An­na-Lisa Paul

As gun and gang vi­o­lence con­tin­ue to claim lives in T&T—two in­ter­na­tion­al­ly renowned reg­gae icons on Thurs­day ap­pealed to pupils in the Mor­vant/Laven­tille area to fo­cus on their stud­ies, as they are the lead­ers of to­mor­row.

Call­ing on the Gov­ern­ment to find out what was af­fect­ing the peo­ple, they said a con­scious ef­fort is need­ed to find out what is­sues con­tin­ued to fu­el crime.

Ty­ing the shoelaces of some of the pupils at the Rose Hill RC Pri­ma­ry School, Laven­tille, min­utes af­ter he ar­rived at the fa­cil­i­ty, Miguel “Siz­zla Kalon­ji” Collins, urged the 65 chil­dren present to aim to be more suc­cess­ful than him.

Ad­mit­ting it was beau­ti­ful to be back in T&T as he spoke to re­porters briefly be­fore en­ter­ing the school, Collins said, “Ed­u­ca­tion is the foun­da­tion.”

Collins, along with Clifton “Caple­ton” Bai­ley III vis­it­ed two pri­ma­ry schools and one sec­ondary school as they sought to send a con­scious mes­sage to the youth.

Collins said they were “send­ing the con­scious mes­sage of Rasta­fari...reach­ing out to the peo­ple in the di­as­po­ra for them to know they are one de­spite the sit­u­a­tion, de­spite the crime and vi­o­lence and dis­trac­tions with­in the me­dia and all those stuff.”

He added, “You are one black peo­ple from Africa and you should be con­scious and be mind­ful of that.”

“Don’t be eas­i­ly dis­tract­ed, stay fo­cused, know what you want in life and work to­wards that, and you will get it done.”

“School is the foun­da­tion,” he not­ed.

Siz­zla and Caple­ton, along with Calvin Scott (Co­coa Tea) and Kei­th Blair (An­tho­ny B), are in Trinidad to per­form at the Kings of the Earth con­cert at the Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah, Port-of-Spain, to­mor­row.

Both Collins and Bai­ley, along with their re­spec­tive en­tourages, vis­it­ed the Rose Hill RC Pri­ma­ry School; St Barb’s Gov­ern­ment Pri­ma­ry School and the Mor­vant/Laven­tille Sec­ondary School – where they pro­vid­ed words of in­spi­ra­tion and hope for the fu­ture to both staff and stu­dents.

Dur­ing the vis­its, they al­so dis­trib­uted note­books, pen­cils and socks to the stu­dents, and re­mind­ed them of the im­por­tance of keep­ing them­selves, their uni­forms, books and sur­round­ings clean.

Asked to com­ment on the vi­ral video record­ing of the sit­u­a­tion which oc­curred at Rose Hill RC on Oc­to­ber 31, when pupils and teach­ers were seen ly­ing on the ground and un­der desks whilst gun­shots from war­ring gangs were heard echo­ing through the sur­round­ing hill­sides, Collins said, “The dis­tur­bance of the cit­i­zens are still with­in the whole en­tire struc­ture of the sys­tem nat­u­ral­ly, and these peo­ple re­sid­ing in this area, know­ing it has got ter­tiary in­sti­tu­tions here and they still in that like­ly man­ner, to cre­ate vi­o­lence...some­thing must be done and some­thing is re­al­ly wrong.”

He said work was re­quired to de­ter­mine “the needs of the peo­ple, get the peo­ple com­fort­able, see what’s both­er­ing the peo­ple, and as­sist the peo­ple so the peo­ple can be more com­fort­able as for them not to cause any vi­o­lence to dis­turb the school­ing for the chil­dren be­cause we all know that ed­u­ca­tion is the key.”

Fo­cus­ing on those who had cre­at­ed the fear and pan­ic in the com­mu­ni­ty, he added, “There are big per­sons do­ing what they are do­ing, and they know the crime and vi­o­lence and the ex­plod­ing of the guns dis­turb the chil­dren in study­ing, yet still you are do­ing it, so some­thing is wrong, so we just need to as­sist the peo­ple.”

He added, “The Gov­ern­ment needs to reach out more to the peo­ple and know what’s the prob­lem with the peo­ple as to quell the vi­o­lence.”

As­sur­ing they will be stand­ing in sol­i­dar­i­ty with the com­mu­ni­ty, Collins smiled as he said, “I am Siz­zla Kalon­ji, the voice of the peo­ple is the voice of Jah. And I think I should be us­ing my voice for the chil­dren al­so.”

Hug­ging Collins as they greet­ed each oth­er out­side the school, Bai­ley echoed sim­i­lar sen­ti­ments as he said reg­gae mu­sic had the pow­er to heal the hearts and free the minds of the peo­ple.

“Reg­gae mu­sic is mu­sic with soul...so it can make peo­ple get in­to them­selves,” Bai­ley said

Em­brac­ing the stu­dents at all three schools as they per­formed ex­cerpts from sev­er­al hits, both Collins and Bai­ley were warm­ly re­ceived as they ap­pealed to stu­dents to stay in school; re­main fo­cused on their stud­ies; main­tain a spot­less char­ac­ter, which would be their call­ing card; and al­so build in­tegri­ty and im­prove self-aware­ness and con­fi­dence.