Over 90 Venezuelan passengers trying to get into TT through the Cedros port were turned back by T&T Coast Guard as patrols on the border heightened on Thursday.
With intensified street protests and violent clashes on the streets of Venezuela, hundreds of desperate Venezuelans have found the fresh resolve to flee their homeland.
A source who requested anonymity said two ferries Orinoco Delta and Angel were scheduled to arrive at the Cedros port on Thursday. The Orinoco Delta was transporting 60 passengers, including one Trinidadian man with his passport.
The Angel had 35 passengers which included two Venezuelan women who are married to Trinidadian men and an elderly Venezuelan woman. She had a Trinidadian passport and was accompanied by a child believed to be her grandson.
The source said upon reaching about two miles off the Cedros coast, the TT Coast Guard interceptor stopped the Angel. They detained the passengers at sea for more than an hour, perusing documents. All of the Venezuelans were sent back except the grandmother and the two women with Trinidadian husbands.
The grandmother was distraught that the grandson was separated from her, the source added.
The Angel had been registered to dock at the Cedros port, the source added.
The Orinoco Delta which normally comes to Cedros port at least three times per week was also stopped by the Coast Guard. For more than an hour, the vessel stayed out at sea. The lone Trinidadian was taken back to the port via the Coast Guard vessel but after an hour of detention, the ferry with almost 60 passengers was also sent back by the TTCG.
"No instructions were given to Customs and officers were later briefed. It is not usual for the ferries to be sent back because Venezuelans come here to shop for basic groceries and medicine to take back to their families, " the source added.
At the Cedros coast, dozens of people waited for the ferries to dock up to 430 pm. It was through WhatsApp that some of them learned the TTCG had detained the ferries.
One man who took videos of the Coast Guard was warned by CG officers who threatened to arrest him if he failed to delete the video.
Contacted for comment, councilor for Cedros Shankar Teelucksingh said he was puzzled by the developments.
He said the TTCG should have informed the ferry owners that they were not allowed to enter the Cedros port prior to their departure in Venezuela.
Teelucksingh said the TTCG should focus on cracking down on the illegal entry of Venezuelans.
"This kind of thing will cause Venezuelans to choose the illegal way to enter rather than the legal way" he added.
Teelucksingh also said better lockdown of the borders were needed for those boats bringing in illegal migrants.
Contacted for comment yesterday Public Affairs Lieutenant of the TT Coast Guard Officer Hillaire said a statement will be issued pending investigations.
Since tensions escalated in Venezuelan in January, hundreds of Venezuelans have been entering TT through several points in the southern coast.
These include Galfa Point, Carlise Trace, Coromandel, Chatham, Green Hill, Icacos, Columbus Bay and Fullarton Beach.
The foreigners are dropped off on the beach. They hide out in the forests at nights and by 5 am they are picked up in maxi taxis by Trinidadian men.
Venezuelans normally spend between $1,500 to $2,000 to get to Trinidad.
The fees are paid in US and are non-refundable.
It is estimated that there are between 40,000 to 50,000 Venezuelans living illegally in TT. An estimated 700 Venezuelans come through the Cedros port weekly.
Source:  CNC3

Va­grants have moved in­to Li­on House, the child­hood home of late No­bel Lau­re­ate VS Naipaul, which is in an ad­vanced state of di­lap­i­da­tion and could col­lapse at any time.
The once ma­jes­tic white struc­ture made fa­mous in Naipaul’s book, A House for Mr Biswas, in which he trans­forms the rep­re­sen­ta­tions of li­ons carved on the front of the build­ing in­to the Hin­du mon­key-god Hanu­man.
How­ev­er, al­though it has un­der­gone ex­ten­sive restora­tion works in the past, Li­on House was left aban­doned fol­low­ing the death of at­tor­ney Suren­dranath Capildeo, grand­son of Pun­dit Capildeo, the in­den­tured labour­er who built the house.
Re­gard­ed as one of the ar­chi­tec­tur­al trea­sures, the build­ing is list­ed by the Na­tion­al Trust and is con­sid­ered to be of ma­jor his­tor­i­cal sig­nif­i­cance in cen­tral Trinidad.
Ch­agua­nas May­or Gopaul Bood­han and Tabaquite MP Su­ruj Ram­bachan, who vis­it­ed the build­ing yes­ter­day, came up­on Su­ruj Samuel, a home­less man who sleeps in front of the di­lap­i­dat­ed doors of the struc­ture. Samuel is one of sev­er­al va­grants now oc­cu­py­ing the struc­ture. He stores his few pos­ses­sions in card­board box­es and sleeps un­der a rot­ted wood­en beam that could col­lapse at any time.
Ram­bachan, a res­i­dent of Ch­agua­nas, said he was very dis­heart­ened at the state of Li­on House. He es­ti­mates that it will col­lapse with­in two years un­less ur­gent re­pairs are done.
He peered through a groove in the wood­en front doors held to­geth­er by a rusty pad­lock at the in­te­ri­or of the build­ing where the floors have caved in and there are signs of ma­jor wa­ter dam­age.
“I am very, very dis­turbed, dis­heart­ened and de­pressed at what I am see­ing hap­pen­ing to Li­on House here in Ch­agua­nas,” he said.
“This is one of the most trag­ic things I am see­ing in my coun­try at this point in time. The de­te­ri­o­ra­tion of this build­ing says some­thing about our val­ue for our his­to­ry and our an­ces­try.”
Ram­bachan said he hopes the rel­e­vant au­thor­i­ties will see it fit to con­duct im­me­di­ate re­pairs.
“If you can­not ap­pre­ci­ate where you came from, you would nev­er be able to build the kind of fu­ture that would be one our chil­dren can be proud of,” he said.
He rec­om­mend­ed that the build­ing be ac­quired by Gov­ern­ment and “re­stored with the same en­thu­si­asm that was placed in the restora­tion of Stollmey­ers Cas­tle.”
Bood­han said since the prop­er­ty is pri­vate­ly owned there is very lit­tle the Ch­agua­nas Bor­ough Cor­po­ra­tion apart from get­ting the va­grants to re­lo­cate.
Li­on House was last re­stored in the ear­ly 1990s by Suren­dranath Capildeo who re­tained ar­chi­tect Col­in Laird to ad­vise on and su­per­vise the project, award­ed to EWAC & Co. Ltd with Glen Es­pinet in charge.
Work was halt­ed for a view years dur­ing which the build­ing was van­dalised, so the project had to start all over again. The restora­tion was even­tu­al­ly com­plet­ed in 2001 with all the costs borne by Capildeo.
In 2013, then tourism min­is­ter Stephen Cadiz an­nounced that a mas­ter plan was be­ing de­vel­oped to trans­form Brechin Cas­tle, Cou­va, in­to an East In­di­an her­itage site. That plan in­clud­ed restora­tion of the Li­on House. He said a bud­get had al­ready been for­mu­lat­ed for the restora­tion work and dis­cus­sions would be held with Capildeo.
How­ev­er, since Capildeo’s death in 2016, Li­on House has been left aban­doned.
The Li­on House has been many things to many peo­ple in its ear­ly his­to­ry. It was the meet­ing place for many trav­ellers from all over Trinidad who were pass­ing through Ch­agua­nas.
It was al­so an ear­ly com­mu­ni­ty cen­tre for the res­i­dents of Ch­agua­nas and sur­round­ing ar­eas. It was the nat­ur­al home for Hin­du Pil­grims wher­ev­er they may have resided in Trinidad. At some point in their lives, they gath­ered for com­fort un­der the awnings of the Li­on House on the Main Road, Ch­agua­nas. Gan­ja was sold at the Li­on House and it was con­sumed there, by the pub­lic with­out any dis­com­fort to any­one.
Source:  The Guardian, March 2019

Deep in the Trin­i­ty forests about 13 miles from the coast lies one of T&T's best-kept se­crets—a warm salt wa­ter vol­cano or salt spring, pos­si­bly the on­ly one of its kind in the world.
Salt Spring—the Rio Claro Salt Wa­ter Vol­cano—was record­ed in a pub­li­ca­tion in 1959 by Swiss ge­ol­o­gist Dr Hans Ku­gler, but it was on­ly two years ago a team of 37 ge­ol­o­gists went back to the site, defin­ing it and mak­ing it known pub­licly.
De­spite this, the vol­cano re­mains un­der-ex­plored to many cit­i­zens. The rocks around the vol­cano are spongy be­neath your feet. A coral-like for­ma­tion known as "tu­fa" ex­ists on the flanks of the vol­cano, which plunges around 250 feet down­hill to meet the salt wa­ter riv­er in the area, which is de­void of veg­e­ta­tion.
Re­searchers have been try­ing to as­cer­tain why the wa­ter which flows from the vol­cano is salty, see­ing that the near­est coast is 25 kilo­me­tres away.
Around 100 feet from the salt wa­ter vol­cano is a ma­jor oil seep, which al­so flows down to­ward the salt wa­ter riv­er.
Se­nior geo­sci­en­tist at Touch­stone Ex­plo­ration Xavier Moo­nan, who has been in­ves­ti­gat­ing the mys­te­ri­ous nat­ur­al won­der, be­lieves the out­flow is ac­tu­al­ly trapped sea wa­ter com­ing from a Cre­ta­ceous reser­voir dat­ing 65 mil­lion years ago.
In an ex­clu­sive in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia, Moo­nan said the warm salt wa­ter emerges from the ground as a nat­ur­al seep sim­i­lar to mud vol­ca­noes in oth­er parts of the coun­try.
"Ac­com­pa­nied by some oil, the salty wa­ter con­stant­ly flows and cas­cades ra­di­al­ly down the hill­side where the small streams merge to form Salt Riv­er. Salt Riv­er flows gen­er­al­ly north­ward where it even­tu­al­ly merges with the larg­er Or­toire Riv­er that emp­ties in­to the At­lantic on the east coast near Ma­yaro," Moo­nan said.
It was hunters who first came up­on the vol­cano, which when viewed from drones ap­pears as a whitish ex­pan­sive pud­dle com­plete­ly sur­round­ed by dense trop­i­cal for­est.
Moo­nan said the small hill­side of very ac­tive oil and salt wa­ter seeps drew ge­ol­o­gists by the droves.
"The Amer­i­can As­so­ci­a­tion of Pe­tro­le­um Ge­ol­o­gists Young Pro­fes­sion­als Trinidad and To­ba­go Chap­ter (AAP­GYPTT) vis­it­ed the site on a num­ber of oc­ca­sions, sam­pling the rocks, wa­ter, and oil em­a­nat­ing from the ground," Moo­nan said.
Not­ing that this site is quite unique, and quite pos­si­bly the on­ly of its kind in the world, Moo­nan said it was much more than just an­oth­er oil and salt wa­ter seep.
"Our very own La Brea Pitch Lake, for in­stance, is one of the largest nat­ur­al oil seeps in the world. This Salt Wa­ter vol­cano is unique. We be­lieve the salt wa­ter flow comes from trapped sea­wa­ter flow­ing from an an­cient Cre­ta­ceous reser­voir," Moo­nan said.
He said proof of this comes from the re­sults of an ex­plo­ration well drilled by Exxon in the 1990s which showed a num­ber of lime­stone-rich zones in the area which dates to the Cre­ta­ceous age. The rocks were found at depths of ap­prox­i­mate­ly 5,500 feet, Moo­nan ex­plained. Clos­er ex­am­i­na­tion of the "crunchy" rocks iden­ti­fied then as a car­bon­ate de­posit called tu­fa.
"It is gen­er­al­ly grey to white and ap­pears spongy in parts. They are very sim­i­lar to the lime­stone de­posits at Tu­rure Wa­ter­steps in the North­ern Range, which make up the walls of each ter­race. At Tu­rure the car­bon­ate is be­ing ac­tive­ly re­pre­cip­i­tat­ed out of the riv­er wa­ter. It is en­riched in car­bon­ate due to lime­stone rocks along the riv­er trib­u­taries fur­ther up the moun­tain," Moo­nan said.
"Based on the ge­o­log­i­cal evo­lu­tion of the Guayagua­yare area, we strong­ly be­lieve that the source of the car­bon­ate for tu­fa pre­cip­i­ta­tion comes from Cre­ta­ceous rocks, and fur­ther­more, the saline wa­ters which feed the Salt Riv­er are very like­ly be­ing ex­pelled from Cre­ta­ceous reser­voirs as well," Moo­nan ex­plained.
Like the Pitch Lake of La Brea and our many oth­er mud vol­ca­noes, Moo­nan be­lieves the Salt Wa­ter vol­cano could gen­er­ate mass for­eign ex­change to the coun­try at a time when the econ­o­my is in sham­bles.
"In oth­er parts of the world, a fea­ture such as this would be sig­nif­i­cant­ly de­vel­oped and mar­ket­ed as a nat­ur­al spa," he said.
"Com­pa­nies such as Range Re­sources and Touch­stone Ex­plo­ration, who are ac­tive­ly ex­plor­ing these ar­eas for hy­dro­car­bons have to date sig­nif­i­cant­ly sup­port­ed the ex­pe­di­tions, test­ing and ge­o­log­i­cal un­der­stand­ing of the fea­ture," he said.
Get­ting to the vol­cano is not easy and on­ly an ex­pe­ri­enced tour guide can get you there.
It takes two hours south­ward from the Trinidad Con­trolled Oil­field (TCO) Duck­ham Road, through very thick for­est, to come up­on the vol­canic site.
Down­stream from the salt wa­ter vol­cano, the Salt Riv­er cross­es the Duck­ham Road, head­ing north­east to join the Poole Riv­er.
"Though its salin­i­ty has dropped from 23,000 ppm at the source to a brack­ish 6,000 ppm some 2.5 kilo­me­tres down­stream, peo­ple can rev­el in this nat­ur­al ge­o­log­ic phe­nom­e­non," Moo­nan said.
"With the right vi­sion a good syn­er­gy of the sci­ence from the com­pa­nies and mar­ket­ing from the Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion, the Salt Wa­ter vol­cano can be­come a new ge­o­t­ouris­tic site that can re­dound in jobs and de­vel­op­ment for the peo­ple of Rio Claro, Guayagua­yare," he added.
Min­is­ter of Agri­cul­ture Clarence Ramb­harat who ac­com­pa­nied the team of ge­ol­o­gists on the his­toric 2017 ex­pe­di­tion to the vol­cano agreed that the vol­cano had the po­ten­tial for tourism.
Chair­man of the Ma­yaro Rio Claro Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion Glen Ram said that in 1959, Dr Hans Ku­gler record­ed this fea­ture as a salt spring in his work Sur­face Ge­ol­o­gy Map of Trinidad. Ram said with prop­er as­sis­tance, the Rio Claro Salt Wa­ter vol­cano could be de­vel­oped in­to an in­ter­na­tion­al tourist site. He said the Cor­po­ra­tion was will­ing to print brochures on the vol­cano to ed­u­cate the pop­u­la­tion about its won­ders once it re­ceives fund­ing from the Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment.
Source:  The Guardian, March 2019

Pineap­ple farm­ers who have chopped down more than 300 acres of for­est re­serve in Table­land are ex­pect­ed to be charged by the po­lice fol­low­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tions, Agri­cul­ture Min­is­ter Clarence Ramb­harat con­firmed yes­ter­day.
Ramb­harat him­self has al­so launched a probe in­to “the com­plete fail­ure of the Forestry Di­vi­sion to com­bat squat­ting in the for­est re­serves.”
In an in­ter­view with the T&T Guardian, Ramb­harat said he was ap­palled at the for­est de­struc­tion.
“I am lead­ing the ef­fort to iden­ti­fy rogue farm­ers and re­quest that ac­tion be tak­en, in­clud­ing pros­e­cu­tion,” Ramb­harat added.
Say­ing the Forestry Di­vi­sion, Com­mis­sion­er of State Lands and po­lice were deal­ing with this mat­ter, Ramb­harat said the of­fences in­clude tres­pass­ing and de­struc­tion of trees.
“Apart from pros­e­cut­ing the of­fend­ers, I have re­quest­ed an in­ves­ti­ga­tion by the Con­ser­va­tor of Forests as to whether these were re­port­ed by For­est Of­fi­cers who are sup­posed to mon­i­tor squat­ting in for­est re­serves,” Ramb­harat said.
Asked why the de­struc­tion of the for­est trees was not re­port­ed by the Forestry of­fi­cials be­fore, Ramb­harat said: “Forestry Di­vi­sion has been deal­ing with these is­sues in Table­land for a long time. But with the move­ment of of­fi­cers, the mon­i­tor­ing clear­ly slacked off.”
On who was re­spon­si­ble for the de­struc­tion, Ramb­harat said: “The Forestry Di­vi­sion has iden­ti­fied a few rogue farm­ers. I can­not re­veal their iden­ti­ties ex­cept to say they are farm­ing in the for­est re­serves in Table­land—Glod Road and War­well.”
Ramb­harat said in the past, forestry of­fi­cers could have or­dered of­fend­ers to pay com­pen­sa­tion to avoid pros­e­cu­tion.
“For­est of­fi­cers, like game war­dens, can com­pound of­fences—which means that they can agree with of­fend­ers to pay com­pen­sa­tion and avoid pros­e­cu­tion. This may be an area of abuse and I have act­ed un­der the Forests Act and banned the set­tle­ment of these of­fences with­out the min­is­ter’s ap­proval,” Ramb­harat said.
He added, “Sec­tion 21 of the Forests Act gives the min­is­ter that au­thor­i­ty.
“A cou­ple of years ago I did the same thing for game war­dens, where they can­not set­tle mat­ters with­out my writ­ten ap­proval. That is why more mat­ters are go­ing to the po­lice and the court.”
Asked whether he planned to pi­o­neer leg­isla­tive changes to deal with the is­sue, he said: “The leg­is­la­tion is not per­fect but it is ad­e­quate enough to give law en­force­ment of­fi­cers the pow­er to charge of­fend­ers. My mes­sage is that I am per­son­al­ly lead­ing the ef­fort to iden­ti­fy rogue farm­ers and re­quest that ac­tion be tak­en, in­clud­ing pros­e­cu­tion.”
Con­tact­ed for com­ment on the is­sue, ex­ec­u­tive mem­ber of the Table­land Pineap­ple Farm­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion Ralph Ram­per­sad said he did not know whether pineap­ple farm­ing was tak­ing place on State or pri­vate lands.
“I know there is a lot of cul­ti­va­tion tak­ing place in Glod Road but I can­not say whether it is State land or pri­vate lands. I am not sur­prised. A lot of peo­ple squat on State land and on­ly when it is re­port­ed the min­istry takes ac­tion.”
Ram­per­sad said he was in sup­port of the min­istry’s crack­down on the rogue farm­ers.
He added: “I am not sub­scrib­ing to any­thing il­le­gal. A lot of peo­ple squat. De­struc­tion of the forests has a lot of im­pact on the en­vi­ron­ment and the wa­ter­sheds. It is def­i­nite­ly some­thing that the State Lands Di­vi­sions should in­ves­ti­gate. 
Source:  the Guardian, March 2019.

A 17-year-old boy who migrated from Trinidad at the age of seven has been grabbing headlines in the United States after he was accepted into 17 universities.
Dylan Chidick's story is even more compelling because he was once homeless.
Chidick applied to 20 universities. So far he has been accepted into institutions such as Rowan University into the Psychological Science Programme, New Jersey City University and York College of Pennsylvania, among several others. 
The New Jersey teen, his mum Khadine Phillip and his family migrated to the US when he was seven. According to a story in WPTV, his younger twin brothers are living with serious heart conditions and his family has been in and out of homelessness.
“My family went through a lot, and there has been a lot of people saying, ‘You can’t do that,’ or ‘You’re not going to achieve this,’ and me – getting these acceptances – kind of verifies what I have been saying. I can do it and I will do it,” he said. 
Writing on his Facebook page, Chidick said he is thankful for all the stories but he won't let his struggles define his life. 
"I WAS homeless, and I am not going to let that part of my life define me. it has made me and my family become stronger! <3," he wrote. 
Chidick will be the first in his family to go to college.
Source:  The Loop, Feb 2019

Over the last decade, fish­er­men and guest house own­ers in Man­zanil­la have looked on in awe as the wa­ters of the At­lantic Ocean claimed huge ar­eas of land along the coast­line.
Most of the co­conut trees that once adorned the 15 miles of beach­front on the east coast are gone and those that re­main may very well be gone with­in a decade if we are un­able to stem the ero­sion.
Suc­ces­sive gov­ern­ments have im­ple­ment­ed sev­er­al mul­ti-mil­lion dol­lar coastal pro­tec­tion projects over the years in an at­tempt to stop the ero­sion. But the sea would not be stopped.
While fish­er­men con­tend that coastal ero­sion was just Moth­er Na­ture go­ing about her busi­ness, di­rec­tor of the In­sti­tute of Ma­rine Af­fairs (IMA) Dr Ah­mad Khan said ris­ing sea lev­els, brought on by glob­al warm­ing, was the cul­prit.
Start­ing this week, Guardian Me­dia will show you how glob­al warm­ing is wreak­ing hov­oc on T&T's ecosys­tem.
Dur­ing a vis­it to Man­zanil­la about two weeks ago, at least ten prop­er­ties ap­peared aban­doned, with weeds grow­ing where vis­i­tors once en­joyed them­selves. Sev­er­al oth­er build­ings had huge “For Sale” signs plas­tered on their gates.
At one of the few prop­er­ties that was oc­cu­pied—the Co­conut Cove Re­sort—38-year-old An­der­son Bartholomew, who has man­aged the re­sort along Ca­lyp­so Road, Man­zanil­la, for the last ten years, said he was born and bred in the area and has seen the sea wreck hav­oc on the beach­front for years.
Bartholomew said the re­sort was once well known for its clump of co­conut trees where guests could re­lax in ham­mocks and watch the waves crash against the shore. But ap­prox­i­mate­ly sev­en years ago, the two lots of land on which the trees were plant­ed be­gan to dis­ap­pear in­to the sea.
“In front of the re­sort, we lost about two lots of land al­ready, we had co­conut trees and ham­mocks for the guests to re­lax and all of that is gone, all of it washed away,” Bartholomew said.
Five years ago, the re­sort’s own­ers tried to stop the wa­ter from tak­ing more of the land by spend­ing some $500,000 to build a sea wall. Dur­ing the vis­it, the dam­age to the wall was clear­ly vis­i­ble as chunks of it have been washed away.
Bartholomew said be­cause the re­sort has a pool, guests can still en­joy them­selves but he is con­stant­ly asked what will hap­pen if the sea claims more of the land.
“The guests are still com­fort­able but peo­ple are al­ways ask­ing if we don’t fear that the sea will come and take the wall and the pool, but we say that’s a part of na­ture, there is noth­ing we can do but let it take its course.”
Fish­er­man An­ton Hayde, who has a healthy re­spect for the sea, said life on the east coast has be­come in­creas­ing­ly hard­er over the years as the wa­ters of the At­lantic con­tin­ue to claim more and more of the beach­front.
In 2014, the bat­ter­ing waves claimed the Man­zanil­la Fish­ing De­pot.
“I watch the riv­er change course and the sea come up and cut away the whole de­pot, every­thing just wash in­to the sea. I feel in a few years, all here where we stand­ing up will go too, but that is how it is, the sea will take what she want, when she want."
He said he can vivid­ly re­mem­ber his glo­ry days as a teenag­er bound­ing through co­conut trees to reach the beach­front.
“You used to feel so good to run through the co­conuts, we used to race each oth­er and you run­ning for a good ten min­utes, on­ly see­ing the sea in the dis­tance…boy, them was the days. Now, you dri­ving and the beach out­side your car win­dow, it could nev­er be the same again. Some days I does say Man­zanil­la is a lost cause…cause is on­ly time be­fore the sea go with every­thing you see here.”
Hayde's words were truer than he an­tic­i­pat­ed as af­ter leav­ing his pair of slip­pers on the shore to cross the riv­er and show the Guardian Me­dia team around, he re­turned to find on­ly one side of it.
“You see, I shoul­da walk down bare­foot yes,” he said. “I have to buy a slip­pers now.”
Along the Man­zanil­la stretch Shquile Ce­les­tine, 25, was busy try­ing to lev­el the yard of his un­cle’s hol­i­day rental.
Ce­les­tine, who said he has been do­ing main­te­nance and up­keep of the prop­er­ty since he was a teen, said just last year he piled huge boul­ders along the shore­line to try to keep the wa­ter out.
Like Bartholomew and the own­ers of Co­conut Cove, Ce­les­tine has learnt that the sea would not be stopped.
“Most of the stones have been washed away, the few pieces that are left will wash away soon, every time I come up here, I fill up the yard and try to lev­el it be­cause you can’t have guests com­ing to see these big gap­ing holes in the yard,” he said.
With waves crash­ing less than 20 feet from the prop­er­ty fence at low tide, Ce­les­tine said the yard is flood­ed every time the tide is high.
He point­ed to a heap of “over­bur­den” dirt that was de­liv­ered that very day.
“I hop­ing this would be able to get a lit­tle chance to set­tle and it wouldn’t wash away with the high tide.”
A stone’s throw away at Waves, a new­ly-con­struct­ed beach re­treat, Tony Ram­lal was busy mix­ing con­crete to be­gin con­struc­tion on a shed.
Ram­lal, whose sis­ter “Ted­dy” Ram­lal owns the prop­er­ty, was un­daunt­ed by the ris­ing sea lev­el. He said his sis­ter has faith that her busi­ness in­vest­ment will pay off and they are not wor­ried about the sea.
How­ev­er, he said plans are un­der­way to cre­ate a small sea wall to mit­i­gate the an­tic­i­pat­ed dam­age.
“We will try to bury some tyres and make a wall to stop it from com­ing in so much,” he said.
$$ spent so far
•On No­vem­ber 16, 2014, a large sec­tion of the Man­zanil­la/Ma­yaro Main Road col­lapsed af­ter flood­wa­ters from the high tide and pro­longed rain­fall cov­ered large parts of Ma­yaro and Man­zanil­la. It was re­built at a COST OF $35 mil­lion and re­opened in Feb­ru­ary 1, 2015.
• In Ju­ly, 2015 the then Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship gov­ern­ment built the Man­zanil­la Board­walk across 800 feet of beach­front to stop the rapid ero­sion and cre­ate a space for beach­go­ers to en­joy the east coast again.
• The Coastal Pro­tec­tion Unit (CPU) un­der the cur­rent PNM ad­min­is­tra­tion is con­struct­ing a re­tain­ing wall just be­fore the "Co­conuts" in Man­zanil­la, a project that is ex­pect­ed to be com­plet­ed by May this year. 
Tack­ling coastal ero­sion: The Bar­ba­dos Mod­el
In a 2013 pa­per ti­tled the “Coastal Zone Man­age­ment The Bar­ba­dos Mod­el” two mem­bers of the Amer­i­can Plan­ning As­so­ci­a­tion doc­u­ment­ed Bar­ba­dos’ fight to save its coast­line.
The au­thors, Gre­go­ry Scrug­gs and Thomas Bas­set, not­ed the Gov­ern­ment’s move to form a Coastal Zone Man­age­ment Unit (CZ­MU) in 1996 when it recog­nised there was an im­me­di­ate need to stem coastal ero­sion.
Backed by fund­ing from the In­ter-Amer­i­can De­vel­op­ment Bank (IDB), the CZ­MU man­aged to stop the ero­sion with var­i­ous coastal en­gi­neer­ing projects in­clud­ing con­struct­ing sea­walls, break­wa­ters, and groynes.
•Break­wa­ters are con­crete struc­tures, sunken close to the beach, that force waves to break far­ther from the coast so they don’t di­rect­ly pum­mel the sand.
•Groynes are rock struc­tures that jut out in­to the ocean to dis­rupt the move­ment of sed­i­ment.
•Sea­walls are the CZ­MU’s largest type of in­ter­ven­tion, in­tend­ed to pro­tect more pop­u­lat­ed ar­eas, these con­struc­tion projects in­volve ei­ther a riprap de­sign of large rocks or a flat, con­crete sea­wall that can cre­ate pub­lic space at­trac­tive to both tourists and res­i­dents, such as the Richard Haynes Board­walk, par­tial­ly fund­ed by an IDB loan.
•Nat­ur­al meth­ods were al­so used, in­clud­ing restor­ing sand dunes and man­groves and plant­i­ng veg­e­ta­tion in coastal ar­eas to al­low dunes to form nat­u­ral­ly, hold­ing back in­un­da­tions from storm surges.
The IDB’s web­site states that Bar­ba­dos is con­sid­ered “a best-prac­tice mod­el” for the Caribbean.
“From 2002 to 2009, the coun­try built head­lands, break­wa­ters, re­tain­ing walls, and walk­ways and revet­ments to sta­bilise its shore­line and con­trol beach ero­sion on the south and west coasts. The key for Bar­ba­dos to de­sign and car­ry out cost-ef­fec­tive sus­tain­able beach nour­ish­ment op­er­a­tions has been un­der­stand­ing shore­line dy­nam­ics based on the best avail­able sci­en­tif­ic da­ta and cut­ting-edge tech­nol­o­gy that takes in­to ac­count dis­as­ter risk and the im­pact of cli­mate change,” the IDB said.
Source:  Trinidad Guardian, Feb 28, 2019

During his 20-year love affair with Trinidad Carnival, British mas man Alan Vaughan has won competitions and friends along the way. This year he’s back with another stunning West African-themed moko jumbie band.
From the back stairs of a spacious open-plan studio, Alan Vaughan gazes over the rusty rooftops of Belmont. In the distance, the spire of St Margaret of Antioch Church pokes its head up. Beyond it, the green hills undulate towards Morvant.
“It’s all very close together,” he says, looking at the tightly packed houses in Port of Spain’s oldest neighbourhood. He’s been encamped in Belmont for weeks, making mas for his new band Moko Somokow.
After posing for a picture, Vaughan returns to his desk in the workspace he shares with other artists. His friend and collaborator Kriston Chen has just brought him a vintage Singer sewing machine.
“I prefer these old solid ones to the modern plastic,” he says pointing at the other sewing machines on the tables around him. He’s upstairs at Granderson Lab (the G and R have fallen off the sign on the door) on Erthig Road. The former printing press was taken over a few years ago by the owners of Alice Yard and turned into a workshop for a fashion company and other artistic enterprises.
It’s a drastic change from Vaughan’s usual setting in Newcastle, north-east England and a departure from the familiar surroundings of Taradale where his erstwhile moko jumbie band, Touch D Sky, are based. He’s been coming to Trinidad for 20 years and since 2012 the two-phase housing development built on former cane fields outside San Fernando has been his Carnival headquarters.
“We started off in a squat in an empty house and the police came and threw us out, so we ended up making the whole mas in one of the boys’ bedrooms,” he laughs.
In the five years since Touch D Sky’s founders, Adrian Young and Jonadiah “JJ” Gonzales, invited Vaughan (“Mr Alan” to his friends) to design for the band, he has not only learned how to sew (his background is in sculpture and painting) but also taught himself how to stilt-walk.
“We wanted to move things on,” he explains. “Up until then the whole experience of being a moko jumbie was being called up to ‘do a run’ at a fete…there were no moko jumbies saying ‘we want to bring out our own mas.’”
By 2015, he had moved things on to a level nobody could have predicted, becoming the first British designer in history to win the Carnival Queen competition when Stephanie Kanhai performed Sweet Waters Of Africa dressed in Vaughan’s interpretation of the African goddess Oshun.

Smiling at the judges from ear to ear, Kanhai also became the first moko jumbie to win the crown.
“People still grumble about that now,” says Vaughan. “Moko jumbies aren’t supposed to win when you have people entering these big expensive float designs.”
The boat-shaped headpiece Kanhai wore symbolised, he says, “the African blood that travelled over the Atlantic and is still flowing on this side of the Atlantic.”
His mas band that year was named Crossing the River, after the Caryl Phillips novel about the global migration of African culture. The book was an epiphany for Vaughan who had become besotted with West African culture, art and religion since visiting Afrocentric parts of Brazil in the 1990s.
“There’s a parallel world going on in Brazil that’s right obvious and I found it really hard to find in Trinidad – for years I couldn’t see it. Even in Rio, a big commercial city, on a street corner you’ll see some flowers, a candle, some cigarettes and a bit of rum, for Eshu.”
“New Year’s Eve, Copacabana beach is just full of people sending little boats out for Yemanja. It’s part of so many people’s lives – the spiritual life going on at the same time as the physical. Bata drums in the night, paper balloons crossing the sky for St Anthony.”
With Touch D Sky on hiatus for 2018, Vaughan has launched the spin-off band Moko Somokow (meaning “spirit family” in Mali’s Bambara language) and has decided he will perform in the Carnival King competition himself, for the first time.
“I want to walk across that stage,” he says, smiling. “Before I’m too old.”
His entry is called The Magnificent Return of Sundjata, after the king who united the 12 tribes of Mali together to form an empire in the 13th century. Griots in Mali still tell the epic of his prophecy, birth and return from exile.
The aesthetic themes of the costume are familiar to followers of his work – richly coloured fabric adorned with shimmering pieces of material that flutter like bird feathers, and swirly sequined patterns that glitter in the light.
Asked what his artistic inspirations are – leaving aside the fact he has played mas in bands by Peter Minshall and Brian Mac Farlane – he somewhat surprisingly references medieval paintings.
“It’s the richness of the detail and because they’re not dealing with reality.”
Growing up in Gloucestershire in rural south-west England, he was a punk rocker with orange hair, a plastic rain mac and Day-Glo socks by the time he left home to attend Cheltenham College of Art and Design in 1978.
“That was my awakening year,” he says nostalgically. “I’d failed my art A-Level but they’d given me a place anyway and when I got there they said, ‘well that’s great, everyone who fails is a far better artist.’”
“It was the year that taught me to think. I still remember the head of fashion saying, ‘I always look at fashion like body sculpture.’”
That statement has followed him through his life’s work and still informs his mas making today.
He went on to study fine art at the University of Nottingham, then took a job as artist in residence on the psychiatric ward of a hospital in Newcastle – the city he now calls home – before raising funds to open the North Tyneside Arts Studio, which caters for people with mental health problems.
By the mid-90s, a Conservative government that had decimated public funding in Britain for everything from hospitals to school meals had begun withdrawing support from arts projects, including his. Depressed at constant attempts to shut down the thing he had built, Vaughan took the advice of a Trinidadian roommate and came over for Carnival.
“I would come and shut myself away in Maracas Valley and not speak to anyone for three months and just make bits of art out of junk,” he chuckles. “I didn’t know any artists, I wouldn’t go and socialise, it was just my time.”
Trinidad was a life-changing experience for Vaughan, particularly his fascination with moko jumbies “appearing out of nowhere.”
“And it’s often these quite unruly young lads, so there’s this hint of danger and menace going on, you don’t know what’s going to happen.”
He shares some of these experiences back in grey, drizzly Newcastle, teaching children moko jumbie walking at a local community centre. In 2015, he brought one of them down to the British Museum in London and flew Kanhai and Gonzalez over from Trinidad, to perform together for crowds outside the world-famous institution.
But despite his fondness for the Caribbean and for Europe, Vaughan’s heart really lies in Africa.
“Africa is a different way of thinking,” he says.
He recalls a conversation he once had with the “mesmeric” South African professor Pitika Ntuli, who told him a story about the Ndebele women who paint their houses with geometric shapes, “almost like Mondrian paintings” and in the rainy season it all washes off.
“This British missionary aid worker goes over there and tells them about this exterior household paint, and the women just look at him in horror saying, ‘why would we want to do that?’ And the missionary says, ‘so it won’t wash off and you don’t have to redo it.’ So the women tell him, ‘but we’ll want a different pattern next year because our lives will have changed.’”
Ntuli’s conclusion was that the European view of art is to create “little forevers”, like paintings that are exhibited and preserved for centuries, while in Africa they are “forever creating”.
“You do something, it has a purpose and then life moves on and you recreate.”
The annual, seasonal renewal of Trinidad Carnival is arguably similar, even if the inspirations hark back to longstanding traditions.
But what inspires Vaughan to make mas? He sums it up quite simply but poetically.
“It’s the same as writing a novel. You do it because you think there’s something important to say, but you hope other people are going to read it and enjoy it.”
Source:  Newsday, January 27, 2019 

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​IT was an emotional ceremony yesterday as the Express presented its 2018 Individual of the Year awards at the Radisson Hotel in Port of Spain.
As brothers Ravi and Navin Kalpoo collected their award, they revealed that it was the one-year anniversary of their mother’s death.
The Kalpoo brothers became local heroes following last October’s unprecedented flooding in Central and East Trinidad, rushing out to help rescue more than 300 people in distress in Kelly Village.
Their mother, Doolarie Kalpoo, was known for her tireless community work.
Source: Express, Feb 2019.
​Check out this video below... starts around 1:24 

Applying for a US immigrant visa? Make sure you have your computer-generated polymer birth certificate, according to an update from the US Embassy in Trinidad and Tobago.
In an update shared to social media on January 28, 2019, the US Embassy said this is required for all immigrant visa applications from February 1, 2019.
"#VisaUpdate: Starting February 1, 2019, U.S. Embassy Port of Spain will require the new green polymer, computer-generated civil documents issued by the Registrar General."
"These include Trinidad and Tobago birth certificates, marriage certificates, and death certificates. All previous versions of these civil documents will no longer be accepted."
"Please ensure that you have your updated documents prior to your scheduled immigrant visa interview in order to avoid any delays in visa processing," the Embassy said. 
According to the US Bureau of Consulate Affairs, a citizen of a foreign country who wishes to enter the United States must first obtain a visa, either a nonimmigrant visa for a temporary stay, or an immigrant visa for permanent residence. Visitor visas are nonimmigrant visas for persons who want to enter the United States temporarily for business (visa category B-1), for tourism (visa category B-2), or for a combination of both purposes (B-1/B-2).
For more information on the US visa application process see here: https://bit.ly/2B8dHpX
To search for your birth certificate details and order a polymer certificate online, click here: https://bit.ly/2KFSXgl
To contact the Registrar General's offices see here: https://bit.ly/2Nfv8wS 
Source: The Loop TT, January 2019

According to CNN a foreign language can be the best aphrodisiac, and as a result, CNN traveled the world in search of the 12 hottest accents.
Coming in at number 10 is the Trinidadian accent which is the only West Indian accent on the list. This is what CNN had to say ” For fetishists of oddball sexuality, the Caribbean island of Trinidad offers an undulating, melodic gumbo of pan-African, French, Spanish, Creole and Hindi dialects that, when adapted for English, is sex on a pogo stick.”
A Few Famous tongues: Nikki Minaj, Billy Ocean, Russell Latapy, Geoffrey Holder, V.S. Naipaul, Peter Minshall, Heather Headley, Wendy Fitzwilliam, Ato Boldon, Brian Lara, Dwight York, Marlon Asher,and ah bunch ah Soca artists like Machel Montano, Denise Belfon, Shurwayne Winchester, Nadia Batson, Destra, Bunji Garlin, Fayann Lyons, Iwer George, Patrice Roberts, Farmer Nappy, Zan, Blaxx, Benjai and many more…you get the picture