Joanne Brig­gs

The way Kali­fa Damani talks about tech­nol­o­gy, one would quick­ly as­sume that she is a com­put­er nerd or a geek (and there is a dif­fer­ence be­tween the two). But at the same speed at which the ques­tion is asked, she replies "no"–with a smile. She is amused when she is asked that, since tech­nol­o­gy for her is part of every­day life and not an ex­cep­tion­al, high­er knowl­edge that sur­pass­es reg­u­lar folks.

"Chil­dren are al­ready re­ceiv­ing lap­tops at school. But how do they use it to ac­cess in­for­ma­tion and im­prove their ed­u­ca­tion? How are teach­ers be­ing taught to use and em­brace this tech­nol­o­gy in schools?" she asked. That is why she is de­ter­mined to pur­sue her PhD at Cam­bridge Uni­ver­si­ty, Eng­land.

Her in­ter­est in chil­dren and youth cre­ates the op­por­tu­ni­ty to find ways to con­tribute to their de­vel­op­ment. She is pas­sion­ate when she speaks about this. Her words are fast, al­most , com­ing from her slim frame. In ad­di­tion, she has an op­por­tu­ni­ty to be su­per­vised by Pauline Rose, a for­mer di­rec­tor at the Unit­ed Na­tions Or­gan­i­sa­tion for Ed­u­ca­tion, Sci­ence and Cul­ture. Rose was re­spon­si­ble for the EFA Glob­al Mon­i­tor­ing Re­port and di­rect­ed two re­ports on youth, skills and work, and on teach­ing and learn­ing.

Damani's area of re­search for her doc­tor­ate is tech­nol­o­gy in Caribbean schools and how this could help poor­er chil­dren have bet­ter ac­cess to a bet­ter ed­u­ca­tion. This plan is to fo­cus on Trinidad and Ja­maica, look­ing at their tech­no­log­i­cal sta­tus, with Sin­ga­pore as the case study, which is small­er in com­par­i­son to Trinidad's ge­o­graph­i­cal size but is struc­tural­ly de­vel­oped and al­ready us­es tech­nol­o­gy as part of its na­tion­al de­vel­op­men­tal strat­e­gy.

"One of our de­vel­op­ment goals is to be tech savvy. But there is not enough re­search in place here and this is a great op­por­tu­ni­ty. We are not be­ing trained to be com­pet­i­tive in this dig­i­tal age. We must have sol­id re­search and put sol­id pro­grammes in place," she said. "My re­search needs to be done, it fits well with where T&T wants to go."

Damani's pas­sion for ed­u­ca­tion is, per­haps, in­flu­enced by the peo­ple who sur­round her. Her moth­er is the vice prin­ci­pal at North East­ern Col­lege and her aunt is al­so in the teach­ing pro­fes­sion. Damani is al­so in­ter­est­ed in chil­dren and youth. Her BA and MPhil de­grees (the for­mer is First Class Ho­n­ours from UWI, St Au­gus­tine, the lat­ter from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cam­bridge) are based on psy­chol­o­gy. She al­so speaks as a child of tech­nol­o­gy, a mem­ber of a gen­er­a­tion who be­lieves tra­di­tion­al me­dia has been trumped by so­cial me­dia, if not facets of the in­for­ma­tion su­per­high­way.

At age 26, Damani sees tech­nol­o­gy en­hanc­ing the lives of gen­er­a­tions be­hind her. It al­ready has for her. She is able to blend tra­di­tion with the new world as she us­es the tra­di­tion of art and tech­nol­o­gy to cre­ate a tech­nique that has made her quite pop­u­lar. A tablet is her can­vas as she lets per­cep­tion and thought guide her cre­ations.

On her Face­book page, she de­scribes her­self as a Caribbean artist. Her work is a mix­ture of many con­cepts. A fea­ture on the black cul­ture blog Afrop­unk high­light­ed Damani's con­cept of women su­per­heroes–shape­ly, pow­er­ful im­ages of colour. She even us­es lo­cal el­e­ments–fac­tu­al (po­lice of­fi­cer and tas­sa drum­mer) and fan­ta­sy (soucouyant and a fe­male "Pa­pa Bois") to cre­ate fan­tas­tic im­ages.

"What in­flu­enced me to draw a lot of the women that I did was what ap­peared to me to be a lack of fan­ta­sy/com­ic/car­toon type art­work that de­pict­ed the full di­ver­si­ty of hu­man beau­ty," she said.

"I be­lieve that hu­man di­ver­si­ty is beau­ti­ful, and I want every­one to see and feel their beau­ty cel­e­brat­ed, and that idea car­ries across to my art and dri­ves choic­es I make in paint­ing my per­son­al pieces." Damani al­so cre­ates il­lus­tra­tions from still pho­tog­ra­phy. Among her pieces is R&B singer Janelle Mon­ae, who made men­tion of the work on her so­cial page.

Damani says art has al­ways been a part of her. "It's just some­thing that I've al­ways en­joyed do­ing," she said. At pri­ma­ry school, her class­mates knew she loved to draw. At St Au­gus­tine Girls' High School, she got in­to paint­ing at Form 3. Dig­i­tal art start­ed as a strug­gle draw­ing on the Mi­crosoft Paint pro­gram when she was around 14 or 15. By then, she was in­trigued by the clean art­work and the bold­ness of colours.

"Al­though I drew a lot back then us­ing coloured pen­cils on pa­per, the colours didn't look like what I saw on TV and in on­line art­work. So, I think I got in­to try­ing to draw us­ing my mouse on Mi­crosoft Paint just be­cause I liked car­toons–ani­me and su­per­hero ones, par­tic­u­lar­ly the X-Men car­toon and I en­joyed draw­ing, and I want­ed to achieve the look I saw on TV," she said.

At 18, she got her first Wa­com tablet and pen that made it so much eas­i­er to draw on the com­put­er. By then she al­ready had Pho­to­shop that al­lowed her to cre­ate a dark­er stroke just like pen­cil on pa­per, giv­ing a more nat­ur­al flow.

Art has al­ways sus­tained her. Af­ter she left school, she used her graph­ic skills in her role as de­sign­er of the Guardian in Ed­u­ca­tion mag­a­zine. As thank -presents for peo­ple who helped her, she gave them a fine art por­trait. Now, her fas­ci­na­tion with lines and colours has be­come an op­por­tu­ni­ty to help get to Cam­bridge at an an­nu­al cost of $200,000.

So far, the re­sponse has had her in de­mand to the point of cre­at­ing a sched­ule to en­sure each client is prop­er­ly tak­en care of. She con­tin­ues to seek fund­ing from oth­er re­sources such as Go­FundMe but in the mean­time, some­thing that gives her so much joy al­so sup­ports her dream.

While she drafts her course for the next four years of her life, she al­ready has a plan for when she re­turns to Trinidad. In ad­di­tion to her re­search that can as­sist in de­vel­op­ing a healthy ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem, she will re­turn to her art.

"I want to cre­ate a medi­um that chil­dren can in­ter­act with," she said. "I am hop­ing to cre­ate and in­te­grate."

�2 Cost of a por­trait is $400.

Pay­ment can be made at www.go­fundme.com//Fund­Jen­dayiKali­fa or Unit Trust (#5148889-002). If not a por­trait, then do­na­tions are wel­come. Damani says all it takes is �1 or TT$10 to help.