Tag Archives: Laventille

“In a diverse society, aiming to do well, African people are not doing as well as we expected or as well as we might,” intoned Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley on the same day that Fitzgerald Hinds, member of parliament for Laventille West, gave an expansive interview in the Sunday …

That Akil Phillip was shot ostensibly for his cell phone is sad. But the greater sadness is missed in the midst of the outcry by elements of the wider population against the ‘deafening’ silence of the Laventille community. They seek to chastise the residents for not ‘making noise’ comparing the …

Not all women can run away, as advised by Singing Francine. They are treated worse than dogs. They are treated with vindictiveness. They are ‘owned’ and dare not challenge the man or seek to pursue their own decisions or rights. This week, we add Netanya Mohamdally to the list of …

A photograph by Maria Nunes stirred emotions in me that I thought I had quelled. I cry for Laventille when I remember the beauty of the people and the ambition and the sense of striving I grew up with. The callous may say, “Nostalgia!” But it was real. The memories …

Trinidad and Tobago has always been dreadful at organising anything but Carnival. Nowadays, we can’t even organise that properly. And it is killing us, in some ways, literally. The example of Desperadoes and the Laventille Hill is instructive. Laventille has been problematic but it has produced some of the most …

I would have liked to write a comical or even a satirical piece but Mr Live Wire has a patent on those types of columns.  And, frankly, I don’t think the Editor would have allowed anything I wrote in that vein to be so much as edited for publication, far …

Former Brazil World Cup winning captain Cafu will lead an array of local and global international football standouts in an exhibition match at Soogrim Trace Recreation Ground on Monday evening as part of the “Laventille Nights” series. The series is an initiative led by Tony Lee and I95.5FM while the …

Well, after my Minister of National Security went and guff up he chest in Enterprise, ah was going to post my views on that… But Mr Live Wire come and say every single thing I was going to say. So instead of suing him for tiefing my thoughts, lemme try a …

“Nothing from Ms De Verteuil about her forbears being given parcels of land by the Cedula; no mention of the vagrancy laws passed by the colonial administrators influenced by the merchant elites—including De Verteuils—to force Africans back to the plantations and other laws aimed at preventing Africans from pooling resources …

“It is clear that R De Verteuil was referring to Afro Trinbagonians when she criticised Laventillians. Not once did she mention the contributions of Africans to the development of Trinidad and Tobago. “She praised the Indians, the Chinese, the Syrian/Lebanese community and, of course, her people the Europeans. The contempt …

As mentioned in this column recently we are a society pock-marked by destructive shade preference practiced by citizens of all descents, even within ethnically kindred groups. I had intended to return to the subject because in my view there is an inextricable link between the violent crime that is again …

“David,” Mama stands in the doorway and calls down the hill to me, “bring yuh skinny red self and get something to eat.” ‘Mama’ is my late mother’s mother and she lives not in middle class Champs Fleurs which was my base in my growing-up years but on the Hill. …