Category Archives: Trinidad & Tobago

Whooahooooohhhhhh ooohhhhhh ohhh

I am a Soca Warrior

I say win or loose I am a fighter!

I am a Soca Warrior

I come tuh shine meh nationality brighter.

Maximus Dan – Soca Warrior
Up until this point. Up until we football make ah move, we had only one true national philosophy. This self-same ‘Carnival mentality’ we had nurtured for years, we exported and proudly touted it as Trinidad.We also bragged and limed and dined it, sayin’ “Iz Chinidad.”

What has that done? What has the use of mediocrity done to us when used as a tool to forge culture from love and liberty? How will the fires of hope and prayer treat us when we disown self-responsibility? If a Trinidadian refuse tuh claim dey space, what kinna mas it go make? And I use mas tuh describe the procession of people that call this island home. All of us, from now to eternity, chippin’ together in a beat, but on we own chip each.

And look how when we reach Germany, a simple man, a simple artist use words and music to pen a new national philosophy, if we would have it. We could be fighters! Not violent, bloodthirsty people, but fighters. A people who take responsibility for theyself and they actions. A people who, no matter where they go or what they do, they put out their best. It could be on a football field or in the boardroom of Google, anywhere a Trini reach, they will fight. And not fight to disrupt, but fight to organize and arrange. Not senseless fighters, but fighters with a purpose and passion. Fighters who aspire and achieve together.

We will attack

We will defend!

Young and black in Babylondon: part one

It wasn’t until I left Trinidad for much colder climes I discovered I was black.

All my life I had been a so-called “red girl” – a racial hybrid with Indian, Caucasian, African and Chinese anscestors.

Mixed, middle-class, prestigiously schooled and commensurately sheltered, I railed against the hyphenated identities adopted by Indo- or Afro- Trinbagonian peers.

“I’m a Trini,” I would insist when faced, as I so often was, with those who demanded to know how I defined myself.

But what did that mean? It was a question with which I struggled. I lacked a defined cultural context.

Continue reading Young and black in Babylondon: part one


Pretty Girl In Dirty Undies

To smelt or not to smelt, that is the question.

As a nation, we have been fortunate to have such a vast array of resources at our fingertips, under our lands and seas. Oil is king, but an old king and Natural Gas his relatively reserved queen. Oil is an old king who knows that these are his last days on the throne but pretends like he is not concerned. But we can all see his wrinkles, and we all talk about him behind his back, now that he is old and weak. Ethanol, Hydrogen, and Hybrids are younger, spicier, more attractive. This old king cannot run our nation for much longer and his queen becomes more and more withdrawn, so what then is the solution?

Continue reading Pretty Girl In Dirty Undies