It is al­leged that, in T&T, the south­ern wealth re­sides not so much in oil, but in the hu­man re­source. Some say that the south­ern hos­pi­tal­i­ty can­not be sur­passed, and oth­ers say there is a "je ne sais quoi" about cer­tain women schooled on a hill named La Pique.Two such women re­cent­ly dis­tin­guished them­selves by be­ing ho­n­oured as re­cip­i­ents of this year's na­tion­al awards-Za­lay­har Has­sanali, the Or­der of Re­pub­lic of Trinidad and To­ba­go, and Jus­tice Gladys Gafoor, Pub­lic Ser­vice Medal of Mer­it (Gold).Both orig­i­nal­ly from south Trinidad and for­mer stu­dents of Na­pari­ma Girls' High School, they have blos­somed in­to glo­ri­ous na­tion­al ex­em­plars.

Za­lay­har Has­sanali

Has­sanali's life has been painstak­ing­ly out­lined by Brins­ley Sama­roo, Yvonne Teelucks­ingh and Ken­neth Ram­c­hand in a pub­li­ca­tion en­ti­tled Za­lay­har, Life of a First La­dy. Quotes from this book cap­ture the char­ac­ter of the la­dy that she has be­come over the years, dat­ing back to her years at Na­pari­ma Girls' and even be­fore:"In Za­lay­har, we dis­cov­ered an emo­tion­al­ly strong, prag­mat­ic woman. She is of­ten busy but she is al­ways serene. Un­der pres­sure she does not lose her pleas­ant de­meanour and no mat­ter what the provo­ca­tion, her pa­tience ever breaks," and ex­cerpt of the book reads.Has­sanali was among the many Na­pari­ma Girls' grad­u­ates who stayed at the Sarah Mor­ton Dor­mi­to­ry dur­ing the school year. She re­mem­bers this time as a try­ing one, since she missed home and the lux­u­ry of home-cooked meals.She steeled her­self by the re­minder that hers was a priv­i­lege to at­tend a pres­ti­gious school. Some­how she knew even at that young age that the ed­u­ca­tion­al op­por­tu­ni­ty should be max­imised. A Mus­lim girl at­tend­ing a Pres­by­ter­ian school, she par­tic­i­pat­ed ful­ly in Chris­t­ian com­mu­nal prayers not ever los­ing her stead­fast faith in her own Is­lam­ic faith.She ap­plied a dis­ci­pline, her own fam­i­ly val­ues as well as those of the school and an ap­pre­ci­a­tion of learn­ing to all her en­coun­ters at school. Her school friends re­mem­ber her as fo­cused, metic­u­lous, fas­tid­i­ous and prop­er.Even to this day some of the younger gen­er­a­tion of Naps grad­u­ates and as­so­ciates bear in mind her in­sis­tence on stan­dards and pro­to­col when it comes to school cer­e­monies and func­tions which she of­ten at­tends.In the minds of the Na­pari­ma fam­i­ly, "Za­lay" is a "steel mag­no­lia" of whom they are all proud. One who is de­vot­ed to her vol­un­teer work rep­re­sents the school's mot­to: non no­bis solum sed om­nibus (not for our­selves on­ly but for all).

Jus­tice Gladys Gafoor

One of the char­ac­ter­is­tics of a suc­cess­ful school is the abil­i­ty and ca­pac­i­ty to ap­pre­ci­ate the di­ver­si­ty of peo­ple who com­prise its pop­u­la­tion. Such di­ver­si­ty is the ba­sis of the rich­ness of our hu­man cap­i­tal. Jus­tice Gladys Gafoor lived in San Fer­nan­do, Cipero Street to be ex­act, and grad­u­at­ed from San Fer­nan­do Gov­ern­ment School with a schol­ar­ship to Na­pari­ma Girls..Al­ways fo­cused and goal-ori­ent­ed she sub­se­quent­ly trav­elled to Eng­land to study law. There she met and mar­ried the love of her life, An­tho­ny, al­so from the "le­gal" world.As a young girl, she host­ed many birth­day par­ties and en­cour­aged her shy friends to so­cialise and en­joy them­selves. Her friends de­scribe her as one who loves life and a dar­ling of a per­son. To know her well is to un­der­stand that all through her life there is one facet of her val­ue sys­tem that has re­mained con­stant and about which she re­mains con­sis­tent.Per­haps it was be­cause she was brought up in a strict home with a fa­ther who was a cat­e­chist in the Pres­by­ter­ian church. Gafoor, ac­cord­ing to those who are close to her, has no tol­er­ance for dis­hon­esty. Her need to voice her opin­ion whether or not it hurts is tes­ti­mo­ny to her be­lief that even in one's re­sponse to a sit­u­a­tion one must be hon­est and ex­press one's true opin­ion.As a young girl grow­ing up in San Fer­nan­do, her sharp brain en­abled her to mis­chie­vous­ly out­wit el­ders who at­tempt­ed to ex­ert too much con­trol. It is quite pos­si­ble that even to­day this sharp­ness and her val­ue sys­tem have re­mained with her as she served as judge in the In­dus­tri­al Court and head­ed the Com­mis­sion of En­quiry in­to the Op­er­a­tions and De­liv­ery of Pub­lic Health care Ser­vices in this coun­try.