Michelle Loubon

Trin­ba­go Uni­fied Ca­lyp­so­ni­ans' Or­gan­i­sa­tion (Tu­co) pres­i­dent Lu­ta­lo Masim­ba (Broth­er Re­sis­tance) says he feels ex­treme­ly ho­n­oured to have been se­lect­ed at the 50th An­niver­sary Dis­tin­guished Alum­ni Awards cer­e­mo­ny at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, St Au­gus­tine cam­pus on April 2.Among those present were Pres­i­dent George Maxwell Richards, Mark Reg­is, pres­i­dent of the UWI Alum­ni As­so­ci­a­tion, T&T Chap­ter; co/chair of the Se­lec­tion Com­mit­tee, Prof Brid­get Br­ere­ton; alum­nus rep­re­sen­ta­tive Jer­ry Med­ford and en­ter­tain­er Adafe Pad­more.In­ter­viewed on Tues­day, Masim­ba said: "I feel ex­treme­ly ho­n­oured; es­pe­cial­ly since it was done by the alum­ni. It's ex­tra spe­cial when you are recog­nised from among your peers."Fa­mous for his rap­so mu­sic in­clud­ing gems like Ring The Bell, Masim­ba had ma­jored in His­to­ry and Eco­nom­ics. Quizzed on his sen­ti­ments on the fu­ture of UWI, he said: "It's an ex­cep­tion­al­ly good thing for the re­gion in terms of carv­ing out an aca­d­e­m­ic ex­pe­ri­ence that is tru­ly Caribbean. Fifty years is an im­por­tant mile­stone."In the sphere of cul­ture, vet­er­an ca­lyp­son­ian Dr Hol­lis Liv­er­pool and pan com­pos­er Mark Lo Quan were al­so ho­n­oured by UWI.

Pres­i­dent Richards com­ments

In his fea­ture ad­dress, Richards paid ku­dos to the il­lus­tri­ous Caribbean icons.He said: "The Alum­ni who are be­ing ho­n­oured are ex­em­plars of which the coun­try and the re­gion are very proud and ap­pre­cia­tive. These hon­orees are ev­i­dence of the growth and de­vel­op­ment of our coun­tries though their out­stand­ing con­tri­bu­tions."

He added: "They chose to re­ceive a ma­jor part of their ed­u­ca­tion in the Caribbean en­vi­ron­ment. While not es­chew­ing the val­ue of ter­tiary ed­u­ca­tion abroad, from which some of them have ben­e­fit­ed, they chose to demon­strate their trust in our lo­cal in­sti­tu­tion. This can be in­ter­pret­ed as an­oth­er di­men­sion of un­der­stand­ing what in­de­pen­dence means."St Au­gus­tine has spe­cial mean­ing for them. I con­grat­u­late them as well as their sup­port­ive fam­i­lies and com­mu­ni­ties."