​PORT OF SPAIN, TRINIDAD“What would you like to know about the scarlet ibis?” Kenny Rattan asked as he stepped out of a black sedan.
First of all, I was curious: What does the national bird of Trinidad taste like?
Rattan spent 31 days in prison for knowing the answer to that question. In 2013 the oysterman was caught with 18 scarlet ibis carcasses in a knapsack. “It taste good—real, real, real good,” he answered, speaking in the fast cadence of a thick Caribbean accent. “The meat’s sweet. If you taste it, you will like it.”
Rattan had agreed to meet me on a dirt road in the middle of an abandoned sugarcane plantation so we could talk privately about his days poaching ibises in nearby Caroni Swamp, where thousands of the birds feed, nest, and roost. Those days are in the past for him, Rattan said. “I learned my lesson. Now I tell people: Don’t do it. I want to protect them. I stopped hunting because I want my grandchildren to see them.”
It was legal to hunt the scarlet ibis until 1962, when the bird was chosen to be featured on Trinidad and Tobago’s coat of arms as the symbol for Trinidad. (Tobago’s bird is the rufous-vented chachalaca, known locally as the cocrico.) This special status, combined with the ibis’s role as one of the region’s biggest tourist attractions, marks it not only as a national treasure but also as an international phenomenon.
I was awestruck when I first saw scarlet ibises about a decade ago on a boat tour of the Caroni Swamp. For more than an hour I watched as hundreds of the fiery birds arrowed beneath a glowing full moon toward a cluster of mangroves where they routinely roost. Their bright red color, derived from eating crabs that are rich in carotenoids, contrasted so starkly with the green of the mangroves that it was easy to see why some people say these birds look like ornaments hung on Christmas trees.
Today the Caroni has 8,000 to 30,000 scarlet ibises, according to local estimates, out of a total population of 100,000 to 150,000 throughout their range in South America and the Caribbean. With such numbers, they aren’t considered endangered, but environmental authorities and wildlife advocates in Trinidad are concerned about various threats: habitat destruction, pollution, boat traffic (which disturbs the skittish birds while they’re feeding and nesting), as well as poaching.
Among the 1.37 million people of Trinidad and Tobago, some still consider the bird a delicacy and an aphrodisiac—something to eat in secret. The root of the taste for the scarlet ibis comes from a cultural heritage of eating wild meat—bush meat—typically simmered in curry spices. Many Trinidadians prefer wild game (not always obtained legally) to domestic chicken, pork, or beef—especially during Christmastime and carnivals, when dancers in sequins, spandex, and elaborate feathered headdresses revel in the streets.
The deep-rooted desire to eat bush meat is what makes controlling poaching so challenging, Minister of Agriculture Clarence Rambharat explained. “Hunting is so entrenched culturally that if you go to a function and they have wild meat, everyone gravitates to it. Even the churches serve wild meat in game season.”
Small-time ibis hunters kill a handful for supper. (Rattan said it takes at least three to five birds to make a decent curry.) Big leaguers slaughter the birds en masse and sell them in sets of three for about $15. “One guy come in here and shoot 300, 400,” Rattan said. Some poachers are everyday fishermen and crabbers, he continued, but others are influential people. “Big guys,” he said. “I know customs officials coming in here and doing it.”
Rambharat often hears such stories. “People in the surrounding communities have always said that well-known people—including law enforcement officers—poach, buy, and consume meat,” he said. “I do not believe it’s just a rumor.”
To help stop the poaching, last month Trinidad declared the scarlet ibis to be an environmentally sensitive species, a decision that followed persistent petitioning by Rambharat. In a stroke, the fine for killing an ibis increased by 100 percent, to $100,000 (nearly U.S. $15,000), which is about the same as the average salary in Trinidad, plus two years in prison.
The new designation also increases the likelihood that some portion of the roughly 14,000-acre Caroni Swamp, already recognized as an internationally important wetland, will be declared an environmentally sensitive area, making it off-limits to hunting and fishing without a permit. (At present, only 4,000 acres in the swamp are classified as prohibited.)
“I think there are more people who want to see the scarlet ibis protected than there are people who see the scarlet ibis as a delicacy,” Nadra Nathai-Gyan, who chairs the board of the Environmental Management Authority, told me. “It took us a while to get here, but people want to champion this species.”
Only 16 game wardens patrol all of Trinidad’s 1,800 square miles, and no more than three wardens are assigned to the Caroni Swamp at any time. In recent years more than a hundred honorary wardens—ordinary citizens who receive a small daily stipend and are authorized to make arrests—have also done independent patrols in wildlife areas. Some carry registered weapons. The program ended this year, but Rambharat said it’s being reinstated and that recruitment is under way.
Vast, sheltered, and bordered by the Gulf of Paria and Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago’s capital, the Caroni Swamp is both a nature lover’s paradise and an ideal place to commit a crime. Political unrest and food shortages in Venezuela only 10 watery miles away have created a lawless coastal area where desperate Venezuelans—struggling amid their country’s soaring inflation—come to Trinidad to find staples such as pasta, diapers, and toilet paper. Criminals dodge armed Trinidadian coast guard patrols to traffic guns and drugs, force girls into prostitution, and illegally sell animals into the lucrative pet trade.
With such high stakes, so many murders and kidnappings have stricken the semi-enclosed sea between the east coast of Venezuela and Trinidad that a local newspaper called it the “Gulf of No Return.”
Fishermen are especially vulnerable to pirates. According to news reports, in May 2015 a Caroni Swamp tour guide named Shawn Madoo and his friend Vishal Ramlochan were kidnapped while fishing. Follow-up coverage indicated that no one had heard from the men since their disappearance. Months later pirates intercepted another Trinidadian fishing vessel, shooting one man dead and critically wounding another. The report stated that three survivors escaped by diving into the sea. Bloomberg Businessweek reporter Jonathan Franklin, who went for a boat ride with some Trinidadian fishermen in August 2016, wrote about a leader of a local fishing cooperative who said he’d been kidnapped four times.
Meanwhile smugglers use the Caroni as a gateway between the gulf and the capital, and ibis poachers skulk in the shadows of the swamp’s arching mangroves. Near the small town of Felicity, at its southeastern end where hundreds of ibises feed, poaching them can be as easy as picking dandelions in a meadow.
A common method is to lure the birds in with a piece of red fabric, displayed to give the illusion of another ibis feeding. When they come down to investigate the red patch, they get snagged in a net. One poacher in Felicity, who asked not to be named, told me he kills the ibises “by clubbing them on the head.”
In May I had a chance to see the scarlet ibis spectacle again, this time from the seat of a flat-bottomed motorboat with game wardens Nicholas Leith, 58, and Richard Romlogan, 49, along with two coast guard sailors armed with assault rifles and other weapons. They were patrolling for traffickers, pirates, and poachers.
The wardens, outfitted with bulletproof vests and firearms, keep watch over the Caroni Swamp and large swaths of land in the central part of the country where forest animals are also poached. Leith said that two months earlier, a fellow warden named Rajiv Harrinarine asked to be transferred to another part of the country. “He said the Caroni Swamp is a dangerous place and he feared for his life. A lot of people won’t let their children take this job. They don’t want to lose them. Thankfully no one has been killed yet.”
Leith, a big man wearing a fisherman’s hat, gestured at the 12-gauge shotgun cradled in his lap. “At close range it will blow your head off,” he said. Romlogan nodded, adding that the guns are vital for their security—even more so now with the scarlet ibis’s new status and the higher fines. The protections will likely deter some poachers, he said, but there will always be people who want to eat the bird—and that makes the job more dangerous. “If you got the ibis and you now know it’s a $100,000 fine, what you gonna do?” he said. “Shoot.”
Waves lapped the boat as we tied up to a post at the edge of the mangroves to watch ibises arriving at their roost. A flock of migratory flamingos, recent seasonal visitors to the swamp, flew in a circle overhead and settled in the mudflats just below the ibises. “Look at all of them,” Leith said. “They’re like sitting ducks. Someone could just come in here and shoot them. That’s what we don’t want.”
Romlogan and Leith have been working in the Caroni Swamp off and on for most of their 18 years as wardens. They say they know of ibis poaching cases that were dropped because expert testimony was blocked or evidence was tampered with.
The first time in the country’s history someone was convicted for hunting scarlet ibises was 2010, following the arrest, in December 2007, of five Trinidadians and one American tourist caught with a handful of skinned ibis carcasses.
“We took them to court, and we won the case!” Romlogan said. “The Trinidadians were fined $750. The American was reprimanded and discharged.”
After the verdict, the senior warden in the case,
 Samsundar Ramdeen, now retired, told the local paper that the penalties for killing ibises—then ranging from a hundred dollars to a thousand dollars—should be stiffer. “The hunters know full well it’s illegal to hunt the scarlet ibis,” he said. “We need to be more serious about protecting our wildlife and its habitat.”
“STEALING FROM THE COUNTRY’S TREASURE”Former poacher Kenny Rattan’s solid month in prison was the harshest penalty yet for ibis poaching. A 15-year-old cousin who was arrested with him was released without charges. Another cousin, Russel Joe Pancham, fled before he could be arrested.
Rattan testified that the ibises were Pancham’s, not his. But the judge, Bramanand Dubay, was unsympathetic. “This is an offense against Trinidad and Tobago,” Dubay said at the sentencing hearing, according to news reports. “The scarlet ibis is our national bird. If everybody go to hunt down scarlet ibis, what our children and grandchildren going to see? What you are doing is stealing from the country’s treasure.”
Eventually the wardens caught up with Pancham. Romlogan said they apprehended him on 18 charges of ibis hunting and one charge of escaping arrest and that he was fined $2,500. When I asked why there was such a discrepancy between Rattan’s and Pancham’s punishments, Romlogan replied that Pancham had a good lawyer.
Romlogan is still chasing Pancham for allegedly poaching ibises. “Last year I got 40 police from another area and 10 search warrants,” he said. “But we think someone sold us out. They told Russel we were coming.”
Another scarlet ibis case is currently winding its way through the courts. One night in August 2017, Romlogan, Leith, and Harrinarine were on patrol when they saw a boat with three men coming toward them. “They were within the prohibited area, so we decided to pursue them,” Leith recounted. “We told them to stop. They refused and accelerated. We turned and started following them. Our boat was much faster than theirs, and we caught up with them on the Blue River. While we were in pursuit, we saw them throw something—we think it was a gun.”
When the wardens searched the boat, they found a bag of scarlet ibis parts. The men were arrested for possession of the birds and for being in a prohibited area without a permit. “We don’t give second chances for scarlet ibis,” Leith said. “These people, we know they’ll use any trick to evade capture and prosecution.”
The arrested men, ranging in age from 18 to 35, pleaded not guilty. The hearings, previously scheduled in May, are now set for September. Related court documents are sealed, and the alleged poachers have not made statements about the charges they face.
The wardens say that if they’re called as witnesses in the court proceedings, they’ll likely testify that the men tried to bribe them. “They offered us $50,000 each if we let them go—$50,000 for me, $50,000 for him,” Romlogan said, pointing to Leith. He continued, “Fifty thousand dollars for the next officer and $50,000 for the boat driver. One of the guys’ dads is a big boy,” by which he meant a suspected drug dealer.
When Clarence Rambharat heard about this incident, he raced to the dock to meet the wardens escorting the alleged criminals out of the swamp. He wanted photographs of the evidence: a fishing boat scattered with red feathers and dismembered scarlet ibis parts, including a head with the bird’s characteristic long, curved beak. That night he posted the photos on Facebook with the announcement that the poachers had been arrested after a short chase in the Caroni Swamp’s prohibited area.
Rambharat’s objective was to use the evidence to gain support for his campaign to list the scarlet ibis as an environmentally sensitive species. “I could overlook a lot of things,” he told me. “But not the national bird.”
His move had the desired effect: The public was outraged. “The recent arrest of three men who are accused of being found in possession of bird parts at the very sanctuary where it is supposed to be safest is just the tip of the iceberg,” read an August editorial in the Trinidad and Tobago Newsday. “People high and low are accused of this outrageous practice.”
And yet the courts rarely deliver a maximum penalty for wildlife crimes like scarlet ibis poaching. Rambharat believes that’s partly because such offenses seem trivial in the mix of cases before the judiciary. “In Trinidad there’s a serious crime every six hours.” The U.S. State Department reports that the country's crime rates are indeed on the rise. There were 496 murders in 2017—a 15 percent increase from 2015—driven largely by gangs and drug-related activities.
He suspects that law enforcement is complicit in some of the poaching. “This is not an office environment,” he said. “The wardens have endless opportunity to turn a blind eye or accept a bribe.” And if he can’t trust the wardens, Rambharat said, he definitely can’t trust the forestry division—the agency under his direction that’s charged with sustainably conserving the country’s forests and natural resources. According to Rambharat, one reason live animals seized in wildlife crime cases are now held at the zoo is because informants inside the forestry division said that officers were hawking animals to pet traders. “There were times when we were told the animals died,” he said. “But we believe those animals were sold.”
Narine Gupte Lutchmedial is the president of the zoological society. He said the issue is widely known, and that part of the problem is “when forestry officers give a warning to people caught poaching, they can seize the animals and dispose of them however they want. This is something that needs to change,” he continued. “Everyone caught with animals should have to face the court, and seized animals should always come to the zoo where we can make sure they are accounted for, properly cared for, and if possible release them back into the wild.”
In addition to the scarlet ibis, 10 other animals in the country are listed as environmentally sensitive species. They include five species of sea turtles, the ocelot (Trinidad’s only big cat), the golden treefrog, the manatee, the white-tailed sabrewing hummingbird, and the Trinidad piping guan, a black-and-white turkey-like endemic bird known locally as the pawi.
The Environmental Management Authority’s Nadra Nathai-Gyan cites the leatherback sea turtle, added in 2014, as a prime example of how the designation can help. “Prior to the listing, you had great community involvement with tourist groups taking people to see the turtles, but you still had—I don’t want to use the word ‘idiots’—persons who despite all of those tremendous efforts would still engage in undesirable behaviors. For example, being on the back of turtles, taking eggs, wanting to touch the hatchlings, hacking off a fin.”
The more stringent penalties made people stop and think, she continued. “Where before they could have done that and gotten away with a small fine, they now realize that the likelihood of being found out is greater, especially with social media. And if they are, the penalties are serious business.”
Clarence Rambharat said he might petition the government to designate other animals as environmentally sensitive species. The red howler monkey is one candidate. Named for its roar, which can be heard for miles, the monkey is one of the country’s most charismatic species. Like the scarlet ibis, the red howler isn’t endangered, and hunting the monkeys is illegal. But they’re being poached for food and for the pet trade, particularly in the Cats Hill area near Rio Claro, in the southeastern part of the country where Rambharat grew up. “In these communities they don’t have KFC,” Rambharat said. “They go hunting, and they eat whatever they get.”
 In March 2018 Kriyaan Singh, a veterinarian and former Trinidad and Tobago senator, tagged Rambharat on a Facebook post to draw his attention to someone slaughtering monkeys. He didn’t divulge publicly how he got the evidence, but Singh said he’d received several photos of poachers killing red howler monkeys and capuchins—“skinning them, killing babies, beheading them, and cooking them”—and that the photographs were so gruesome he wouldn’t post them.
In March 2018 Kriyaan Singh, a veterinarian and former Trinidad and Tobago senator, tagged Rambharat on a Facebook post to draw his attention to someone slaughtering monkeys. He didn’t divulge publicly how he got the evidence, but Singh said he’d received several photos of poachers killing red howler monkeys and capuchins—“skinning them, killing babies, beheading them, and cooking them”—and that the photographs were so gruesome he wouldn’t post them.  For more click here
Source:  National Geographic

Nicholas Leith, armed and on patrol in the Caroni Swamp, has been a game

Trinidad and Tobago stamped their name at the Central American and Caribbean (CAC) Games over the weekend in Barranquilla, Colombia, winning six medals and setting new records at the competition. 
Olympic swimmer Dylan Carter won two gold medals for swimming, breaking two of CAC's records, with times of 48.95 and 23.11. Fellow swimmer Joshua Romany won bronze with a time of 24.05. 
In cycling, trio Nicholas Paul, Kwesi Browne, and Njisane Phillip won gold with a combined time of 43.873 seconds, a new games record, well ahead of Venezuela (44.578 secs) and Colombia (44.172 secs) which got silver and bronze respectively.
Cyclist and reigning Caribbean Road Race and Time Trial champion, Teneil Campbell, won bronze in the Women’s Scratch Race (10,000 metres/40 laps). The medal for 20-year-old Campbell is the first ever at the CACSO Games by a women’s cyclist for this country in their first ever appearance as well.
Earlier on the same track, the duo of Costa sisters, Alexi and Jessica as well as Christian Farah and Alex Bovell missed out on qualification to the Women’s Team Pursuit (4,000m) medal round. The T&T women combined for a time of 4:51.022, a new national record, for the fifth spot.
Olympian, Felice Aisha Chow secured T&T’s first ever women’s medal in rowing, competing in the Women’s Singles Scull contested over a distance of 2,000 metres.
Chow, who competed at the Rio Olympics in 2016 crossed the finish line in nine minutes, 26.24 seconds for silver behind Cuban, Yariulvis Cobas (9:13.05 mins) while Mexico’s Naiara Arrillaga took bronze in (9:41.22 mins).
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Trinidad and Tobago stamped their name at the Central American and Caribbean (CAC) Games over the weekend in Barranquilla, Colombia, winning six medals and setting new records at the competition. 
Olympic swimmer Dylan Carter won two gold medals for swimming, breaking two of CAC's records, with times of 48.95 and 23.11. Fellow swimmer Joshua Romany won bronze with a time of 24.05. 
In cycling, trio Nicholas Paul, Kwesi Browne, and Njisane Phillip won gold with a combined time of 43.873 seconds, a new games record, well ahead of Venezuela (44.578 secs) and Colombia (44.172 secs) which got silver and bronze respectively.
Cyclist and reigning Caribbean Road Race and Time Trial champion, Teneil Campbell, won bronze in the Women’s Scratch Race (10,000 metres/40 laps). The medal for 20-year-old Campbell is the first ever at the CACSO Games by a women’s cyclist for this country in their first ever appearance as well.
Earlier on the same track, the duo of Costa sisters, Alexi and Jessica as well as Christian Farah and Alex Bovell missed out on qualification to the Women’s Team Pursuit (4,000m) medal round.
The T&T women combined for a time of 4:51.022, a new national record, for the fifth spot.
Olympian, Felice Aisha Chow secured T&T’s first ever women’s medal in rowing, competing in the Women’s Singles Scull contested over a distance of 2,000 metres.
Chow, who competed at the Rio Olympics in 2016 crossed the finish line in nine minutes, 26.24 seconds for silver behind Cuban, Yariulvis Cobas (9:13.05 mins) while Mexico’s Naiara Arrillaga took bronze in (9:41.22 mins).
In hockey, teenager Shaniah De Freitas netted two goals, as T&T women’s hockey team battled past Barbados 2-1 to improve to a perfect 2-0 round-robin record at the Unidad Deportivo Pibe Valderrama. However, it was the Barbadians who struck first in the 17th minute through Keisha Boyce after a 0-0 first quarter.
De Freitas, 18, playing in her sixth international match for the ‘Calypso Stickwomen” drew T&T level five minutes later from the penalty spot and with two minutes left in the match she was on spot to score again to earn her team a deserved win.
Olympian Andrew Lewis had a mixed day on Saturday as he placed second in the fourth of his Laser Radial races before a 16th placed in race five while Kelly-Ann Arrindell was fifth and ninth in race four and five respectively.  
Source: The Loop, July 30, 2018

Vincent Van Gogh sold just one painting during his lifetime. He toiled in obscurity and poverty, only to be appreciated after his death. Once art collectors started to realize the value of his work, it was scooped up, and now a Van Gogh piece rarely comes on the market.
Fifteen years after a little-known Caribbean rum distillery shut down for good, it’s having a Van Gogh moment.
The Caroni Ltd. distillery in Trinidad was a state-run distillery, producing heavy rums made from its own sugarcane crops. At its height, the sugar refinery and distillery employed more than 9,000 workers. Caroni was the preferred rum of the British Navy, but the lads apparently didn’t drink enough of it to sustain Caroni’s labor-intensive, unindustrialized methods of farming, processing and distilling.
After years of being subsidized by the Trinidad and Tobago government, the sugar-growing industry on the island collapsed, and in 2003, the distillery soon followed suit. Caroni died, and no one outside the island seemed to take much notice, until a chance discovery breathed new life into the brand. 
In 2004, Luca Gargano, the head of Velier, a Genoa, Italy-based importer and distributor of fine wine and spirits was in Trinidad on a research trip. He stumbled across the shuttered Caroni distillery and was led, Indiana Jones-style (or was it Jack Sparrow-style?) to a boarded-up warehouse and shown thousands of wooden casks of rum, some dating back as far as 1974.
Gargano bought up all the barrels, shipped some of them to Italy and left others to mature in Trinidad. Velier has been releasing small batches of Caroni to the market ever since, and for rum connoisseurs, Caronimania is officially a thing
Caroni’s cachet grew once collectors started realizing that supplies were limited and the quality was very high. A bottle that might have sold for around $30 in the early 2000s now sells for closer to $400 – and some bottles can go for more than $1,000. Velier releases just two or three bottlings a year that may yield just a few hundred bottles total.
Stefan Lercher is a bona fide Caronimaniac whose work allows him to cultivate his passion for Caroni. He’s head barman at Hotel Quelle, a luxury spa resort in Italy’s Dolomite Mountains. It might seem an unlikely place to find an extensive collection of Caroni rums and other rare spirits, but the hotel’s high-end clientele have come to expect that Lercher will surprise them with liquors they can’t find elsewhere, especially not by the glass.
The hotel bar offers a selection of 10 varieties of Caroni. They’re not listed on the bar menu; instead Lercher knows how to spot the connoisseurs among his guests, move on them with the secret handshake and seek to win them over to Caronimania.
“It’s not a rum for everybody,” says Lercher. If drinkers are accustomed to sweet rum, then dry Caroni – which is cask-strength, meaning it’s not diluted or blended once it’s aged – might make them shudder. This is a collectors’ rum, not for cocktails with paper umbrellas and pineapple wedges, but for snifters or small grappa glasses, to be sipped, not slammed. Lercher wouldn’t think to dilute it with soda water or even ice.
“It’s a question of romance, a question of respect,” Lercher says. “This is a sacred distillery. If you add even one ice cube, you’ve just reduced the value of the rum.”
The only suitable accompaniments? A fine cigar (like, one that costs as much as the rum), or maybe a piece of dark chocolate. “It is a party after all,” Lercher says.
I’m certainly no rum connoisseur – unless ordering a Myers floater on top of my piña colada counts, and I’m pretty sure it doesn’t – but Lercher’s enthusiasm had me ready to drink the Caroni kool-aid. He explained that two marks of quality define Caroni. One is the integrity of the distilling and aging process: “If the bottle says the rum was distilled in 1996 and bottled in 2006,” Lercher explains, “you can be sure you’re drinking 10-year-old rum that has aged in the original casks.” The other is what’s known as the “angels’ share,” the percentage of liquid that evaporates during the barrel aging process and lost “to the angels.”
For Caribbean rums, an angels’ share of about 7% is the average. For certain distillations of Caroni, it’s as high as 85%, making the finished product incredibly concentrated and high in alcohol content.
And so went my introduction to Caronimania – a dram of a 20-year-old, 100-proof heavy Trinidad Rum, distilled in 1996 and bottled in 2016 (bottle 1700 of 3800 released that year, to be precise) with that stunning 85% angels’ share. Bottled undiluted from the barrel, it clocks in at a mouth-searing 57.2% alcohol by volume.
It’s best to start with a small taste, which habituates the mouth to the tongue-numbing heat of this high-proof hooch, then wait several minutes before sipping again. The second sip is a revelation – still heady, but that burning sensation has disappeared, instead replaced with a complex, interesting character that lingers long after the last sip.
It’s easy to get sucked into the romance of Caroni and its rags-to-riches tale. Since Velier started releasing varieties a little bit at a time, Caroni’s cult following has grown, and collectors enjoy a scavenger hunt of sorts to grab up remaining bottles at auctions and online sales.
And since there are just a handful of places in the world where Caroni can be purchased by the glass, if you want to sample this rare and vanishing breed of rum without purchasing an entire bottle, you may just have to head for the Italian Alps. Because unlike Van Gogh’s masterworks, which can be visited in art museums any old time, Caroni Rum has to be consumed to be appreciated. And once it’s gone, it’s gone.
​Source: Eat, Sip and Drink 
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An animation studio from Trinidad and Tobago has produced the animation for an HBO series featuring performances from RuPaul, Aziz Ansari, Wanda Sykes, Raven-Symone and Usher, among others.
Season three of Animals will premiere on August 3.
Full Circle Animation Studio was recently contracted by Big Jump Entertainment in Ottawa Canada to produce the animation for the HBO series.
A release said the show is considered to be one of the funniest, most idiosyncratic shows on television.
An in-house team of 12 people (nine animators, one animation supervisor, one project coordinator, and one project manager) worked tirelessly between December 2017 and May 2018 at the studio located in Trincity.
“This show had a very unique and distinctive style of design and animation. It looks simple and minimalist but it required us to transmit a lot of emotion through the characters using very limited animation movement. Going in, we had otherwise underestimated how challenging that could be while keeping the provocative edge that really defines the style of the show. In that regard, it was a new technical experience for us," said Managing Director Jason Lindsay.
This is the first time that an animation studio in Trinidad or throughout the Caribbean has been contracted from an international studio for a full season of a TV show on a major network.
“For a young animation industry like ours here in Trinidad, the main long-term benefit of an opportunity like this is the investment in our human resource. The experience and technical/creative insight gained from our animators working with an experienced production studio like Big Jump Entertainment are invaluable. The entire team benefited from it tremendously," Lindsay said. 
The release said that projects like this and other overseas productions outsourced to Full Circle puts the company in a position where over the last three years, over 50 percent of its income has been from foreign exchange revenue, with this most recent project catapulting its export earnings for the first half of 2018 to over 90 percent of its income during that period – a very unique position for any small business in general to be in but a major achievement for the studio and the industry as a whole.
Lindsay pointed out the role that institutions have played in various capacities in getting the studio to this point in its growth. Organisations like ExporTT has given tremendous support in positioning the studio for export and continues to support the animation industry as a whole. InvesTT planted the seeds that spawned this growth through guidance, support, and exposure to position the studio for opportunity and success. Though there is still a lot to be done the studio is well on its way with this landmark achievement on the journey, he stated.
The release said that this accomplishment exemplifies how the Government, the education sector, and enterprise can work hand in hand to achieve and change the landscape of the economy. 
The release said below the surface of this model is the seamless education thread that few are aware of and appreciate.  Students from the YTEPP Animation Retraining Programme, went on to complete the UTT Diploma in Animation programme and now 90 percent of the workforce is part of that thread that makes up the studio.  
“This is a great example of success in creative sector and seamless education in a country that depends on Oil and Gas. Programme Coordinator for animation Studies at the University of Trinidad and Tobago Camille Abrahams said.
Season 3 of the HBO animated series ANIMALS will premiere on August 3.

John Tannous is aiming to connect customers with locally crafted beer, and also to the process behind it all.
The founder of Tommy’s Brewing Company, a restaurant and micro-brewery opening on Monday as the latest addition to Movietowne Port of Spain’s Fiesta Plaza, is sure to attract a slew of new clientèle – ranging from the Trini hipster circle seeking out micro brews, to those who want a fun or family environment with excellent food and in-house crafted beer.
Starting in the beer business in 2008 with the importation of Coors Light, Tannous went on to develop a full portfolio of imported beverages and brands in a market that immediately embraced them for their youthful feel with strategic marketing that went around the traditional approach to connect with consumers. While successful in its own right, the new entrants to the market faced stiff competition from the existing local breweries determined to maintain their market share.
He explained, “Besides having to face higher tariffs and other non-tariff barriers, we faced a slew of challenges as the incumbent local beer producers began to muscle their way back in to the market share we had won over.” That led to the idea, that a locally-brewed beer brand would help to overcome this challenge while offering something new and fun to the market.
“Tommy’s Brewing Company is a small-scale restaurant and micro-brewery that places an emphasis on quality, flavour and brewing techniques. After travelling around to a number of similar microbreweries internationally, particularly in Denver, I realised that this is something that would work well here. We craft our beer, which is different to manufacturing it. In manufacturing, there is a focus on cost-efficiency over say, quality of ingredients, so while we do focus on the science behind it, we are really placing an emphasis on the art of beer-making. It’s been a passion of mine to create something like this and share it with patrons and the market,” he detailed.
“While we do have locally manufactured beer and also do have a number of imported craft beers, Tommy’s brews are made right here at our Movietowne location and can be consumed fresh from the micro-brewery.” When asked about the size of the investment, Tannous responded lightly noting, “It wasn’t insignificant! This new establishment will create permanent jobs for 50 people with another 20 part-time roles as well.” The founder also noted that while entrepreneurial activity is high in TT, much has to be done to foster this type of activity that goes beyond the status quo, to businesses such as his that have placed an effort on stimulating local production, employment and perhaps even fostering positive changes to the current foreign exchange situation.
Patrons of Tommy’s will immediately notice the massive steel tanks located in the restaurant space but separated by a glass partition – which means that customers will actually get to witness their international award-winning brewmaster Saty, at work on the next batch of brewed options – and there will be lots of options.
“For our opening, we have selected six house brews that will be available year-round ranging from traditional pale ales to IPAs to stouts and Dunkels, but we will also take note of seasonal options, so you may at one point find us brewing a beer with hints of real mango or sorrel – this really is just the start of the journey for us,” Tannous commented.
That journey has seen him come up against as many as 18 governmental and regulatory organisations and laws related to the industry that were instituted at the turn of the 20th century; an adventure that was two years full of 24-hour-days of work and commitment. “There is also an extensive menu of food items… we partnered with well-known restaurateur Peter George of Prime/Trotters/Buzo fame to bring the best options to pair with our beers, forward,” he pointed out. “The choice was clear when it came to bringing his experience of the food market and the best quality to the table for our patrons too.”
Menu items range from shareable platters to bison burgers, Shepherd’s pie, tacos, and salads for the discerning. The space too, has its own charms – with a rustic but modern finish, smartly using a mix of concrete with lots of local wood and local craftsmanship to complement the industrial feel of the micro-brewery which is part of the charm of the dining experience. Tannous added, “We want people to feel at home here – almost as if it’s a family on the inside and definitely a space where people are excited to interact with our staff and learn about crafted beer and the food that goes best with it. There is the opportunity to learn, to have fun too and put down the phone and interact with your table or other customers at the bar, that’s what we intend for it.”
More than anything, patrons will immediately notice the quality of flavours and notes in each offering, something that is only possible by offering the freshest crafted beers that only have to make the journey of a few feet, direct from the micro-brewery to the bartender’s tap.
As for the inspiration behind the brand, the name and the logo of a shipwrecked sailor sitting atop a beer keg lost at sea, Tannous owes that to his grandfather, from whose journal entries he’s crafted an entirely new casual dining experience, taking patrons across the world with a mix of food and beverage as they sit either in the cosy interior or outside on picnic style tables astride turf grass and under hanging Edison bulbs.
There’s nothing quite like Tommy’s and with the innovations planned, the team behind the brand will surely have an adventure of their own to tell, in the years to come.
Source: Newsday, July 29, 2018

A tale written in Trinidadian Creole that was inspired by the true story of a family who cremated a baby in the wilds of the island, has been plucked from more than 5,000 entries to win the Commonwealth short story prize.
In Passage, Kevin Jared Hosein writes of a man who hears a story in a bar about a family living away from society, and sets out to find them. “A man is so small in the wilderness, believe me. The way how people is now, we ain’t tailored to live there. So when Stew say he stumble across a house in the middle of the mountain, my ears prick up. I take in every word as he describe it. A daub and wattle house in the middle of a clearing, walls slabbed with sticks and clay and dung and straw, topped with a thatch roof,” writes Hosein, in Trinidadian English Creole, a choice he had initially thought would put people off.
“Originally I was afraid – I didn’t think people would understand the Creole,” the Trinidadian author told the Guardian. But the novelist Sarah Hall, who chaired the award jury, said Passage was “immediately and uniformly admired by the judges”.
“It balances between formal language and demotic, ideas of civility and ferality, is tightly woven and suspenseful, beautifully and eerily atmospheric, and finally surprising,” said Hall. “It is, in essence, all a reader could want from the short story form; a truly crafted piece of fiction that transports the reader into another world, upends expectations, and questions the nature of narratives and narrative consequence.”
The annual prize is awarded to the best piece of unpublished short fiction from the Commonwealth. Stories can be submitted in Bengali, Chinese, English, Malay, Portuguese, Samoan, Swahili, and Tamil, with 5,182 stories entered from 48 countries this year.
Hosein, who received his £5,000 award in Cyprus on Wednesday night, first learned about the true story behind Passage when he was 15. “People were aware there was a family living along a trail – they had older living customs that wouldn’t be acceptable today. Their baby died, and they had a custom to send its spirit off by cremating the body. That is what drew attention to them, and the two parents were put in an asylum, and the older children into a foster home,” he said.
“The last thing on the news was that when the children were brought into society and saw a television, they couldn’t stop screaming. I remember it hanging in my head as a child for a long time. People just wrote it off as madness, but I thought it had more to it than that and I wanted to explore it.”
AdvertisementA science teacher as well as a writer, Hosein was a Caribbean regional winner for the Commonwealth prize in 2015. “Winning in 2015 was pure validation – I didn’t really put my writing out there before that,” he said. “But just the fact that I made it on to the shortlist told me that my work could resonate with people outside my region. You always have that doubt: ‘Am I really good?’”
This time, “I just felt pride – not just in me but in my country … There is not much opportunity in the Caribbean to make a name for yourself. I think the prize has helped with that,” he said.
Hosein is the author of three novels: The Beast of Kukuyo, which won him the Burt award for Caribbean literature, The Repenters, which was shortlisted for the Bocas prize, and Littletown Secrets.

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​Chaguramas last week...  Look at the beautiful scenery in Trinidad.. sad to see this