Wes­ley Gib­bings

At the time of writ­ing, one prime min­is­ter, one pres­i­dent, the Cari­com Sec­re­tari­at, and dozens of jour­nal­ists, pub­lic of­fi­cials, politi­cians, and de­vel­op­ment ex­perts have paid trib­ute to Caribbean jour­nal­ist Rick­ey Singh.

He will be laid to rest in Bar­ba­dos a week from now, but his 65 years in jour­nal­ism have ce­ment­ed his place in the Caribbean pub­lic space.

His daugh­ter Wendy has led the ef­fort to or­gan­ise and lodge his ex­ten­sive archives at UWI Cave Hill—a task that re­veals the mag­ni­tude of Rick­ey’s re­mark­able ac­com­plish­ments. He was born on Feb­ru­ary 1, 1937, in rur­al Canal 2 Pold­er, to a young cou­ple who bore no sur­names.

His fa­ther, Pharsadie, died when Rick­ey was just two months old. His moth­er, Dud­hia (known as Jessie), passed when he was about eight or nine. Rick­ey’s birth cer­tifi­cate sim­ply list­ed him as “Ramo­tar”.

Jessie is re­mem­bered as a youth­ful ag­i­ta­tor for fair pay and trans­port for women farm­ers, since on­ly men were trans­port­ed to the fields. She died young but ap­peared to have left Rick­ey with the con­vic­tion that ef­fec­tive ad­vo­ca­cy could bring about mean­ing­ful change.

He en­tered jour­nal­ism at 17, and his ear­ly promise was such that the pub­lish­ers of the Graph­ic news­pa­per, the Thomp­son Fleet, sent him to the Uni­ver­si­ty of In­di­ana to hone his skills.

Dur­ing po­lit­i­cal un­rest in Guyana in 1974, they re­lo­cat­ed him to Eng­land, but he felt strong­ly that his fam­i­ly could not thrive in a so­ci­ety that viewed them as “less than what they are” and he re­turned to the Caribbean.

Fast for­ward to the late 1970s. My grand un­cle, Rev Roy Nee­hall—my grand­moth­er’s youngest broth­er—would fre­quent­ly men­tion “Rick­ey” dur­ing our talks about a pos­si­ble writ­ing ca­reer. Un­cle Roy even­tu­al­ly made the con­nec­tion, and Caribbean Con­tact, then edit­ed by Rick­ey, be­came one of my first free­lance plat­forms.

Un­cle Roy al­so played a piv­otal role in in­tro­duc­ing me to the late, great Hans Hanoomans­ingh, who, like Rick­ey, passed away last Sat­ur­day. Three men—Rick­ey, Hans, and Roy—dif­fer­ent in many ways, but unit­ed by an un­wa­ver­ing pur­suit of what they be­lieved to be just and right.

Un­cle Roy, a so-called “left-wing” Pres­by­ter­ian mod­er­a­tor and lat­er gen­er­al sec­re­tary of the Caribbean Con­fer­ence of Church­es who died sud­den­ly in 1996, was deemed a trou­ble­mak­er by some.

Hans, who was not a rad­i­cal by any means but an ef­fec­tive change agent, of­ten spoke of his ad­mi­ra­tion for Un­cle Roy, and some claimed their voic­es were al­most in­dis­tin­guish­able. Our con­ver­sa­tions in­vari­ably cir­cled back to vis­its to the Nee­hall home in Trinidad and Cana­da.

When we worked to­geth­er at Ra­dio 610, I asked both Hans and man­age­ment why his brand of East In­di­an mu­si­cal con­tent wasn’t more present in “main­stream” pro­gram­ming.

That dream ma­te­ri­alised at 103.1 FM, which he helped pi­o­neer with me­dia vi­sion­ary Dik Hen­der­son years lat­er.

It was the coun­try’s first 100 per cent East In­di­an ra­dio sta­tion. Hans lat­er launched Her­itage Ra­dio with a broad­er pro­gram­ming range.

Rick­ey’s name would come up now and then in our con­ver­sa­tions, but my own pro­fes­sion­al jour­ney even­tu­al­ly brought me clos­er to the Guyanese jour­nal­ist. I’ve of­ten de­scribed him as a “jour­nal­is­tic fa­ther,” shaped by a rugged work eth­ic and pro­lif­ic out­put.

When I was of­fered the post of PRO at the Cari­com Sec­re­tari­at, I was told that Rick­ey’s en­dorse­ment had helped seal the deal—such was his in­flu­ence. He had al­ready carved a rep­u­ta­tion as leader of a for­mi­da­ble corps of Cari­com Sum­mit reg­u­lars: Canute James and Hugh Croskill from Ja­maica, Pe­ter Richards from Ra­dio An­tilles/CANA/CMC, Bert Wilkin­son of Guyana, and Andy John­son, Clevon Raphael, and Sharon Pitt from T&T.

We all mar­velled at his com­mand of the is­sues and the pas­sion with which he en­gaged con­tem­po­rary re­gion­al is­sues in every field of en­deav­our.

One of these days, I will re­count the heart­break of 2021-2023, when Rick­ey, grave­ly ill, tried to re­set­tle in T&T. I have the re­ceipts. It was a sober­ing chap­ter that re­in­forced my be­lief that his deep love for the Caribbean was not al­ways rec­i­p­ro­cat­ed. Ex­pe­ri­ences in his home­land, Guyana, to­geth­er with Bar­ba­dos, and T&T, fea­ture in a com­pli­cat­ed tale sup­port­ive of this view.

But his voice en­dures—etched in­to the re­gion’s mem­o­ry as a re­lent­less chron­i­cler of Caribbean life and pol­i­tics, shaped by hard­ship, and sus­tained by pur­pose.

If a com­mon rest­ing place for those who have served well does in­deed ex­ist (as all three be­lieved), there is most like­ly now an in­ter­est­ing con­fab com­pris­ing Roy, Hans, Rick­ey and oth­ers re­flect­ing on how the place we oc­cu­py can be made bet­ter.