By Raffique Shah
Sunday, May 31st 2009
Trinidad and Tobago News Blog
www.trinidadandtobagonews.com/blog
EVERY year, come Carnival or Emancipation Day or Spiritual Baptist Day or Indian Arrival Day, one hears the same refrain: the Government ‘ent give we enough money to celebrate we special day.
Carnival band leaders, who charge mas’ players severely for their flimsy costumes and all-inclusive-wee-wee-enhanced, two-chord-bands, threaten to blank competition sites because the steelband fraternity gets more dollar-support than the NCBA. Steelband leaders grouse about not having enough funds to paint their instruments, far less compensate the people who make music. Baptists shout loud about being discriminated against, and the scores of groups that mark Indian Arrival Day cry our louder: Discrimination!
Continue reading Of pride and prejudice
If one is to judge from the relatively high prices for food at supermarkets then Trinidad and Tobago must be the only place on the globe that has not been affected, price wise at least, by the international economic downturn which has seen food prices tumbling worldwide, for example, the United States of America, China, India, Canada, the United Kingdom, Japan and South Africa. Nonetheless, the answer must lie, not in complaining, but in starting a kitchen garden in which fruits and vegetables can be grown on a modest scale, or if you have adequate land space then yams, eddoes, carrots, pigeon peas, corn, bananas, ochroes, green figs and dasheen as well as the seasonal sorrel.
TRINIDADIANS would swear that the world is gripped by “blight”, a toxic mix of negative forces or “spirit lashes” that have us reeling every-which-way. Those who believe in the biblical end-times would counter that God is angry with man, hence the confluence of wars, pestilence, human misery and harsh economic times. Whatever the reasons for the seemingly intractable problems that have engulfed the world, I choose to adopt calypsonian Blakie’s refrain, “Ah never see t’ing so yet!”