When we witness injustice and the brutal acts that plague our nation, it is not easy to be grateful. We groan under the weight of many human failings, and our first reaction is not gratitude. Indeed, difficult times and circumstances are handy excuses to be disgruntled and ungrateful. We become …
Read More »Early Bird: A WASA mouthful for Marvellous Marvin to munch on
“On a hill far away,” Paul burst into mournful fo’daymorning song as he caught up with us, “stands a new water tank, the emblem of suffering and shame…” Taken completely by surprise, Bobby and I looked blankly at each other. “Who side you on?” Paul asked. Scores of people, mainly …
Read More »Early Bird: Can Minister Marvin punch above his weight in wasteful WASA?
“What’s really going on with this WASA water tank?” Bobby inquired, in the middle of our walk last Wednesday morning. In the area to the west of the tank, there was heavy machinery, a tractor and a front-end loader. I know that put Bobby’s mind at ease. He is a …
Read More »Vaneisa: Mancrab and the river—man’s struggle against time
A conversation about imagining our future planet raised a jumble of issues for me. I could grasp the substantive points being made by the 30-year-old, but many of them had not occurred to me before. It seemed that it might be a world where basic survival would define all activities. …
Read More »Vaneisa: Everywhere is war—is it too late for humans to pull back?
When was the last time you looked at a map of our planet? After reading Gwynne Dyer’s column in last Wednesday’s Express, Routine Rockets, I pulled out an old printed atlas to get a good look at the groupings of the countries. Somehow Google maps did not feel appropriate. Dyer …
Read More »Noble: The demonisation of the black woman; and its impact on our society
“The race rises as its women rise. They are the true standard of its elevation. “We are trying to produce cultured men without asking ourselves where they are to find cultured wives. We forget that cultured families constitute a cultured race and that a cultured race is an equal race. …
Read More »Vaneisa: Education Minister’s casual cruelty on high temperatures burns
Cruel has to be the word to describe the response of Education Minister Nyan Gadsby-Dolly to the question of how her ministry was dealing with high temperatures in classrooms. How else could one interpret her offensive comments that teachers and principals are used to it and know how to manage …
Read More »Noble: Water woes: from Wrightson to Marvin
“Our mission of ‘water for all’ is the assertion of a basic human right as enshrined in the constitution of Trinidad and Tobago, namely – the right of the individual to life… Providing water for all our people provides for equality and equal opportunity…” Ganga Singh, July 2000. Our first …
Read More »Indra Persad Milowe: “My art brings to life many of my childhood memories…”
“[…] Our teacher pinned our small flags on our blouses and we had to hold hands with each other. We then walked clockwise around the school. “Every child had to recite one line of the national anthem. We then had to jump up in the air and, when landing on our feet, shout loudly: …
Read More »Demming: Digitisation won’t erase public sector “stuckness”, without attitude change
Congratulations to the Ministry of Legal Affairs (MLA). I received my digital marriage certificate in four days without leaving my home. Unfortunately, we have to start the process all over because there’s an error. The name of one of the witnesses is incorrectly spelt. Having gone through the application process I was …
Read More »Daly Bread: Contrasts of moonlight and misery; the trouble with Manzanilla-Mayaro
In November 2022, part of the Manzanilla-Mayaro road—the once scenic route along the east coast “through the coconuts”—collapsed. Part of it reportedly collapsed before, in 2014. In that same year, a commentary by Rajiv Jalim, described as a climate change advocate from Trinidad and Tobago, analysed coastal erosion on that …
Read More »Vaneisa: Flooding, drought, earthquakes, war… no wonder we struggle with mental health
A friend messaged me a couple of days ago to say that her doctor had put her on anti-anxiety meds and it makes her feel so exhausted. It reminded me that after I got Covid, I had experienced a quickness to exhaustion myself—a general fogginess and a funk. I deduced …
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