Caribbean Beat — September/October 2019 (#159)

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Contents
No. 159 • September/October 2019
62
74
50
EMBARK
IMMERSE
18 Wish you were here
Annandale Falls, Grenada
20 Need to know
Essential info to help you make the
most of September and October
across the Caribbean — from a new
literature festival in Brooklyn to Divali
in T&T, Guyana, and Suriname
34 Bookshelf and playlist
Our reading and listening picks
38 screenshots
Barbadian filmmaker Lisa Harewood
talks about her new virtual reality
project exploring families separated
by migration
40 Cookup
A feast for all
The Hindu festival of lights is a time
of hospitality and generosity, writes
Franka Philip — from welcoming
friends and family into your home to
helping those affected by misfortune
44 Closeup
The reinvention of poetry
Born in Trinidad and based in Canada,
writer Dionne Brand has spent
decades exploring the transgressive
possibilities of poetry, says Shivanee
Ramlochan — breaking through
boundaries of genre in her quest to
understand the shapeshifting self
50 Snapshot
Racing for the hit
When T&T’s men’s 4x400-metre team
won gold at the 2019 World Relays last
May, it was thanks to a “finish for the
ages” by Machel Cedenio. As Sheldon
Waithe reports, the young athlete
grounds himself with family support
and mental preparation long before he
even takes to the track
56 Portfolio
Riddles of survival
Working across mediums,
Guadeloupean artist Kelly Sinnapah
Mary creates images with a
fairytale quality, mingling cruelty
and enchantment, as she explores
postcolonial dilemmas and the
resistance of self-invention, writes
Shereen Ann Ali
ARRIVE
62 Explore
Jamaica on the road
A rambling road trip is one of the
best ways to explore the diverse
landscapes of Jamaica — from
forested mountains to valleys and
villages, from the cliffs of Negril to the
waterfalls of Ocho Rios
72 Neighbourhood
OtroBanda, Curaçao
The “other side” of Willemstad, capital
of Curaçao, is a neighbourhood of
historic buildings and street art
10 WWW.CARIBBEAN-BEAT.COM

CaribbeanBeat
An MEP publication
Editor Nicholas Laughlin
General manager Halcyon Salazar
Design artists Kevon Webster, Kriston Chen
Production manager Jacqueline Smith
Web editor Caroline Taylor
Editorial assistants Shelly-Ann Inniss, Kristine De Abreu
74 Destination
Five days in Barbados
Heading to Barbados? Of course
you’ll hit the beach. But there’s much
more to this island of twenty-one
by fourteen miles — as this itinerary
compiled by Shelly-Ann Inniss makes
clear. Get ready for adventures on the
hiking trail, underground, on a historic
railway — and that’s just to start
Business Development Manager,
Business Development
Tobago and International
Representative, Trinidad
Evelyn Chung
Tracy Farrag
T: (868) 684 4409
T: (868) 318 1996
E: evelyn@meppublishers.com
E: tracy@meppublishers.com
Barbados Sales Representative
Shelly-Ann Inniss
T: (246) 232 5517
E: shelly@meppublishers.com
82 Bucket List
Rainforests of Suriname
To experience nature at its wildest,
head inland from Paramaribo to one
of Suriname’s extraordinary rainforest
lodges
ENGAGE
84 Green
The climate change
countdown
For decades, climate scientists have
warned us about the consequences of
global warming — and small island states
like those in the Caribbean are especially
vulnerable. 2017’s Hurricane Maria was
just a taste of what the coming decades
will bring, reports Erline Andrews, unless
significant resources get directed to
efforts to protect threatened coastlines
and reefs
88 puzzles
Enjoy our crossword and other fun
brain-teasers!
Media & Editorial Projects Ltd.
6 Prospect Avenue, Maraval, Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago
T: (868) 622 3821/5813/6138 • F: (868) 628 0639
E: caribbean-beat@meppublishers.com
Website: www.meppublishers.com
Read and save issues of Caribbean Beat on your smartphone,
tablet, computer, and favourite digital devices!
Printed by Solo Printing Inc., Miami, Florida
Caribbean Beat is published six times a year for Caribbean Airlines by Media & Editorial Projects Ltd. It is also available on
subscription. Copyright © Caribbean Airlines 2019. All rights reserved. ISSN 1680–6158. No part of this magazine may be
reproduced in any form whatsoever without the written permission of the publisher. MEP accepts no responsibility for
content supplied by our advertisers. The views of the advertisers are theirs and do not represent MEP in any way.
Website: www.caribbean-airlines.com
96 classic
A dip into Caribbean Beat’s archives:
Adanna Austin always assumed a Trini
accent was easy to understand — then
she arrived in Barbados and discovered
otherwise
The Caribbean Airlines logo shows a hummingbird in flight. Native to the Caribbean, the hummingbird represents
flight, travel, vibrancy, and colour. It encompasses the spirit of both the region and Caribbean Airlines.
WWW.CARIBBEAN-AIRLINES.COM
11

Cover Seeking serenity at
Animal Flower Cave near
the northernmost point of
Barbados
Photo Courtesy Barbados
Tourism Marketing Inc.
This issue’s contributors include:
Shereen Ann Ali (“Riddles of survival”, page 56) is a
freelance writer who has covered cultural and social
issues in Trinidad since the 1990s as a reporter for
three national newspapers.
Shivanee Ramlochan (“The reinvention of poetry”,
page 44) is a Trinidadian poet — author of Everyone
Knows I Am a Haunting — arts reporter, and Bookshelf
editor for Caribbean Beat.
Julián Sánchez González (“On view”, page 28) is a
PhD student in art history at Columbia University. His
current research project analyses the influence of
diasporic and non-hegemonic spiritualities on artistic
modernism in the 1970s in selected countries in Latin
America and the Caribbean, particularly through the
lens of witchcraft.
Writing with glee on sport, politics, and culture,
Sheldon Waithe (“Racing for the hit”, page 50) fuses
these facets into articles for both Caribbean and
European websites and magazines. He also is the editor
of Parkite Sports.
In our July/August 2019 issue,
the cover photograph of Naomi
Osaka was incorrectly published
without a credit. It should have
been credited to Adam Pretty/
Getty Images
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13

A MESSAGE From OUR CEO
Andrea Da Silva, courtesy Caribbean airlines
Caribbean Airlines has a clear vision
to connect the region, which is a
major element in strengthening our
Caribbean identity. Far too often we
have heard from our customers how
difficult, inconvenient and expensive it is
to travel within the Caribbean.
Thankfully, this is changing, as
Caribbean Airlines is actively improving
regional connectivity, with the introduction
of new routes and increased services. In
August, we added Curaçao, our twentyfirst
destination, to our network. And in
the coming weeks and months, you will
hear and see more islands connected
from north to south and east to west,
as we close the distances within the
Caribbean archipelago.
There is significant interest among
Caribbean people to develop and
strengthen relations in the region, and
there is great potential and opportunity
for increased trade and tourism. Our
twice-weekly service to Curaçao, every
Monday and Friday, facilitates easy
connections to other Caribbean Airlines
destinations like Barbados, Grenada,
Guyana, and New York City. We also
offer cargo service to Curaçao, which
is a welcome addition for our business
travellers who utilise the free-zones on
the island. We encourage you to visit
Curacao and “feel it for yourself”!
Our network expansion also includes
the development of Kingston, Jamaica,
as a northern hub. Soon we will start
twice-weekly service between Kingston
and Grand Cayman, and Kingston and
Havana, Cuba.
Along with our developing network,
we are transforming the way we
connect with our customers. Our
customer experience improvement took
a quantum leap with the launch of the
Caribbean Airlines Mobile App. Your
response to the app has been phenomenal,
and more features will be added
as we move forward.
Now, in the palm of your hand you
can easily manage your travel experience,
including paying for travel
between Trinidad and Tobago in
TT dollars, buying Caribbean Plus
Seats, checking your flight status —
including the exclusive ability to check
your standby status if travelling on the
domestic air bridge between Trinidad
and Tobago — and much more. Try
the app for yourself, and enjoy all the
convenient features it provides.
In September and October, there
continue to be numerous exciting events
throughout Caribbean Airlines destinations,
including the Hero CPL T20
Caribbean Premier League Series,
which takes place from 4 September to
12 October. As the Official Airline sponsor,
we will connect cricket fans and
teams to attend the games.
We are also the Official Airline for
Miami Carnival, which takes place from
10 to 14 October. Caribbean Airlines
operates daily between Trinidad and
Tobago and Miami International Airport;
five times each week to Hollywood International
Airport in Fort Lauderdale in the
off-peak, and daily for the period 19 July
to 10 September; and three times weekly
to Orlando International Airport — with
seamless connections to Guyana, Suriname,
and other regional destinations.
We also fly daily between Fort Lauderdale
and Kingston, Jamaica.
Miami and South Florida are significant
markets for Caribbean Airlines,
and being the Official Airline for Miami
Carnival is a natural partnership which
fits squarely into our Caribbean Identity
brand story.
Please check the Need to Know
section of the magazine, starting on
page 20, for details of these and other
events, and how Caribbean Airlines can
get you there.
Download the Mobile App — which
gives you access and information like
never before!
Thank you for choosing Caribbean
Airlines — we value your business, and
look forward to serving you throughout
our twenty-one-destination network.
Garvin Medera
Chief Executive Officer
14 WWW.CARIBBEAN-AIRLINES.COM

Art is
Identity
By John Robert Lee
In the 1960s and early 70s, when protests in Jamaica
and Canada and daily marches in Port of Spain were
headline news, when the West Indies cricket team
wreaked anti-colonial vengeance on imperial powers, latenight
student conversations over coffee and fried chicken
were inevitably about Caribbean identity and culture. Those
were the years of the poetry of Kamau Brathwaite, Derek
Walcott, and Martin Carter, the novels of George Lamming,
Roger Mais, and Earl Lovelace, the dance of Rex Nettleford’s
Jamaica Company, new soca, zouk, Bob Marley and reggae.
In Gordon Rohlehr’s book Perfected Fables Now (Peepal
Tree Press, 2019), the chapter “Preserving Caribbean
cultural identity in the face of globalisation” begins: “The
subject of this address has preoccupied Caribbean thinkers
for more than five decades now, surfacing as a concern
of nationalist movements throughout the region since
the 1920s and 1930s, and becoming a central feature
of the early post-Independence years, when new Caribbean
nations were faced with the necessity of either defining
national identities, or identifying foundational values upon
which such identities could be constructed.”
Rohlehr’s essay discusses efforts through seven UNESCO
conferences to develop cultural policies. He writes, “the
deepest and most difficult issue contested at the Bogotá
Conference in 1978 was that of the paradoxical nature of
Caribbean and Latin American cultural identities, the contradictory
forces that had brought those identities into being . . .
Wrestling with the ethnic and cultural pluralism of the region,
the delegates concluded that cultural identity lay in the interface
of ‘several mutually enriched differences.’”
Are we nearer to clarifying Caribbean identity after our
youthful attempts at cultural revolution? Add the resurgence
of neo-globalisation in the 1990s, various forms of recolonisation,
commodification, consumerisation, the rejection of
“perennial philosophies” gleaned by earlier generations from
various spiritualities, a cosmopolitan community spread over
large swathes of diaspora — and I wonder whether “Caribbean
identity” is an important imperative for a new generation.
For many young citizens who are more familiar with inner
cities of North America and Europe than their island hinter-
lands, racial identity — given the threats to non-whites in
those metropolises — is more important than some nebulous
Caribbean identity. They take their Caribbean-ness
for granted. In the words of Sunity Maharaj in the previous
instalment of this column, “geography is re-contoured into a
place of the mind.”
Possible definitions of Caribbean identity are always at
the forefront during Carifesta, the Caribbean Festival of Arts,
which now runs biennially. The most recent iteration,
Carifesta XIV, was held in August 2019 in Trinidad and
Tobago, but its roots go back almost half a century.
In an absorbing memoir, Georgetown Journal (New
Beacon, 1972), Andrew Salkey described the meeting of the
Writers’ and Artists’ Convention in Georgetown in February
1970, when plans were made for staging the inaugural
Carifesta two years later. The names of the participants
are a who’s who of leading writers of the time. Everyone was
concerned with Caribbean cultural identity, the political movement
from colonial past to true Independence, and certain
we had an identifiable Caribbean character. They believed our
culture would be seen most clearly in the arts. They would
provide a distillation of the best of our lives, shaped out of the
cauldron of our complicated, brutal history.
The convention recommended: “The Caribbean Arts
Festival should be representative of our multi-lingual
Caribbean plantation culture, including the varied cultural
contributions from Cuba in the north to Guyana in the south
. . . should be entertaining, inspirational, educational, and
completely related to the cultural matrix of the masses of our
people in the Caribbean.”
Every generation formulates its identity, creates its coordinates
of cultural expression. Today’s Caribbean map
encloses within its borders islands, cities, continents. Being
Caribbean is as much a state of mind as a conglomeration
of political states.
I propose that Carifesta, presenting the best of literary,
visual, and performing arts, the continuing intellectual
explorations of our thinkers in symposia, open to the public,
thoughtfully planned, can help maintain a space in which we
Caribbeans, and friends from other cultures, can see: that’s
us, there is what we have learned, through multicultural
generations, against daunting challenges. There is a visible
representation of our identity.
John Robert Lee is a St Lucian writer. His Collected Poems
1975–2015 is published by Peepal Tree Press (2017). His Saint
Lucian Writers and Writing: An Author Index is published by
Papillote Press (2019)
This essay is part of a series written by eminent thinkers from
across the region, reflecting on The Caribbean Identity and
what it is and can be
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17

wish you were here
Annandale Falls, Grenada
A short drive north from St George’s,
Grenada’s capital, the waterfall at Annandale
is a refreshing escape when the weather turns
sultry. Lush foliage surrounds the thirty-foot
cascade, which plunges into a deep pool
of mesmerising emerald, reaching under a
natural rock grotto.
Photography by mauritius images GmbH/
Alamy Stock Photo
18 WWW.CARIBBEAN-BEAT.COM

WWW.CARIBBEAN-AIRLINES.COM 19

NEED TO
KNOW
Essential info to help you make the most of
September and October: what to do, where to go,
what to see!
Jason Audain
Don’t Miss
Hosay
At the Battle of Karbala, in the year 680, the grandson
of the Prophet Mohammad was killed. For centuries,
this event has been remembered by Shia Muslims as the
holy day of Ashura — better known in Trinidad as Hosay.
Falling on 10 September this year, Ashura is preceded by
ten days of prayers and commemorations which have
evolved to combine South Asian and Caribbean influences,
culminating in four days of street processions in the
neighbourhoods of St James, Tunapuna, and Cedros. On
the seventh night, Flag Night, devotees bear multicoloured
flags. The eighth night is even more colourful, as familyand
community-based groups carry tadjahs — ornate
floats representing the tomb of the Prophet’s grandson
— through the streets. On the ninth night, heavy red
and green moon effigies are carried on the shoulders of
the faithful, the task of “dancing” them a form of ritual
penance. The insistent sound of tassa drums fills the
streets, and onlookers of all faiths witness the spectacle.
At the finale, the tadjahs are immersed in the sea.
How to get there? Caribbean Airlines operates numerous flights each day to its base at Piarco International
Airport in Trinidad from destinations across the Caribbean and North and South America
20
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need to know
agence opale/alamy stock photo
Top Five
Caribbean writers in
Brooklyn
Jamaica Kincaid
Each year in early September, Caribbean people residing all over the world
converge in Brooklyn, New York. The West Indian American Day Carnival Parade
— also known as the Labour Day Parade, and running for over half a century —
is the reason, but this year there’s a new festival in town, with the Caribbean
squarely in focus. The inaugural Brooklyn Caribbean Literary Festival, from 6 to
8 September, is eager to encourage, inspire, and thrill culture enthusiasts with a
lineup of star Caribbean writers. Here are our picks for five talents you can’t miss.
Mervyn Taylor
A Trinidadian poet based in Brooklyn,
Taylor has won praise from no less a
figure than Nobel laureate Derek
Walcott, who lauded his “admirable
degree of subtlety.” Voices Carry, his
most recent book of poems, shifts
between the island of his birth and the
city of his current residence, exploring
the complicated links between love
and belonging, past and present.
Kei Miller
Considered one of the leading
Caribbean poets of his generation,
Jamaica-born Miller has also made
a name for himself as a novelist and
essayist, and has the awards to prove
it. His latest book of poems, In Nearby
Bushes — hot off the press! — is a
disturbing but arresting exploration of
violence in the landscape of Jamaica,
both historical and contemporary.
Elizabeth Nunez
Known equally as a novelist and literary
scholar, Trinidad-born Nunez is a
Distinguished Professor at Hunter College,
CUNY. Her novels include Boundaries
(nominated for a NAACP Image
Award), Bruised Hibiscus (American
Book Award), and Beyond the Limbo
Silence (Independent Publishers Book
Award), plus her memoir Not for Everyday
Use won the 2015 Hurston Wright
Legacy Award and is an Oprah online
book club selection.
For more information, and the
Brooklyn Caribbean Literary Festival’s
programme, visit bklyncbeanlitfest.
com
Jamaica Kincaid
Betrayal, loss, and division as a
consequence of colonisation and the
disempowerment of women — these
are all major themes in the work of the
Antigua-born writer, whose novels
Annie John and Lucy are considered
modern Caribbean classics. Named
Elaine Potter Richardson by her
parents, Kincaid adopted her nom
de plume to write fiercely personal
material, and renaming recurs in her
works as a metaphor for conquest and
colonial domination.
Barbara Jenkins
Following a full career as a secondary
school geography teacher, Jenkins
discovered her proclivity for writing
late in life — and has made up for
lost time. Her award-winning short
story collection Sic Transit Wagon
was followed last year by her novel
De Rightest Place, an episodic comic
novel set in a Port of Spain rumshop
that’s been favourably compared to
the fiction of Samuel Selvon.
If you miss the Brooklyn
Caribbean Literary Festival in
early September, you’ll have a
second chance to catch some of
the hottest names in Caribbean
literature at the Brooklyn Book
Festival, running from 16 to 23
September. Look out for Booker
Prizewinner Marlon James,
Edwidge Danticat, Alex Wheatle,
Nicole Dennis-Benn, and more.
22
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need to know
Word of Mouth
Divali lights
Shelly-Ann Inniss meets one of the traditional potters who make
thousands of deyas for Trinidad’s annual Divali celebrations
Anupam Lotlikar/Shutterstock.com
My introduction to Divali, the Hindu festival of lights, actually came in
Jamaica, when I was a university student. That night, the walk to my flat
was unusually dark, except for tiny, flickering lamps in parallel rows along the
pathway. I thought a romantic marriage proposal was in progress. Then some
Trinidadian friends beckoned me over. I noticed henna designs on the girls’
hands, a feast of food I didn’t recognise, and my Hindu hallmates dressed
up and celebrating like it was someone’s birthday. They told me the deyas —
the small clay lamps — represent the body, their wicks symbolise the mind,
and the oil is a symbol of love. There seemed to be a never-ending supply of
deyas in that courtyard, and I wondered where they came from.
Years later, now living in Trinidad, I found out. Several family-run
potteries in central Trinidad use local clay to make wares ranging from
vases to plant pots year-round — and many thousands of deyas for Divali.
Andy Benny, a third-generation potter from Radika’s Pottery Shop,
answered my questions.
What material are deyas made
from, exactly?
Clay is dug from underground,
processed, and refined to make them.
Everything is done by hand. We use an
old-fashioned kiln — a big oven with
wood fire — to bake them, as electricity
is too costly.
Are they easy to make?
When you start, clay and water will be
everywhere. Once you get the hang
of it, you have more control over the
clay. My mum, Radika, inspired people
to go behind the wheel and practice.
Pottery is for everyone. Anyone can get
a tabletop wheel and have a pottery
studio at home. Pot, clay, and kiln,
that’s the process.
If you’re skilled, a deya takes a
second or two.
Can people come to your
workshop and make their own
deyas?
The nice thing about pottery is that it has
all the elements — clay from the earth,
water to mix the clay, airflow to push
the fire. Making stuff from clay makes
us resourceful. Schools from preschool
upwards come here for sessions, as
well as families. They love to watch and
participate in making the deyas. Everyone
gets really excited when the kiln is fully lit,
and the fire is raging.
How many deyas do you
manufacture annually?
Approximately four hundred thousand
over a six-month period.
How do you prepare the deya
for lighting?
It is a simple process: pour oil, get some
wick and extend it to the length of the
deya just beyond the little lip, and light
it. Wax candles save time for people
who don’t want to pour oil. Above all,
safety is key, so place deyas carefully
around your home.
And how do you arrange the lit
deyas?
In my younger days, bamboo was bent
to form the structures. There was a
bamboo-bending competition and the
more intricate and ornate your style,
the better your chances of winning.
Some people still use bamboo, others
lay the deyas on the floor. Traditionally,
the bamboo is cut and stripped down
and the deyas are placed in the joints.
Where is the best place in
Trinidad to see Divali lights?
Anywhere there is a Hindu community,
but Chaguanas and Felicity are very
popular. Some people have an electrical
lighting system, and it’s a big attraction.
People sit in traffic for hours just to see
the lights.
How do you feel when you see
the deyas lit on Divali night?
It’s rewarding, as it’s the fruit of your
labour and people get the joy of what
they’re celebrating, and the symbolism.
Divali, falling on 27 October
this year, is a public holiday in
Trinidad and Tobago, Guyana,
and Suriname.
For more information about
Radika’s Pottery Shop, visit
facebook.com/radikaspottery/
24
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WWW.CARIBBEAN-AIRLINES.COM 25

need to know
Luis Echeverri Urrea/Shutterstock.com
Must Try
Cassava five ways
To most of us, cassava is simply a tasty ground provision. But in Guyana, it is
a treasure of an indigenous culinary tradition, a key staple of First Peoples for
thousands of years. Unsurprisingly, considering that long history, Guyanese have
created numerous ways to prepare the starch. As Guyana celebrates Indigenous
Heritage Month in September, here are a few dishes and by-products of cassava
to get you acquainted.
Cassareep
This condiment is used in numerous
stews and sauces — including the
national dish, pepperpot (see below).
To make cassareep, peel the cassava
and grate it to a pulp. Wring the juices
from the pulp — traditionally, this
was done with a matapee, a woven
tubular sieve. Boil the juice, constantly
skimming the scum from the surface,
until the liquid is thick, sticky, and dark
brown like molasses.
Kasiri/parikari
Here’s another way to use cassava
juice: ferment it into a sweet heady
beer, known by various names among
different indigenous peoples.
Cassava bread
This fried bread cooked with a dash of
oil is one of the best ways to introduce
gluten-free fare to the healthconscious.
The Guyanese method is to
cook it in a cake tray above a frying pan.
Metemgee
This coconut-milk-based soup
includes cassava, sweet potatoes,
plantains, and salted meat — delicious
garnished with a fried banga mary fish.
Pepperpot
Guyana’s national dish is a zesty mix
of stewed meat, cassareep, peppers,
and spices. Traditionally, the pot is
periodically replenished with fresh
meat and cassareep, which has
preservative qualities. There’s a local
rumour that the Georgetown Club
has had a pepperpot bubbling for over
seventy-five years. Talk about a dish
with a history . . .
SAI
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27

need to know
On View
2019 Whitney
Biennial
Julián Sánchez González on the spiritual and historic
concerns of Puerto Rican artists represented in this major
biennial survey of contemporary American art
Since its first iteration in 1932, the Whitney Biennial, one of
the most important surveys of contemporary American art,
has traditionally given little attention to artists based in Puerto
Rico. However, this year’s five Puerto Rican artists, together
with the previous selection from the biennial of 2017, continue
to tell an excitingly different story. As an unincorporated
United States territory with no electoral voting rights, dealing
with the aftermath of Hurricane Maria sweeping through
the Caribbean and a recent surge of political protests,
Puerto Rico’s presence in the show is a timely and poignant
commentary on neocolonial politics in the Caribbean. In
addition to the participation of artists nibia pastrana santiago
and Sofía Gallisá-Muriente, pieces by Daniel Lind-Ramos and
Las Nietas de Nonó address these issues through innovative
proposals in installation and performance formats.
Under the curatorial lens of Jane Panetta and Rujeko
Hockley, this selection of Caribbean artists followed a
lengthy process which included over three hundred studio
visits across twenty-five locations in the United States. In
general terms, the curators have tended to favour topics
related to new readings of history, questions on race and
gender, the vulnerability of the body, and community
engagement, among others. In addition to these transversal
topics, the five Boricua creators’ presence in the Biennial
signals an ongoing interest of the Whitney Museum in
furthering their Latinx curatorial and educational initiative.
The recent hiring of curator Marcela Guerrero and the 2018
show Pacha, Llaqta, Wasichay: Indigenous Space, Modern
Architecture, New Art, for example, aim to further provide
underrepresented communities with a louder voice and
greater agency within the museum’s space. More specifically,
the Biennial works by Lind-Ramos and Las Nietas de Nonó
bring to the fore concerns about the retrieval of ancestral
knowledge and spiritual practices, and the diasporic
experience of Afro-Puerto Rican communities.
According to Holland Cotter, art critic for the New
York Times, one of the most transgressive and effective
contributions of the 2019 Whitney Biennial is its emphasis on
spiritual practices, including the work of Daniel Lind-Ramos,
born in 1953 in Loíza, the northeastern stronghold of Afro-
Puerto Rican culture. Lind-Ramos’s most recent practice
focuses on the creation of large-scale sculptural pieces
made from found materials, both industrial and organic.
Paula Court, courtesy the Whitney Museum of American Art
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His piece Maria-Maria (2019) is notorious for conflating
spirituality with assemblage techniques in an original and
striking composition employing coconuts, bubble wrap, and
— most critically — FEMA (Federal Emergency Management
Agency) blue tarps. Still lingering on rooftops in Loíza two
years after Hurricane Maria, this waterproof material speaks
directly to a story of political strife, unresponsiveness, and
neglect towards the socioeconomic recovery of Puerto Rico
after the island’s financial and natural catastrophes.
Moreover, the totem-like structure of this piece and the
use of the blue tarps recall a Madonna’s draping veil, and
reflect on local hybridised altar-making practices serving as
primordial sources for mental endurance and communitybuilding
in times of distress. Spirituality and craft aesthetics
speak to each other here in a candid, unmediated way, a
curatorial avenue that Panetta and Hockley investigated and
pursued as a working paradigm for this Biennial. Overall, this
piece, together with Lind-Ramos’s similarly breathtaking
installation Centinelas (2013), speaks of the survival of
African diasporic spiritualities and culture despite the longstanding
presence of colonialist, oppressive structures in
racial configurations and social relations in the Caribbean.
Also attempting to make a statement on the importance
of traditional knowledge systems, Las Nietas de Nonó — a
sister-duo of performers, Lydela (born 1979) and Michel
(1982) Nonó — performed Ilustraciones de la Mecánica
at the Whitney on three occasions in June. Previously
presented at the 2018 Berlin Biennial, this sinister and
dystopian performance work confronts the viewer with a
gory reenactment of a sterilisation procedure that Lydela,
dressed as a white doctor, performs on her sister Michel as
she covers her face with her skirt upside down. Leaving the
viewer little room for assessing the patient’s expressions,
beyond a disfigured body that is violated with scientific
curiosity and self-indulgent desire, Ilustraciones refers to a
series of hysterectomies performed illegally on black women
from rural Puerto Rico between the 1930s and 1980s,
encouraged by mainland authorities.
The staging of this act is reinforced by the use of mirrors
placed on the ceiling, a gesture forcing the viewer to engage in
a voyeuristic attitude. Further confining the patient’s body into,
for instance, fragmented legs or a mock-up open belly made of
vegetable leather, the still images from these reflected views
constitute a powerful compositional choice that speaks of the
artists’ interest in investigating violence against black bodies
in their subjection to experimentation in hospitals, schools,
and prisons. Ultimately, this confrontational work denounces
the overriding of the role of healers or curanderas/os by
Western medical practices. Focusing on compartmentalised
specialisation rather than holistic approaches, modern
medicine neglects a fundamental aspect of healing, namely our
relationship to various elements and cycles of the natural world.
This concern is a growing trend in the work of contemporary
artists living in diasporic conditions, such as a recent
performance by Guadalupe Maravilla, Walk on Water,
at the Queens Museum.
By referencing events critical to the survival of
their communities through the lens of spirituality
and ancestral heritage, Lind-Ramos and Las
Nietas de Nonó put forward a distinct and unique
voice into the plethora of political and social
claims brought together under the same roof at
the Whitney Biennial. While deeply entrenched
in the Caribbean’s recent and distant histories,
their works transgress boundaries of time and
space as they approach with aesthetic finesse
the challenges of moving forward into new, more
sustainable paradigms for collective behaviour and
thinking.
Ron Amstutz, courtesy the Whitney Museum of American Art
Opposite page Performance by Las Nietas de
Nonó, 28 June, 2019, at the Whitney Biennial
2019, Whitney Museum of American Art
Left Centinelas (Sentinels) (2013), by Daniel Lind-
Ramos, installed in the Whitney Biennial 2019
WWW.CARIBBEAN-AIRLINES.COM 29

need to know
Great Outdoors
Volcano hopping
Spectacular waterfalls, verdant rainforests, beautiful birds,
and an active four-thousand-foot volcano make St Vincent
a paradise for lovers of nature and adventure. La Soufrière,
one of the most studied volcanoes in the world, last erupted
forty years ago, between April and October 1979. And while
scientists keep a close eye on its status, the steep slopes
leading up to the crater offer a thrilling hike with the payoff
of incredible views. Vincentian photographer, hotelier, and
adventure-seeker Stephan Hornsey sees his homeland as
a playground and has an innate calling to explore — which
includes several memorable ascents of La Soufrière, and one
very stormy night
Are you a daredevil at heart?
I wouldn’t define myself as intentionally reckless, but
perhaps an accidental daredevil, considering some of
the situations I find myself in. If I decide to do something
potentially dangerous, I always plan ahead incessantly.
How often do you go hiking?
Not terribly often, but when I do, it tends to be something
personally challenging, and a new experience.
When did you first hike La Soufrière?
One of my earliest memories as a kid was my father holding
my arm at the edge of the volcano. He was making sure the
winds didn’t take me into the steep crater as I peeped over.
These days, the reason is based on a sense of adventure —
it’s a volcano, and very cool.
How difficult is the trail?
It’s a well-trodden trail, as the volcano is a hiking highway for
many locals. Countless visitors make the trek as a milestone
in their vacation. Recently I’ve taken the windward route,
which is closer to my home. I’m most comfortable with this
route and would recommend it for both time and ease.
If I’m gunning it, then it may take an hour or less from the
“base camp.” For most that I have observed or hiked with, it
may take an hour and a half or two.
How fit do you need to be?
I’ve seen individuals who considered themselves unfit
complete the entire trek from bottom to top and back. It’s
totally up to you, as long as you can get back.
Can you describe the views?
The trail is a snaking path through a tropical rainforest, filled
with bamboo, ferns, and other plants. As you ascend further,
you are teased with little breaks in the foliage allowing you to
see how far you have come. It’s truly motivating. After a short
time, you emerge onto the face of the volcano. I am truly in
awe of the landscape. It’s hard to imagine without seeing it.
As you ascend, there is one point where you break out
of the canopy of trees and the sounds of the rainforest
disappear in sudden silence. This is when you realise you are
on a volcano, as you turn around to see the coastline far in
the distance.
What was your biggest adventure on La
Soufrière?
There was a thunderstorm while we were camping inside the
crater last year. We had a sub-optimal-size tent to withstand
heavy winds and the temperature. The tent was just under
six feet, which allowed it to catch the winds constantly
tugging on our anchors. At one point it started to dip down
to where it touched our chests flat on the floor of the tent.
The space made most of our heat escape quickly, which
became especially noticeable between 2 and 6 am, as the
temperatures dropped to violently shivering conditions.
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Stephan Hornsey
How did you manage?
I vividly remember staring at the inside of our tent watching
it fight to hold itself together from the wind, and thinking,
“This really sucks right now, don’t forget it.” The thing about
St Vincent is that after a thunderstorm comes the clearest
weather and best visibility. The hike that morning came with
some very positive thoughts. I have never been scared of La
Soufrière, but when we camped in the storm, I was uneasy at
some moments.
Have you ever hiked La Soufrière alone?
I challenged myself to solo hike the volcano from sunset into
nightfall. At dusk, having just watched the sunset from the
southern tip of the crater, I was descending down the open
face and suddenly I realised I had to walk all the way home by
myself in the dark.
How do you prepare for the hike?
I always set a very specific goal, whether it’s to see sunset,
or camp, or just walk up and down. This helps to keep things
in perspective, for both preparing and the actual hike itself.
Conditions can all change at a moment’s notice.
Whenever I go, I take more than I need so that I can
share if necessary, and more importantly, so that I’m not
underprepared. Take essentials like water, food, lights, first
aid kits, etc.
Comfortable feet make a happy hike. Ensure you wear
shoes that are tried and tested in wet, hot, cold, and long treks.
Ascending is hotter than you think, but it’s cold at the
top. The weather changes very quickly, so spend at least
thirty minutes sitting, looking into the crater, waiting for the
clouds to dance in or out.
What makes La Soufrière unforgettable?
This particular hike is challenging, and it immerses you in
nature. Yet it never feels far from home for me. This combination
of feeling at home while experiencing something so
majestic truly makes it a memory to share.
As told to Shelly-Ann Inniss
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need to know
Courtesy CPL T20 Ltd 2019
Datebook
More highlights of September and
October across the Caribbean
Caribbean Premier League cricket
4 September to 12 October, venues around the Caribbean
Explore the region through world-class cricket played in an
extremely festive atmosphere: music, flag-waving, cheering, and
non-stop fun. It’s no surprise cricket fans — and those who just love
the party — return each year. cplt20.com
Curaçao Pride
25 to 29 September
Five thrilling days filled with parties and
performances by local and international
artistes, celebrating the LGBTQ community. A
Pride Walk, Pride Happy Hours, a beach party,
and boat party are some of the highlights.
curacaopride.com
Pure Grenada Dive Fest
28 September to 4 October
Grenada’s underwater wonderland has
something for everyone, whether you’re
a beginner or an advanced diver. Famous
wrecks and diverse marine life await. Jump in!
puredivinggrenada.com
World Creole Music Festival
25 to 27 October, Dominica
A cavalcade of star power emanating from the Caribbean, Africa and
North America, arranged to thrill the seasoned festival-goer and novice
alike. Don’t miss Nigerian singer Davido, soca artistes Mr Killa from
Grenada and Bunji Garlin, Fay Ann Lyons, and Patrice Roberts from T&T,
alongside bouyon artistes Asa Bantan, Tasha P, the Signal Band, and
Triple K from Dominica. discoverdominica.com
Jamaica Food and Drink Festival
26 October to 3 November
Depart from the ordinary and join over sixty talented chefs as they
turn Kingston into the culinary epicentre of Jamaica. Fusions of local
and international cuisine are served with distinct grit and urban edge.
jafoodanddrink.com
32
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ookshelf
Unraveling
by Karen Lord (DAW/Penguin Random House, 304 pp, ISBN 9780756415204)
What would you weave if you could walk
through the labyrinth of another’s mind?
Spiderlike, summoning slippery cunning
and an Anansi’s web laced with whodunit
flair, Karen Lord maps the world of Unraveling,
her newest novel of psychological
intrigue and startling suspense. At the
centre of this sphere, forensic therapist
Dr Miranda Ecouvo is snatched sideways
out of her ordered City life to help solve a
mystery behind a mystery. Can she work
alongside supernatural, demi-human
agents to help pin down the menacing
figure behind serial killer Walther Grey?
Flanked by the not-quite-mortal brothers
Chance and the Trickster, Miranda
walks cerebral mazes, labyrinths of the
lives of others. It’s a shadow-and-ink
realm where her metaphysical motions
echo with deliberate repercussions in real
life, dangerously teeming.
Lord, whose speculative fiction novels Redemption in
Indigo, The Best of All Possible Worlds, and The Galaxy
Game serve up worlds that feel both
fantastical and immediate, is poised at
the pinnacle of her mastery in Unraveling.
Here is a challenging, thorny narrative
that requires attentive reading
and rewards careful scrutiny, a reality
wherein “humans are not only permitted
but encouraged to change destiny.”
The deeper Miranda progresses into
the labyrinth, flanked by grisly and
gruesome remnants of the murders she
has probed, the tighter we tug on the
storytelling string binding her fate to
ours: the more fully, completely we are
invited to start walking the rings of our
own mazes.
“Humans would look for a pattern in
anything — a face in the clouds, a voice in
the wind, and a reason in chaos,” muses
Miranda’s right hand sojourner, Chance.
What a densely alive cipher of a novel
Lord has bestowed on us: our own diligent fascination is the
key to unlocking it.
Now/After
by Anton Nimblett (Peepal Tree Press, 142 pp, ISBN
9781845234423)
In his second short story collection
(following 2009’s Sections
of an Orange), Trinidadborn
Anton Nimblett takes
us into the private reading
rooms of bibliophilic desires.
Not content with the casting
of supposedly well-known
characters from Lamming
and Melville? You can find
their stories upended in Now/
After, in moving, often tender
acts of reclamation. Here, the
origin story of Moby Dick’s
Queequeg is a decidedly different tale, one that renders
the South Pacific Islander animist as far more than a “sober
cannibal” in the eyes of Ishmael. A studied, deliberate rearchiving
of the canon is afoot: hear the Mighty Shadow’s
Bassman speak in “Farrell”, declaring “I mean all of we connected
to the bass, connected like a pulse linking mother
and child, continent and island.” Each story in Now/After is
an object lesson in listening to secret rhythms.
Slave Old Man
by Patrick Chamoiseau, translated by Linda Coverdale
(The New Press, 176 pp, ISBN 9781620975886)
A runaway slave flees into a
densely thicketed wilderness,
with his plantation master’s
feral hellhound hot on his heels.
This is the plot of Martinican
Patrick Chamoiseau’s Slave Old
Man, translated from French
and Creole by Linda Coverdale
(for which the book received a
2019 French-American Foundation
Translation Prize). In
the ancient woodlands that
cradle the terrified, elderly
slave, “everything shivered shapeless, vulva dark, carnal
opacity, odours of weary eternity and famished life. The
forest interior was still in the grip of a millenary night.” Into
this world of densely compacted imageries Chamoiseau
steals us, guaranteeing that we are changed — our awareness
amplified — when we emerge on the other side of
such alchemical prose.
34 WWW.CARIBBEAN-BEAT.COM

Skin Can Hold
by Vahni Capildeo (Carcanet Press, 128 pp, ISBN
9781784107314)
Vahni Capildeo’s pen does more
than take no prisoners: it implicates
the reader with an intelligence
so searing you could fry
fish on its patina. Consider the
disgusted beautician in “Shame”,
who handles brown skin during
a waxing appointment with
a torturer’s cruelty: “The skin
was stripped and festered and /
purpled and scarred. The ancient
and worshipful triangle of mystery
/ became the record of an
intimate war.” Alongside this purposeful
rage — never reactionary, always a feat of polyglottal
blistering — lies true, invitational playfulness. Harnessing
the invocations of late Guyanese poet Martin Carter’s “I Am
No Soldier”, Capildeo presents “syntax poems” in response,
described as “rearrangeable elements for future experiments,”
best activated by bodies in motion. On your feet,
then, the syntax poems sing, dismantling the traditional
audience-speaker receivership of performed, and read,
poetry. There are revolutions to dingolay.
Gardening in Trinidad and Tobago:
Our Style
by Chancy Bachan-Moll (The Garden Club of Trinidad, 170
pp, ISBN 9789768255822)
Whether your thumb is
green, or you can’t cultivate
a cactus, there’s no denying
that a verdant world
blooms between the pages
of this more-than-a-coffee-table-book.
Founded
in 1993, the Garden Club
of Trinidad has spread its
modest tendrils, from
an intimate gathering of
friends growing greenery, to a bountiful organisation committed
to holistic preservation of T&T’s natural landscapes.
Even if the science of bromeliads and other plant families
eludes you, an evening of reflective contemplation spent
with Gardening in Trinidad and Tobago: Our Style has
the power to enliven, educate, and inspire. Every curated
garden photographed herein, be it modest or expansive, is
stunningly presented, with love glistening from each leaf.
Reviews by Shivanee Ramlochan, Bookshelf editor
Enter the World of Hardears
Jouvert Island. Home to flying buses
piloted by giant fish, defended by landships
— vessels built of ancestral memory:
here’s a realm where everything depends
on the essential life force called “vibez.”
It’s a world informed, and inhabited, by the
indisputably Caribbean. Here shines a contemporary
graphic novel series as ambitious
and fully realised as anything emerging from
larger metropolitan studios.
The world of Hardears is masterminded
by Barbados-based Beyond Publishing,
helmed by Matthew Clarke (creator/story/
art) and Nigel Lynch (story/script). Alongside
fellow creators Aguinaldo Belgrave and
Tristan Roach, who oversee other projects,
Beyond Publishing is on the frontlines of
what’s achievable in comic books of the
current era: these titles are as politically charged as they are
packed with feats of super heroism and special effects.
In Hardears Volumes 1 through 4, Jouvert Island braces
against a baleful anthropomorphised super storm, confronts
the corporate face of hyper-mechanised industrialisation,
and takes us into the clouds on the soaring wings of a landship,
piloted to the tattoo of tuk band music.
Our principal hero, Bolo, King of the Crop,
Champion of the Agri Guild, works stubbornly
to thwart the postcolonial power of
Mr Hardin, alongside resolute heroine Zahra.
There’s even a diminutive, tangerine-hued
animal sidekick, Duppy, last of the Barbados
Raccoons, who supplies picong and pithy
observances. From moko jumbies to stern
nautical empresses, Clarke and Lynch have
poured rapt, fascinated attention into the
Hardears world: a tradesman, speaking no
lines but magnificently bedizened, is given
perfectly calibrated room to cavort on the
page alongside a crafty, faceless villain.
These are islands made for multiple
memorable returns: it’s impossible not to
be compelled by this impeccably imagined
romp of a graphic novel. You’ll find that steeping yourself in its
pages produces ample vibez.
To order the Hardears series, visit
www.beyondpublishingcaribbean.com
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35

playlist
Global
Godwin Louis (Blue Room Music)
When wanderlust coincides with discovery, great
things can happen. When it is your job to travel
to perform, it should be your duty to discover
all that you are in the context of new vistas.
Saxophone sideman to the stars Godwin Louis
has travelled to over one hundred countries, and
focused his discovery on the history of African
and diaspora music across the world. His aptly
titled debut album Global, a two-CD package,
features “compositions that emerged out of
research that he performed in Africa and Latin
America on the music exported out of Africa, to
the rest of the world via the transatlantic slave
trade.” Audacious in scope, adept in execution,
this Haitian-American has compiled a record
featuring jazz syncopation that juxtaposes with
African rhythm and Latin American voices and
Antillean grooves, making this a testament to
the idea of connectedness in modern music. By
joining all the musical dots, Louis spiritually finds
his way home.
The Gospel of Romance
Stephen John (self-released)
The idea of love in modern popular music oftentimes
veers towards lust. Romance becomes
raunch, with a funky beat as the rhythm for tales of
“getting down.” Trinidadian contemporary gospel
singer Stephen John has decided that romance
must be the antithesis of that popular view, by
making a thoroughly contemporary-sounding
EP of love songs that play with the notion of love
as altruistic, sacred, and uplifting. “Patient, kind,
forgiving. / Sounds like love to me,” is a refrain
repeated in his “Overture” before John thanks
Jesus for his lady. And with that opening, we chart
the many ways love can be expressed by mere
mortals in awe of heavenly inspiration. With slick
production values and vocals that may remind
listeners of R&B crooner Maxwell, these songs
have an appeal beyond an audience in search of
divine reinforcement. With lyrics that juxtapose
practical and joyous attraction with admonitions
based on the Word, this EP resets the bar for love
songs. Desire and doctrine are one.
MDR
Jonathan Michel (Imani Records)
Haitian-American bassist Jonathan Michel calls
his debut album MDR “an entry into the world of
music as me. I think it’s a great representation.”
And with that declaration, Michel, along with
drummer Jeremy Dutton and vibraphonist Joel
Ross, plays trio-based jazz that becomes an
extension of the live gig scene this musician has
been a part of for much of his career. The album
touches on a range of genres that identify
with the Caribbean-born in the diaspora. Jazz,
spirituals, Haitian folk songs, R&B are all distilled
through that enhanced prism with small-unit
playing; bass and drum anchor a space for the
vibraphone to resonate. The bass is never far
away, and we hear why Michel is the leader on
this album, with the old Negro spiritual “Wade in
the Water” taking a frenetic spin in tandem with
the improvisations of the vibraphone. Fellow
Haitian child-of-the-diaspora Melanie Charles
adds her soul-inspired voice on the bookend
tracks.
Cimarrón
Josean Jacobo & Tumbao (E7 Studios)
Pianist Josean Jacobo has been heralded as
the “Ambassador of Afro-Dominican Jazz,”
and with that understanding, the listener must
negotiate a minefield of ideas and ideologies on
“Dominicanness” and the image of the island
as a tourist playground. On Cimarrón, Jacobo,
along with the band Tumbao — a unique combo
of two saxes, drums, and percussion — present
a solid interface of music born in the American
melting pot of New Orleans and traditional
folkloric rhythms from African-descended
natives of Hispaniola. His piano soars and floats
on the ten songs here, while the polyrhythms
of the hand drums and other percussion give
credence to a history of solid representation
of the music of African souls who have mingled
and transformed Spanish-derived sounds to
create what we today know as salve, congos,
bachata, and more. The language of jazz has
broadened in this context, and this album is a
distinctive beginning for new listeners.
Reviews by Nigel A. Campbell
36 WWW.CARIBBEAN-BEAT.COM

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screenshots
Courtesy Lisa Harewood
“Having many
tools only makes
my storytelling
stronger”
Love and seawater don’t mix, goes the Caribbean saying — a
reflection of the experiences of generations of economic
migrants and the ones they’ve often been forced to leave behind.
Love and Seawater is also the name of a new virtual-reality
project by Lisa Harewood, the latest in a series of works by the
Barbadian filmmaker on the often fraught issue of parental
separation by migration.
Harewood first approached this subject in
the acclaimed short fiction film Auntie (2013),
about a woman who must reckon with the day
when the child she has spent years caring for in
Barbados leaves to be reunited with her mother
in England. This was followed by Barrel Stories
(2015), a series of digital-audio testimonies from
people affected by economic migration — the
name comes from the shipping barrels filled with
goods sent back to the Caribbean as a means of
support for those left behind.
Harewood, who currently lives in London,
spoke with Jonathan Ali about Love and
Seawater and embracing new technology to
further her storytelling.
Is there something about the
medium that makes virtual reality
(VR) especially suited to this subject?
VR has some unique affordances. Some
of the people I’ve interviewed for Barrel
Stories have used the recordings they
made to start conversations with their
loved ones. So I wanted to extend that
and ask whether I could inspire more
conversations if I could literally have
you walk in a parent’s or child’s shoes as
they talk about what they went through
— getting barrels of goodies, parenting
through phone calls, the grind of working
several jobs to save up money for
immigration procedures, being cared
for by someone else. This is a piece of
work meant to bridge the experience
gap between Caribbean migrant parents
and their children.
What is working with VR like?
I came in as a sceptic. VR felt so far
removed from what I was doing. It’s also a
technology that isn’t widely distributed
and costs a lot to make, so there were
barriers to even trying it out. Fortuitously,
there was some research funding
available for new voices in VR. I was
encouraged to apply and was awarded
one of three commissions. I now believe
we have to really engage with new kinds
of technology to tell our stories, as
Caribbean people. We have to engage
with these tools so we can continue to
have ownership of our narrative.
How is Love and Seawater progressing,
and how will people be able to
access it when it’s done?
In June, we were selected to pitch the
project at the Sheffield Documentary
Festival. We then completed and
presented at a showcase in Bristol a
prototype of the first chapter of what
will ultimately be a three-chapter experience.
The feedback was very positive,
and we’re eager to do some user testing
with the Caribbean community here in
the UK before making a plan for building
out the full experience. We want to do
a library and community centre tour of
the piece, and we’ve designed it for one
of the relatively affordable VR headsets
to enable more people to access it.
Has working across different creative
forms — film, digital audio,
and now VR — endeared you to one
particular form?
Working in Barbados for most of my
career, I had to become a Jack-of-alltrades.
I used to see that as a weakness.
I didn’t even know what to call myself
professionally. But now I know that
having as many tools in my arsenal as
possible only makes my storytelling
stronger.
Are you interested in telling longerform
stories on this subject?
I see Barrel Stories as a database that
will constantly be replenished with new
material, and then as we sift through
that material it will be possible to extract
specific oral histories and give them a
longer treatment in other formats. But
at heart I’m a filmmaker. I would love to
do an observational documentary with
families currently separated or about to
be reunited. I’d love to show our resilience
in the face of the difficult physical
and emotional journey that so many
Caribbean people continue to make.
Find out more at
loveandseawater.com and
barrelstories.org
38
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cookup
A feast
for all
Divali, the festival of light and prosperity,
is celebrated by Hindus around the
world — and in the Caribbean. It’s a time
of hospitality and generosity, writes
Franka Philip, whether that means
welcoming friends and neighbours into
your home — or helping those affected
by catastrophe, like the devastating
floods in central and south Trinidad in
2018. And the joy of sharing good food
is at the heart of it all
Illustration by Shalini Seereeram
Trinidad and Tobago is a complex
and beautiful place. In our national
anthem, the standout line is
“where every creed and race find
an equal place.” Because of our
multicultural society, Trinidadians
are very embracing of traditions and celebrations
from different communities. One of the best
examples of this is Divali. This Hindu festival
celebrates the triumph of darkness over light, and
is a festival of renewal for Hindus all over the world,
and right here in T&T.
On the day before Divali, at offices and banks
across the nation, it’s normal to see employees of
all races wearing traditional Indian garb, and if
you’re lucky, there will be a service representative
at the door handing out bags of Indian sweet treats
to customers. One of the beautiful things about
Divali is the outpouring of love and generosity
shown by members of the Hindu community as
they welcome relatives and friends to their homes
on the holiday.
My first proper experience of Divali in a Hindu
household came in my mid-twenties, when I visited
my friend Ricky at his home in Penal in south
Trinidad. Not that I hadn’t had a traditional Indian
meal before, eaten with my hands from a banana
leaf — I’d experienced that at an Indian wedding—
but Divali was special, because of the spectacle of
the many illuminated deyas all around the house.
Ricky’s mother, a short, busy lady with twinkly
eyes and a welcoming smile, took pride in letting
us light some deyas, too, which we placed on a
handmade bamboo bird. Ricky’s mother had a
humble upbringing. but now that she had her own
family and a beautiful home, built after years of
hard work, she was happy to entertain friends and
family at a time when community and togetherness
come first.
My friends and I couldn’t help but notice the
scent of curry wafting from the kitchen. Admittedly,
I hadn’t eaten much that day, so I could
totally enjoy the epic meal that was in prospect.
“Our family takes Divali like Christians take
Christmas,” Ricky explained. “Since earlier, people
have been coming around to eat, and my parents
love it. Mummy also makes sweets for the temple,
and they give them out to kids and the people who
come to worship.”
I was amazed at the lavish spread that evening.
There were delicacies like samosas, saheena, and
baiganee to start. This was followed by a host of
delicious vegetarian dishes: tomato choka (smoked
tomato that’s mashed and served with fresh herbs
40 WWW.CARIBBEAN-BEAT.COM

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41

If you visit Trinidad in the days leading up
to Divali, you must visit the Divali Nagar, a
ten-day event that showcases the best of
Indo-Trinidadian culture. It’s a full-on experience,
because of the number of exhibits,
tents, and the sheer volume of people
there. Obviously, the lines are longest at the
food stalls, many of which sell freshly made
dishes — like legendary pepper roti.
As the name implies, pepper roti is
extremely spicy. But it’s not just about the
heat, it’s also bursting with flavour. This
type of roti is not widely available in commercial
roti shops — it’s generally found in
homes where mothers and aunties have the
special knack for cooking it.
Pepper roti dough is made to be stiffer,
with a texture akin to flaky paratha roti. One
round of dough is rolled out and covered
in a vegetable mix that includes mashed
potatoes, carrots, hot roasted peppers,
and pimento peppers, seasoned with garlic
and chadon beni. The vegetable mix is then
covered with a layer of grated cheddar
cheese and another rolled-out round of
dough is placed on top of that before the
whole thing is cooked on a hot tawah or
griddle. Making pepper roti is truly a labour
of love, and for some, the excitement of
seeing the cooks in action makes the long
wait for a slice of cheesy pepperiness truly
worthwhile.
like cilantro and parsley), curried spinach, pumpkin
(roasted, mashed, and generously seasoned
with geera and garam masala), curried chataigne
(a chestnut-like seed), curried channa, potato,
carailli (bitter melon), all served with silky paratha
roti and huge helpings of salad. As I was eating,
I wondered, is it just me or does eating with my
fingers from a banana leaf make the food taste
better and earthier?
Divali is meant to be an extremely happy event,
but there are times when circumstances
prevent that. Because the holiday occurs
during the rainy season, it’s not unusual for heavy
rains to affect the celebrations.
One of the beautiful things about Divali
in T&T is the outpouring of love and
generosity shown by members of the Hindu
community
In 2018, some parts of rural Trinidad were literally washed away when the
equivalent of a typical month’s rain fell over a three-day period just two weeks
before Divali. Many homes were extensively damaged, and some people lost
everything.
What happens then? In Penal, the Penal Debe Foundation, a community
group started by some civic-minded friends, was able to bring cheer to
families who were affected, with the aid of generous donations from the
public. “Our group is four years old. We are a group of friends who wanted
to do more for the community,” says Khemraj Seecharan, a member of the
foundation. “We’ve done various projects with schools and for people who
needed assistance.
“Where there were floods in 2017, we were first responders and we got
a lot of help, so it was no surprise when the devastation took place in 2018
that we would be there. The same people, plus more, donated to the cause,”
Seecharan explains. “For Divali, we recognised that many people were not
going to be able to cook, so we made meals that included buss up shut [paratha
roti], channa, pumpkin, and mango talkari.”
In addition to the food distributed on the day, the Penal Debe Foundation
organised a Divali celebration at the Bakal Recreation Ground, which was like
“an oasis” from the destruction of the floods. “We had the celebration in the
heart of the flooding, and did everything including food and sweets like kurma
and prasad. Over a thousand people came — we even had pepper roti. It was
well received,” Seecharan adds.
He explains that the celebration will take place again this year, but they’re
praying — of course — for no rain.
So in one celebration, you have the perfect demonstration of the Trinidadian
spirit of generosity, and a true triumph of light over the darkness of
catastrophe. n
The Penal Debe Foundation has partnered with the Living Water Community to help rebuild homes in their
community. So far, nine houses have been rebuilt. If you’re interested in assisting, visit their Facebook page for
more information: www.facebook.com/thepdf
42 WWW.CARIBBEAN-BEAT.COM

Immerse
courtesy kelly sinnapah mary
44 Closeup
The reinvention
of poetry: Dionne Brand
breaks through literary
boundaries
50 Snapshot
Racing for the hit:
T&T’s track star Machel
Cedenio
56 Portfolio
Riddles of survival:
the fairytale images of
Guadeloupean artist Kelly
Sinnapah Mary
Notebook of No Return, Jungle (photo montage, variable size, 2016), by Kelly Sinnapah Mary

closeup
The
reinvention
of poetry
For writer Dionne Brand — born in Trinidad and now
based in Canada — the shapeshifting, transgressive
possibilities of poetry are essential to understanding
the self, the world, history, and politics. Over a
forty-year career, she has pushed past boundaries
of convention and genre — creating something
“unparalleled,” writes Shivanee Ramlochan
Photography by Cole Burston
Don’t take it personally, but Dionne
Brand isn’t gushing to tell you her
life story.
The reason for this is its
own poetry. “My biography is
my books,” she tells me — and
anyone who’s read her, across multiple genres,
spanning decades of poetry, fiction, essays, and
hybrid forms, is nodding and saying yes. Her newest
books, The Blue Clerk: Ars Poetica in 59 Versos
and Theory, were launched on the same day in
September 2018. How’s that for prolific?
Both books are radical genre-defiers, challenging
a collective Western understanding of
what poetic and prose forms can offer. They are
audacious, shocking, and revealing in the best
possible way. Brand, who lives and works in
Ontario, Canada, has been publishing this kind of
work, writing woven with threads of the brightly
transgressive, since her first collection of poems,
Fore Day Morning, published in 1978.
Before all of these stories were written, a young
girl stood before a field blazing with bright orange
blooms in Guayaguayare, in Trinidad’s southeastern
county of Mayaro. Many Trinidadians would
be hard-pressed to tell you how to drive there, but
for Brand, the village’s urgency as a site of childhood
imagination has never faded. “I remember as
a kid walking from the house,” she says, “trying to
get to these heliconia flowers, this sea of orange,
repeatedly trying to walk towards it, never being
able to get there, getting halfway there and crying.”
When she returned to visit as a young woman, in
her twenties, a part of her, one rooted in her earliest
memories, was astonished at not being able to
locate that field of flowers. That heliconia orange
has “accrued significance as something unreachable,
but quite beautiful.”
44 WWW.CARIBBEAN-BEAT.COM

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45

A Dionne Brand dozen
A reading list of twelve key books from the many published by the author over the
past four decades:
Fore Day Morning: Poems (1978)
Winter Epigrams: &, Epigrams to Ernesto Cardenal in Defense of Claudia (1983)
No Language Is Neutral (1990)
Land to Light On (1997)
At the Full and Change of the Moon (1999)
A Map to the Door of No Return: Notes to Belonging (2001)
thirsty (2002), shortlisted for the 2003 Canadian Griffin Poetry Prize
What We All Long For (2005)
Ossuaries (2010), winner of the 2011 Canadian Griffin Poetry Prize
Love Enough (2014)
The Blue Clerk (2018), shortlisted for the 2019 Canadian Griffin Poetry Prize
Theory (2018), winner of the 2019 OCM Bocas Prize for Fiction
The writer took this blazing palette with her, departing
Trinidad at age seventeen for Canada, where she attended the
University of Toronto, graduating in 1975 with a BA in philosophy
and English. An MA in the philosophy of education from the
Ontario Institute for Studies in Education followed. Academia
has been one rudder by which Brand has steered her legendary
path: she is currently a professor at the School of English and
Theatre Studies at the University of Guelph, and her name is
invoked in scholarly circles with awe, frank admiration, and
more than a little starry-eyed wonder. If universities appointed
rock stars, Brand would command the stage with a six-string
guitar, pealing out poetry.
Why verse first? You feel this vivid poetic gaze at work
in Brand’s oeuvre, no matter the genre. In fact, poetry
called to her before anything else. Brand’s relationship
to the form is a bridge to how she began writing in other genres.
“I like its complexity, its unstillness, its forward momentum,” she
says of poetry, “its ability to shift you forward or backward, its
aggression. I love the aggression of poetry. Then I thought, can I
do that in any genre? Can I mean triply, plow forward and apply
an aggressive imprint to a page in any genre?”
The short answer: yes. The more circuitous response: look
to her living body of books, the place where she says all the
answers lie waiting. No matter the form, you will find worlds
within worlds, spaces of hunger and longing, sites of reclamation
and remembrance, oceans as ineffable as the seas lapping on
the Guayaguayare shore. Brand’s characters strive for an understanding
of the world that surpasses dictionary definitions: there
is no finer example of this than the character of Marie Ursule in
At the Full and Change of the Moon (1999), a woman radically committed
to the idea of her freedom, even in unspeakable bondage.
We first meet Marie Ursule in 1824, Trinidad, on the verge of
unfurling a quietly defiant mass suicide: a way to refuse slavery
at its rotten ideological core. As Brand tells me, this is Marie
Ursule saying, “If I can’t live in this world, then I won’t.” To trace
the genealogies of this warrior queen, Brand steeped herself in
research, in a profound examination of the archive. There she
found Thisbe, a Trinidadian enslaved woman who, at the point
of her execution by hanging in 1802, reportedly declared, “This
is but a drink of water to what I have already suffered.”
In Thisbe’s last, resolute drink of water, Brand’s Marie Ursule
was born. Archival research revealed, in details that rival all the
horrors of the imagination, how black people had the humanity
extracted out of them through the punishments and systems of
slavery. One example: a ball and chain around the leg for three
years, as disciplinary action against revolt. Brand knows anything
you can grotesquely imagine has been perpetrated against
the black self: there is fire in her eyes and a nearly combative
glee to the cast of her mouth when she says, “I don’t do black
spectacularity. I just don’t.”
“I like its complexity, its unstillness,
its forward momentum,” Dionne
Brand says of poetry, “its ability to
shift you forward or backward”
If this is one of the central covenants of Brand’s scholarship
and activism, then it has served her writing well. The prizebestowing
academies all think so. Brand has won Canada’s
Governor General’s Award for Poetry, the Pat Lowther Award,
the City of Toronto Book Award, the Harbourfront Festival
Prize, the Griffin Poetry Prize, and holds honorary degrees from
Thorneloe University and the University of Windsor. Earlier this
year, she received the OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature
in the Fiction category, for Theory; the Trillium Book Award, for
46 WWW.CARIBBEAN-BEAT.COM

The Blue Clerk; and the Blue Metropolis Violet Prize, given in
celebration of an established LGBTQ+ writer’s career. Yet these
laurels aren’t quite what Dionne Brand is after. They don’t define
the anatomy of her days at the writing desk, and there is nothing
of the formulaic in them.
Just ask her if she’s ever written odes for the newborn
babies of Canadian politicians, during her three-year tenure as
Toronto’s third Poet Laureate, and gales of laughter will greet
you. Instead, Brand focused on bringing poetry to the working,
breathing world of the everyday, with a project called Poetry is
Public is Poetry. In an address given to mark the first permanent
pavement installation of a poem by Rosemary Sullivan, Brand
said, “Poetry beautifies public space, pays respect to the intelligence
of the citizenry, gives respite from the grind of daily
living, and engages the city’s humanistic ideals.” Cast in bronze,
embedded in the sidewalk leading to the Cedarbae Branch of the
Toronto Public Library, Sullivan’s lines read: “a man packed a
country / in a suitcase with his shoes / and left.”
Consider this: there is poetry pulsing under your very feet, if
you walk through Toronto, and Dionne Brand was pivotal
in putting it there. It’s a vital sign of Brand’s preoccupation
with the city, a relationship as loving and symbiotic as a house
built with adoration and concern.
Her novels What We All Long For (2005) and Love Enough
(2014) offer the reader dynamic, unsettled (and therefore
unsettling), imaginatively robust characters contending with
themselves and each other throughout Toronto. Anyone who
considers Toronto nebulous in the global literary imagination
will find it mapped with a living curiosity here. Better still, Brand
seats everyone at the table: people of First Nations communities,
immigrants, refugees, queer citizens, alongside everyone.
Brand’s work recognises that they are everyone, too.
Ferocious inclusivity articulates Brand’s politics and life
in activism. You couldn’t separate this political animus from
Brand’s work if you tried — in every genre, her commitment to
her peoples, her places, would shun any smaller analysis. Brand
returned to the Caribbean in 1983 to serve on the intellectual
and corporeal frontlines of the Grenada Revolution, as information
and communications officer for the Agency for Rural Transformation.
Upon her return to Canada, critics noted a sea swell
in her poems, published in Winter Epigrams: &, Epigrams to Ernesto
Cardenal in Defense of Claudia (1983). The language seemed to
spark off the page, to incandesce. As a teacher, community
Poetry called to her before anything
else. Brand’s relationship to the
form is a bridge to how she began
writing in other genres
organiser, and radical animator, Brand’s language has continued
to fan flames, and generate them, enveloping generations of
students, activists, mentees, and readers. As the St Lucia-born,
Ontario-based poet Canisia Lubrin says, “Dionne Brand is just
the greatest magician of language to me.”
It takes intentional, muscular crafting, to be certain, to release
two books on the same day — and to have both those books be
extraordinary, perched on the vanguard of the literary possible.
Shazia Hafiz Ramji, writing for the Hamilton Review of Books, says
of Theory that “Brand has continued to reinvent herself while
staying true to an uncompromising vision that gestures towards
the potency of the novel in the real world.” Ramji’s right: at every
page turn of Theory, I felt I was reading a new form, generating
itself. Teoria, the intellectually brilliant, interpersonally challenged
narrator of the book, is often stumped by “love’s austere
and lonely offices,” to channel Robert Hayden.
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47

The difficult processes through which Teoria comes to
a series of understandings — about her three very different
women lovers, about her unwieldy thesis — every stage of this
journey, was an intentional mapping. “It has to be her judging
herself. She had to be self-aware, but she also had to fail,” says
Brand, adding, “The actual thesis needed to layer itself in, too.
It’s like kneading flour, like kneading a dhalpuri. I enjoyed
writing that, incredibly, because she was so ridiculous, and so
smart. Each of the chapters became a kind of theory and then
the academic work became layered atop of it.” Brand pauses,
then concludes her thought, saying, “To approach a new book is
to approach a new method — not to repeat, but to reinvent the
shape — so too with poetry.”
The Blue Clerk is precisely that — a remodelling of the poetic
form. Brand doesn’t claim to have invented the essay poem
form, but the unmistakable spirit of an archival ingenuity powers
it. Certainly, the Trillium Book Award jury citation isn’t shy
in crowning Brand a trailblazer for what she’s made here: “At
once an epic poem, polemic, fragmentary novel, creation story,
and grimoire, The Blue Clerk suggests an entirely new literary
48 WWW.CARIBBEAN-BEAT.COM

Dionne Brand at home
in Toronto
Ferocious inclusivity
articulates Brand’s politics
and life in activism. You
couldn’t separate this
political animus from her
work if you tried
form, a magnificent literary achievement.” In this book, a
sustained and complicated, complicating conversation between
two personae unfurls. One, the blue clerk, keeps a ledger in
minutiae of everything the second persona — the author — has
collected. The clerk functions as shadow curatrix, as restless
and hypervigilant accounts notary: in her own words, “I am the
clerk, overwhelmed by the left-hand pages. Each blooming quire
contains a thought selected out of many reams of thoughts and
stripped by me, then presented to the author.”
Composing The Blue Clerk began in 2012. Brand says she
swiftly realised “It’s my work. It’s what I’ve
been collecting.” Despite her own adherence to
blistering candour in her poetry, Brand found that
the project of mapping the clerk and her author
exacted a ruthless, often painful honesty beyond
what she had known. The project of the clerk is
to expose the author-poet, who burdens the clerk
with constant raw material, then charges her with
keeping everything, everything, everything. Brand
says, “It was quite the fight in my own head, leaving
the verse not smoothed and raw, leaving it unspoken.
The book was difficult to lay out and difficult
to finish.” There was urgency, too, in ending The
Blue Clerk with a prime number — the 59 Versos
of the subtitle — which required an engineering
of specific mathematics, atop the book’s already
remarkable form. It succeeds, in all its coruscating
ambition — math and metaphysics dovetailing to
create something unparalleled in poetry.
Yet Brand’s gaze is not, one senses, driven by
the celebration of her ego. She’s too busy being
hungry for more work, more poems, to bask in
her own glow. In 2017, she was appointed poetry editor for
McClelland and Stewart, the venerable Canadian publishing
house. Her eye is trained to the rise of other voices, not hers. Of
her acquisition ethic, she says, “My hope is to bring a bunch of
new voices representative of living now. There is a real chorus
of people talking into the world we’re living in.” These are the
current and future biographies of others, their lives and the lives
of their subjects, laid out in poems. In Brand’s hands, they will be
much more than safe. Under her unflinching stewardship, they
will be allowed to remain dangerous. n
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49

snapshot
Roger Sedres/Shutterstock.com
50 WWW.CARIBBEAN-BEAT.COM

Racing
for the
hit
He shares a name with
T&T’s soca superstar, but
athlete Machel Cedenio
has more than a claim to his
own fame. After anchoring
T&T’s winning team at the
2019 World Relays event in
an astonishing “finish for the
ages,” the twenty-threeyear-old
400-metre specialist
is heading into September’s
World Athletics Championships
with a hunger for gold. And his
mental preparation is as rigorous
as his physical training, reports
Sheldon Waithe
“A finish for the ages,” said the
commentators: Machel Cedenio
on the final leg of the men’s
4x400-metre event at the 2019
World Relays championship in
Yokohama, Japan
London Stadium, August 2017. The hallowed lanes paved
with greatness at the 2012 Summer Olympics are once
again being bestowed with glory, as the stadium hosts the
World Athletics Championships.
As ever, the very last event is the men’s 4x400-metre
relay final; as ever, the USA are red-hot favourites to
add to their medal tally in the discipline. But while the Americans have
unparalleled dominance in the relay, Trinidad and Tobago also has an
uncanny pedigree, dating back to the 1950s and represented now by a
quartet that does that lineage proud.
Two short years earlier, the T&T team secured gold at the Pan Am
Games in Toronto, when their youngest member — already with a silver
medal from the individual 400-metre event — turned on his trademark
after-burners in the final stretch, and took T&T from also-rans to champions.
For good measure, two weeks later he anchored the relay team to a silver
medal at the 2015 World Athletics Championships in Beijing. Now that man
— Machel Cedenio — and his three teammates, are seeking to go one step
higher on the winners’ podium.
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51

Roger Sedres/Shutterstock.com
Cedenio with teammate
Jereem Richards, after winning
the 4x400-metre race at the
2019 World Relays
The USA leads comfortably from the very beginning, until
T&T’s Jereem Richards and then Cedenio close the gap, to
place Lalonde Gordon in a position to do the unthinkable and
beat the Americans. As Gordon disappears under two of his
countrymen in the wild abandonment of celebration, Cedenio’s
face is the epitome of initial shock, requiring an answer to his
probable question: did this really just happen? It soon wears
off and he joins the celebrations,
now blissfully aware that this is
the latest addition to a long line of
achievements in his brief twentyone
years.
Cedenio is purpose-built
for his profession: he has
the classic rangy make-up
of the one-lap specialist, with a
relaxed attitude reflected in an easy-looking stride which belies
the incredible amount of work being converted into raw speed.
You’d be hard-pressed to find a photo of him grimacing from
the effort of catching and passing competitors. He displays
none of the facial antics commonly equated with supreme focus
among world-class athletes. You could say he is somewhere in
the middle of the athlete attitude spectrum, but it’s more likely
that Machel Cedenio is completely relaxed on the track simply
Machel Cedenio is completely
relaxed on the track simply
because he knows it is exactly
where he belongs
because he knows it is exactly where he belongs. It is “home.”
Familiarity allows for calm, and Cedenio has been acquainted
with victory on a rising scale since the age of fifteen, when — like
so many Caribbean track and field stars — he burst through
to prominence with gold-medal performances at the Carifta
Games. The fuse was lit. “At that point, I thought, I have some
talent, maybe I should stick with this sport,” Cedenio recalls.
“When I first started, I used to
run the 100 metres, but I used to
come fourth or fifth. But the first
national team I made was for the
400, so from there I realised it was
my event.”
Natural progression saw him
expand his regional tally at the
Junior Central American and
Caribbean Championships before
stamping his authority globally with the big one: the individual
400-metre title at 2014’s World Junior Championships. By now, it
was evident that he needed to further his potential in the unofficial
athletic finishing school that is the US track and field circuit.
“After secondary school,” he says, “my parents and coach [Lance
Braumann] decided that we will dedicate everything to running.”
Moving to Orlando, he continued to blossom as part of
Braumann’s training group, and set his sights on senior titles.
52 WWW.CARIBBEAN-BEAT.COM

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53

Richard Heathcote/Getty Images
Lalonde Gordon, Machel Cedenio,
Jereem Richards, and Jarrin Solomon
on the winners’ podium at the 2017
World Athletics Championships in
London
Despite concerns about living away from his family, Cedenio
made a seamless transition into the senior ranks. He was still
only twenty years old when the Rio Olympics came along, so the
emphasis — according to observers, at least — was on gaining
experience. But Cedenio took to the competition with a zest that
saw him into the 400-metre final, only to finish just out of the medals
in fourth place as the winner broke the world record. With his
scintillating form, he joined his relay companions in the continued
search for precious metal. Then, disaster. T&T were disqualified
for stepping outside their lane in their very first heat. The 2016
Olympic dream was over, representing the first real setback of
Cedenio’s career.
The twin aspects of family support and deep patriotism
remain entrenched in his psyche and, aligned to his work ethic,
make the Point Fortin man even hungrier for success. When the
Trinidad and Tobago Olympic Committee launched a campaign
for ten Olympic gold medals by the year 2024 (#10Golds24),
Cedenio was the first athlete to pledge his dedication to the
cause. “I’m working every day to help achieve this goal for my
country,” he said. Reinforcing that he’s acutely aware of what
it takes to get to the top, he portrayed his viewpoint with the
clichéd “You’re only as good as your last race,” before adding his
own mantra: “I don’t believe in days off.”
Cedenio’s composure may have its roots in his relationship
with his greatest supporters, his family. He speaks
regularly about the need to get back to T&T to spend time
with them. “I’m close to both my parents and my three sisters,” he
says. “Any time something goes bad in track and field, I go to my
mom or God, and it ends up all being good.”
That support was crucial when Cedenio experienced the
negative side of celebrity in late 2018, as he was called in by
the police for questioning over a road accident in Tobago, being
cleared once the investigation was completed. He took umbrage
at the media’s reporting of the incident, releasing a social media
comment: “They were happy to report I walked into a police
station with my lawyer for questioning
etc, but they weren’t as eager to report
I walked out uncharged with a clear
name.” It marked the end of a troublesome
year, with no medals at the 2018
Commonwealth Games and injury forcing
him out of the CAC Games. It was time to
rebound.
In his own words, “If you lose, it’s not a reason to give up, it’s
a reason to go forward.” Which is exactly what Cedenio has done
in 2019, with a slew of steady performances that culminated in
a performance dubbed “the run of his life” at the World Relays
In his own words, “If you lose, it’s not
a reason to give up, it’s a reason to
go forward.” Which is exactly what
Cedenio has done in 2019
event in Yokohoma, Japan, this past May. The USA once again
had a commanding lead, with T&T in third place as Cedenio
was handed the baton on the final leg. Amazingly, he closed the
seemingly impossible gap to catch his American opponent on
the line by the smallest of margins. Commentators were floored:
“Cedenio with a finish for the ages!”
Now twenty-three years old and entering the peak years of an
athlete, Cedenio faces a crucial stepping-stone — the 2019 IAAF
World Championships in Doha — towards the one medal missing
from his collection: Olympic.
The Pan Am Games in Peru this past August brought a
setback. Cedenio stopped before the line in the individual 400
metres, feeling the onset of cramp. In the relay, he was neck and
neck with his Colombian counterpart and about to turn on those
trademark afterburners when he inexplicably faded to third place.
The reserved Cedenio offered no explanation, but there are bigger
targets on the immediate horizon, with Doha looming. There’s
enough time for Cedenio to tweak things before lining up on his
favourite hunting ground at the World Championships.
“Going up on the podium and hearing the national anthem,
that’s when it really hit me,” Cedenio said after his two World
titles. Prepare to be hit again, Machel. n
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55

portfolio
Riddles of
survival
Scenes of otherworldly
violence often occur in the
work of Guadeloupean artist
Kelly Sinnapah Mary, with a
fairytale quality that mingles
cruelty and enchantment.
As Shereen Ann Ali learns,
these riddling images explore
dismembered identities in a
world shaped by colonialism
— as well as the selfreinvention
that allows both
resistance and survival
Photography courtesy Kelly Sinnapah Mary
Braided cloth, flowered bedsheets, stuffed cushions — these are
the unlikely materials from which Kelly Sinnapah Mary makes
art. She combines such soft, “feminine” crafting materials and
surreal, subversive techniques to raise hard issues: the reality
of violence against women, for instance, or institutionalised
violence against colonised cultures. What do such invasive
experiences of domination do to the people who must endure them? How have
people changed themselves in order to survive?
These themes sound heavy indeed, but the range of Sinnapah Mary’s
approaches makes her art a constant adventure. Born in Guadeloupe in 1981,
the descendant of Indian indentured labourers, the artist embraces her own
ethnic heritage, sexuality, love of crafting, and keen sense of social injustice
to make art objects, installations depicting mini-worlds, and two-dimensional
images which often have unexpected science fiction or fairy tale echoes. She
paints, draws, takes photographs, makes occasional videos, and also enjoys
sewing up a storm of handmade objects with appliqued graffiti and drawn or
collaged symbols, as she lets her imagination loose on ideas.
With degrees in visual art from the prestigious
Université Toulouse-Jean Jaurès (2004) and from
the University of the French West Indies and
Guiana in Martinique (2005), Sinnapah Mary has
shown her work widely. The list of exhibitions
includes her provocative 2012 show Vagina at
Galerie T&T in Guadeloupe; the 2014 group show
Caribbean: Crossroads of the World at the Pérez Art
Museum in Miami; the 2015 show Field Notes at the
Museum of Contemporary African Diaspora Arts
(MoCADA) in downtown Brooklyn; the 2017 show
The Expansion of Fantasies at the Maelle Gallerie in
Paris; and most recently Present Passing: South by
Southeast, presented by the Osage Foundation in
Hong Kong this year.
She works mostly in a dedicated studio, but
says sometimes she also likes to make art at home
— “Because I like hearing my son play and talk in
the background.” She also listens to music as she
creates — right now she’s into Haitian-Canadian
DJ Kaytranada, she says.
“When I was a child, I always liked drawing,
doodling characters from tales or cartoons: Mickey,
Donald, Goldilocks, Cinderella,” says Sinnapah
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Notebook of No Return,
Land Owner (drawing on
paper, 2017)
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57

Detail of installation Notebook of No Return,
Alice & Goliath (painting on tapestry, wooden
bench, and fabric knots on wall, 2019)
Mary, in an email interview translated from her native French. “I could also
spend hours and hours colouring. My mother liked working directly with cloth:
she was a seamstress, and I think I inherited this hands-on approach from her.”
One of her grandfathers was a Hindu priest. All her grandparents followed
both Hinduism and Catholicism, as many Indian families did in Guadeloupe,
says Sinnapah Mary, but her own parents became Jehovah’s Witnesses and
were uninterested in Indian diaspora issues. As Sinnapah Mary grew up, she
gradually realised that both Afro- and Indo-Caribbeans are victims of a terrible
uprooting, and this consciousness would help shape her future art.
Her artworks today involve subtle or graphic statements and visual
stories that can be a bit like puzzles or riddles: you have to experience
them and take the time to decode them. That is not to say that many
of her pieces don’t have an immediate visceral power: just look at the animal-
As Kelly Sinnapah Mary grew up, she
realised that both Afro- and Indo-
Caribbeans are victims of a terrible
uprooting, and this consciousness would
help shape her future art
istic image of a hairy mother cradling a newborn
(a photo-drawing collage from Hot Milk 2), which
seems bestially primeval, or the macabre images
of a long-haired, faceless woman with a huge redcushioned
open maw where her face should be, part
of the 2013–14 Vagina installation.
The scary Vagina woman-monster-mouth
image may remind some people of the 1990s
X-Files character the Flukeman, a genetic humanworm
mutant who evolved from human pollution,
living in sewers and eating people to survive and
breed. Sinnapah Mary succeeds in creating her
own unique interpretation of the monstrous: a
cushioned red mouth orifice suggests both the
vulnerability of female apertures and the dangers
of woman unleashed, who may swallow you whole
if you’re not careful.
What inspired that red-mouthed figure was
Sinnapah Mary’s deeply felt reaction to the brutal
2012 gang rape and death of a twenty-three-yearold
woman named Jyoti Singh Pandey by a gang of
men on a bus in Delhi, which made international
headlines and sparked public protests in India
58 WWW.CARIBBEAN-BEAT.COM

that year. Sinnapah Mary’s art in the wake of this
horrendous crime became a meditation on rape,
resistance, and the mutation of assaulted bodies
and psyches into ghoulish personas and sometimes
monstrous survival strategies.
Sinnapah Mary’s creative process often begins
with reading literary works, and then proceeds
to a series of sketches as she fleshes out
her ideas. At the time of this interview, she’s busy
reading books by V.S. Naipaul and James Baldwin.
“I am very influenced by Caribbean literature,”
she explains. “For example, in the series Notebook
of No Return” — a 2018 installation — “I’d been
reading about transcultural concepts as expressed
in ‘Coolitude’ by the French Mauritian poet Khal
Torabully, as well as ideas on the Négritude
movement as expressed by Aimé Césaire. Both
writers addressed themes of oppression.”
Sinnapah Mary often uses photo-editing and
collage approaches to help in composing her paintings, doing a series of tests
before committing to the final work. She works on several projects simultaneously,
with inspiration coming from anywhere at all: “Anything can inspire me:
a book, a meeting, an odour, a sensation, a movie . . .”
There is a fairytale quality of magical enchantment and cruel brutality to
some of Sinnapah Mary’s work. In Notebook of No Return, one painting depicts
a mysterious, somewhat zombie-like young woman in a ballooning white
colonial-era dress with her arms and feet cut off, against a painted background
of soft feathery leaves. Strange white spikes grow from her skin.
This image of severed limbs and a spiky body is disturbing: it’s gory, but
can also suggest other kinds of dismemberment, such as the cutting up of
women’s identities, or the cultural amputations of Indian migrants to the
Caribbean, who must keep some parts of themselves, lop off other bits, and
grow new body-armours in their struggle to adapt and create new identities
in alienating new lands.
“Yes, there is both the idea of enchantment and brutality in this work,”
says Sinnapah Mary, referring to the group exhibition Désir Cannibale —
which ran in mid-2018 at the Fondation Clément in Martinique — in which
her dismembered spiky women featured in her Notebook of No Return to a
Native Land works. The title of this series references Martinican writer Aimé
This image of severed
limbs and a spiky body is
disturbing: it’s gory, but can
also suggest other kinds of
dismemberment, such as
the cutting up of women’s
identities
Left Detail of Vagina
(sewing and embroidery on
cushion, 2014)
Above The artist at work
in her studio
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59

Paintings from Notebook of No Return (acrylic on canvas, 100 x 100 cm, 2018).
Courtesy of Fondation Clement, Martinique
Césaire’s celebrated 1939 poem Cahier d’un retour
au pays natal (Journal of a Homecoming), about the
cultural identity of black Africans in a colonial
setting. Sinnapah Mary sees some commonalities,
and says for Indians in the Caribbean, there was no
real going back to any ancestral home.
She explains that her spiky amputated women
figures are indeed mutated selves: they shed
or moult old skin to make way for new growth,
essential to the rebirth of Indian emigrants in their
adopted lands: “The spikes on their skin are like
the quills of sea urchins. These women are marked
with traces of the crossing of the waters and the
curse of the black waters of the Kala Pani” —
cursed to perpetual wandering.
Some of Mary’s Notebook of No Return images
evoke a primordial, even cannibalistic quality in
order to defy “the violent intentions of the colonial
insult,” as Trinidadian-Canadian writer Andil
Gosine notes in an article on her work. “Sinnapah
Mary creates visual images which both assert
the presence of an underrepresented people and
reveal the spaces in which pleasure and violence
are simultaneously generated and entwined.” The
hint of cannibalism also recalls the Brazilian modernist
poet Oswald de Andrade’s 1928 Manifesto
Antropófago, advancing a playful theory of cultural
cannibalism: the New World must eat up the creations
of the Old World, digest them, and transform
them to create its own reality.
Another intriguing motif in Sinnapah Mary’s
work is a long skein of plaited hair. In one series
of black and white drawings, all the images
are formed from hair. Sinnapah Mary says this
references survival mechanisms of indentured
Indians who encountered deplorable working
conditions on French plantations. For most,
there was no question of a return to a former
home, to a motherland, or to former notions of
“purity”: “They had to rebuild their identity in
the global context of French, Caribbean, African,
and Indian cultures.”
So in the plaiting together of different strands
of hair, Sinnapah Mary finds an apt visual
metaphor for how Indian diaspora people had
to reconstruct and weave together new realities
and creolised identities from whatever was
available to them in these new landscapes — and
an equally apt metaphor for those Caribbean artists,
like herself, who create bold, unforgettable
images exploring these elements of personal and
collective history. n
60 WWW.CARIBBEAN-BEAT.COM

ARRIVE
Caledonia/Alamy Stock Photo
62 Explore
Jamaica on the road
72 Neighbourhood
Otrobanda, Curaçao
74 Destination
Five days in Barbados
82
Bucket List
Rainforests of Suriname
On the wild east coast of Barbados, Atlantic breakers meet limestone cliffs

explore
Jamaica
on the road
Almost 150 miles from Negril in the west to Morant Point
in the east, Jamaica is an island of mountains and lush
valleys, rivers and forests, sheer cliffs and gentle coasts.
And the best way to explore it is a road trip. Whether
you’re based in bustling Kingston or a laid-back north
coast resort, assemble some friends, grab a car, pull up a
map, and head out on an adventure on the road
62
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Said to have been first
planted in the seventeenth
century, Bamboo Alley in
St Elizabeth Parish
stretches for two and a half
miles between the villages of
Lacovia and Middle Quarters
— a sun-dappled tunnel of
green along the road to the
south coast
Uliana Bazar/Alamy Stock Photo
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Jon Arnold Images Ltd/Alamy Stock Photo
64 WWW.CARIBBEAN-BEAT.COM

A fresh coconut from
a roadside fruit stall —
like this one in St Mary
Parish — is the best
thirst-quencher on a
long country drive
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Limestone cliffs
mark Jamaica’s
westernmost tip,
close to Negril
Ian Dagnall/Alamy Stock Photo
66 WWW.CARIBBEAN-BEAT.COM

Montego Bay
Ocho Rios
Negril
Hanover
Westmoreland
St James
Trelawny
St Ann
St Mary
Bamboo
Alley
St Elizabeth
Manchester
Clarendon
St Catherine
St Andrew
Portland
St Thomas
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67

The view is all green
on the drive through
the hills of St Ann
Parish
Scott Kemper/Alamy Stock Photo
68 WWW.CARIBBEAN-BEAT.COM

No
better
dan
yard
A colourful new mural at
Kingston’s Norman Manley
International Airport,
commissioned by Caribbean
Airlines, celebrates Jamaican
culture and travel
From left: Caribbean Airlines Director Zachary
Harding; Caribbean Airlines Executive Manager
Marketing & Loyalty, Alicia Cabrera; Joe
Bogdanovich, CEO, Downsound Entertainment,
owner and producer of Reggae Sumfest; and
Caribbean Airlines CEO Garvin Medera
The warmth, energy, and defining personality of Jamaica and the humorous side of
travel are captured bigger than life size in a new mural at Kingston’s Norman Manley
International Airport, commissioned by Caribbean Airlines and unveiled on 1 July,
2019. Located in the departure concourse of the airport, the fourteen-panel mural
was designed by up-and-coming Jamaican illustrator George Hay.
Featuring Hay’s signature cartoon illustration style, the mural spans 3,600 square
feet and depicts the Jamaican experience from three perspectives: resident Jamaicans,
visitors, and the many Jamaicans who live abroad and for whom Jamaica is
home. “No weh no better dan yard,” declares one panel: there’s no place like home.
“This mural is a grand canvas celebrating a few of the signature elements that
make Jamaica special,” said Caribbean Airlines Chief Executive Officer Garvin
Medera, speaking at the unveiling, “showcasing moments that everyone, whether
born here or abroad, will love. This masterful work reflects the core of the Jamaican
Identity, which is integral to our Caribbean Identity, and we are pleased to share
George’s masterpiece with the world.”
“I am honoured to have been a part of this project,” said the artist. “As a proud
Jamaican and Caribbean national, it gave me great joy to team up with Caribbean
Airlines to showcase to the world these illustrative views into our culture and Caribbean
lifestyles.”
A graduate of Kingston’s Edna Manley College of the Visual and Performing Arts,
Hay is also considered one of Jamaica’s best animators, and is a multiple award
winner at Kingstoon, Kingston’s cartoon and animation festival. The Kingston airport
mural is his most prominent work to day — every passenger flying out of the airport
will experience Hay’s images as they head to the departure gates. It makes for a
colourful farewell — and an invitation to return.
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Fresh water meets
salt near Ocho Rios
on the north coast, as
a small river plunges
into the crystal sea
National Geographic Image Collection/Alamy Stock Photo
Caribbean Airlines operates daily return flights to Norman Manley International Airport in Kingston and Sangster
International Airport in Montego Bay from destinations in the Caribbean and North America
70 WWW.CARIBBEAN-BEAT.COM

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71

neighbourhood
Danita Delimont / Alamy Stock Photo
Gail Johnson/Shutterstock.com
Juan Camilo Jaramillo/Shuuterstock.com
Otrobanda,
Curaçao
The “other side” of Curaçao’s capital, across the
harbour from Punda, may be the island’s most
vibrant, historic, and arts-focused area
History
Willemstad, founded in 1634 by Dutch colonists,
began as a settlement on a small promontory,
today known as Punda. By the eighteenth
century, as the population swelled, Willemstad’s
residents began building houses across St Anna
Bay, and the district of Otrobanda — Papiamento
for “the other side” — was born. Connected to
Punda by the landmark floating Queen Emma
Bridge since 1888, Otrobanda has become the
buzzier half of Curaçao’s capital, known for its
arts scene and restored historic buildings.
seasoned artists to send messages of love for their
city. Today, concerted restoration projects have
made Otrobanda almost as neat and polished as
Punda across the bay, but the neighbourhood’s
informal art scene still thrives. Look out for stunning
murals depicting nature, political satire, and
even thought-provoking philosophical questions,
as you explore the streets and blocks.
Living art
Curaçao’s street art movement took off in the
1980s, following the growing popularity of graffiti
art in the United States and Europe. At the
time, Otrobanda was not the most picturesque of
areas, but its many abandoned walls and lonely
alleyways offered a canvas for both young and
Gail Johnson/Shutterstock.com
72
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Breedestraat
Don’t be confused by Willemstad’s multiple Breedestraats. “Broad
Street,” as the name translates in English, refers to a main shopping
avenue. Otrobanda’s Breedestraat isn’t occupied by famous
international names like Punda’s — here you’ll find local businesses,
restaurants, and family-run hotels housed in picturesque nineteenthand
early-twentieth-century buildings, offering crafts and local fashion.
Explore them for a more intimate look at Curaçao’s everyday life. Some
of the smaller establishments are the size of closets, yet hold so much
character — from the people who run them to the patrons who visit.
Green rum?
Curaçao takes its liquor very seriously: much time and effort are
devoted to concocting some of the most unusual drinks in the Caribbean.
Blue Curaçao — with its vivid turquoise hue and orange flavour
— is a world-famous cocktail staple, but it has a local rival with an
equally vivid colour and growing popularity. On Otrobanda’s Breedestraat
is a hole-in-the-wall establishment with a special reputation.
The Netto Bar (opened in 1954) is where you’ll find the notorious Rom
Berde — green rum. Yes, green. Very sweet, sickly green, potion-like,
and a hit with both locals and visitors. But what makes this drink so
special and gives it this startling colour? The recipe is strictly confidential,
bringing bold tipplers back for more.
Courtesy Curaçao Tourism Board
Pawel Courtesy Kazmierczak/Shutterstock.com
Curaçao Tourism Board
Back in time
Shopping, art, proximity to beaches — Otrobanda has all of those, but can
also offer a — sometimes sobering — history lesson, via two of Curaçao’s
most important museums, the Kura Hulanda and Rif Fort. Both tell stories of
maritime warfare and the enslavement of Africans on colonial plantations,
which shaped present-day
Curaçao.
On display at the Kura
Hulanda Museum are chilling
artifacts of the slavery era, such
as chains, torture implements,
and model ships. Other galleries
explore the broader context
of Caribbean, American, and
African history, making them
one of the best exhibits of the
region’s colonial past, and
a vital educational tool for
islanders and visitors alike.
Nearby Rif Fort — which translates as “Reef Fort” — is located at the
entrance of St Anna Bay and the Otrobanda quarter. In 1828, King
William I of the Netherlands ordered the fort’s construction, as part
of a restoration of the island’s defences. During the Second World
War, outfitted with machine guns, it protected the island from
enemy vessels. Later the fort turned into a police station, and in
its present incarnation it houses a popular shopping mall within its
historic stone walls.
Head out
When you’re ready to explore the rest of
Curaçao, the island’s beaches are obvious
day-trip goals, but for a deeper experience,
plunge into the quiet mystery of the Grotten
van Hato —the Hato Caves — north
of Willemstad near the airport. These
300,000-year-old rock formations have been
a popular site with visitors since they opened
to the public in 1991. The millenia-long erosion
of coral limestone by salt water created
these impressive caverns, which were once
used by indigenous Amerindians for shelter
and later as a place of refuge by escapees
from Curaçao’s colonial slave plantations.
On the glittering cave walls are petroglyphs
of animals long extinct, and among the stalactites
and stalagmites your guide will point
out fanciful “faces” and shapes of all kinds.
Coordinates
12.1° N, 68.9° W
Sea level
CURAÇAO
Caribbean Airlines operates two return flights weekly to Curaçao
International Airport from Trinidad, with connections to other
destinations in the Caribbean and North and South America
Otrobanda
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73

destination
Five days
in Barbados
Barbados may be world-famous for its beaches, for good reason, but
there’s much more to this island than brilliant blue water and shimmering
white sand. Shelly-Ann Inniss suggests a five-day itinerary to explore the
twenty-one by fourteen miles of Bim — ranging from hills and gullies to
deep underground, and then some
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Courtesy Barbados Tourism Marketing Inc
Forget the reputation for being laid-back: time never seems to stand still in Barbados. Just when you think all the items are checked
off your action-packed travel itinerary, another eye-catching adventure appears. This island east of the Caribbean chain is proof
that good things come in small packages, with one exciting activity after another invoking happiness at a supersonic rate. And with
a bit of planning, you can cram a month of thrills into an action-packed week.
Day one
Start by getting to know the landscapes, wildlife, and overall
essence of the island the old-fashioned way: on foot. Long walks
on the beach are one thing, but hiking up the steep hills of
Barbados’s east coast, or through the rivers and gullies, or along
the old train line, is hardcore. The island is predominantly flat,
compared to its neighbours, but the right hike can be both challenging
and very enjoyable. Hackleton’s Cliff in St Joseph Parish
rises to approximately one thousand feet above sea level, and the
summit offers luscious views, from Pico Tenerife in the north to
Rugged Point in the south-east. Or explore Coco Hill Forest in
St Joseph, a fifty-three-acre reserve filled with bamboo, royal
palms, fruit trees, and more. Its mission is heritage preservation
and food security through permaculture and other forms of
farming.
The Barbados National Trust hosts three-hour hikes every
Sunday, with grades for each fitness level. There’s Stop ’n Stare
(averaging six miles), Slow Medium and Fast Medium (approximately
nine miles), and Grin ’n Bear (roughly twelve challenging
miles) — with an occasional moonlight hike too, if you’re a night
person.
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75

Day two
You’ve experienced the Bajan landscape on foot. Now it’s time to
hit the road, or even get off the road, in a go-kart or ATV. Rainy
days are perfect for off-roading if you don’t mind getting dirty —
water, mud, and good vibes may almost remind you of J’Ouvert
celebrations during Crop Over. A tour from Off Road Fury
Barbados will take you through miles of mud and dirt tracks,
kart roads, hills and inclines, through vegetation thick and thin.
In the kart, drivers and their navigators thunder across thrilling
trails. You can take your turn at the wheel as long as you’ve
got a valid driver’s license. Some of Barbados’s country roads
and canefields aren’t the usual places you see in guidebooks, but
when you’re in a go-kart, you can zoom from bush to wonderland
with beguiling panoramic views.
Or head for the Bushy Park motor track. Year-round, professional
racers and instructors encourage you to hear, feel, and see
what a race car can do when thrust to its limits. It’ll completely
redefine your idea of driving. Start by riding with the pros, then
it’s your turn to take the wheel: you have the opportunity to “fly
solo” along the circuit. On your mark!
Day three
Yes, this itinerary obviously includes a trip to the beach. Beach
days are every day in Barbados, some would say. And from
sunrise to sunset and beyond, there are beach activities ranging
from the merely relaxing to the highly invigorating, on the sand
or in the water. On the serene side, check out tiny Shark Hole
Beach in St Philip. From the roadside, the entrance to the beach
is unassuming — navigational apps on mobile phones can’t
even detect it. But as you head down the path which gives way
to the beach and ruins nearby, you involuntarily give thanks for
creation. This naturally funnel-shaped cove unfolds as steep
rock cliffs lead to a patch of sand — quiet, breezy, impeccably
clean, a picturesque hidden treasure.
The crystal-clear blue waters, relative calm, and balmy temperature
— sea temperatures usually linger between twentyone
and twenty-six degrees Celsius throughout the year — of
Barbados’s west and south coasts make them ideal for jet ski,
kayak, and surf sessions. Needhams Point, Dover Beach, Brandons
Beach, and Paynes Bay are all favourite spots for water
sports. Kite surfing might become your latest craze at Silver
Sands Beach or Long Beach, with the right winds. And have you
tried stand-up paddleboarding (SUP), or maybe the exhilarating
JetBlade experience? SUP is exactly what the name suggests:
standing and paddling on a surf-style board. It’s a cross between
surfing and kayaking, and relatively low impact. The hydro flight
JetBlade, on the other hand, means adrenaline thrills at electrifying
levels. Newbies always have an unforgettable experience
as water jet propulsion literally skyrockets them into the air. This
extreme water sport gives you a natural high — and chances are
you won’t want to come down.
76 WWW.CARIBBEAN-BEAT.COM

yvalet/Alamy Stock Photo
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77

Courtesy Barbados Tourism Marketing Inc
78 WWW.CARIBBEAN-BEAT.COM

Day four
Back to nature! And this time, go deep. You may have heard of
Harrison’s Cave long before you set foot on Barbadian soil. This
limestone cave system officially opened to the general public
in 1981, after seven years of excavation and building works to
accommodate underground trams. The tram tour is the most
common way to visit, but if you’d like to go back in time and
experience the cave as the early explorers did, gear up with a
headlamp and some knee guards for an eco-adventure tour. Harrison’s
Cave is more than a walk-through type of cave. Climbing,
squeezing, contorting, jumping, and perhaps crab walking are
all required.
The Harrison’s Cave system is approximately 2.3 kilometres
long, with its largest cavern, the Great Hall, soaring fifteen
metres high. This is a very active geological feature, as water
continues to flow through the limestone, with stalagmites and
stalactites still slowly growing to form amazing columns. The
secrets of the Harrison’s Cave await you — but try not to lose
a shoe during the taxing but marvellous trek, like one friend of
mine.
WWW.CARIBBEAN-AIRLINES.COM
79

james Boardman/Alamy Stock Photo
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Craving excitement while relaxing in the Caribbean?
Discover the many non-traditional holiday experiences for
fun-seekers available in Barbados. The island appeals to
soft adventure lovers in a wide variety of activities. From
surfing to horseback riding along the east coast, or even
bike riding into the sunset — you’re sure to find something
to satisfy your adventure cravings.
Guided tours and hikes will also take you through the
trails and hills along our stunning coastal stretches. Sights
such as incredible rock formations, the waterfalls at
Harrison’s Cave, and our enchanting botanical gullies are all
waiting to be explored.
Of course, your holiday to Barbados would not be complete
if you didn’t swim or snorkel on one of our amazing
catamaran cruises. Whether you’re exploring our rich and
local history, relaxing on our breathtaking shorelines, or traversing
through our serene coasts, Barbados offers enough
soft adventure to last a lifetime. For more information, visit
www.visitbarbados.org
80
WWW.CARIBBEAN-BEAT.COM

While exploring Barbados, don’t forget your tastebuds.
The Barbados Food and Rum Festival, running from
24 to 27 October this year, serves up gastronomic
adventures featuring local and international chefs and
mixologists, in culture-rich style.
Courtesy St Nicholas Abbey
Day five
All aboard for a history lesson, and a journey through time on the
St Nicholas Abbey Heritage Railway. As the locomotive chugs
through plantation fields, mahogany woods, and a limestone
quarry, tour guides share historical tidbits to exercise your
imagination. For instance, did you know that every familiar
landmark for hundreds of acres along the east coast collapsed
and disappeared during the Great Landslip of 1901? It left those
gorgeous views near Cherry Tree Hill. There’s also a chance to
get hands-on by manually turning the train around on the turntable
as the tour returns to the abbey. St Nicholas Abbey, built
in 1658, is one of only three Jacobean mansions in the Western
Hemisphere, and now serves as a museum of eighteenthcentury
plantation life.
For another slice of Barbados history, head into the capital,
Bridgetown. Hiding in plain sight, the Blackwoods Screw Dock
in Cavans Lane is another historic gem: this is the only screw
dock of its kind remaining in the world. This type of drydock
uses powerful screw-lifting mechanisms to raise boats out of
the water for repairs and cleaning. The adjoining Historical
Maritime Centre features unique and attention-grabbing artefacts,
photos, and exhibits of nineteenth- and twentieth-century
Barbados.
Further into the city, history, architecture, and art can be
found round every corner. A walking food tour is a fascinating
way to see off-the-beaten-path parts of the capital, and satisfy
the appetite you’re bound to work up. Or pay a visit to UNION at
Beckwith, a collective of designers, artisans, and entrepreneurs
transforming the Beckwith Mall shopping centre with pop-up
galleries, studios, and stores, offering innovative local products,
from fashion to food to artworks. n
Caribbean Airlines operates daily flights to Grantley
Adams International Airport in Barbados from
destinations across the Caribbean, with connections to
other destinations in North and South America
WWW.CARIBBEAN-AIRLINES.COM
81

ucket list
Marcel Bakker/Shutterstock.com
Rainforests
of Suriname
GUYANA
S U R I N A M E
BRAZIL
FRENCH
GUIANA
Less than an hour’s flight from Suriname’s
capital, the country’s immense rainforest
offers an accessible immersion in nature at
its most lush and wild
Like neighbouring Guyana and French Guiana, Suriname
— with its population of 570,000 concentrated near
the Atlantic coast — retains vast areas of wilderness,
with eighty per cent of the country still covered with tropical
rainforest — a canopy of green stretching as far as the eye can
see, home to uncounted species of flora and fauna, threaded
with hundreds of rivers. This wilderness region is also home to
indigenous Amerindian and Maroon settlements, and a handful of
rustic lodges — some of them community-run — where visitors
can experience both the thrill and the calm of nature at its most
intense, less than an hour’s flight from Paramaribo. n
Caribbean Airlines operates daily return flights to
Johan Pengel International Airport in Paramaribo
from Trinidad, with connections to other destinations in
the Caribbean and North and South America
82
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ENGAGE
john A. Anderson/shutterstock.com
84 Green
The climate change
countdown
88 Puzzles
Enjoy our crossword and
other brain teasers!
At 1.5 degrees Celsius of global warming, scientists predict, up to ninety per cent of tropical coral reefs may die

green
The
climate change
countdown
Global warming isn’t a theory — it’s a fact,
and scientists are clear about its impact
on countries around the world. Small
island states like those in the Caribbean
are especially vulnerable. Erline Andrews
reports on the predicted consequences
of climate change in the Caribbean — and
explains why efforts to adapt are lagging
behind
Image by lavizzara/Shutterstock.com
In 2017, Hurricane Maria swept across the eastern Caribbean island of
Dominica, taking lives, destroying homes, and damaging the natural
landscape that sustains the tourism industry which the 270-square-mile
island relies on. The storm’s overall cost to Dominica was an estimated
US$930 million, almost double the country’s GDP. Maria went on to
cause havoc in Puerto Rico, directly and indirectly killing more than 2,900
people. It was the deadliest storm Puerto Rico and Dominica had experienced
in more than a century.
Just two weeks prior, both islands had been hit by Irma, which became
a Category 5 hurricane during its lifecycle. More than one hurricane of that
magnitude in the same season had previously been unheard of.
In recent years, the Caribbean has seen its hurricane season — from June
to November — become more destructive. The change has been attributed to
global warming due to climate change, a crisis that many have been warning
for decades could have particularly devastating effects for the Caribbean.
With the glaring evidence of crushed infrastructure, homes, and lives, more
people seemed prepared to listen and take action. But much of the increase in
global temperatures seems irreversible, and effects will get worse.
What experts and activists hope for now is that temperatures won’t rise to
a point where they threaten the very existence of
small islands like Dominica. “I come to you straight
from the front lines of the war on climate change,”
said Dominica’s Prime Minister Roosevelt Skerrit
in a heartfelt appeal to the UN General Assembly,
shortly after Maria’s passage. “We as a country and
as a region did not start this war against nature. We
did not provoke it. The war has come to us. There
is no more time for conversation. There is little
time left for action.”
The global mean temperature (GMT) has
been increasing rapidly following the Industrial
Revolution, largely due to carbon dioxide and
other greenhouse gases generated by humans’ use
of fossil fuels. By 2030, it is predicted to increase
by one degree Celsius over what it was in 1880.
The repercussions of that are already being felt.
84 WWW.CARIBBEAN-BEAT.COM

Among them: stronger storms, rising sea levels that cause coastal erosion,
droughts that reduce the water supply and crop yields, and the acidification of
the ocean, killing coral reefs — which are habitats for fish, and major tourist
attractions.
Beyond 2030, the GMT is inevitably going to increase by at least 1.5 degrees
Celsius, and international bodies and scientists are racing against time to keep it
there, through various efforts — called mitigation — to reduce the production of
greenhouse gases. In the landmark 2015 Paris Agreement, 197 countries agreed
to do all they could to keep global warming well below two degrees Celsius and
What experts and activists hope for now
is that temperatures won’t rise to a point
where they threaten the very existence of
small islands
to regularly report their progress.
But countries not only have to work on mitigation,
they have to pursue adaptations that make
them less vulnerable to the effects of global warming.
Those adaptations are particularly important
for small, poor, sea-dependent countries.
“Countries are going to disappear if we don’t
take action,” says Carlos Fuller, a senior official
with the Caribbean Community Climate Change
Centre, or 5Cs, the regional body set up in 2002
to help climate change efforts in the region. It’s a
source of project funding, research, advice, and
consultation.
“Our coral reefs will not be able to survive, and
so our fish will migrate out of the Caribbean,” says
Fuller. “And if our coral reefs die, why are tourists
going to come into the Caribbean?”
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85

The Caribbean Community as a body has pledged to draw almost half of
its energy from renewable instead of fossil fuel sources by 2030. Individual
countries have pledged more. And adaptation efforts have slowly
been getting off the ground — too slowly.
For example, two American environmental entrepreneurs are experimenting
with land-based coral farms to grow warming-resilient corals to replenish
decimated reefs. Conservationists have been growing corals in sea-based
nurseries in Grenada, Bonaire, Curaçao, the Cayman Islands, and elsewhere in
the region. But the sea exposes them to same harm faced by naturally grown
coral. On land, corals can be farmed in large numbers.
“There is hope that we can make a significant difference. I’ve watched reefs
come back to life from reef restoration,” one of the entrepreneurs, twentynine-year-old
Gator Halpern, said in a video posted online by UN Environment,
after he was named Young Champion of the Earth for Latin America
and the Caribbean last year.
In another climate adaptation project, a US$27 million water facility was
launched in Barbados last May, which uses solar energy and is built to be more
resistant to natural disasters. “The project will provide a replicable framework
for countries of the Eastern Caribbean,” said Wilfred Abrahams, the Barbados
minister of energy and water resources, at the launch ceremony.
In Dominica, meanwhile, five thousand new homes are being constructed
to be hurricane-resistant. Housing complexes will be built with underground
utility lines and infrastructure made of reinforced concrete and hurricaneimpact
glass.“The housing programmes have new designs where not even a
Category 5 hurricane would significantly impact it,” Joseph Isaac, Dominica’s
environment minister, told a reporter.
The housing project is being financed by Dominica’s Citizenship by Investment
programme, which offers citizenship to those who can afford to pay the
How climate change will affect the
Caribbean: a timeline
• Between 2030 and 2050, climate change is expected to cause
approximately 250,000 additional deaths per year, from malnutrition,
malaria, diarrhea, and heat stress.
• Seventy to ninety per cent of coral reefs will die at 1.5 degrees
Celsius of warming, which is expected to happen by 2030; 99 per
cent of coral reefs will die at two degrees Celsius of warming, which
could happen by the end of the century.
• Major coastal defence projects will be required to protect hundreds
of kilometres of vulnerable coastlines by 2050.
• By that year, significant relocation of people and existing coastal
infrastructure will be necessary.
• World Bank estimates suggest the annual damage to countries within
the Caribbean community caused by climate change will rise to US$11
billion by 2080 — eleven per cent of the region’s collective GDP.
• The sea level in the Caribbean is expected to rise by more than 1
metre by 2100, putting many coastal towns and cities — including
most Caribbean capitals — at risk of being submerged.
price. Money for the Barbados water project came
from the Green Climate Fund, set up by the UN and
coordinated in Caricom by the 5Cs. Seven more
projects in other countries in the region are to be
implemented through the fund. And large-scale
coral restoration — still far from reality — is going
to have a large price tag.
Weakened by debt and recession, countries in the
Caribbean have to rely on funding from international
aid agencies and wealthy countries for their adaptation
projects. The money — experts believe — hasn’t
been enough so far. “The Green Climate Fund that
was created to assist in putting mitigation measures
in place and to assist the victims of climate change is
commendable,” Prime Minister Skerritt told the UN
General Assembly. “But much more must be done to
assist countries that continue to bear the brunt of the
impact of climate change.”
Dr Riad Nurmohamed, a climate change
researcher and member of parliament in Suriname,
was equally unequivocal. He believes regional
representatives need to strike the same tone at
international meetings about the issue. “We have
to be very clear on this: the Caribbean is not
responsible for the climate change. So indeed the
world needs to support the Caribbean more,” says
Nurmohamed.
In addition to a lack of financing, many Caribbean
countries are distracted by social problems, as
Brown University researcher Stacy-Ann Robinson
found in a paper looking at limitations Caribbean
countries face in adapting to climate change. “The
cost of crime is 7.5 per cent of the country’s GDP,”
said a Jamaican official, one of the twenty-six
policymakers Robinson spoke to for her study. “A
hurricane costs two per cent of GDP every couple
or few years, but the high probability–high impact
events are crime and corruption. These do more
harm than any other threat.”
The main limitation in the region, others say,
may be overall poor governance. “Finance is not
our major impediment,” said another policymaker.
“If we are not properly structured internally — our
institutions are too politicised or they are not working
the way they ought to work — then it doesn’t
matter how much money we pour or throw at the
problem, the problem will not be solved.”
The 5Cs is working to improve the prospects of
the Caribbean Community on all fronts, negotiating
with international agencies and advising regional
governments. Fuller hopes to get more people —
including the average citizen — to grasp the urgency
of the problem. “If we keep to 1.5 degrees Celsius,
we have a sixty per cent chance to adapt,” he says of
global warming. “If we go to two degrees, our ability
to adapt is cut down to ten per cent. We only have a
small window of opportunity to survive.” n
86 WWW.CARIBBEAN-BEAT.COM

ADVERTORIAL
Joining the fight
against pancreatic
cancer
A family’s tragedy inspires the launch of
the John E. Sabga Foundation
In January 2017, after a ten-month
battle with pancreatic cancer, John
E. Sabga succumbed to this dreaded
disease. Sabga, a businessman and
sporting enthusiast, was well known
in Trinidad and Tobago for his amicable
personality, joie de vivre, and love for
his family and country. His passing was
an enormous blow to his family, staff,
friends, and colleagues.
For his wife Natalie Sabga, who had
walked the journey with her husband,
the overarching questions that still haunt
her are why John, and why were there
no early detection methods and no cure.
What more could have been done for
him? How could she now find a way to
change things for others? As Natalie says,
“I am still looking for a cure for John.”
Her questioning became desperation,
which turned into determination. Three
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with her family, the first draft of the
mission and vision statement for
the John E. Sabga Foundation for
Pancreatic Cancer was written. In
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million to assist with funding a clinical
research trial in partnership with the
Translational Genomics Research
Institute (TGen) in Phoenix, Arizona,
headed by Professor Daniel Von Hoff.
The foundation, through its
affiliation with Prof. Von Hoff and
ongoing donations to TGen, has
managed to acquire the opportunity
to bring to Trinidad and Tobago a
Pancreatic Cancer Phase 2 pilot study
named the JES1 Trinidad Trial. This is the
first-ever clinical trial to be conducted
in Trinidad and Tobago, as well as
the entire Caribbean. It is a massive
undertaking on the foundation’s part, but
with the support of an exceptional team
of doctors, headed by Professor Dilip
Dan, the JESF is forging forward with
excitement and renewed energy in the
relentless race for a cure. The trial has
now been given both US FDA and local
approval through the T&T Ministry of
Health’s Ethics Committee, and is due to
start in October 2019.
In addition, the JESF has expanded its
activities to include:
• A range of much-needed support for pancreatic cancer patients and their
families through a Patient Nurse Navigator Programme with the CCRI
• A quarterly patient and family support group and patient daily access call-infor-assistance
line
• Public awareness and education through an ongoing publicity campaign
and a range of brochures now available at health centres and online at the
JESF’s website and Facebook page
• Advocacy for better health care and resources for cancer patients with
the government of T&T and other NGOs, health care professionals, and
organisations
• Association with international organisations for capacity building. The
foundation is a member of the World Pancreatic Cancer Coalition
• The hosting of a distinguished lecture series with world-renowned medical
specialists to share best practices with our local medical community.
Donations can be made to the continued work of the John E. Sabga Foundation
through the website at johnsabga.com, and by calling (868) 789 7930, or via
private message on the foundation’s Facebook page at https://www.facebook.
com/jesfoundation/

puzzles
book
Dutch
pepper
athlete
landmark
bridge
field
plait
adventure
choka
forest
studio
train
clay
harbour
track
safari
Zoomers
Word Search
Chipsters
coast
hike
yard
Négritude
degree
interior
cannibal
relay
deya
medal
ancestry
Brooklyn
dough
metre
installation
eruption
A V X J N F C A N N I B A L W
T N O I T P U R E O I D U T S
H L C T P R E R U T N E V D A
L A K E V L A L S A F A R I Y
E N I D S N A I U R E L A Y A
T D G M N T É I N E B O O K R
E M H D Y M R G T G H G U O D
F A C L L E T Y R D E Y A L C
O R T E K T T R O I R E T N I
R K U I O R S L O R T N C Y E
E C D F O E A Y Y B M U E K K
S A H A R B O U R L J E D L I
T R J U B Q C E E R G E D E H
E T C H O K A R E P P E P A Y
L N O I T A L L A T S N I X L
Spot the Difference
by James Hackett
There are 10 differences between these two pictures. How many can you spot?
88 WWW.CARIBBEAN-BEAT.COM

Sun Mix
Caribbean Crossword
1 2 3 4 5 6 7
8 9
Across
8 Triangular Indian pastry often served
with chutney [6]
9 After a few nights, you might get tired
of it [8]
10 Any admirable attribute [6]
11. Fifth largest island in the Caribbean [8]
12 Ballerina’s aid [5]
13 Creamy tan colour [4]
14 How everyone enters the world [4]
17. Line of seats in a stadium [3]
18 Invented in Barbados with distilled
molasses [3]
19 Call it a good time [3]
20 It surrounds any island [3]
24 Bible book named for a Jewish queen [6]
25 Corporate abbreviation [2]
28 A pain in the you-know-where [8]
30 Travellers from afar [6]
32 This coffee flavouring grows on trees [8]
33 A source of tapioca [6]
Down
1 Home of Kingston’s Norman Manley
International Airport [10]
2 Ceramics factory [7]
3 Underground shelters [5]
4 Painting with two panels [7]
5 Persistent and hardworking [9]
6 Atmospheric kind of music [7]
7 Passage permit [4]
15 Hate the idea of [5]
16 A potentially devastating storm [9]
10 11
12 13 14 15
21 Symptom of the creeps [7]
22 What makes different voices
unique [7]
23 Blends [7]
27 Pre-eruption lava [5]
29 Dentist’s offering [4]
31 Small cozy space, similar to a
cranny [4]
16
17 18 19 20
21 22 23
24 25 26
28 29 30 31
32 33
27
If the puzzle you want to do has already been filled in, just ask
your flight attendant for a new copy of the magazine!
Sunshine Solutions
Caribbean Crossword
Word Search
Spot the Difference
A V X J N F C A N N I B A L W
A Z E L N U T 33 M A N I O C
T N O I T P U R E O I D U T S
H L C T P R E R U T N E V D A
L A K E V L A L S A F A R I Y
E N I D S N A I U R E L A Y A
S
8
V
10
B
12
R
17
P
1
P
2
C
3
D
4
A M O S A I
9
A
5
A
6
X D A N G O O
V
7
N S O M N I A
L T V P S B S
I R T U E 11 T R I N I D A D
S E S Y D E
A R R E 13 E C R U 14 N U D
D Y 16 H H O T R
15 E
O W 18 R U M 19 F U N 20 S E A
E
24
E 21 S R 22 A S F
23 A
U I C M
27 S
S T H E R 25 C O 26 P U N D A
H
28
E
29
A D A C H E 30 A L I E N
31 S
H
32
E T C H O K A R E P P E P A Y
T D G M N T É I N E B O O K R
E M H D Y M R G T G H G U O D
F A C L L E T Y R D E Y A L C
The clouds are different; the sail on the second boat has different
designs; there is one extra wave in the water; one bird
is lower; there is a dot missing in the boat name on the left;
there are more rocks in the image on the right; the first boat has
different hull details; the second boat has a different-coloured
hull; there is a shell in the image on the right; the first sailboat
has different sail details.
E C D F O E A Y Y B M U E K K
O R T E K T T R O I R E T N I
R K U I O R S L O R T N C Y E
S A H A R B O U R L J E D L I
L N O I T A L L A T S N I X L
M R E S A S K
T R J U B Q C E E R G E D E H
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89

WIRELESS INFLIGHT ENTERTAINMENT
Welcome to
The NEW way to be entertained!
Use your personal device to stream Blockbuster movies, TV shows,
games and more Caribbean content while in the air.
How to access Caribbean View during your flight
To enjoy Movies and TV, please simply download our free Caribbean View app via the
Google Play Store and Apple App Store.
Steps
Enjoy free
entertainment on
your flight!
Content is available only on selected flights*
1. Ensure your device is in
Airplane Mode
2. Enable your Wi-Fi and select the caribbean_view network
OR
In preparation
for your flight
Download
Get our free
Caribbean View app
before you travel,
available via the Google
Play Store and Apple
App Store
Charge
Before boarding,
ensure your device is
fully charged
3. Launch the Caribbean View App
OR
Open the browser on your device and enter
www.caribbean-view.net into the address bar.
Note: The Caribbean View App is required for playback of
Movies and TV shows once using a smartphone or tablet.
Scan the code
Headphones
Bring your
personal headphones
to enjoy our selection
of entertainment
Troubleshooting
Unable to connect
1. Switch Wi-Fi off and on
2. Power the device off and on and repeat step 1
Unable to view content
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classic
James Hackett
What accent?
Everyone knows a Trini accent is easy to understand,
right? Adanna Austin went to Barbados
and discovered otherwise. Originally published
in our September/October 2004 issue
Imagine my shock on landing
in Barbados when I, speaking
in my normal Trini accent, was
misunderstood by a Bajan customs
officer.
It was my first time out of
Trinidad, and my first encounter face to
face with a Bajan, but my shock was unbelievable.
Trinis speak in a very sing-song
dialect, but I never thought anyone would
have trouble understanding me. I should
have known my journey would be difficult
after the numerous phone calls I had
made weeks before to the University of
the West Indies Cave Hill campus, where
I was about to start my degree. The lady
on the other end kept asking me to repeat
myself. In my naivety, I thought we had
a bad connection. Only now as I stood in
the airport did I realise she really had not
understood a word I was saying.
That morning at the airport, summoning
all my patience, I spoke as
slowly as I could to the officer, until he
understood what I needed. Exasperated
and exhausted from my thirty-fiveminute
flight (yes, I was exhausted after
just thirty-five minutes — I’m scared of
heights, so I was tired from anxiety), I
made my way to Cave Hill and my hall of
residence — only to be further accosted
by accents from Jamaica, St Lucia,
St Kitts, and Montserrat. What a day I
was having. Apparently these people had
been there for a while and had already got
to know each other — and each other’s
dialects. I, on the other hand, sat back
quietly in my room and listened to the
accents drifting in and out of the windows
above and beyond me.
As any true Trini would tell you, it was
not long before I was in the mix of the
thing, mingling, laughing, and cajoling
every which way with my own unique
accent. Here was St Lucian Davis cussing
us in patois under her breath while she
stirred her bouillon; there was Jamaican
Simone yapping in a dialect we could only
understand when she stopped laughing,
and showing her annoyance by hollering
“cha,” the Jamaican version of a good
steups. As for me, everyone begged me
to speak more slowly. When they called
for me and I replied, “Look meh,” they all
laughed in unison. Apparently that was
the funniest thing they ever heard.
The American exchange student (who
was actually from the Philippines) was
more intrigued by our various dialects
than by the classes offered at UWI. At
the end of the year, she dubbed herself a
“trinipino,” because she believed she had
to be part Trini, part Filipino. Our accents
stood us apart and brought us together
at the same time. We named ourselves
“Bashment Block 8.” The block itself
suffered the consequences of housing
so many West Indians. One week it suffered
a “tabanca” and by the next it was
the “Love Boat.” St Lucian Faye insisted
we were all “makaks” (monkeys), and
shouted “heeeeeeeee salop” if you made
the terrible mistake of falling or tripping
in front of her. Others who did not fit our
mould were given nicknames to match
their demeanour. Hence on our block
of sixteen girls we had a “Silence of the
Lambs,” a “Pillsbury Dough Girl,” and a
“Cockroach” — all appropriately named
after their special oddities.
For Block Week, when we had to
showcase our respective talents, we proceeded
to sing a rendition of The Bassman
by Shadow — in our own words and
accents, of course. A culinary competition
found us climbing over each other
in the kitchen, trying to concoct sugar
apple juice, mango cheesecake, and split
peas soup.
When I made my trip back to Trinidad
for the Christmas holidays, it was no
wonder my family could not understand
my stories of the “rat bat” flying through
the dorm, or why I asked them to pass the
i-run (that’s how “iron” is pronounced in
Barbados). My exclamations of “guh bleh”
astonished them. Yes, I had lost my Trini
accent, to some extent, but I had come
home with a Caribbean accent all my
own. To me, there was no reason for them
to be “corn-fused.” n
96 WWW.CARIBBEAN-BEAT.COM

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