisions, imperial 

histories, and contemporary conditions that separate the different areas in 

the Caribbean from each other,” Relational Undercurrents argues “that the 

visual arts are uniquely equipped to bridge the region’s language and cultural 

divides.” In other words, the focus is on what these artists from the breadth 

of the Caribbean have in common, while not ignoring or eliding what makes 

them different. It is, as the curators say, a decidedly “archipelagic approach” 

to a region of the world that is “notoriously hard to categorise.” 

Unsurprisingly, given the title of the show, one recurring element in many of 

these works is the sea, which serves by turns and sometimes simultaneously as 

Courtesy of the artist and KADIST, Paris and San Francisco 



Above El Mundo desde abajo/Under View of 

the World (2015–16, cyanotype panel, 30 x 40 x 

2 inches), by Juana Valdes 

Left Antillas (2013; concrete, steel, acrylic, 

enamel, and endemic native plants, 36 1/4 × 9 

7/8 x 6 inches each), by Engel Leonardo 


43


Above From the series Circa No Future (2014, 

digital photograph, 22 1/2 x 30 inches), by Nadia 

Huggins 

Opposite page The Waters of Kiskeya/ 

Quisqueya (2017, nine panels, mixed media on 

vellum, 72 x 108 inches), by Jean-Ulrick Désert 

Curated by Tatiana Flores, Relational Undercurrents: Contemporary Art 

of the Caribbean Archipelago ran at the Museum of Latin American Art 

in Los Angeles from September 2017 to March 2018. Including works by 

eighty artists with roots in Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Cuba, Puerto 

Rico, Curaçao, Aruba, Sint Maarten, St Martin, Martinique, Guadeloupe, 

Trinidad, Jamaica, the Bahamas, Barbados, and St Vincent, the exhibition 

was part of the Getty Foundation’s Pacific Standard Time initiative. In 

June 2018, Relational Undercurrents moved to the Wallach Art Gallery 

at Columbia University in New York City, where it remains on view until 

23 September. The catalogue, co-edited by Flores and scholar Michelle 

A. Stephens, is published by Duke University Press. 

subject, source of imagery, theme, and even medium. “The sea itself has been 

known by many names,” the curators remind us, “including the North Sea, 

Sea of the Antilles, Sea of Venezuela, West Indian Sea, Great Western Ocean, 

Gulf of New Spain, and Gulf of Mexico” — a continuous body of water that 

changes with every shift of perspective, like Relational Undercurrents itself. The 

titles of the show’s four sections suggest certain preoccupations: “Conceptual 

Mappings”, “Perpetual Horizons”, “Landscape 

Ecologies”, “Representational Acts”. Charting 

our physical and imaginative worlds, seeking and 

exceeding our limits, learning to live sustainably 

in our small island places, asserting our presence 

and our right to be ourselves: whatever else divides 

us, these imperatives connect us, relate us, through 

tides that run deep in our past, our present, and the 

unknown future. n 


Collection of the artist, courtesy of éspace d’art contemporain 14°N 61°W, Fort-de-France, Martinique 

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45

snapshot 

With music in her bloodline, T&T’s Nailah 

Blackman was almost destined for a 

career behind the microphone. She was 

the breakthrough performer of Carnival 

2017, still a teenager — but, as she tells 

Laura Dowrich-Phillips, her ambitions 

go beyond soca, to another stage of 

musical evolution 

One of the most striking things about Nailah 

Blackman is her sense of style. In her videos, 

on stage, even on an ordinary day hanging out 

with friends or running errands, the twentyyear-old 

singer exudes a combination of star 

quality, youthful exuberance, and confident 

sexuality in her attire. 

Fashion is a big deal for the rising star from Trinidad and 

Tobago, who learned to sew at a young age, and makes her own 

clothes. More than just determining her brand, fashion is one of 

the ways she plans to stamp her presence — and, by extension, 

that of T&T — on the international stage. 

“We want to look like outsiders, outsiders want to look like 

us,” she says. “When I travel, I get so angry at Trinidad and 

Tobago — I love us, but it’s like we always want to be like somebody 

else. Why can’t we be like us? Let’s be Trinbagonian. So I 

want to work with people who are like-minded,” she explains — 

hence her support of T&T designers like the Brown Cotton label 

in her “O Lawd Oye” video. 

Blackman is putting her money where her mouth is, too, 

with the launch of her own fashion line called Sokah — a line 

formerly owned by her mother, Abbi, the eldest of the fourteen 

children in the Blackman clan. So in between writing, recording, 

and performing, Blackman takes time to source 

materials and do sketches. She doesn’t yet have 

a date for the launch, but the first collection will 

be called Everything Is Connected. The line will 

consist of clothing which will be repurposed 

with new materials, namely denim, crocus, and 

mesh. “The whole concept of Sokah is Trinidad 

and Tobago, so my main colours are gold, red, 

black and white.” 

“Sokah” is the original spelling of soca, the 

genre of music invented by her grandfather, 

the late Garfield Blackman — known as Lord 

Shorty before he found God and became Ras 

Shorty I. As he explained it, “so” represents the 

soul of calypso, while “kah” comes from the 

Hindi word for “divine.” Shorty’s aim was to 

unite the two major races in T&T — Afro- and 

Indo-Trinbagonians — through music. 

Blackman took the genre back to its origins this past 

Carnival, when she launched her EP Sokah and its title track. 

And the merchandising of the Sokah brand is just one cog in 

Blackman’s engine, which has gathered steam towards an 

international career since she burst out on the soca stage in 

2017 with “Workout”, a duet with Kes the Band frontman Kees 

Dieffenthaller. 

Formerly a neo-pop/alternative singer known on the 

underground open mic scene, Blackman participated in soca 

and calypso competitions in school, but hated them. When she 

decided to try her hand at soca again, she was discouraged by 

many producers, who felt it would destroy her sound. 

But producer Anson Soverall, known professionally as Anson 

Pro, saw her potential. “Let’s do this,” he said. “I know exactly 

what to do to make you popular.” Under Anson’s guidance, 

Nailah became the breakout star of 2017, following up her 

collaboration with Kees with a string of singles: “Baila Mami”, 

“Badish” with Jamaican rising star Shenseea, and “O Lawd Oye”. 

“Baila Mami”, on the Parallel riddim, was a strategic move 

to establish Nailah as a solo artist and get her name known. “I 

wanted to come out with a pop summer song, and Anson said, 

No, you need to come out with a local soca/dancehall/pop song 


Photography by Ikenna Douglas @idouglasphoto 

Styled by RisAnne for Brown Cotton Caribbean @risystyle 

Make up by Kai Forde @simplii_beautifulll 


47

that will make you international but local at the same time,” 

Blackman says. 

“I took it hard at first, but I was like, Nailah you are trying to 

pay some rent, so I went back to the drawing board and asked 

myself, What do you want? I wanted people to know my name, 

so what’s better than having a song with a title that rhymes with 

your name?” 

The song also signalled her intention 

to spread her wings across the Caribbean. 

The lyrics include the term “yardie,” a 

Jamaican word which Blackman deliberately 

inserted to establish a connection 

to Jamaica, the first place she performed 

outside of T&T. Now she calls the land of 

reggae and dancehall her second home. 

I 

met 

up with Blackman in Kingston last 

April, where she was one of many soca 

stars in Jamaica for Carnival in Kingston. 

Apart from fulfilling her Carnival obligations, 

she was hard at work filming a video with 

Tarrus Riley on Hellshire Beach for the remix of “Dangerous Boy”, 

and recording “Birthday Song” with Ding Dong, musician and dancer, 

which was released in May. She also laid down new tracks for T&T 

Carnival 2019 with Shenseea. 

“She is a cool girl,” Blackman says of her Jamaican peer, “and 

our teams have the same vision. We have built each other. She 

“I went back to the 

drawing board and 

asked myself, What 

do you want? I wanted 

people to know my 

name,” says Nailah 

Blackman 

built me in Jamaica, I built her in Trinidad. All around the world 

people know us as a duo. We met the first night she came to 

Trinidad in studio, and while we were shooting the video for 

‘Badish’, people thought we knew each other before, because 

we just hit it off, it was such a good vibe,” says Blackman, 

who revealed plans for a joint tour one day, and more song 

collaborations. 

When it comes to her music, Blackman 

is not afraid to infuse different sounds into 

her body of work. Her EP Sokah, which 

she launched on her twentieth birthday 

on 2 December, 2017, includes not just the 

reggae-flavoured “Dangerous Boy” but 

also “Oceans”, a nod to her acoustic past. 

Afrobeat, pop, and Latin music are all tied 

into her music, which she nonetheless 

fiercely defends as “sokah.” 

“My music is not soca, it is sokah, 

which is the evolution of soca music” 

she explains. “Soca is the evolution 

of calypso, and sokah is the evolution 

of soca. Even if it is not necessarily in the soca line, with the 

marriage of Indian and African rhythms, it will always be soca 

influenced,” she adds. 

Since she burst onto the T&T music scene, Blackman has 

been greeted as a breath of fresh air, a beacon of hope for a 

country yearning to have a soca star go truly mainstream on 



49

the global stage. She has the passion, says Robin Foster, a 

producer who worked with Ras Shorty I and who sees the 

same drive in his granddaughter. 

Of course, comparisons have been made to Rihanna, the 

mega star who was discovered in Barbados, and whose success 

has fuelled hopes of mainstream stardom in the hearts 

of countless Caribbean entertainers. “I don’t want to be like 

Rihanna,” declares Blackman, “but I want to be at her level,” 

making no bones about her ambitions. 

To get there, she’s working non-stop. 2018 is her year of 

travel, and though she has been booked at numerous events 

across the Caribbean and the wider world, she is focused on 

clearing a path to global stardom. So far, she’s performed at 

South by Southwest, a major music festival in Texas, started 

her own Vevo account on YouTube, and recorded a track 

with Nigerian highlife singer Adekunle for a new album by 

DJ Walshy Fire. 

Blackman is also working to officially launch her Sokah 

album online. Though all the tracks have been released, she’s 

still tweaking them to make the album international. “We 

want to make sure it has the ears that need to hear it, and we 

want it released in the right channels, so people can hear it 

“I don’t rest, in terms of music. It 

is all about being consistent. We 

already have the formula, we are 

already making good music” 

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in Africa, Latin America, Asia — that’s the plan,” she says, 

revealing that some of the channels have been established 

already. 

Over lunch, producer Soverall and Blackman were hard 

at work planning her children’s show, Lahlahland, for which 

she’ll do kid-friendly versions of some of her songs. Even 

though she wanted to spend the day at a nearby waterfall, 

work took precedence. To achieve her goal, she knows, hard 

work and consistency are key. 

“This is where my upbringing comes in a big way” she 

says. “When I was younger, my father had us living in boot 

camp. We had to wake up 5.30 every morning, pray, run a 

mile and a half, cross an ocean, because we needed to be fit 

and disciplined. And then we had to walk to school — he had 

a car, but he was, No, you have to walk to school,” she recalls, 

laughing. 

“I don’t rest, in terms of music. It is all about being 

consistent. We already have the formula, we are already 

making good music. The problem with Trinidadian music, 

soca and other music that comes out of Trinidad, is that we 

are not consistent. We will release a song for Carnival and 

wait until next year to release another song, or we will start 

doing something amazing and just fall off. It comes down to 

consistency.” 

And then, on cue, it’s back to work. n 


ARRIVE 

M. Timothy O'Keefe / Alamy Stock Photo 

52 

Round Trip 

Head for heights 

60 Neighbourhood 

Charlestown, Nevis 

62 Escape 

Clearing the trail 

A traditional Nevis cottage, painted in bright colours

ound trip 

Head 

for heights 

Birds do it, bees do it — fly high above the 

earth, that is. And for travellers who crave a 

higher perspective — and with a bit of nerve — the 

Caribbean offers more than a few ways to get off the 

ground and experience the thrill of elevation 


Ziplining, Rockland Estate, 

Sint Maarten 

In November 2017, while Sint Maarten was still 

rebuilding after the infliction of Hurricane Irma, 

the Dutch territory’s newest tourist attraction 

managed to open on schedule. In the hills just 

northwest of Philipsburg, Rockland Estate is a 

new eco-adventure park, boasting the world’s 

steepest zipline. Dubbed the Flying Dutchman, 

dropping 1,050 feet from the tip of Sentry 

Hill, it’s not for the faint of heart. Visit www. 

rainforestadventure.com/pages/stmaarten 

for more information. 

courtesy Rainforest Adventure St Maarten 


53

Hot air ballooning, Punta 

Cana, Dominican Republic 

They say there’s no other sensation like 

floating above the earth in a hot-air balloon, 

gently steered by the breeze. And there’s 

no better place to experience it than the 

Dominican Republic’s eastern resort town of 

Punta Cana. The hour-long sunrise ride over 

canefields and gentle hills offers panoramic 

views, a bird’s-eye perspective — and ends with 

a Champagne breakfast, to ease the return to 

solid ground. 

Carlos Gotay / getty 


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55

Rock-climbing, 

Viñales Valley, Cuba 

The Viñales Valley in Cuba’s western 

province of Pinar del Río is famous for 

its mogotes, sheer-sided limestone 

hills emerging abruptly from the valley 

floor like islands. They form a unique 

ecosystem, home to rare flora and 

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Microlighting, east coast, 

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It’s like flying in a hang glider with an 

engine. Microlight aircraft take off and 

touch down like any other plane, but 

give you the sensation of soaring like a 

bird, the wind in your face, the terrestrial 

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57

Cliff-diving, Negril, 

Jamaica 

Negril’s Seven Mile Beach, at Jamaica’s western 

tip, is often ranked one of the world’s best. 

It’s a favourite of well-heeled jetsetters and 

spring-breakers alike. When lounging on the 

beach loses its thrill, they head down to the 

cliffs of West End, equally famous for sunsetwatching 

and cliff-jumping. Rick’s Café may be 

the best known spot, with its thirty-five-foot 

cliff towering above glimmering turquoise 

water. For some daredevils, that’s not nearly 

high enough — hence the makeshift diving 

platform set in a treetop. 

Prisma by Dukas Presseagentur GmbH / Alamy Stock Photo 



59

neighbourhood 

EQRoy/shutterstock.com 

courtesy nevis culturama 

Charlestown, 

Nevis 

The tiny capital of St Kitts’s sister isle is a favourite 

of history buffs, with more museums per capita 

than almost anywhere else — and a stone’s throw 

from one of the Caribbean’s best beaches 

Streetscape 

Charlestown’s relatively well-preserved historic 

architecture includes a number of eighteenth- and 

nineteenth-century buildings — such as the Old 

Customs House, Courthouse, and Library. A history 

of earthquakes influenced the traditional style of 

houses with a stone-walled lower storey and upper 

storey of lighter wood — less liable to collapse in 

a tremor. Extending just a couple of blocks in from 

Gallows Bay, the historic centre quickly gives way 

to more leafy residential districts, with Nevis Peak 

towering in the background. 

Head for the baths 

Nevis is a volcanic island, and the proof is plain to the touch at 

Bath Spring, on the outskirts of Charlestown. The waters of this 

natural volcanic hot spring are said to be therapeutic for ailments 

of all kinds, and visitors have flocked here since 1778, when the 

Bath Hotel was first opened, catering to sufferers from gout and 

rheumatism (some say it was the Caribbean’s very first luxury 

hotel). Though the stone structure is no longer used as a hotel, 

outdoor pools in the grounds still offer the prospect of a hot soak, 

when you need a break from the cool turquoise waters of the 

Caribbean Sea. 


Take a swim 

Stretching for four miles north of Charlestown, 

Pinney’s is Nevis’s most famous beach, home 

to the Four Seasons Resort and numerous rustic 

beach bars — the most celebrated of them 

being Sunshine’s, the preferred hangout for 

locals and tourists alike, including the jetsetting 

celebrities who favour the island’s low-key 

vibe. But beware Sunshine’s Killer Bee, the 

lethally delicious rum cocktail invented by 

proprietor Llewellyn “Sunshine” Caines. 



History 

When Columbus sighted Nevis in 1493, it had 

been inhabited by Amerindian peoples for two 

thousand years. Though the Spanish claimed 

the island, they never established a settlement 

there — but they did capture and enslave 

much of the indigenous population, shipping 

them to the pearl beds of Venezuela. 

Permanent European settlement finally came 

in 1628, under the English, who named their 

small town and its protecting fort after King 

Charles I. By the late seventeenth century, Nevis 

was one of the most productive and profitable 

West Indian colonies, thanks to the labour of 

enslaved Africans, with Charlestown even serving 

for a time as capital of the British Leewards. 

An attempted invasion by the French in 

1706 was repelled, but Nevis’s economy never 

fully recovered, and by the early nineteenth 

century sugar production was in near disarray. 

After Emancipation, the formerly enslaved 

population quick established small farms 

across the island, the beginning of a society 

of relatively prosperous landowning farmers 

with a culture distinct from nearby St Kitts. 

Nonetheless, in 1882 the two islands were 

joined into a single colony, finally achieving 

Independence just over a century later. 

History boys 

On the Charlestown waterfront, the Museum of Nevis History occupies the 

house long known as the birthplace of Alexander Hamilton — Founding 

Father of the United States, first Treasury Secretary under President George 

Washington, and most recently the subject of a smash Broadway musical. 

Born here in 1757, Hamilton left Nevis when he was five — for St Croix and 

then ultimately New York — but locals haven’t forgotten the connection. 

Now somewhat eclipsed by his near-contemporary, Horatio Nelson was 

long considered Nevis’s most famous historical figure. Posted to the island 

by the Royal Navy in 1784 — years before he was recognised as Britain’s 

foremost naval hero — Nelson fell in love with the young widow Fanny 

Nisbet. History buffs can visit Fig Tree Church, where they were married, as 

well as the Montpelier Great House, location of the wedding party, and the 

Horatio Nelson Museum, home to what’s been called the biggest collection 

of Nelson memorabilia outside the UK. 

Get stamped 

Since 1980, Nevis has enjoyed 

its own independent Philatelic 

Bureau, headquartered in 

Charlestown, issuing postage 

stamps commemorating the 

island’s history and culture, 

alongside world events and 

personalities — avidly sought 

by collectors. A visit to the 

philatelic office is worth it for the history 

lessons conveyed through small colourful 

bits of paper — and the fine selection 

of first day covers, postcards, and other 

memorabilia. 

St kitts 

Charlestown 

Co-ordinates 

17.13º N 62.62º W 

Sea level 

Nevis 

Sergey Goryachev/shutterstock.com 

Caribbean Airlines operates daily flights to V.C. Bird International Airport 

in Antigua, with connections on other airlines to St Kitts and Nevis 


61

escape 

Clearing 

the trail 

The immense task of rebuilding 

Dominica after 2017’s Hurricane 

Maria has required the efforts of 

thousands — including dedicated 

volunteers who travel to the 

island for a “holiday” spent in 

toil. Paul Crask meets two 

“voluntourists” helping to clear 

the island’s Waitukubuli National 

Trail, a key part of Dominica’s 

eco-tourism infrastructure 

Photography by Paul Crask 

The Old Logging Road is the beginning of 

segment eleven of the much-lauded fourteensegment 

Waitukubuli National Trail, Dominica’s 

two-hundred-kilometre joined-up hiking route. 

Running from the south to the north of the island, 

the Waitukubuli trail takes in an abundance of 

natural and cultural heritage along the way. Starting beyond the 

high coffee and citrus farmlands of Syndicate — in the foothills 

of Morne Diablotin, Dominica’s highest volcanic peak — segment 

eleven passes through a rainforest habitat known for two endemic 

and endangered species of parrot, the Jaco and the Sisserou. 

Last year, Hurricane Maria reduced the forest to sticks, but 

both foliage and parrots are slowly returning. The hiking trail, 

however, is still a mess of fallen trees, branches, and bush, and 

completely blocked from end to end. That’s why Richard and 

David are here. 

Both men have travelled to Dominica from Britain. Early 

retirees, they allocate some of their free time back home to 

working on a range of local volunteer projects. David worked for 

and still maintains a relationship with the Surrey Wildlife Trust, 

and Richard spends a couple of days a week helping the Royal 

Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) as well as clearing 

trails in his local national parks in Hampshire. 

“Having spent years as an accountant, in an office every 

day, and with all the pressures and decision-making challenges 

that went with it, there is something very appealing about being 

outdoors and taking instructions from someone else,” Richard 

says. “Cut this, clear that, hammer and nail this. It’s refreshing 

to my mind and spirit as well as all being for a very good cause.” 

He smiles. “This is the first time either of us has ever volunteered 

outside of England, however. It’s hot here, isn’t it!” 


The Boeri Lake Trail in the high montane 

forest of Dominica’s Morne Trois Pitons 

National Park is one of several iconic 

hiking routes now clear and recovering 

Knowing just how challenging and expensive it can be to 

get to Dominica from Europe and North America, and then 

how shocking the aftermath of Hurricane Maria is on both the 

eye and the emotions, I am keen to meet some of the unique 

people who travel here on holiday with the sole purpose of 

helping this small island nation get back onto its feet — in 

particular, those who spend their vacation days deep in the 

jungle, covered in bugs and sweat, clearing the island’s hiking 

trails. That’s why I find myself today on this section of the 

Waitukubuli trail. 

“I came here on holiday in 2008,” David tells me. “Everyone 

at home thought I was going to the Dominican Republic — they 

still do, in fact — but I loved the island, and spent a couple of fun 

weeks exploring. Of course, it all looks very different now, and 

it’s very sad. But someone has to clear these hiking trails, and it’s 

satisfying knowing that I am doing a little to help that process.” 

“We met an American who had been here before us, also 

clearing this stretch of trail,” Richard continues. “He was an 

amazing guy, and very dedicated to helping people in need. He 

filled his suitcase with tree saws and other tools and left them 

here for us all to use.” 

Accompanying us, lugging chainsaws, fuel, and helmets, are 

Fabian and Anderson, two young Dominicans from the west 

coast villages of Mero and Colihaut, respectively. I ask them 

what they make of tourists who travel all the way here to work 

on clearing trails. 


63

“It’s refreshing to my mind and spirit as 

well as being for a very good cause,” says 

“voluntourist” Richard 

“I think it’s great that they come here to help us do this,” 

Fabian says. “And we need all the help we can get. But, trust me, 

if I spend all that money on a holiday, I’m sitting by the pool with 

a cocktail. You know what I mean?” He flashes a grin with what 

seems to be a hint of embarrassment. 

“Me too. I’m telling you,” Anderson nods in affirmation. “Yes, 

aye.” 

I smile at this odd little scene, an example of what the destination 

marketing people in Dominica have branded “voluntourism.” 

Richard and David have bought into a package that includes 

flights, accommodation, three meals a day, three days 

touring the island, and the rest spent trail-clearing. They 

are staying at the Tamarind Tree Hotel on Dominica’s west coast 

at Macoucherie, where owners Annette and Nathan handle all 

the logistics for their voluntourism guests. A Forestry and Parks 

Division officer, sadly absent today, is supposed to accompany 

them on working days and provide guidance and information 

about the trail and the forest habitat. I do my best to fill in. 

The skeleton of the Timberjack logging vehicle we pass is 

a feature of this trail, and a reminder that people once viewed 

Dominica’s vast swathes of forest as a resource to be exploited 

for their timber. The 1910 Forest Company even established 

a two-mile stretch of railway line between Brandy, where this 

segment eventually emerges, and the Indian River, where logs 

were transported to the coast. The company went bankrupt after 

just three years — Dominica has a history of fighting back — and 

the abandoned railway iron is rumoured to hold up a number of 

buildings in the west coast town of Portsmouth. 

Huge trees have been knocked down across the trail. Most 

of them seem to be gommiers (Dacryodes excelsa), also known 

regionally as tabonuco or candlewood, because of the flammable 

gum-like sap that oozes from its bark. Towering thirty to forty 

metres high, they are a favourite food source for Dominica’s parrots, 

and are also the tree of choice for Kalinago canoe-builders. 

Other fallen trees, and also parrot food, are the buttress-rooted 

chataniers, which have ripped open large scars in the earth where 

they crashed down in the unimaginable winds of the hurricane. 

Anderson and David get to work on a large fallen 

gommier about two hundred metres beyond the 

Timberjack, while Fabian and Richard scramble past 

to tackle a younger chatanier that has fallen a short 

distance ahead. A Jaco parrot squawks loudly overhead 

and lands in the thin emerging canopy of a broken but 

still-standing gommier. We all pause to look up, and 

it dawns on me that the parrot is really at the heart of 

what this effort is all about. Nature-loving people, both 

from the island and afar, have been affected by the devastation 

wreaked by the hurricane. Under increasingly 

malevolent skies, they are here in this broken forest, 

working together, trying to put things back together 

again. The parrot squawks loudly in approval, flaps its large 

wings and flies off into the mist. 

Although “voluntourism” was conceived by suited people in 

an office, it is being implemented on the ground, in the mud and 

the rain, by private enterprises like the Tamarind Tree Hotel 

and generous and dedicated individuals like David and Richard, 

Fabian and Anderson. The marketing hyperbole echoes rather 

hollow and meaningless in the heavy rain that is now falling in 

sheets on this hurricane-ravaged hiking trail, but this incongruous 

team of two young Dominicans and two ageing Englishmen 

keep on cutting and clearing, regardless. 

I am keen to meet some of the 

unique people who travel here on 

holiday with the sole purpose of 

helping this small island nation get 

back onto its feet 

And that has been the innate nature of this post-hurricane 

period: ordinary people who care, rolling up their shirtsleeves 

and — despite the odds that may be stacked against them — 

simply getting on with things. 

We have all been riding huge waves of emotions since 

that fateful and terrifying night in September 2017, and I feel 

reassured that so long as there are people like this — with the 

strength and determination to do the work, and not just talk 

about it — we may overcome all the obstacles ahead of us after 

all, and eventually complete our journey to the end of this very 

long and exhausting trail. n 

For information about the Tamarind Tree Hotel and 

its voluntourism packages, visit 

www.tamarindtreedominica.com 


ENGAGE 

Daniel-Alvarez/shutterstock.com 

66 Discover 

Eye on the sky 

68 Inspire 

OK to be proud 

70 

On This Day 

Long before Bolt 

Jamaican sprint champion Arthur Wint in his heyday

discover 

Eye on 

the sky 

For the past five decades, some of our most 

scientifically valuable information about 

outer space has come from an observatory 

at the heart of the Caribbean: the radio 

telescope at Arecibo in Puerto Rico. As 

Erline Andrews reports, 2017’s Hurricane 

Maria interrupted Arecibo’s research 

programme — but it remains one of the 

world’s leading centres for astronomy 

Photography by Dennis van de Water / Shutterstock.com 

is a potential for serious problems and 

serious casualties.” 

“Being able to understand the dynamics 

and the properties of these asteroids is 

going to help us understand the risks and 

potentially what could be done to prevent 

it,” Fernandez continues. “If you need to 

push an asteroid out of the way so that 

it won’t collide with Earth, that requires 

knowing something about what is the 

shape of the asteroid, what is the density, 

what is the interior like, what is it like on 

its surface. These are the kinds of things 

that Arecibo helps you understand.” 

The Arecibo telescope has been 

around since 1963. It was the 

world’s largest single-dish 

telescope until 2016, when that position 

was taken by the FAST (Five-hundredmetre 

Aperture Spherical radio Telescope) 

in China. It was at Arecibo that scientists 

first detected gravitational waves, thus 

confirming Einstein’s theory of relativity. 

Physicists Russell Hulse and Joseph Taylor 

were awarded the 1993 Nobel Prize for 

their discovery. The first planets outside 

The Phaethon asteroid — 

a giant, globe-shaped 

rock more than three 

and a half miles across 

at its centre — orbits 

the sun just like the 

eight planets in our solar system. First 

sighted in 1983, it occasionally crosses 

paths with Earth. Because of its size and 

proximity to us, Phaethon is categorised as 

a “potentially hazardous asteroid,” or PHA, 

by NASA. If it ever hit the Earth, it could 

cause devastation beyond what we can 

imagine. And there are more than eight 

hundred other PHAs — that we know of. 

Phaethon, named for the son of the god 

of the sun in Greek mythology, was last 

visible from Earth for a few days in mid- 

December last year, coming close enough 

to be seen even by amateurs’ telescopes. 

More important, it was also picked up by 

one of Earth’s most powerful telescopes, 

a bowl one thousand feet across, nestled 

in a sinkhole in the forests of Puerto Rico. 

The images of Phaethon captured at 

the Arecibo Observatory revealed that 

the space rock has what may be a large 

crater at its equator, and is bigger than 

astronomers first thought. This is important 

information that we almost didn’t 

get. The Arecibo telescope suffered minor 

damage from Hurricane Maria, which had 

devastated Puerto Rico months earlier. 

The island was without electricity, and 

a shortage of diesel in the immediate 

aftermath meant there wasn’t enough fuel 

to operate the observatory’s generators, 

forcing a temporary shutdown of the telescope’s 

radar. It was back up and running 

just in time for Phaethon’s passage. 

Arecibo’s radar operation is funded 

by NASA’s Near-Earth Object Observations 

Programme, which is part of the 

Planetary Defense Coordination Office, 

founded in 2016 to monitor and plan for 

possible asteroid impacts. “We are not in 

any imminent danger from anything as 

big as, say, what killed off the dinosaurs,” 

says Yan Fernandez, an astronomy professor 

at the University of Central Florida. 

“But there are plenty of things out there 

that are smaller than that. If they hit, there 


our solar system — called exoplanets 

— were discovered at Arecibo in 1992. 

Hundreds of scientists all over the world 

use data collected from the telescope to 

conduct research on outer space, and the 

Earth’s own upper atmosphere as well. 

“Arecibo is a great place to do atmospheric 

science,” says Fernandez. “In 

a time when global climate change is 

happening, with the possibility of having 

more and stronger hurricanes coming 

in the future, having a much better idea 

about what the atmosphere is like is really 

important for understanding what the 

future might be like on planet Earth.” 

And in case human beings one day 

have to look for another planet to live on, 

data from the observatory is used by the 

Planetary Habitability Laboratory at the 

University of Puerto Rico. The PHL maintains 

a Habitable Exoplanets Catalogue, 

which now has fifty-three candidates. 

“We are trying to observe red dwarf 

stars,” says PHL director Abel Mendez, 

referring to stars that can’t be seen with 

the naked eye. “They are the most abundant 

type of stars. Many of the potentially 

habitable worlds that have been found are 

around those stars.” 

In 1974, a team of scientists sent what 

became known as the Arecibo Message 

from the observatory. It was coded in 

the form of radio waves, and had as its 

target a distant cluster of stars. The very 

It was at Arecibo 

that scientists first 

detected gravitational 

waves, thus confirming 

Einstein’s theory of 

relativity. The first 

planets outside our 

solar system were 

discovered at Arecibo 

Opened in 1963, the radio telescope 

at Arecibo was the world’s largest for 

almost five decades 

slim hope is that it could be picked up by 

intelligent life. 

Today the Search for Extraterrestrial 

Intelligence (SETI) movement continues 

in the form of SETI@Home, run by scientists 

at the University of California, Berkeley. 

The programme, started in 1999, 

uses millions of computer users all over 

the world to look for anything unusual in 

radio emissions coming from space. And 

the data are collected at Arecibo. 

“SETI@Home has a history of catching 

the public’s imagination,” says director Eric 

Korpela. “When we first started out, we 

expected to get ten thousand people, and 

in the first two weeks two million people 

signed up. The question ‘Are we alone in 

the universe?’ is one of the most profound 

things that we can ask ourselves.” 

Considering the telescope’s importance, 

it’s hard to imagine there’s been 

talk of shuttering it. The National Science 

Foundation, which provides most of the 

funding for the observatory, had been 

struggling for years to continue doing so. 

In December, a three-way consortium led 

by the University of Central Florida won a 

competitive bidding process to take over 

the operation and part financing of the 

observatory for the next five years. After 

a transition period, the new management 

began on 1 April this year. 

Professor Fernandez is UCF’s main 

representative at the observatory. The 

on-the-ground management of the observatory 

has not changed, nor has much 

else. “Our overarching goal,” Fernandez 

says of the management shift, “was for 

everyone to keep doing the great things 

they’d already been doing.” 

Fernandez believes the Arecibo telescope 

— which also has a place in pop 

culture through key appearances in the 

movies Contact and GoldenEye and the TV 

show The X-Files — is worth the US$20 million 

cost of the management deal. Despite 

the size advantage of China’s FAST, 

Fernandez says, “Arecibo is the most powerful 

single dish telescope in the world.” 

“Even though it’s a fifty-year-old 

facility, the superlatives are still there,” 

he says. “There are capabilities there in 

terms of astronomy, planetary science, 

atmospheric science, and earth science 

that you just cannot do anywhere else in 

the world.” n 


67

inspire 

OK to be 

proud 

Photography by 

Brandon Kalyan courtesy the 

Silver Lining Foundation 

Founded in 2012 after the tragic 

death of a young man, the Silver 

Lining Foundation is part of a growing 

movement supporting LGBTQ people 

in Trinidad and Tobago — with a 

special focus on providing support 

and safe spaces to vulnerable youth. 

Bridget van Dongen finds out more 

In September 2011, Trinidad and Tobago was rocked by 

news of the suicide of sixteen-year-old George Kazanjian. 

A student of one of T&T’s so-called “prestige” schools, his 

suicide brought to the forefront the problem of bullying — 

especially of LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, 

etc) young people. 

The tragic event distressed many — and for one young university 

student named Jeremy Edwards, it was a call to action. 

“When George’s story emerged in the media,” Edwards recalls, 

“I myself was contemplating suicide, because of the difficulties 

in dealing with my own sexual orientation and not having 

anyone to turn to.” At Kazanjian’s funeral, the priest told attendees 

to find someone they could talk to. “I did find someone,” says 

Edwards, “and it took me all of six months from that day to begin 

to turn around from my depressive state.” 

During this time, Edwards reached out to Kazanjian’s family. 

“I wanted to connect with them and let them know how their 

son’s tragedy gave me new life. I also knew in myself that I had 

had this great gift given to me, and I needed to now give back 

in George’s memory to those who needed similar support, love, 

and acceptance in dealing with their own battles.” 

Edwards rallied together some fellow university students, 

and in February 2012 they launched the Silver Lining Foundation 

(SLF), intended to ensure that LGBTQ youth had a safe, 

secure, and reliable support system to help them navigate the 

difficulties of dealing with their sexual identity during their 

teenage years, at school and at home. The founding principle 

was that youth can mobilise other youth to create, facilitate, 

and sustain a strong peer support network. They encourage the 

development of safe environments where people can lean on 

each other for support. 

When asked what he considers the group’s most significant 

achievement in six years of advocacy, Edwards names the creation 

of Safe Space: “one of the first campus-based/school-based, 

psychosocial peer support groups in the country. It really was a 

key moment in beginning to deliver on the care and support to 

LGBTQ youth that they so desperately needed,” he explains. 

A Safe Space is also the title of a short film produced by the 

foundation (screened at the 2015 Trinidad and Tobago Film 

Festival, and now available for viewing on SLF’s YouTube page), 

documenting both harsh realities and inspiring testimonies from 

local and international families and individuals dealing with 

issues faced by the LGBTQ community. It’s part of a series of 

activities designed to bring public awareness to issues which 

many would rather sweep under the carpet. Hence, also, the 

Silver Lining Foundation’s Day of Silence, organised annually 

since 2013. Held in April, it brings attention to anti-LGBTQ 

name-calling, bullying, and harassment faced by young people. 

How serious is the situation in schools? One of the Silver 

Lining Foundation’s recent achievements was the 

publication of a School Climate Survey, charting bullying 

and gender-based violence in the T&T school system. Edwards 

explains the rationale: “In the first few months of starting SLF, I 

told the team during one of our meetings that twenty of us sitting 

around a table and sharing our stories . . . does not reflect in any 

way the reality of what is happening in all schools across the 

country. We needed to get out there and gather data to help us 

shape and direct our limited resources on critical interventions 

where they were needed most. It took us a few years to complete,” 

he adds, “but I am still so very proud that we were able to finally 

produce statistics that show, yes, LGBTQ children exist, LGBTQ 

bullying exists, and it is a problem that requires urgent attention as 

it threatens and impedes the right of each child to their education.” 

As a direct result of the publication of the survey, the SLF 

is now in talks with T&T’s Ministry of Education, and creating 

training workshops designed to assist teachers in treating with 

matters of sexual identity and gender diversity in schools. 

As advocates for young LGBTQ persons, the foundation 

believes it’s imperative they are visible at as many events 

as possible. In April 2018, at a protest outside Parliament in 

Port of Spain, I spoke to the SLF’s chief administrative officer 

Kennedy Maraj, gender affairs specialist Renelle White, and art 

and creative consultant Brandon Kalyan. 


Silver Lining Foundation members 

and friends at their Easter 2018 

family event in Port of Spain’s 

Queen’s Park Savannah 

Kalyan told me he’d struggled with his gender identity and 

sexuality as a teenager. “I was bullied for being myself, but I 

want to show kids that it’s OK to be proud of who they are, and 

OK to be unapologetically gay, even in a homophobic society 

like Trinidad.” 

As advocates for young LGBTQ 

persons, the Silver Lining Foundation 

believes it’s imperative they are 

visible at as many events as possible 

Maraj spoke about the SLF advocating for stronger families 

— for example, through a series of workshops for the families of 

LGBTQ people. “Our goal is to create a series of family-friendly 

events where whole families can come together in a supportive 

environment,” he said. So last Easter Sunday, the Silver Lining 

Foundation hosted a family event at the Queen’s Park Savannah 

in Port of Spain. “Support from families is crucial for LGBTQ 

youth, but many families do not know how to handle it when 

their child reveals that they are gay.” 

The SLF is also attempting to take their message outside 

Trinidad and Tobago. In 2013, they received international funding 

to launch a Caribbean youth LGBTQ movement. “The aim of 

this movement,” according to the SLF website, “is to assemble a 

coalition of young voices throughout the Caribbean, attempting 

to beget a generation of change in the region, as young people 

become empowered to stand up and demand what is rightfully 

theirs.” 

It’s an admirable goal, and a brave one — especially in a 

society where homophobia is still widely seen as legitimate, 

and where LGBTQ people are still regularly put out of their 

homes for coming out. As one young person, Samantha, puts it: 

“Even though I came out at the age of sixteen to my parents, I 

still struggled with my identity. Getting involved with SLF has 

allowed me to accept myself as a member of the LGBTQ community, 

and their Safe Space has made me grow as a person.” n 


69

on this day 

As a schoolboy 

athlete, years before 

his international 

success, who did 

Usain Bolt cite as an 

inspiration? Arthur 

Wint, Jamaica’s first 

Olympic medallist. 

On the seventieth 

anniversary of 

Wint’s achievement, 

James Ferguson 

recalls his story, on 

and off the track 

Illustration by Rohan Mitchell 

You’d have to be the sole 

inhabitant of the remotest 

of desert islands to 

have escaped the media 

hyperbole surrounding 

the Jamaican athlete 

Usain Bolt. His celebrity arguably reached 

its peak at the London Olympic Games in 

2012 (where he won three gold medals), 

but by then he’d already set world records 

by finishing the 100 metres in 9.58 seconds 

and the 200 metres in 19.19 seconds back 

in 2009. The holder of eight Olympic golds 

over three successive Games, “Lightning 

Bolt” is widely considered the greatest 

sprinter in the sport’s history, capable of 

reaching a speed of 27.44 miles per hour. 

Even after his retirement in 2017, 

this most charismatic of athletes has 

remained firmly in the celebrity spotlight, 

pictured with glamorous models, DJing 

Long 

before 

Bolt 

at the recent Commonwealth Games 

in Australia, and captaining a World XI 

football team against England in a Soccer 

Aid charity game in June. There are 

plans afoot to open fifteen Bolt-themed 

Tracks & Records restaurants across 

Britain, while fans can avail themselves 

of t-shirts, running shoes, and backpacks 

at the Usain Bolt Official Store. Never one 

to shun publicity, he has trademarked his 

famous lightning bolt pose and made public 

his ambition of playing for Manchester 

United. And, needless to say, rumours 

of an impending return from retirement 

continue to keep Bolt in the public eye. 

Brash and ebullient, Usain Bolt straddles 

sport and showbiz, a contemporary 

cultural icon who has done much to magnify 

the positive side of athletics when it 

has been tainted by doping allegations. 

He has also boosted the international 

profile of Jamaica, now rightly perceived 

as punching well above its weight in 

athletics, with a new generation inspired 

by Bolt’s prowess. 

But he in turn had a model to emulate, 

even though his unassuming precursor 

could hardly have been more different 

from Bolt’s glitzy persona. And this 

Jamaican sprinter was the first athlete 

from the island ever to win an Olympic 

gold medal, an achievement that took 

place at Wembley seventy years ago, on 

5 August, 1948. His name was Arthur 

Wint, and his time of 46.2 seconds in the 

400 metres final equalled the world record 

(and narrowly beat fellow Jamaican Herb 

McKenley, who took the silver). Fourteen 

years before Jamaican independence, 

Wint collected his gold medal to the 

sound of “God Save the King”. 

A trailblazing athlete, Wint was also 

much more: an air force pilot during the 

Second World War, a medical doctor, 

and a diplomat on behalf of independent 

Jamaica. He was born on 25 May, 1920, 

in Manchester Parish, and educated at 

Calabar and Excelsior High Schools in 

Kingston, where he excelled at sprinting 

as well as high and long jump, winning the 

accolade of Jamaica Boy Athlete of the 

Year in 1937. The following year, he won a 

gold medal in the 800 metres at the Central 

American Games in Panama. Unusually 

tall at six feet four inches, his height 

together with his modest demeanour won 

him the nickname of the “Gentle Giant”. 

Wint wanted to become a doctor, but 

the outbreak of war put his career on hold, 

and in 1942 he and his brothers Lloyd 

and Douglas joined the British Commonwealth 

Air Training Plan in Canada. Two 

years later he “won his wings,” and saw 

active service in Britain, flying Spitfires. 

In 1947, Flying Officer Wint left the 

RAF, having won a scholarship to study 

medicine at St Bartholomew’s Hospital in 

London. It was at the end of his first year 

there that the capital was to host the first 

post-war Summer Olympics. 


Arthur Wint is primarily remembered for his 400 

metres gold, but he and his fellow Jamaicans 

came remarkably close to doubling that record 

that year’s Heroes Day. His memory 

has been honoured with many 

awards, a blue plaque in London, 

and the naming of Arthur Wint 

Drive in Kingston, the long 

thoroughfare that passes the 

National Stadium and the city’s 

other main sporting facilities. 

In a 2003 interview, a young 

schoolboy named Usain Bolt 

cited Wint as an inspiration, but 

perhaps the most eloquent testament 

to his stature came from his 

friend Michael Manley: 

Arthur Wint is primarily remembered 

for his 400 metres gold, but he and 

his fellow Jamaicans — a couple 

of whom had endured a twenty-four-day 

journey to the UK on a banana boat — came 

remarkably close to doubling that record. 

Wint came second in the 800 metres and 

only a pulled muscle prevented him from 

catching his American opponent in the 

last leg of the 4 x 400 metres relay. The 

Jamaicans’ disappointment lasted just under 

four years. On 27 July, 1952, Wint, McKenley, 

George Rhodon, and Les Laing took the 4 

x 400 gold medal at the Helsinki Olympics, 

in a world record time of three minutes, 

3.9 seconds. Wint, meanwhile, also won a 

silver in the 800 metres, and McKenley came 

second in the 100- and 400-metre events. 

The following year, Wint both qualified 

as a doctor and ran his last competitive 

race, returning once more to Wembley. 

His career in athletics was over, commemorated 

with an MBE from Queen 

Elizabeth II in 1954, but his career as a 

doctor in Jamaica was only just beginning. 

From 1955 to 1974 he worked as the 

only doctor in rural Hanover Parish, the 

smallest on the island, often offering free 

care to the poorest. Known to Prime Minister 

Michael Manley since 1941 (when 

Wint was defended in court by Manley’s 

father after a tragic accident, described 

by Valerie Wint in her recent biography 

The Longer Run), he was appointed Jamaican 

High Commissioner in London in 

1974, serving for four years. 

Returning to Jamaica, Wint worked 

at Linstead Hospital as senior medical 

officer until retiring in 1985. He died in 

Kingston on 19 October, 1992 — fittingly, 

The single most important element 

to the influence of Arthur on 

my generation was the sense of 

Jamaica, the Caribbean, as a great 

centre of potential excellence. We 

were, comparatively speaking, a 

tiny part of the world with a very 

small population, but here we were 

producing people who were running 

world records, Olympic records, who 

were taking on the best at the highest 

level and winning. 

These words are as applicable today as 

then, as many young Jamaican athletes 

— galvanised by the success of Usain 

Bolt, Asafa Powell, and Shelly-Ann 

Fraser-Pryce — look set to continue in 

a winning tradition founded seventy 

years ago. n 


71

puzzles 

1 2 3 4 

Caribbean Crossword 

5 6 7 8 

9 

Across 

5 A passion for stamps [9] 

8 Newspaper funny [5] 

10 Crazy [5] 

11 Last teen year [8] 

12 Police checkpoint [4,5] 

13 Brazilian dance [5] 

16 Famous Nevis beach [7] 

18 Hot air makes these rise [7] 

20 Japanese-style cartoons [5] 

21 Miniature example [9] 

24 Southernmost continent [10] 

26 Stories [4] 

27 Boot-shaped country [5] 

28 It searches the cosmos from Arecibo, 

Puerto Rico [9] 

Down 

1 Calm [5] 

2 Healthcare centres [6] 

3 Americans call it soccer [8] 

4 Blaze [4] 

6 Expert on the past [9] 

7 Streetcars [8] 

9 First number [3] 

14 Pull yourself up by it [9] 

10 11 

12 13 14 

16 17 18 

20 21 22 

15 Honoured poet [8] 

17 Identifiable [8] 

19 Went to see [7] 

22 Colourful cat [6] 

23 Frozen water [3] 

25 Memo [4] 

23 

24 25 26 

27 28 

19 

15 

Spot the Difference 

by Gregory St Bernard 

There are 15 differences 

between these two 

pictures. How many can 

you spot? 

Spot the Difference andswers 

Diver’s flippers have changed colour; pattern on diver’s trunks is different; some of the reeds on the left have been removed; bubbles from diver’s 

snorkel have been removed; pipe on diver’s snorkel is shorter; stars next to “selfie” fish on left have been removed; colours of “selfie” fish are 

swapped; “K” on diver’s pendant is replaced with “Y”; green fish’s eyes are repositioned; earrings are added to green fish; green fish’s skirt has 

changed colour; orange fish’s hat is smaller; orange fish’s tie is repositioned; orange fish’s left fin is repositioned; heart next to “instagramming” fish 

on right is removed. 


aby 

birth 

Broadway 

curry 

duet 

dynasty 

family 

flying 

goat 

gout 

Hamilton 

high 

historian 

honorary 

hot spring 

literature 

midwife 

mother 

Word Search 

musical 

natural 

obligation 

prize 

recovery 

relay 

school 

silver 

soca 

stamp 

stew 

trail 

Usain 

verse 

view 

volunteer 

Waitukubuli 

Wint 

I D Y R R U C D Y N A S T Y E 

L U R E V L I S I Y L V H B R 

U E A F A M I L Y R I B A A U 

B T L S Y V E R S E R V M B T 

U N A T U R A L W V E K I R A 

K W G N I R P S T O H F L E R 

U E T U O G L J B C T L T E E 

T T B N U I B L C E O Y O T T 

I S O R A E I L A R M I N N I 

A H H R O G F S O C A N I U L 

W W T T A A F I G R I G A L P 

W I N T R H D G W L E S S O M 

P R I Z E I I W O D A L U V A 

L O O H C S B G A A I X A M T 

N A I R O T S I H Y T M Y Y S 

Sudoku 

Caribbean Beat Magazine 

Hard 9x9 sudoku puzzle 

Sudoku 9x9 - Puzzle 3 of 5 - Hard 


Hard 6x6 mini sudoku puzzle 

Sudoku 6x6 - Puzzle 3 of 5 - Easy 

by www.sudoku-puzzle.net 

Fill the empty square with numbers 

from 1 to 9 so that each row, each 

column, and each 3x3 box contains 

all of the numbers from 1 to 9. For 

the mini sudoku use numbers from 

1 to 6. 

If the puzzle you want to do 

has already been filled in, just 

ask your flight attendant for a 

new copy of the magazine! 

1 6 8 2 

6 4 7 1 

7 5 

8 4 3 

4 5 

9 2 6 

7 9 

1 8 6 9 

5 2 1 4 

www.sudoku-puzzles.net 

3 

4 

4 2 3 

1 6 

4 2 

5 


www.sudoku-puzzle.net 

Solutions 

Caribbean Crossword 

Word Search 

Sudoku 

Mini Sudoku 

Sudoku 6x6 - Solution 3 of 5 - Easy 

Sudoku 9x9 - Solution 3 of 5 - Hard 

3 1 5 2 6 4 

4 1 6 8 7 9 5 3 2 

3 2 9 5 6 4 8 7 1 

8 7 5 2 1 3 4 6 9 

7 5 8 9 4 6 2 1 3 

6 4 2 1 3 8 9 5 7 

9 3 1 7 2 5 6 8 4 

2 6 3 4 5 1 7 9 8 

1 8 4 6 9 7 3 2 5 

5 9 7 3 8 2 1 4 6 


6 4 2 1 3 5 

I D Y R R U C D Y N A S T Y E 

L U R E V L I S I Y L V H B R 

U E A F A M I L Y R I B A A U 

4 2 6 5 1 3 

5 3 1 4 2 6 

1 5 3 6 4 2 

E E D O 

2 6 4 3 5 1 


B T L S Y V E R S E R V M B T 

P 

5 

P 

10 

H 

6 

T A L Y 28 T E L E S C O P E 

P 

1 

C 

2 

I L A 7 T E L Y 8 C O M I C 

I A R I 9 O O R 

I 

27 

S Y C H O 11 N I N E T E E N 

3 

F 

4 

F 

U N A T U R A L W V E K I R A 

K W G N I R P S T O H F L E R 

R 

12 

P 

16 

T I L I E B 

O A D B L O C K 13 S A M B 

R E S 15 L L O 

14 A 

I N 17 N E Y S 18 B A L L O O N 

A 

20 

A A S 19 V U T 

N I M E 21 M I C R O 22 C O S M 

A 

24 

N 

25 

E I 

23 

S E A T 

T A R C T I C A 26 L O R E 

O B E T T I A 

N A I R O T S I H Y T M Y Y S 

L O O H C S B G A A I X A M T 

U E T U O G L J B C T L T E E 

T T B N U I B L C E O Y O T T 

I S O R A E I L A R M I N N I 

A H H R O G F S O C A N I U L 

W W T T A A F I G R I G A L P 

W I N T R H D G W L E S S O M 

P R I Z E I I W O D A L U V A 




73

85% (2018 year-to-date: 30 March)

Caribbean Airlines 

CARIBBEAN 

Trinidad Head Office 

Airport: Piarco International 

Reservations & information: 

+ 868 625 7200 (local) 

Ticket offices: Mezzanine Level, The Parkade, 

Corner of Queen and Richmond Streets, 

Port-of-Spain; 

Golden Grove Road, Piarco; 

Carlton Centre, San Fernando 

Baggage: + 868 669 3000 Ext 7513/4 

Antigua 

Airport: VC Bird International 


+ 800 744 2225 (toll free) 

Ticketing: VC Bird International Airport 

Hours: Mon – Fri 8 am – 4 pm 

Baggage: + 268-480-5705 Tues, Thurs, Fri, Sun, 

or + 268 462 0528 Mon, Wed, Sat. 

Hours: Mon – Fri 4 am – 10 pm 

Barbados 

Airport: Grantley Adams International 

Reservations & information: 1 246 429 5929 / 

1 800 744 2225 (toll free) 

City Ticket Office: 1st Floor Norman Centre Building, 

Broad Street, Bridgetown, Barbados 

Ticket office hours: 6 am – 10 am & 11 am – 

7 pm daily 

Flight Information: + 1 800 744 2225 

Baggage: + 1 246 428 1650/1 or + 1 246 428 7101 

ext. 4628 

Cuba (Havana) 

Airport: José Martí International 

Reservations and baggage: +1 800 920 4225 

Ticket office: Commercial Take Off 

Calle 23 No. 113, Esquina A Ovedado 

Plaza de la Revolución 

Havana, Cuba 

Grenada 

Airport: Maurice Bishop International 

Reservations & Information: 

1 800 744 2225 (toll free) 

Ticketing: Maurice Bishop International Main 

Terminal 

Baggage: + 473 439 0681 

Jamaica (Kingston) 

Airport: Norman Manley International 

Reservations & information: + 800 523 5585 (International); 

1 888 359 2475 (Local) 

City Ticket Office: 128 Old Hope Road, Kingston 6 

Hours: Mon-Fri 7.30 am – 5.30 pm, 

Saturdays 10 am – 4 pm 

Airport Ticket Office: Norman Manley Airport 

Counter #1 

Hours: 3.30 am – 8 pm daily 

Baggage: + 876 924 8500 

Jamaica (Montego Bay) 

Airport: Sangster International 


/ 

Across the World 

+ 800 744 2225 (toll free) 

Ticketing at check-in counter: 

8.30 am – 6 pm daily 

Baggage: + 876 363 6433 

Nassau 

Airport: Lynden Pindling International 

Terminal: Concourse 2 

Reservations & information: + 1 242 377 3300 

(local) 

Airport Ticket Office: Terminal A-East Departure 

Hours: Flight days – Sat, Mon, Thurs 10 am – 4 pm 

Non-flight days – Tues, Wed, Fri 10 am – 4 pm 

Flight Information: + 1 242 377 3300 (local) 

Baggage: + 1 242 377 7035 Ext 255 

9 am – 5 pm daily 

St Maarten 

Airport: Princess Juliana International 

Reservations & information: + 1721 546 7660/7661 

(local) 

Ticket office: PJIA Departure Concourse 

Baggage: + 1721 546 7660/3 

Hours: Mon – Fri 9 am – 5 pm / Sat 9 am – 6 pm 

St Lucia 

Airport: George F L Charles 

Reservations & information: 1 800 744 2225 

Ticket office: George F.L. Charles Airport 

Ticket office hours: 10 am – 4 pm 

Baggage contact number: 1 758 452 2789 

or 1 758 451 7269 

St Vincent and the Grenadines 

Airport: Argyle International 

Reservations & information: + 800 744 2225 

Ticketing: Argyle International Airport (during flight 

check-in ONLY) 

Tobago 

Airport: ANR Robinson International 

Reservations & information: + 868 660 7200 (local) 

Ticket office: ANR Robinson International Airport 

Baggage: + 639 0595 / 631 8023 

Flight information: + 868 669 3000 

NORTH AMERICA 

Fort Lauderdale 

Airport: Hollywood Fort Lauderdale International 


(toll free) 

Ticketing: Terminal 4 – departures level (during 

flight check-in ONLY – 7.30 am to 7 pm) 

Baggage: + 954 359 4487 

Miami 

Airport: Miami International 


(toll free) 

Ticketing: South Terminal J – departures level (during 

flight check-in ONLY – 12 pm to 3.00 pm); 

Baggage: + 305 869 3795 

Orlando 

Airport: Orlando International 


+ 800 920 4225 (toll free) 

Ticketing: Terminal A – departures level 

(during flight check-in ONLY – Mon/Fri 11:30 am 

– 2.15 pm) 

Baggage: + 407 825 3482 

New York 

Airport: John F Kennedy International 


(toll free) 

Ticketing: Concourse B, Terminal 4, JFK 

International – open 24 hours (situated at departures, 

4th floor) 

Baggage: + 718 360 8930 

Toronto 

Airport: Lester B Pearson International 


(toll free) 

Ticket office: Terminal 3 

Ticketing available daily at check-in counters 

422 and 423. Available 3 hours prior to 

departure times 

Baggage: + 905 672 9991 

SOUTH AMERICA 

Caracas 

Airport: Simón Bolívar International 


+ 58 212 3552880 

Ticketing: Simón Bolívar International Level 2 – 

East Sector 

Hours: 7 am – 11 pm 

City Ticket Office: Sabana Grande Boulevard, 

Building “Galerias Bolivar”, 1st Floor, office 11-A, 

Caracas, Distrito Capital 

+ 58 212 762 4389 / 762 0231 

Baggage: + 58 424 1065937 

Guyana 

Airport: Cheddi Jagan International 


(toll free) 

Ticket office: 91-92 Avenue of the Republic, 

Georgetown 

Baggage: + 011 592 261 2202 

Suriname 

Airport: Johan Adolf Pengel International 

Reservations & information: + 597 52 0034/0035 

(local); 1 868 625 6200 (Trinidad) 

Ticket Office: Paramaribo Express, N.V. Wagenwegstraat 

36, Paramaribo 

Baggage: + 597 325 437

Starting this 

AUGUST 

WIRELESS INFLIGHT ENTERTAINMENT 

Welcome to 

The NEW way to be entertained! 

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

games and more Caribbean content while in the air. 

How to access Caribbean View during your flight 

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

Google Play Store and Apple App Store. 

Steps 

Enjoy free 

entertainment on 

your flight! 

Content is available only on selected flights* 

1. Ensure your device is in 

Airplane Mode 

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

OR 

In preparation 

for your flight 

Download 

Get our free 

Caribbean View app 

before you travel, 

available via the Google 

Play Store and Apple 

App Store 

Charge 

Before boarding, 

ensure your device is 

fully charged 

3. Open the browser on your device and enter 

www.caribbean-airlines.com into the address bar 

OR 

Launch the Caribbean View app 

Scan the code 

Headphones 

Bring your 

personal headphones 

to enjoy our selection 

of entertainment 

Troubleshooting 

Unable to connect 

1. Switch Wi-Fi off and on 

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

Unable to view content 

1. Close and restart the browser and type 

www.caribbean-airlines.com 

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

and type in www.caribbean-airlines.com 

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

and 2 again 

Terms and Conditions 

By using the system, you accept the following 

terms and conditions: 

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

• Content is available only during flight. 

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

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

• You may not have sufficient time during the flight to 

watch the entirety of some content. 

Viewing information: 

Please choose your viewing appropriately. Note: Some 

content may not be suitable for younger viewers, so 

please choose appropriate content where children will 

be watching. 

Please ensure headphones are used at all times for 

playback of media content, unless muted. 

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

to start. 

• Please note that we are not responsible for any data 

loss or damage to devices that may occur while/after 

using our services. 

• Onboard battery charging facilities are not available. 

Safety information: 

• We may pause or stop our inflight entertainment 

system for safety or other reasons. 

Security information: 

• This service is provided using wireless LAN technology. 

Please be aware that it is a public network. 

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

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

for their device.

Northbound 

OVERHEAD INFLIGHT Entertainment 

JULY 

Southbound 

Marvel Studios’ Black Panther 

T’Challa returns home to Wakanda to take his place as king, 

but when a powerful old enemy reappears, his mettle as king 

— and Black Panther — is tested. 

Chadwick Boseman, Michael B. Jordan, Lupita Nyong’o • director: Ryan 

Coogler • action, adventure • PG-13 • 134 minutes 

Paddington 2 

Paddington takes on a series of odd jobs to buy the perfect 

present for his Aunt Lucy’s 100th birthday. But then the gift 

is stolen. 

Ben Whishaw, Hugh Grant, Sally Hawkins • director: Paul King • family • PG 

• 103 minutes 

Northbound 

AUGUST 

Southbound 

© 2018 Marvel 

© 2018 Marvel 

Marvel Studios’ Avengers: Infinity War 

With the powerful Thanos on the verge of raining destruction 

upon the universe, the Avengers and their super hero 

allies risk everything in the ultimate showdown of all time. 

Robert Downey, Jr, Chris Hemsworth, Mark Ruffalo • director: Anthony 

Russo, Joe Russo • action, adventure • PG-13 • 149 minutes 

Ready Player One 

In the year 2045, the real world is a harsh place. The only 

time Wade Watts truly feels alive is when he escapes to the 

OASIS, an immersive virtual universe. 

Tye Sheridan, Olivia Cooke, Ben Mendelsohn • director: Steven Spielberg 

• action, adventure • PG-13 • 140 minutes 

Channel 5 • The Hits 

Channel 6 • Soft Hits 

Channel 7 • Concert Hall 

Audio Channels 

Channel 8 • East Indian Fusion 

Channel 9 • Irie Vibes 

Channel 10 • Jazz Sessions 

Channel 11 • Kaiso Kaiso 

Channel 12 • Steelband Jamboree

classic 

Looking 

for horn 

A dip into the magazine 

archives, from our July/August 

2004 issue: Dylan Kerrigan on 

Trini drivers’ noisy but ingenious 

use of “horn” 

Illustration by James Hackett 

The culture of a place — the way its people think 

about and do things — reveals itself in many 

ways. Sometimes like a silent language, or a 

secret handshake known only to those born into 

it; sometimes noisily, but no less mysterious to 

outsiders. 

Take driving, for instance: the style, manners, and general 

attitude of drivers in different parts of the world — as they get 

from A to B on the same asphalt roads with the same traffic lights 

and road signs — couldn’t be more wide-ranging. 

In Spain, for example, drivers speed up on sighting a 

pedestrian. Like waving a red flag at a bull, and regardless of 

your age and sex, stepping onto a zebra crossing in the land of 

lazy siestas is an incitement to speed. In England, conformist 

motorists suffer road rage should a fellow driver err from the 

rules, and are inclined to drive off a cliff if Highway Code rule 

41B tells them to. 

The Caribbean too has its own style. In fact, in Trinidad you’ll 

find an inventive people who’ve taken the car’s central warning 

device, the horn, and created an indigenous language. 

There’s the two-tap “overtake” signal, useful on beach runs 

and in dealing with single-lane traffic moving too slowly. Akin to 

the verbal announcement “coming through!” used at fetes across 

the land, the “overtake” is as common on the road as rum is with 

Coke on a Friday night. 

Of course, there’s also a slightly faster reciprocal two-tap 

“thank you” that many drivers deliver once they’re clean 

through — often modified to an even more grateful three-tap if 

the other car “ease yuh up” by moving over and slowing down. 

And who can ignore the vexation blast? In a country where 

“bad drive” is almost a way of life, it receives a lot of airtime 

on the highway, and when things come to a standstill. There’s 

the taxi blocking up the traffic, the man driving the wrong 

way up your lane, the traffic light jumper, the numb nut who 

thinks he can get through a gap he obviously can’t — all 

regularly get the long, brutal horn, often supplemented by a 

few choice words. 

The “cautious-winding-road” one-tap is extremely useful 

in the hills outside Port of Spain, and used by everyone up and 

down the country like pepper sauce — some like it with everything, 

others only when Tantie food really call for it. Should the 

beep ever sound out of control — an exaggerated long horn, 

low and loud — beware. This could be one of three things: a) 

a big truck coming fast round the corner, and the road ain’t big 

enough for the both of you; b) a nervous or over-cautious driver, 

probably driving slower than your granny and with a snaking 

line of traffic in the rear; or c) just some limeys playing the fool 

after too many Caribs — probably the most dangerous of the 

three possibilities. 

For J’Ouvert on Carnival Monday morning there’s the nonstop, 

in-time-to-the-music horn, most useful when, through no 

fault of your own, a mud truck with hundreds of dirty revellers 

turns the corner to confront you. At these moments, while the 

foreigner fears for his life, locals usually know what to do. Keep 

tapping the horn and get it in time to the music; the mud men will 

soon pass, content that their call was acknowledged with some 

horn of your own. 

From the vast dictionary of horn semantics — and we have 

only touched on a few examples — my personal favourite is the 

“salutation horn.” Sometimes it’s just a short hello, other times 

a rip-roaring, honkety-honk that scares the life out of old people 

and children, but lets your partner (and everyone else in the 

street) know that you and he are good friends, although by no 

means does this guarantee him a ride. 

This horn language isn’t allowed by the road laws of every 

country, but in Trinidad it’s part of everyday life. Without it, in 

fact, the road system probably wouldn’t work. There, I’ve said it 

now: without a good horn, things break down. n

Caribbean Beat — July/August 2018 (#152)

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