Ryan Ba­choo

Lead Ed­i­tor–News­gath­er­ing

ryan.ba­choo@cnc3.co.tt

As one dri­ves down the Na­pari­ma Ma­yaro Road—what lo­cals in Princes Town call the Main Road—with­in the span of one kilo­me­tre is a se­ries of firsts.

The nar­row, wind­ing com­mu­ni­ty of Iere Vil­lage holds the his­to­ry of pre- and post-colo­nial Trinidad. Iere, by its very name, was the Amerindi­an name of Trinidad be­fore Span­ish set­tlers re­named it in ho­n­our of the Holy Trin­i­ty.

Iere trans­lates to Land of the Hum­ming­bird.

And seem­ing­ly writ­ten in­to its des­tiny, this tiny vil­lage sit­ting ten min­utes on the out­skirts of Princes Town’s com­mer­cial hub would be the breed­ing ground of both ed­u­ca­tion and faith in this coun­try.

Iere Gov­ern­ment Pri­ma­ry School, built and opened in 1866, is wide­ly con­sid­ered one of the first state pri­ma­ry schools in the coun­try. The school marks 160 years this year and 24 years since mov­ing from its orig­i­nal lo­ca­tion at the top of Co­r­i­al Road.

A three-minute dri­ve south-east takes you past the Iere Memo­r­i­al Pres­by­ter­ian Church—the first Pres­by­ter­ian Church in Trinidad es­tab­lished in 1868 by Rev­erend John and Mrs Sarah Mor­ton. High­er up the road is the Iere Vil­lage Mosque, built that same year.

Some still de­bate whether it was tru­ly the first mosque in Trinidad, but his­to­ri­ans agree it is one of the first to be es­tab­lished in the coun­try and was lat­er de­clared an his­tor­i­cal build­ing by the gov­ern­ment.

Con­nect­ing these three land­marks are rugged roads that frus­trate the lo­cals and leave vis­i­tors to cau­tious­ly ma­noeu­vre.

Fur­ther to­wards Table­land sits Trinidad’s first Hin­du tem­ple, the Moose Bha­gat Tem­ple, built in 1904—al­so cel­e­brat­ed as the sec­ond old­est in the West­ern Hemi­sphere.

And in be­tween the firsts are ma­ture ties that bind this his­tor­i­cal town. The fa­mous St An­drew’s Pres­by­ter­ian Church, which stands at the mouth of the town, marks 150 years this year. Around here, his­to­ry is every­where.

Keep­ing the mem­o­ry of Iere alive

But be­yond the rough roads that lead in and out of the town, there’s some­thing more that frus­trates Mr Ephraim Ramkissoon, cur­rent prin­ci­pal of the Iere Gov­ern­ment Pri­ma­ry School. Not enough peo­ple in the vil­lage know the deep his­to­ry of both Iere Vil­lage and Princes Town. Since as­sum­ing the role near­ly two years ago, he has been try­ing to fix that.

He told Guardian Me­dia, “Be­fore the name Trinidad, the Amerindi­ans called our coun­try Iere. Peo­ple have to un­der­stand it is an ho­n­our that the name Iere was be­stowed on this com­mu­ni­ty.”

He added, “Princes Town boasts of a very rich his­to­ry. We have pro­duced out­stand­ing cit­i­zens in every sphere of na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment. Robin Singh in crick­et, who went on to play for In­dia, the Christo­pher broth­ers in ta­ble ten­nis, Ras Shorty I gave the world so­ca, Ce­cil Humes (Mae­stro) a mas­ter in ca­lyp­so, Stephen Ma­haraj and Bas­deo Pan­day in pol­i­tics, Dr Noel Kalicha­ran in ed­u­ca­tion and the list goes on. Our chil­dren must be schooled to un­der­stand and ap­pre­ci­ate our his­to­ry thus pledg­ing al­le­giance to build­ing com­mu­ni­ty and a favourable, har­mo­nious spir­it. How can we grow and glow if we don’t know and ap­pre­ci­ate where we’ve come from?”

Ramkissoon boasts he lives “five min­utes from the school”, and through his job, he’s able to give back to the com­mu­ni­ty he loves. He’s so pas­sion­ate about the town, he wrote a song about its his­to­ry and was crowned the 2008 Princes Town Ca­lyp­so Monarch.

He sang a verse for us on our vis­it to the school on Mon­day.

Two princes one day left Lon­don

While trav­el­ling through the Mis­sion,

They called here Princes Town, my love­ly Princes Town.

Jan­u­ary 1880 George and Al­bert plant­ed two poui trees,

Right here in Princes Town, my love­ly Princes Town.

On that blessed jour­ney they had to reach the Dev­il’s Wood­yard,

They call here Princes Town, my love­ly Princes Town.

Now Trin­bag­o­ni­ans like they gone de­range,

Get­ting on strange but she nev­er changed.

With the prayer, Lord I want you in­ter­vene,

That she will al­ways stay blessed and clean,

Lord, please keep my town, these hal­lowed grounds, safe and sound, through ups and downs.

“It’s a small but warm town,” an el­der­ly la­dy told us, while shel­ter­ing un­der a poui tree on Loth­i­ans Road. That poui tree is the em­blem of Princes Town. Stand­ing in­side the St Stephen’s An­gli­can Church, it is one of two poui trees plant­ed by Prince Al­bert and Prince George dur­ing their vis­it in 1880.

One stands at the en­trance of the church while the oth­er stands at the ex­it, and both con­tin­ue to flour­ish 146 years af­ter be­ing plant­ed. It grew with the new name Princes Town, which Al­bert and George changed from Mis­sion to rid it of its Span­ish past.

Some 30 years af­ter his vis­it, Prince George would be­come King George V. It peeves lo­cals when some call it “Princess Town”, and they’re quick to re­mind them that no princess ever vis­it­ed the town, on­ly two princes.

St Stephen’s An­gli­can Church con­tin­ues to wel­come vis­i­tors and tourists alike. Rev­erend Fa­ther Michael Lawrence, who is now priest of the church, told the Guardian Me­dia, St Stephen’s An­gli­can is more than a tourist at­trac­tion and ac­tive­ly serves the needs of Princes Town.

He said, “We en­sure that this space is kept for the com­mu­ni­ty. We al­so have a com­mu­ni­ty cen­tre be­hind, where the Prison Youth Club us­es it Mon­days and Tues­days. We have the Po­lice Youth Club. We have Al­co­hol Anony­mous. We as­sist with the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion and their so­cial out­reach, so there’s a lot that hap­pens here.”

Un­lock­ing Princes Town’s tourism po­ten­tial

There’s a be­lief in these parts that Princes Town can be­come a hub for do­mes­tic tourism, serv­ing those look­ing for a new ad­ven­ture and fresh sight­see­ing.

How­ev­er, it re­mains large­ly un­tapped. One such area is Glen­roy Tun­nel in Mal­gretoute—an eight-minute dri­ve away from the An­gli­can Church. The tun­nel was a key con­nec­tion point for the train that came from San Fer­nan­do and passed through Usine Ste Madeleine on its way to Princes Town. The princes took that route on Jan­u­ary 20, 1880.

Plans are un­der­way to re­store the tun­nel and make it a tourist at­trac­tion, but coun­cil­lor for St Julien/Princes Town North, Latch­mi Nar­ine Ramd­han, said ur­gent as­sis­tance is need­ed from the Gov­ern­ment in this ven­ture.

Princes Town’s com­mer­cial hub may be small, but ge­o­graph­i­cal­ly it ex­tends far across the map.

The Princes Town Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion gov­erns as far as Moru­ga, Table­land, Bar­rack­pore, Ste Madeleine, Pi­paro, Re­form, and Har­mo­ny Hall.

His­toric roads, mod­ern chal­lenges

The roads along the his­toric Iere Vil­lage haven’t been paved in decades. Some patch­ing work is tak­ing place, but res­i­dents ques­tion its ef­fec­tive­ness.

“For­get the land­marks, do a fea­ture on the state of the roads,” one res­i­dent in Palmyra told us. Along that stretch, a land­slide is pulling half of the road down­hill while the oth­er half stays up­right.

“I’m 60 years and the road has been like that ever since I was small,” one pen­sion­er re­marked. It’s cre­at­ed a night­mare for dri­vers, es­pe­cial­ly at night, where an­oth­er res­i­dent said the street light­ing is poor.

At the side of the road, De­onar­ine Dipchan spe­cialis­es in fix­ing tyres for trucks. He’s in­her­it­ed his fa­ther’s busi­ness and watched his un­cle’s house be lost to the land­slide that is tak­ing down the road with it. His un­cle al­so fixed tyres and packed up his busi­ness and moved out of the area some years ago. Dipchan is hold­ing on to hope that the road’s cav­ing will be kinder to his part of the land than it was to his un­cle’s, but it hard­ly seems re­al­is­tic.

Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo bud­get­ed for the area in his first bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion. Dipchan’s broth­er said but for a few vis­its from of­fi­cials “here and there” noth­ing of sub­stance has ever come out.

And the main road is just one part of the sto­ry.

A cou­ple urged us to tra­verse the side streets of Iere Vil­lage and ex­plore the “ter­ri­ble state of the roads.”

Ramd­han said, “It would have de­te­ri­o­rat­ed over many years due to a short­age of re­sources. What we try to do as a Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion is that we spend some of the monies that we re­ceive on the de­vel­op­ment pro­gramme to up­grade the roads with­in the town cen­tre it­self, be­cause Princes Town is not just Princes Town, but the town cen­tre is what would ac­com­mo­date peo­ple from the out­skirts of Princes Town. While we can­not af­ford to main­tain all of the roads with­in the mu­nic­i­pal­i­ty, we try to keep those that are clos­est to the town cen­tre to make peo­ple a lit­tle bit more com­fort­able.”

For vis­i­tors and lo­cals alike, the roads to a town that boasts of cen­turies-old his­to­ry are paved with decades of de­te­ri­o­ra­tion.