Children can be real bastards. In school I was tormented for my unusual name with most of the douchebags in training chanting "Puelos" or "Pallo" every day like it was a rib-tickler just making its debut in the courtyard. It was and still is the last name that seems to almost trigger convulsions in people attempting it for the first time: Kernahan. Female officer at the Licensing Office: "Pallo Kermingham?!" Messenger delivery: "Malo O'Halloran? Sign here." Number 275 at the passport office: "Callo Kannahan?" Any name with the vaguest hint of exoticism is invariably mangled by Trinis for whom the English language is enough of a challenge so they feel no obligation to attempt proper pronunciation of anything more complicated than Smith or Charles.
There is one appellation I hear so often that I am tempted to have my name changed just to avoid having to correct those who are too lazy to enunciate. That name is Kernaham. This spelling got me to wondering about the origins of Kernaham Village, which is on the southeast coast of Trinidad. My name had its beginnings in Manzanilla, but the villagers seem to know very little about the beginnings of this curious title of their home. Ever since the first occasion that I visited Kernaham Village so many lifetimes ago, one thing has always stayed with me. It is perhaps the most unique settlement in all of T&T. Any way you look at it, the villagers are living in a swamp, the community being built upon razed marsh forest in the sixties and seventies.
Just how those early pioneers were able to survive the varied pestilence (or perceived pestilence) that existed in biblical proportions is beyond me. Accounts of early life in Kernaham conjure images of malevolent clouds of mosquitoes darkening the landscape in the afternoon hours or vast bogs filed with writhing serpents only waiting for a careless child to venture close. Of course there are snakes and mosquitoes; you are living in a swamp. There is more to Kernaham Village though. I was motivated to write about this community because of ongoing global economic developments (well that and my television programme featuring Kernaham which airs this weekend). All around the world, once stable economies are faltering. Even for the new global powerhouse China, growth has slowed because demand in other countries has fallen.
Trinidad is a notoriously insular country, with most people content to concern themselves with day-to-day bacchanal, of which there is never any shortage. Successive governments have failed to achieve any appreciable movement towards economic diversification, even as oil production continues to fall and demand for our gas falls off considerably. In Barbados they have tourists strapped into a mini tram travelling through an almost featureless Harrison's Cave and they are shaking those visitors like a money tree. Here at home we have some of the richest rainforests and mangroves in the Caribbean, perfect for quarrying and garbage disposal. I want you to contemplate these points against the backdrop of the fickle tourism market, made even more so by the exigencies of the global economic climate.
It is reasonable to surmise that tourists, with less money to spend on travel, are going to be more selective on where they spend their vacation dollars. This brings me back to Kernaham Village. Thankfully, further encroachment on the marsh forest appears to have been stopped. This I understand is owed to the vigilance of the villagers themselves. What remains is a spectacular landscape or ...swampscape. This place is so interesting it boggles the mind that the most attention the village garners is the occasional feature write-up in a newspaper. Agriculture is the primary source of income for the community, in particular watermelon.
Chances are if you have a watermelon chilling in the fridge right now, it was grown in Kernaham. There is one problem though: it is my understanding that watermelon tends to exhaust the nutrients in the soil and there are questions of sustainability given the typical chemical treatments used to combat this problem. There is one thing that you simply cannot miss on any visit to Kernaham Village and that is the remarkable diversity of wildlife in the community. It just makes sense that the community should be exploiting this natural resource in a sustainable manner. I just have the vision in my head of bird-viewing platforms erected in the marshes.
The community centre at the entrance to the village could also serve as a greeting centre, where visitors could obtain detailed information about the birds that can be found in the Kernaham environment, the best times to view them and villagers could offer their services to take them on tours. Additionally, I think that tourists would get a real kick out of sticking their toes in the mud searching for fresh-water conch, or learning how the throw a cast net for cascadoux. Cabins of simple construction could be built in the community to accommodate tourists and, more importantly, scientists could be encouraged to conduct studies on the biodiversity of the swamp.
Naturally, these people would need to eat and again the residents would have an opportunity to earn income by perhaps providing meals using the very resources that they themselves consume: cascadoux, river conch and fresh fish. The villagers of Kernaham have a unique opportunity to use their breathtaking surroundings to support themselves and create a sustainable industry which will in turn ensure the preservation of the resident wildlife for generations to come. The world is changing, and while shark and bake at Maracas Bay will always be the first place foreigners are dragged to on arrival, the potential of Kernaham Village is a perfect example of the sort of eco-tourism that this country should be focusing on.
