As told to BC Pires

My name is Robyn Ed­wards and I am a speech and lan­guage pathol­o­gist. A pathol­o­gist in any field di­ag­noses what's wrong with some­thing. I was born in Ch­agua­nas but grew up in the Val­ley. Mean­ing Mara­cas Val­ley, St Joseph. Is on­ly Port-of-Spain peo­ple who mean, "Pe­tit Val­ley" when they say, "the Val­ley."

The rest of the is­land know where the re­al Val­ley is. It was a very free child­hood: roam­ing in the bush and rivers, climb­ing moun­tains, trees. Is very hard to get that again in Trinidad. We live be­hind bars. Es­pe­cial­ly in Port-of-Spain.

I went to Catholic schools all my life. St Xavier's, St Joseph's Con­vent, P0S and Ducane, a Catholic uni­ver­si­ty in Pitts­burgh. Un­til I found my niche, in uni­ver­si­ty, I passed all my ex­ams sur­pris­ing­ly well but I was not ex­cit­ed by learn­ing. I'm not a good Catholic. I don't go to church every week­end and I haven't been to con­fes­sion in a long time. But I still think my faith is a very big part of who I am.

I don't have kids but, if I do, I'll raise them as Catholics. They can't be con­fi­dent to make de­ci­sions and stand on their own un­less they're giv­en a base. Though that foun­da­tion can be moral and eth­i­cal good­ness, once it's strong. I love Car­ni­val and usu­al­ly play with Harts. I like folky, gui­tar, acoustic stuff. Like Jack John­son, Ben Harp­er, Tori Amos, Flo­rence & the Ma­chine.

My lit­tle broth­er went for speech ther­a­py when he was three. I was ten. He'd made up his own lan­guage. He called a frog a "bwap." My broth­er was call­ing things by their sounds. A trac­tor was a "bubalow." He was fine. But that's when I first heard about speech ther­a­py. I thought: teach­ing peo­ple to talk; work­ing with kids; and I like to talk. Sounds great! I'll do that!

Speech ther­a­pists work with pa­tients from ze­ro to 100. The age range is, "Any­body." There're the clas­sic dis­or­ders every­one thinks of, like lisps and stut­ters. But there're al­so dis­or­ders caused by strokes, de­men­tia, aneurysms. Autism, cere­bral pal­sy, glob­al de­vel­op­men­tal de­lay.

I have a lit­tle gray hair now to give me more au­thor­i­ty but, when I first came back, it was dif­fi­cult. You were a ba­by! And you have to give par­ents di­ag­noses about their kids, talk to the fam­i­ly of a stroke sur­vivor. But some­times be­ing younger helps. For re­lax­ation, I drink wine! No, I go to the gym. I have won­der­ful, won­der­ful friends. And I love to read. I read any­thing that's put in my hand, al­most. My two most favourite books are To Kill a Mock­ing­bird and The God of Small Things.

I had a boy who start­ed with me say­ing noth­ing. He made "Ah-ah-ah!" nois­es. He's leav­ing speak­ing! You can't get him to be qui­et now! But I'm learn­ing to re-eval­u­ate my idea of "progress." It's not just not-talk­ing to talk­ing. The first ex­cit­ing step was get­ting him to say, "Bah-bah-bah!" And then, "Mm­m­m­mm!"

If you, as a par­ent, have a gut feel­ing some­thing is not right with your child, talk to your GP or pae­di­a­tri­cian first, but, yes, fol­low your gut and go to a speech ther­a­pist. Why wait? A lisp is the eas­i­est thing to cor­rect! Ear­ly in­ter­ven­tion is the key. I'm self-em­ployed. In big­ger coun­tries, speech ther­a­pists would be at­tached to clin­ics or hos­pi­tals.

In Trinidad, speech ther­a­py is all pri­vate pay. All the ther­a­pists I know have a slid­ing scale and try to put part of our case­load to­wards re­duced-rate clien­tele. But, right now, on­ly one speech ther­a­pist works with the State. And she's in To­ba­go. The day-to-day best part of my job is see­ing the progress.

The oth­er thing I re­al­ly like is do­ing eval­u­a­tions. Peo­ple give you all these pieces and you have to put them to­geth­er. It's ex­haust­ing but very ex­cit­ing.It's not a job you can half-a... You re­al­ly have to put your whole self in­to it. At the end of the day you're phys­i­cal­ly, emo­tion­al­ly and men­tal­ly tired.

Lord knows we've all sat in enough bars to know the faults in the coun­try. But there's an in­her­ent good­ness in us. All these for­eign­ers come and stay in my house and they fit in with­out a snag. Peo­ple just ac­cept them. Trinida­di­ans re­al­ly are easy­go­ing. Quick to lime and make a joke. And some of their best qual­i­ties are al­so prob­a­bly some of their worst. Trinidad and To­ba­go is my home. Be­cause of the peo­ple, most­ly, but al­so be­cause of the moun­tains and the sea.

Read a longer ver­sion of this fea­ture at www.BCRaw.com