SAN­DRA L BLOOD

blood­l­sandy@gmail.com

“As I con­tin­ue to re­new and re­vi­talise my spir­it, I be­lieve that women can rise above chal­lenges they face by wel­com­ing guid­ance that em­pow­ers and trans­forms their lives, build­ing a strong and pos­i­tive mind­set, and em­brac­ing in­de­pen­dence.” These are the sen­ti­ments of ad­vo­cate and be­liev­er of lo­cal and the go-green phi­los­o­phy, Hea­matie Bho­la-Gopaul.

Though gift­ed with a sta­ble up­bring­ing and an en­tre­pre­neur­ial mind­set, Bho­la-Gopaul not­ed lim­i­ta­tions placed on women, es­pe­cial­ly those with min­i­mal for­mal ed­u­ca­tion; how­ev­er, through de­ter­mi­na­tion, re­silience, and ini­tia­tive—ex­pe­ri­ences that taught her self-re­liance—she coped and plant­ed seeds that grew.

“My child­hood was shaped by ob­serv­ing the re­al­i­ties of life for women in my com­mu­ni­ty, but I’m proud to have been born on the beau­ti­ful is­land of T&T at Gopie Trace in Pe­nal, South Trinidad, among five sib­lings and with par­ents Ram­ra­tee and Sug­rim Bho­la. My par­ents in­stilled in me good be­liefs and val­ues of in­tegri­ty, dis­ci­pline and per­se­ver­ance, and I de­vel­oped a strong in­ter­est in learn­ing spir­i­tu­al­i­ty, which in­flu­enced my choic­es thus far,” stat­ed Bho­la-Gopaul.

Ex­pe­ri­ences she gar­nered from some chal­lenges she en­coun­tered fol­low­ing the pass­ing of her younger sis­ter and her fa­ther helped boost her strength and re­silience.

Bho­la-Gopaul spoke high­ly of her par­ents. Their faith­ful in­volve­ment in Ram­leela and Kr­ish­na Leela, and their ded­i­ca­tion to tem­ples na­tion­wide, sig­nif­i­cant­ly im­pact­ed her spir­i­tu­al growth. Faith, tra­di­tion and com­mu­ni­ty be­came her cor­ner­stones.

She re­calls ad­mir­ing them cook­ing to­geth­er and ac­tive­ly con­tribut­ing in the tem­ple kitchens, dis­tin­guish­ing her fa­ther’s “re­mark­able, cap­ti­vat­ing” cook­ing skills, which left a last­ing im­pres­sion on her.

This, she said, en­cour­aged her to “pur­sue her goals start­ing from for­mal ed­u­ca­tion”, which re­sult­ed in stud­ies at sec­ondary school, EC­CE (Ear­ly Child­hood Care and Ed­u­ca­tion), YTEPP (Youth Train­ing and Em­pow­er­ment Part­ner­ship Pro­gramme), SER­VOL, and in Man­age­ment Skills, Mi­cro En­tre­pre­neur­ship, Busi­ness Man­age­ment and Agro Pro­cess­ing at SBCS.

As a teen, Bho­la-Gopaul dis­cov­ered a hid­den tal­ent—a “pro­found pas­sion” for East In­di­an dance that led to mas­ter­ing var­i­ous tra­di­tion­al dance tech­niques, en­joy­ing dance class­es, and per­form­ing through­out the Caribbean. But at the age of 23, her life “swung in­to an im­por­tant stage that trans­formed” her “in re­mark­able and un­ex­pect­ed ways.”

“I mar­ried my hus­band, Gamesh Gopaul. My mar­i­tal life was a test­ing ground of true faith and psy­cho­log­i­cal and emo­tion­al re­silience. It was shaped by mo­ments of hard­ship; how­ev­er, we re­mained stead­fast and nev­er al­lowed the chal­lenges to de­fine us, but through per­se­ver­ance, ded­i­ca­tion and faith, we worked tire­less­ly to build a se­cure fu­ture.”

The cou­ple de­vel­oped short-term busi­ness­es, with De­vis and De­vatas Wood­work­ing Co. Ltd still op­er­at­ing.

Bho­la-Gopaul then bore two sons—Saryu, who is cur­rent­ly pur­su­ing up­per-lev­el stud­ies at Iere High School, and el­der Dar­shan: a med­ical stu­dent and busi­ness­man—whom she calls her rock, her great­est mo­ti­va­tion and who she con­tin­u­al­ly sup­port­ed and en­cour­aged to pur­sue their dreams.

While en­joy­ing moth­er­hood, deep per­son­al hur­dles con­front­ed Bho­la-Gopaul.

“My strength and re­silience were test­ed, and in­flu­enced me to take de­ci­sive ac­tions. Out of dark shad­ows, I re­stored my sense of pur­pose.

“I be­gan to en­gage women in my com­mu­ni­ty and wider so­ci­ety who faced sim­i­lar strug­gles, to share ex­pe­ri­ences in mean­ing­ful dis­cus­sions, which brought heal­ing, clar­i­ty and in­spi­ra­tion to me.

“It was dur­ing this pe­ri­od of re­flec­tion that I en­vi­sioned cre­at­ing an iden­ti­ty root­ed in em­pow­er­ment—one that would pro­vide em­ploy­ment op­por­tu­ni­ties for sin­gle moth­ers and women of all ages, en­abling them to be­come fi­nan­cial­ly in­de­pen­dent and strong con­trib­u­tors to their house­holds, legal­ly,” as­sert­ed Bho­la-Gopaul.

“I then made a bold de­ci­sion to start a busi­ness even though, un­cer­tain about the spe­cif­ic di­rec­tion it would take or the in­dus­try I would en­ter.”

Dur­ing a ca­su­al mom-sons in­ter­face, she learned that her sons did not like the veg­etable car­il­lie. They found it bit­ter and chal­lenged her to cre­ate a carail­li snack they would en­joy. She said she was in­spired whole­heart­ed­ly and be­gan ex­plor­ing ways to trans­form it in­to a de­li­cious and nu­tri­tious snack.

“I saw an op­por­tu­ni­ty to turn a sim­ple idea in­to some­thing mean­ing­ful, so I ac­cept­ed the chal­lenge.

“Weeks and months of tri­als, er­rors, note-tak­ing and test­ing over 24-hour pe­ri­ods, to cre­ate the prod­uct while main­tain­ing its health nu­tri­tion in­tegri­ty, be­came fur­ther de­ter­mi­na­tion for me to go green, so­lid­i­fy the pas­sion of the ex­pe­ri­ence, and not waste food.”

To­day, Bho­la-Gopaul is record­ed as the on­ly per­son to pro­duce the ve­g­an-friend­ly snack Car­il­lie Rings, which con­tributed to her es­tab­lish­ing her busi­ness, Go Green Mar­ket­ing Ltd Agro-Pro­cess­ing Unit, on Ju­ly 13, 2022, in Pe­nal.

“I turned a fam­i­ly chal­lenge in­to a plat­form for in­no­va­tion, cre­ativ­i­ty, and women and com­mu­ni­ty em­pow­er­ment. My lev­el of cre­ativ­i­ty, cul­tur­al knowl­edge, and de­sire to re­duce food-waste have al­lowed me to of­fer some­thing new to the mar­ket, and give and bring life to my busi­ness and women in par­tic­u­lar.”

At the in­cep­tion, Bho­la-Gopaul start­ed with no em­ploy­ees, a myr­i­ad of di­verse chal­lenges, and went gro­cery-to-gro­cery to mar­ket her prod­ucts and brand.

Now, she thanks Sills Farm­ers Sup­port Group, her sons, and staff.

Her woman-for­ward busi­ness is pro­ject­ed as a safe work­ing space guid­ed by pro­fes­sion­al­ism, trust­wor­thi­ness, re­spect, com­mit­ment and un­der­stand­ing, and ho­n­ours the en­vi­ron­ment, lo­cal, and women’s men­tal health.

Oth­er unique prod­ucts by Bho­la-Gopaul are Sa­heena Slices, Co­conut Chut­ney, Dhalpuri Fill­ings, Dhalpuri Dough, Dried Pick­le Achar, Kuchela, and Bombers Pep­per Sauce—“all 100 per cent lo­cal, tra­di­tion­al and au­then­tic.”