One thing Trinis could do is throw a fete. Whether it is a Carnival fete, a wedding fete or a funeral fete, whether it is a fete in honour of someone's triumph or in honour of someone's life, we could throw a fete.
Last Friday was no different at the Assumption Church in Maraval, and, as I sat through the one-hour festival of the life of Ivis Gibson, filled with light and music and singing but, above all, with love and affection, and watching the smiling, hugging, kissing faces of the decent, smart, Trinidadians who had come to honour Ivis with her family, I could not help but feel proud to be one of them. Ivis would have loved it all. It was what she liked, what she lived for, this tall striking woman who always seemed so passionate about whatever she was doing. She knew this was what Trinis craved and loved, human contact, a sense of sharing, a feeling of success. We reciprocated, calling her Mrs G, Mrs FIA and above all, Auntie Ivis.
There are few moments in our lives in T&T when we can feel like that. It takes occasions of deep turbulence, funerals or weddings, elections or football matches, Carnival perhaps, to bring those feelings to the surface. I first met Ivis Gibson in 1978. She had taken over a secretarial agency from my sister and happily called to invite me and my wife to her home for dinner. For despite the ups and downs of life, Ivis was a happy woman, no doubt due to the influence of her husband, Lunsford, as well as to the genes she got from her parents.We met, liked each other immediately and over the next two decades kept in touch while she founded Families in Action and made her mark on the NGO world. In 2003, she again called and invited me to a one-day workshop to discuss possible solutions to some of the problems families in T&T were having. It was just at the start of the outbreak of gang violence and the annual hundreds of murders that we have since been experiencing. She must have sensed something at the time.
At the conference I made a proposal which was accepted after much discussion. Simply put, it was that the crucial health problem affecting our children was disability, especially the "hidden disabilities," like attention deficit hyperactivity, dyslexia, autism, hearing and vision loss as well as minor forms of cerebral palsy, mental retardation, child abuse etc. All of these children look and behave quite normally until they are placed in positions of stress where they simply cannot function because of their unknown disability and after some time they usually react violently. After discussions with colleagues in various fields, we postulated that some, if not the majority, of the breakdown in school behaviour as well as the upsurge in criminality could be due to the lack of recognition of these "hidden disabilities."
None of these children were being recognised either at home or in school. Facilities for diagnosis were almost non-existent in the public sector and extremely expensive in the few private-sector agencies available. Ivis's solution was to work to establish a national child development programme, which, because of the number of agencies involved, ministries, NGOs, professionals etc, we decided to call the Collaborative Child Development Programme or CCDP. Ivis then proceeded to dedicate the rest of her life to setting up the CCDP. I cannot tell you how much work she did in those eight years of frustration.
I cannot tell you how many interviews we had with different ministries, minister of this, minister of that, how many promises were broken by these same honourable people and their advisers, how many meetings she set up with other NGOs, how much money she raised through her contacts with appreciative members of the business community that enabled us to assist some of the needy children Ivis saw daily.
For eight years she fought on, proposal in hand, references at the ready, willing to discuss and defend her project with just about anyone, buffed and rebuffed by people who should know better. Those eight years took a heavy toll of her health. Near the end, those of us who were close, asked her to slow down. She refused. One of our last meetings took place in her bedroom, Ivis lying down in bed, occasionally closing her eyes to rest, but refusing to give up. "We nearly there. We nearly there." Ivis was a wonderful woman, the consummate Trinidadian, warm, outgoing, friendly. She was competent and concerned and unafraid to speak up. Her magnificent entry into any meeting,-"Hello, I'm Ivis Gibson and I am here"-said it all. This is a country in need of people we can look up to, heroes and heroines. We have just lost two of the most remarkable women anyone could ever hope to meet. Pat Bishop will be suitably honoured. I would like to humbly suggest that we honour Ivis Gibson by establishing the CCDP within a year and by naming the building it will be housed in the Ivis Gibson Child Development Centre.
This one is for you, Ivis Dear.