The 22-mem­ber team which orig­i­nal­ly com­prised gov­ern­ment mem­bers, busi­ness­men, econ­o­mists and ac­tivists is sup­posed to present a COVID-19 Roadmap to Re­cov­ery for Trinidad and To­ba­go.

As it stands the em­pha­sis is on eco­nom­ic re­cov­ery, but shouldn’t the com­mit­tee be look­ing si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly at a sys­tem of val­ues which could stim­u­late the so­ci­ety?

If I have to get the ear of the Com­mit­tee, I would sug­gest that it looks at the mat­ter of Ed­u­ca­tion with par­tic­u­lar em­pha­sis on Cul­ture ( a way of life), and Cre­ativ­i­ty (which can be taught), as a means of stim­u­lat­ing a na­tion­al thrust for self-re­liance, a key at­tribute for de­vel­op­ing the so­ci­ety more so that we have to face the so-called New Nor­mal.

In a 2017 ar­ti­cle. “ED­U­CA­TION AND TLC (NOT JUST TEN­DER LOV­ING CARE) I wrote “Ed­u­ca­tion has to play a very im­por­tant part in trans­form­ing our econ­o­my to where we want it to be”.

I ref­er­enced a book “Re-In­vent­ing the Cor­po­ra­tion” (1985) by John Nais­bitt & Pa­tri­cia Abur­dene which among oth­er con­cerns dealt with the role of Cre­ativ­i­ty.

In the face of pre­vi­ous crit­i­cism of the com­mit­tee (my own in­clud­ed) an op­po­si­tion politi­cian, Mr. Vas­ant Bharath. has been in­clud­ed and now there are be­lat­ed re­quests to the pub­lic, which may make sub­mis­sions via the Gov­ern­ment’s of­fi­cial web­site.

But why could not the com­mit­tee have in­clud­ed some­one like Dr Hol­lis Liv­er­pool (Chalk­dust)? He has the cre­den­tials and the ca­pac­i­ty for of­fer­ing guid­ance for Ed­u­ca­tion, Cul­ture and Cre­ativ­i­ty with spe­cial em­pha­sis on the Cre­ative Arts.

Where Cul­ture is con­cerned artistes such as the ca­lyp­so­ni­ans hold a col­lec­tive wis­dom which can guide us. Notwith­stand­ing the be­lief in some quar­ters that ca­lyp­so is mere­ly Car­ni­val mu­sic there is a much-re­peat­ed state­ment that “By Ca­lyp­so Our Sto­ries are Told” which ac­tu­al­ly is a line from Sniper’s (Mervyn Hodge) “Por­trait of Trinidad”.

With­out di­gress­ing too much let us look at the need for com­men­tary, doc­u­men­ta­tion and di­rec­tion on psy­cho-so­cial is­sues which have be­come more crit­i­cal be­cause of COVID-19.

I have heard Ayan­na Web­ster-Roy, Min­is­ter of State in the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter quot­ing Sasha Ann Moses’ ca­lyp­so “Let­ter of Re­straint” which dealt with the dis­tress­ing sit­u­a­tion when women fac­ing do­mes­tic vi­o­lence are not well pro­tect­ed even when they have re­strain­ing or­ders. There is al­so Singing Francine’s (Francine Ed­wards) “Run­away”.

Fur­ther­more, War­rior Em­press’ (Iya Ajè­tun­mo­bi So­morin Bernard) “The You in You” and Joanne Row­ley (Ti­gress) “Who feels it knows it”, have sung about de­pres­sion.

Af­ter all, when we are look­ing for guid­ance or in­spi­ra­tional state­ments, we tend to look many artistes from oth­er gen­res, from Shake­speare to Bob Mar­ley. So, what is the prob­lem with ca­lyp­so?

Be­side Chalk­dust there are quite a few oth­ers who can pro­vide di­rec­tion for Ed­u­ca­tion, Cul­ture and Cre­ativ­i­ty. Among them are Jes­sel Mur­ray, Wen­dell Man­war­ren, Rav­i­ji, Ken Ram­c­hand, Son­ja Du­mas, Mun­gal Patasar, Earl Lovelace, Yao Rame­sar, Er­rol Fa­bi­en and Christo­pher Laird.

We have to fos­ter an ap­proach com­pa­ra­ble to what NJAC said in The Peo­ple’s De­c­la­ra­tion of Pol­i­cy for the De­vel­op­ment of a New Trinidad and To­ba­go (the Blue Book,1981) re­gard­ing the steps to­ward a cul­ture of self- re­liance.

“There is no un­der­es­ti­mat­ing the dam­age done to peo­ples by dis­tort­ing the knowl­edge of the past. You de­stroy a man’s im­age of his his­to­ry; you al­so de­stroy his im­age of him­self in the present and his vi­sion for the fu­ture. The ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem is still con­tin­u­ing this dam­age”.

“Part of our res­ig­na­tion to a non-par­tic­i­pa­to­ry role in pol­i­tics comes from the rape of our self-con­fi­dence through de­nial of Self-Knowl­edge and the in­tro­duc­tion of ma­li­cious false­hoods”.

“The be­lief and will need­ed for eco­nom­ic trans­for­ma­tion al­so de­mand a re­build­ing of that self-con­fi­dence”.

“This is so vi­tal to the whole process of trans­for­ma­tion of the so­ci­ety that we fur­ther elab­o­rate as a ba­sic prin­ci­ple”.

“The cul­tur­al de­vel­op­ment of the en­tire so­ci­ety must be firm­loy wed­ded to a con­cept of self re­liance.”

Aiye­goro Ome

Mt Lam­bert

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