· May, 2008

Stories about Trinidad & Tobago from May, 2008

Trinidad & Tobago: Indian Arrival Day

  30 May 2008

Today is Indian Arrival Day in Trinidad and Tobago and Coffeewallah reminisces on her former mother-in-law's legacy and the first time she taught her to wrap a sari: “It is an elegant garment…every woman looks beautiful in a sari.”

Trinidad and Tobago: Shame

  29 May 2008

As an eight-year-old girl is found dead in a canefield in Trinidad, Coffeewallah says: “They're killing the children…casually, as though they are no more than sand through our fingers”, while Now is Wow Too quotes the anonymous subject of one of her photographs: “We have failed our children. What's going...

Jamaica, Trinidad & Tobago: Calabash Podcast

  28 May 2008

Caribbean Free Radio produces a podcast from Jamaica's Calabash International Literary Festival which includes perspectives on “Derek Walcott's unforgettable premiere reading of ‘The Mongoose'” and an interview with Jamaican writer Thomas Glave, who was quite vocal about the Prime Minister's recent comments about there being no place for homosexuals in...

Haiti, Jamaica, Trinidad & Tobago: Caribbean Nostalgia

  27 May 2008

Haitian blogger kiskeácity links to an interview with Nicholas Laughlin, who is at the Calabash International Literary Festival in Jamaica talking about “Caribbean literature, imaginary roads, creoleness…”it all makes you a bit nostalgic…

Trinidad & Tobago: Ah Have ah Tabanca

  27 May 2008

“You know if this was a relationship with a man, you wouldn’t still be here. You would never stick around and take this abuse. Stay for what? Because this is where you were born? This is what you know? This is the only place that understands you?”: Trinidad and Tobago...

Jamaica: Literary Feud

  26 May 2008

Blogging from Jamaica's Calabash Literary Festival, Annie Paul talks about Derek Walcott's poem The Mongoose, “written specifically with V.S. Naipaul in mind”: “Down here at Treasure Beach we give thanks for sunny skies and prickly poets. Willing conscripts in the enactment of a first-class literary feud we await the unfolding...

Trinidad & Tobago: Emergency 101

  20 May 2008

A fatal road accident along Trinidad's North Coast leads KnowProSE.com to comment: “Emergency medicine infrastructure and preventative measures are not a priority, it seems. It seems a victim of economic triage…does the Government of Trinidad and Tobago value the lives of citizens and visitors, much less the quality of life?”

Trinidad & Tobago: Crash and Burn?

  20 May 2008

This Beach Called Life is worried about the direction Trinidad & Tobago is taking: “I am certain the economy will soon crash. I am basing my economic prediction, not on a feeling, but on newspaper commentaries, comments by the Governor of the Central Bank and the imbecilic looks on the...

Trinidad & Tobago, Jamaica: Telling Stories

  20 May 2008

As Trinidadian-born filmmaker Frances-Ann Solomon's A Winter Tale opens in local theatres, Jamaican blogger Geoffrey Philp quotes a particularly poignant review: “A storyteller is a shape-shifter who uses every tool, every image, every sense to draw you in, capture your imagination.”

Trinidad & Tobago: Failed State?

  19 May 2008

Jumbie's Watch links to an article in the Trinidad Guardian which makes reference to the twin island republic as one of 96 countries “in danger of becoming a failed state”, adding: “Much work is needed in 4 areas…security, health, education, and in the judicial system.”

Trinidad & Tobago: Masquerade

  19 May 2008

“There is so much to do in Trinidad and Tobago, not just to make it a “developed” nation…but to keep it civilised, to protect what is left of its humanist traditions. And so little of the work is being done: crassness, violence, corruption and neglect are slowly but surely eating...

Trinidad & Tobago: Hijacked for Water

  16 May 2008

“With cutlasses at their necks, truck drivers are being hijacked by desperate villagers to deliver water to certain parts of the country…”: Blogging from Trinidad & Tobago, KnowProSE.com thinks that perhaps the government is “just not speaking the same language as the people around them.”