Is Trinidad and Tobago the vacation destination for you?  Should you visit?  Maybe… maybe not. There are many reasons you should not venture to our shores despite Vogue Magazine listing this twin island destination as one of the hottest travel destinations for 2017!
Here are 16 ‘tongue in cheek’ reasons why travelling to Trinidad and Tobago might not be one of your best ideas:
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"I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me."
It is this faith in God, and herself, which is guiding Keziah John to success.
At just 11-years-old Keziah, a primary school student, is being celebrated for earning a distinction in mathematics at the January sitting of the Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate (CSEC) examinations which are set for older students in secondary schools, and even adults.
Despite attracting national attention, the math whiz insists she is just an ordinary girl, with an extraordinary work ethic.
Keziah, alongside her mother Caron John, spoke to Newsday Kids about her achievement, challenges, expectations and most importantly her love for puzzles.
A student of the Specialist Learning Centre in St Augustine, Keziah, who sits the SEA exam in May, credits her passion for problem-solving and above average analytical skills to her teacher Noble Felice.
However, Keziah's walk to success began with her first steps, according to her mother, who fondly recalls going to pick her daughter up from pre-school only to find her sitting and listening to lessons in the kindergarten on the same compound.
"I knew there was something special about her. I couldn't describe it but I could definitely see a mature sense of understanding behind her eyes. It was something I have tried to nurture within her without taking away her childhood."
While many students have found themselves within a rigid routine of school, extra lessons and deep study, Keziah does not confine herself to a particular schedule, instead making up her study plan as she goes along.
"The first thing I need to do is eat when I get home. Then I go through the workbooks and see what has to be done. It's something I've grown accustomed to and I don't really follow a particular schedule. People do that?" she says and laughs.
She places more attention on topics she does not understand rather than reviewing and reciting material wholesale.
Keziah is no stranger to routine and discipline as she is active in the Roman Catholic church and serves on mornings as an altar girl at the Cathedral of Immaculate Conception, Port of Spain. This means that she must wake up at 4 am for the latest to get to the cathedral's 6.30 am mass and then make it to school in St Augustine on time.
"My family has done a lot to give me the strength and discipline I need to succeed and make it through the day. Sometimes when it feels too much I know I have their support. Their advice really goes a long way."
In the face of her success at the CSEC level, Keziah is still nervous about sitting the SEA examination. Admitting while she believes she can do it, the mere idea of the exam can be intimidating. But how can someone so familiar with complex equations years ahead of her grade level be intimidated by a simpler exam?
"In the exam room you're by yourself. It's just you and the paper and with mathematics, you either know the answer or you don't."
However Keziah continues to move forward, hoping to pass for her first choice of Holy Name Convent, Port of Spain. She hopes to one day be able to motivate other students to go beyond their comfort zones and excel in their passions.
"But that's all in the future," she says with a smile.
Source:  The Loop, April 5.

For the last three months, I have been a part of the Sokafit BodyMORPH programme, a three-month fitness programme that incorporates weight training, nutrition advice and twice-weekly Sokafit classes.
The programme is an offshoot of Sokafit, a fitness system created by media personality Lisa Wickham and her business partner Sheldon Felix.
As the name implies, the programme is fuelled by soca music but more than that, it takes elements of our Carnival culture and packages it into a fast-paced soca dance fitness class.  Yes, there is wining but there is also waving – in each class, participants are given bandanas to wave – and there are moves inspired by the Dame Lorraine Carnival character and sailor dance. The moves are also named after places in T&T such as the Buccoo Bounce, Bago Rock and the Sando.
With Sokafit officially registered in Australia, France, Canada and, most recently, South Africa, the programme is not just about exporting an indigenous fitness system but also exporting T&T culture to the world.

For the last three months, I have been a part of the Sokafit BodyMORPH programme, a three-month fitness programme that incorporates weight training, nutrition advice and twice-weekly Sokafit classes.
The programme is an offshoot of Sokafit, a fitness system created by media personality Lisa Wickham and her business partner Sheldon Felix.
As the name implies, the programme is fuelled by soca music but more than that, it takes elements of our Carnival culture and packages it into a fast-paced soca dance fitness class.  Yes, there is wining but there is also waving – in each class, participants are given bandanas to wave – and there are moves inspired by the Dame Lorraine Carnival character and sailor dance. The moves are also named after places in T&T such as the Buccoo Bounce, Bago Rock and the Sando.
With Sokafit officially registered in Australia, France, Canada and, most recently, South Africa, the programme is not just about exporting an indigenous fitness system but also exporting T&T culture to the world.
When we train the coaches we do a cultural aspect of the programme, we teach them about the culture of Trinidad and Tobago, the multi-ethnic influences on the music and how they are going to use the music to impact the choreography on the class,” said Wickham, just back from South Africa where she spent over six weeks training coaches. She was initially joined by Lashaun Prescott, head coach of Sokafit and founder of the Elle dance school.
Prescott was the one Wickham and Felix contracted to design the Sokafit programme after Felix came up with the idea to get into fitness as a way to diversify their business. The duo had worked together for years in entertainment, pioneering, among other things, the way music videos were shot and produced.
“We were looking to diversify from what we know which mainly entertainment and he wanted to do a TV show in fitness. I know in aerobics I would be in the back of the class wining and they would say no and I couldn’t understand why I couldn’t wine. I found other forms of fitness were too strict in the movements and not necessarily dance and I wondered why we couldn’t combine the two and do something that people at home could do. So initially it was conceptualised as a television show,” explained Wickham.
Describing Prescott as the epitome of dance and soca, Wickham said when she first produced the COTT Awards where she met the dancer. She watched as Prescott was introduced to Machel Montano and went on to dance for him with her group of dancers from Elle.
She said they approached Prescott with the idea but she had been accepted to go to New York University to do her Master’s in dance.

“We said we will wait on you. By the time she came back in 2012, I was doing Home Again and Girlfriends Getaway and the film business was booming.  In December 2015 I said we have to do Sokafit, if we don’t do it now someone else will. In January 2016 we shot the teaser with Lashaun. People loved it and TV6 said yes they are on board and once it hit the airwaves people were like how do we get this in our gym,” recalled Wickham.

The tipping point, she said, was when Maurisa Gibson Bailey, the only exercise physiologist and sports scientist in the country, requested a Sokafit class at the Mucurapo West School where she teaches.  
“We had a meeting with her to plan it and as a scientist, she said this is a proper fitness system. For instance, she said wining is called circumduction of the waist and if you repeat these moves over and over you will see the benefit to that part of the body.  She explained the benefits of each move and she agreed to come on board and with Lashaun, a group of Elle dancers, Sheldon and myself we sat on the floor in the studio week after week workshopping the moves, developing the criteria for coaches and developing the programme,” said Wickham.
To qualify as a coach, participants must learn the physiology and impact of Sokafit on the body and do a written exam as well as practical exams.
Sokafit’s growth from television was really as a result of them responding to the needs of the market.
After featuring the Mucurapo West School, other schools started calling and the founders embarked on an educational tour where children exercised and given lectures on fitness.  They did 23 schools in all including seven in Tobago.
Adopting the #onefitnation and #onefitworld slogans, Wickham and Felix decided that in an effort to help combat non-communicable diseases in the country, they could bring Sokafit to communities around the country through free community burns. From Plymouth and Roxborough in Tobago to Point Fortin and Matura, Sokafit held community burns all over T&T.
Classes began in various venues when members of the public came forward to train as coaches. The first coach outside of the Elle dancers was Tiffanie Dennison, whose father enquired about her training in Sokafit. Dennison was already a fitness coach in other systems and loved soca music.
Based in South, she today conducts Sokafit classes in San Fernando and Central Trinidad at six gyms.
“We had our first international coach from Australia, Jamie Trahanas. She comes every Carnival and she and Lashaun are friends. When Jamie saw Sokafit she wanted to be trained and certified and is now a super coach,” said Wickham.
Last year, they got an email from Tania Parissi, an Italian, who teaches Salsa and Zumba in Montreal, Canada.
“She was looking for a new form of fitness to introduce to her studio in Montreal and she came here not knowing anything or anyone, she trusted the process and now she just launched the Family Fit featuring Sokafit kids. Training with her was Jenny Pauline, who is the sexy, vivacious coach for the French Caribbean in Martinique and Guadeloupe. She has huge classes with up to 100 people.”
Stating that they plan to be all over, Wickham said she already had links in South Africa as she does a lot of film work there and in showing her business partner the Sokafit videos, she was encouraged to establish the system there.
“So Lashaun and I went across and we trained 22 coaches.  We expanded the curriculum there to include business studies and communication skills to be used as an empowerment tool in the townships,” she said.
Describing the cultural immersion of the programme, Wickham said in South Africa, they recreated the J’ouvert experience with powder and the paint, and then explained the significance of the tradition in the Carnival context.
Asked about the challenges in growing the Sokafit brand, Wickham said in T&T some dismiss it as just a wining thing.
“We take the benefits of soca dance for granted but this has been put into a fitness system to help people meet their fitness goals. Within the system is repetition, in a fete you not going to jump the same way all night to get the benefits,” she explained.
As a start-up, she said, finance is always an issue especially when it comes to legal fees and associated costs of setting up in different countries. She praised ExporTT for holding their hands through their international expansion.
She said from a human resources standpoint, they have been able to rely on satellite relationships with a team of videographers, photographers, coaches, graphic designers, doctors and nutritionists who all support Sokafit.
Wickham, who has kept herself relevant in business and media since she first appeared on Rikki Tikki at the age of six, knows all too well that innovation is key to survival and that has been applied to Sokafit. The BodyMORPH programme is an offshoot product to help people focus on their goals of losing weight and getting fit and includes blood work, body analysis and nutrition advice.
A recently launched product is the Chip2Burn which will be held in communities. Participants chip behind to soca music as they do on Carnival days before engaging in an intensive burn.
Asked about the future plans for Sokafit, Wickham was mum.
Source:  The Loop, March 30.


 
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Not many people get to hold an Oscar, but Trinbagonian compositor Adrian Nurse has achieved the dream.
Nurse who works as lead compositor with acclaimed visual effects studio Framestore Studios, said the golden statuette, a symbol of excellence in US film for over 90 years, was 'heavier than it looks'.
"It's heavier than it looks, I was scared to drop it," he joked, speaking to LoopTT on the amazing award, which his team won for Best Visual Effects in Blade Runner 2049. 
The film also won a BAFTA (British Academy of Film and Television Arts) award for the same category. 
A former student of Queen's Royal College, Nurse, who now lives in Montreal, Canada, said the win feels 'incredibly surreal' especially as it's a first for the province of Montreal.
“Winning feels incredibly surreal. We all thought we worked on something special, but didn’t really expect it to win!"
"This recognition from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences truly validates the time and sacrifice all 160 members of the team put into this film. It’s probably the most I’ve worked in my life."
"The award also has an extra significance here in Montreal as we, [Framestore Studios], are the first studio to win in the history of the province," he said. 
The 35-year-old compositor has worked on several blockbuster films including Guardians of the Galaxy, The Edge of Tomorrow, Alien: Covenant, Paddington, Frankenweenie and many more. 
Nurse said he's also a huge fan of fellow Trinbagonian Sekani Solomon, who recently worked on the biggest blockbuster of the year, Black Panther. 
"Sekani and I are great friends, we talk every week. We are constantly bouncing ideas and concepts off each other. I’m his biggest fan, the work he did on Black Panther is simply amazing," Nurse said. 
He also had some advice for other Trinbagonians trying to break through in the film industry. 
"Practice your art, never stop trying to improve yourself. Surround yourselves with talented people who inspire and challenge you and who will pull you up with them."
"Practice till you're blue in the face, till you're so tired you can’t see straight. Then the next day, do it again. One day the world will reward you for it," he said.
For more information visit his IMDB page: http://imsr.me/AdrianNurseIMDb ​

US researchers visited Trinidad and Tobago to analyse the blue crab as part of a study on viral pathogens affecting the species. 
Agricultural economist Omardath Maharaj joined Dr Donald Behringer, Marine and Disease Ecologist, Associate Professor and Project Lead from the University of Florida, and his team to take samples of blue crabs from the Gulf of Paria last week. 
Dr Behringer and his team have been awarded a US$1 million grant from the National Science Foundation to try to revive the crab industry. 
Maharaj said the study will the findings will be of interest to the smallest economic participants in the local fishery as well as the national population of Trinidad and Tobago.
This forms part of on-going research to determine how variation in life history and connectivity drive pathogen-host dynamics and genetic structure in a trans-hemispheric pathosystem.
The pathogen is not transferable to humans. 
"While we understand much about these life cycle characteristics for important fishery species such as the blue crab (Callinectes sapidus), we understand little about how variations in these characteristics interact with large-scale movement of individuals in the oceans to shape connections between populations." 
"Similarly, we are aware of the emergence and impact of diseases on marine organisms such as crustaceans, corals, and echinoderms, but are only beginning to understand how they spread between distant host populations."
"However, recent advancements in oceanographic modelling, genetic techniques, and animal tracking technologies have greatly increased our ability to measure and model population connectivity in the ocean," Maharaj said. 
Maharaj said the blue sea crab has considerable socioeconomic value in Trinidad and Tobago and numbers are being heavily depleted.
"While there has been significant advocacy focused on the integrity and sustainability the Gulf of Paria and its inherent fishery for many years; the outstanding issues remain largely unaddressed."
​"The focal points have been the damage inflicted by energy and industrial interests, unsustainable fishing practices, and general environmental interactions from climate change through flooding and effluent on the fishery especially juveniles, breeding grounds and vulnerable species."
"In this instance, further pressure on food and nutrition security as well as livelihoods is possible through viruses and genetic changes," he said. 
Maharaj said a stronger emphasis must be placed on the fishing industry to protect habitat and breeding grounds. 
"We are of the shared view that more must be done within the fisheries sector and towards all actions, voluntarily or involuntarily, that lead to its detriment. This includes, but not limited to, fishing techniques and regulations, measures to protect habitat and breeding grounds, enforcement, adopting proper equipment and procedures at sea and at landing sites, and related public awareness and #education concerning the sector."
'Ultimately, Trinidad and Tobago would benefit from the knowledge generated in this project; resource managers who need to manage fisheries, including the artisanal soft shell crab industry, sustainably."
"Simple best practices to avoid disease mortality and curtail the spread of the virus are being developed and could be communicated to fisherfolk through direct collaboration and public workshops. The project also includes formal and informal educational programs integrated with the research program."
"We, as a people, must commit to supporting activities which put value into the hands of the people who need them the most but also those that claw at development," he said. 
The research team was assisted by the Claxton Bay Fishing Association, Felicity Charlieville Fishing Association, Otaheite Fishing Association, Fisheries Division and the Department of Agricultural Economics & Extension, University of the West Indies. 
Source:  The Loop

Conservationists outraged as ancient burial site unearthed

THE teeth belonged to someone who survived childhood. Still attached to the lower jawbone, the molars show signs of a hard life; deep cavities, worn enamel, gum disease. The jaw was part of the skull and skeleton unearth and dismembered by a bulldozer carving land near San Fernando for Trinidad's insatiable need for housing. The bulldozer would go on to expose the bones of an unknown number of people, likely African slaves, who lived and died on the La Ressource sugar estate, near San Fernando in the 1800s.
The bones were exposed two weeks ago. People who care about the country's history have been outraged by the desecration. The police say they can't do much about it. The 
land belongs to a private developer with the right to do whatever he pleases. The bones were still there up to yesterday. Ribs, tibias, femurs, casket handles, coffin nails, strewn about the clay exposed by the earthmovers. Recent rains have exposed more.
No one knows for sure what should or can be done. And if you think none of this is important, consider this.

BORN in the year 1776, in St Vincent, French creole slave supplier Louis Bicaise sailed to Trinidad at age 34, and married into the Scottish Rambert family, then one of the wealthiest in the fertile Naparimas in south Trinidad.
With his brother in law, Bicaise established the La Ressource Estate, and settled there with wife and children. In a short time he would become the sole owner of a prosperous plantation, enriched by the sweat and blood of the slaves that he bought and sold to surrounding plantations, including neighbouring Palmiste.
A son, John Nelson Bicaise, would go on to become the only known West Indian slave trader, who made a fortune from the misery that was the trade in human beings, dealing from his station on the bank of the Rio Nunez, on Africa' West Coast in what is now the country of Guineau. The son would end up dying penniless and diseased, and was buried in Africa, having lost contact with his Trinidad family, whose estate suffered similar misfortune.
The La Ressource estate was ruined as a result of the issues related to Emancipation, and Louis Bicaise would have to mortgage his plantation to an English merchant. In 1838, the year African slaves won full freedom, Bicaise died, leaving a wife, ten children, and the estate in debt.
His body was entombed on a hilltop overlooking the estate, flanked on the east by a cemetery containing the remains of slaves and others who worked the plantation. Bicaise's wife Marie Rose Rambert, would also be buried on the hill thirty years later, and his last surviving son, Charles in 1882.
A marble epitat inscribed in French on Bicaise's grave read:
Louis Bicaise
Natif De Saint Vincent
Decedee A La Trinidad Le 13 Septembre 1838
A L'age De 62 Ans
Il Faut Bon Fils , Bon Pere
Bon Frere, Bon Parent & Bon Ami
Les Excellents Qualites De Son Coeur
Le Font Regretter Par Tous Ceux Qui Connurent

Translation - Louis Bicaise, native of St. Vincent. Died in Trinidad on 13th September 1838 at the age of 62. He was a good son, good father, good brother, good kinsman and good friend. His big-heartedness has left him regretted by all those who knew him.

We know all of this because of the research of famed historian Fr Anthony De Verteuil, who with Belgian Chris-Arthur De Wilde, wrote about the Bicaise family in the book The Black Earth of South Naparima, and the work of historian/writer Angelo Bissessarsingh who, in his book Walking with the Ancestors, wrote about what remains of the Bicaise family tomb (the marble since broken up and inscriptions stolen), and of the slave cemetery (where up to the 1960s, the descendants still came to pay homage). Evidence of the Bicaise tombs can still be found, if you take that trip off Dumfries Road, Rambert Villave pull back the bushes and look for the Scottish firebricks (imported as a ballast in the holds of European sugar ships) which mark the burials, now surrounded by excavated land.
It was left up to Bissessarsingh, on his popular Facebook page Virtual Museum of Trinidad and Tobago three Saturdays ago, to alert conservationists about what had happened to the site. People wanted to know, where was the African Emancipation Committee? Didn't anyone at least understand the anthropological importance of what was being lost? By then, it was too late. The police did visit. The District Medical Officer was called in. He knew immediately that the bones belong to people who lived a long, long time ago.
Divisional Commander of the Southern Division Senior Superintendent Irwin Hackshaw said historical sites were not the responsibility of the Trinidad and Tobago Police Service, but that his officers had responded to the report of an ancient burial site at Rambert Village, San Fernando, being desecrated. He said officers visited the site and contacted the relevant authorities. The items recovered, which included skeletal remains, were handed over to archaeologists, he said.
The rest of the bones are scattered on the hillside, where more than seven feet of soil has been removed in some places. Crime scene tape was pulled across a mound of earth that was not yet excavated by the bulldozer. The Express later attempted to contact (by email and telephone) company said to be developing the land. There was never a response.
“There is nothing we can do really. When we get a report we can contact the relevant people. That is it,” Hacksaw said.
No one is more disturbed by it all, than chairman of the National Trust Professor Winston Suite, who has followed the events at Rambert Village, with despair.
This was one of the most famous estates in south Trinidad and important to understanding how the country had developed to this point, he said. Yet too many people saw nothing wrong with destroying such a site, and now it was likely too late. Yes, Town and Country gave permission, but does it mean that one should go ahead and do whatever one wants at the expense of our national heritage? What's happening in the country? He asked. An absence of education. Maybe it was time to introduce history as a subject in the primary school curriculum. If people only knew, said Suite, they would probably attach more importance to things dating from the time when our ancestors were indentured or enslaved.
What's the National Trust doing?
The National Trust is tasked with listing and acquiring heritage property, permanently preserving lands that are heritage sites and as far as practicable, retaining their natural features and conserving the animal and plant life, in addition to preserving, maintaining, repairing and servicing buildings of historical value. But with the number of sites that need protection, the job in daunting, especially since it has been inactive for more than a decade. Professor Suite is asking that citizens get involved. The National Trust is organising visits of historic sites around the country - the company villages of Moruga, the Moruga Museum, Devil's Woodyard, the railway tunnel in Tabaquite, the Banwari site, Temple in the Sea. And there is the Nelson Island Experience of Tubal Uriah Butler on June 28th (contact 308-8197, 390-6521). Talk has begun again about trying to establish museums in every regional corporation in the country. The National Trust meets today with Chairman of the Sangre Grande Regional Corporation Terry Rondon who wants to demolish the old post office, court house and fire station, some of the buildings more than 100 years old. Professor Suite is going to try saving the buildings.
You can log on to www.trinidadexpress.com to see additional photographs and videos of the gravesite and tomb.