Tag Archives: Vaneisa Baksh

Last Sunday, Mohamed Irfaan Ali was sworn in for another term as president of Guyana. That night, he attended the second of the CPL home matches for the Guyana Amazon Warriors, who had beaten the Trinbago Knight Riders the night before. They were playing the Saint Kitts and Nevis Patriots, …

We invoke the concept of the public in different contexts. Broadly speaking, we are referring to people in general, but there are several common appendages to the word public: nuisance, pressure, opinion, intellectual, and good, are a few. These aspects came to mind within the domain of cricket with the …

The late Austin Clarke published A Passage Back Home as a tribute to his friend, Samuel Selvon in 1994 (the year Selvon died). He wrote about them attending what he called Carifesta I in Georgetown, British Guiana. “All of us from the various diasporas into which we had drifted, Europe …

I don’t know about you, but for years I have listened to David Rudder’s music on an almost daily basis—some song calls me just out of the blue. Sometimes it’s from YouTube, often from my collection of CDs which remind me of when I bought them: soundtracks of those times. …

Last Monday, Trinidad and Tobago’s Prime Minister threatened her ministers and party officials that she would “buss” their heads if they did not walk away from behaviour she considered to be leading down the road to corruption. Although she said she knew who they were, she did not name them. …

I’ve been going through files from the West Indies Cricket Board of Control from the 1950s. I was fortunate to get access to these rare documents which go back 75 years, and I am revisiting them because I feel a sense of responsibility to put the information surrounding the career …

It’s a struggle deciding what to write about every week. Often, so many issues seem to be competing for attention: pick me! pick me! Sometimes, when things around us seem too dreary and dismal, the instinct is to trudge away seeking a happier, lighter place to alight upon. There’s no …

Breadfruits are back in season, and I have been obsessively experimenting. I used to avoid cooking them, deterred by the difficulty I had peeling the coarse green rind. Once I’d figured out that if I wrap it in a paper towel and put it in the microwave for five minutes, …

There didn’t seem to be much point in writing about the ignominious end to the Test series between West Indies and Australia. Like rain flies swarming about after heavy showers, indignant cricket spectators have rained harshly abusive comments about the performances over the three matches. There have been some useful …

More than a decade ago, when the People’s Partnership Government provided laptops to students entering secondary school, it was seen as a wise and progressive thing to do. It was reported that 95,000 laptops had been distributed. I witnessed something then that had startled me at many levels. This is …

Last Tuesday, Gwynne Dyer headlined his Express column Stupid old men. You could substitute all sorts of adjectives before the words ‘old men’ to describe the characteristics of the cohort that has had the most influence on the world we inhabit. Greedy, self-righteous, racist, arrogant, selfish, a multitude of negative …

My preoccupation with advocating that we do more to encourage a love for reading stems from a conviction that it is a fundamental aspect of our development as a society. It’s not so much about learning to read, important as that is, but more about finding pleasure in the act. …