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A MESSAGE From OUR CEO Over the past several months, our region, industry, and company have been battling the COVID-19 pandemic and its unprecedented consequences. But our resilient people have never failed to rise to a challenge. Thanks to some superb planning, cost management, and robust adaptability, we have much to be grateful for. Since July, some regional borders have re-opened and our operations have adapted to provide much-needed air lift. We have worked with several governments to operate repatriation flights and restarted commercial operations from our Jamaica hub and from Barbados. From Kingston, Jamaica, you can fly daily to JFK International in New York, and several times weekly to Toronto, Miami, Antigua, Sint Maarten, Nassau, and Barbados, with easy onward connections to other destinations. Along with the Jamaica operation, our Eastern Caribbean expansion continues out of Barbados, where a temporary base is set up. Now, from Barbados you can travel to St Vincent, Grenada, and St Lucia, with more destinations to be added in the coming weeks. Caribbean Airlines has the largest network in the region and we continue to improve connectivity. To complement the Eastern Caribbean initiative, there is a renewed focus on alliances, which has started with an expanded interline agreement with Virgin Atlantic. This
How Caribbean Airlines plans are taking shape
arrangement enables travellers between Barbados and London Heathrow to connect seamlessly to and from multiple destinations including Grenada, St Vincent, and Kingston, Jamaica — with St Lucia, Antigua, Dominica, and Guyana to be added soon, subject to regulatory approvals. This interline also gives you access to London and beyond from the Caribbean. Soon you will be able to plan and book trips via the Virgin Atlantic or Caribbean Airlines websites or through appointed travel agents. A single ticket will be issued combining the Virgin Atlantic and Caribbean Airlines flights. Notwithstanding the pandemic, our plans continue apace, motivated by our commitment to improve our product and service offerings. To this end, we joined forces with global leaders to enhance our loyalty programme. Coming soon, Caribbean Miles members will enjoy a more person-
We’re pushing ahead with our long-term vision to serve and seamlessly connect people across the Caribbean
Our focus on alliances includes an expanded interline agreement with Virgin Atlantic
alised experience when purchasing and transferring miles, and other new and dynamic features will be added for your benefit. It’s positive news on many fronts, and we are also pleased with the strong performance of our Cargo operations. In the midst of the pandemic, we launched cargo charter services to serve islands which are experiencing limited connectivity and reduced cargo capacity as a result of COVID-19. We operated several charters, including a flight where we delivered humanitarian supplies from Guyana to medical students in Cuba, and a number of flights between Trinidad, Guyana, and Toronto. We expanded our freighter operations to six weekly flights into and out of our Miami hub with the introduction of a third all-cargo flight between Miami and Kingston. And we’ve increased connectivity through passenger flights to and from Kingston and additional routes out of Barbados. For the next quarter, we will continue to plan for multiple scenarios and maintain our preparedness, as we connect you to what’s important in your lives through warm, reliable, and safe air travel.
Garvin Medera Chief Executive Officer
Our commercial schedule out of Jamaica and Barbados is up and running, alongside strong cargo operations
We're improving our loyalty programme through partnerships
Contents September/October 2020 • Digital Issue
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27 EMBARK
8 Wish you were here Shark Hole, Barbados
10 Need to know
Make the most of September and October, even during the time of COVID-19
20 Bookshelf and playlist
Our reading and listening picks
24 screenshots
Haitian filmmaker Esery Mondesir discusses his documentary triptych exploring the lives of his compatriots in the diaspora ARRIVE
27 Round Trip
Go Wild Soaring mountains, rushing rivers and waterfalls, rainforests teeming
CaribbeanBeat CaribbeanBeat Media & Editorial Projects Ltd. 6 Prospect Avenue, Maraval, Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago T: (868) 622 3821/5813/6138 F: (868) 628 0639 E: caribbean-beat@meppublishers.com Website: www.meppublishers.com
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Editor Nicholas Laughlin General manager Halcyon Salazar Design artists Kevon Webster, Kriston Chen Production manager Jacqueline Smith Web editor Caroline Taylor Editorial assistants Shelly-Ann Inniss, Kristine De Abreu
with life, and savannahs stretching to the horizon — the Caribbean has so many amazing natural landscapes to explore. What better time to experience the life-giving adventures of the great outdoors?
68 snapshot
Anti-Stoosh From live events mixing and mashing diverse musical genres to his online Carnival Tabanca series, Trinidadian
Business Development Manager, Tobago and International Evelyn Chung T: (868) 684 4409 E: evelyn@meppublishers.com Business Development Representative, Trinidad Tracy Farrag T: (868) 318 1996 E: tracy@meppublishers.com
An MEP publication
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Cover The sandstone mountains along the border between Guyana and Venezuela are a wild landscape unlike any other in the Caribbean Photo Caio Pederneiras/Shutterstock.com
Dear readers,
DJ Adam Cooper — also known as foreigner, based in Los Angeles — is completely reinventing what Caribbean culture can be, writes Amanda Choo Quan
74 The Deal
The COVID strategY The COVID-19 pandemic has already taken a heavy toll on Caribbean economies, and small businesses have been hardest hit. What can they do to survive the crisis? Natalie Dookie talks to experts in Jamaica, T&T, and Suriname for advice on how to grapple with both risks and opportunities
84 Do you even know
Our trivia column tests your knowledge of the Caribbean’s rare and diverse wildlife
As we publish this latest digital issue of Caribbean Beat, it’s been more than half a year since the COVID-19 pandemic hit the Caribbean. 2020 thus far has been difficult for all of us, and there are still many rough months ahead. But despite these circumstances, Caribbean people continue to create and strive, reinventing the meaning of “normal,” and reconsidering what’s truly important for ourselves, our families, our communities. In some Caribbean countries, borders have reopened and travel has resumed — with new precautions and protocols. We’re all eagerly looking forward to the time — not so far off, we hope — when travelling is once more easily possible. Until then, we can journey through our imaginations. In this digital issue, we take you across the length and breadth of our region, exploring through stunning images the natural wonders of the Caribbean, in our special feature “Go wild.” From the limestone mogotes of Cuba to the Pitons of St Lucia, from the Rupununi Savannah of Guyana to Barbados’s limestone caves, the mangrove forests of Tobago and Antigua to the hiking trails of Dominica, the Caribbean is blessed with incredible natural landscapes and unique flora and fauna. COVID-19 physical distancing means avoiding crowds — so heed the call of the wild and consider an amazing outdoor adventure far from the hustle and bustle. The Caribbean Beat team
Read and save issues of Caribbean Beat on your smartphone, tablet, computer, and favourite digital devices! Caribbean Beat is published six times a year for Caribbean Airlines by Media & Editorial Projects Ltd. It is also available on subscription. Copyright © Caribbean Airlines 2020. All rights reserved. ISSN 1680–6158. No part of this magazine may be reproduced in any form whatsoever without the written permission of the publisher. MEP accepts no responsibility for content supplied by our advertisers. The views of the advertisers are theirs and do not represent MEP in any way. Website: www.caribbean-airlines.com
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Our unfinished revolution By Sunity Maharaj
I
n the spaces of an amnesia engineered through the education system has sprung the myth that there is no lineage of heroism in Caribbean peoples’ march to freedom, that our independence was the gift of a benign sovereign, and that our political and economic victories were not won by rebellious and rioting masses but by a benevolent state. We sing no hallelujahs of shared pride in the heroic stories of our Caribbean ancestors of the First Nations or of the Haitian Revolution, that most improbable of victories that gave the world the template for universal human rights so conveniently ignored by both the American and French Revolutions. Here in Trinidad and Tobago, loss of memory has broken the straight line that should be drawn between the Belmanna Labour Riots of 1876 in Tobago, the Canboulay and Hosay Riots of the 1880s, the Water Riots of 1903, the Dock Workers’ Strike of 1919/20, the Labour Riots of 1937, and the Black Power Revolution of 1970. These are but some of the headline events in the story of our ongoing and unfinished revolution compelled by an insistent longing for peace, bread, and justice in political systems that refuse to yield to the cry for representation until forced to do so. It took rebellion and rioting, not a sense of justice, to restore our humanity from enslaved property and to inch us forward from people without rights to full citizenship, even if only in name for too many in Morvant, Laventille, Beetham, and Sea Lots, to name a few. Scrubbed from all memory is the ferocious take-no-prisoners, yield-no-
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quarter stand of heroes beginning with our first freedom fighter, Baucunar, Chief of the Carinepagoto people who successfully repelled Spain’s first attempt to settle Trinidad at Mucurapo in 1531. It was a mighty battle that would launch over two hundred years of unrelenting Indigenous resistance against land capture, enslavement, and, ultimately the genocide of the civilisation that owned and nurtured this Caribbean for thousands of years before we inherited it. Among the pantheon of that first civilisation of Caribbean leaders were men and women of extraordinary courage, intelligence, and deep love and understanding of this land. Their heroic stand against European invasion is the first volume of the Caribbean’s epic story of travail and triumph. It remains to be told on the grand scale that has shaped the identity of Europe and the United States through movies, music, literature, art and drama. As the world come to grips with the concept of reparation, it should be our collective responsibility, as their cultural if not necessarily biological descendants, to place our first Caribbean ancestors at the head of the list that must include other big-ticket items like the repayment of France’s extortion of “reparations” from Haiti, now valued at roughly US$21 billion. On the agenda must be the mandate to resurrect the civilisation that first baptised this place. Among them the Taínos of Haiti, who were the first to feel the fires of European greed for gold; the military strategists of the Kalinago chiefs, who successfully thwarted Dutch, Courlander, French, and British ambition to settle Tobago; the Garifuna of St Vincent, who waged war against Britain until the European powerhouse was forced into signing its first treaty with non-white persons in the Caribbean; and the realpolitik of Goanagoanare, Chief of the Carinepagoto, and military brilliance of the Nepoyo warrior-leader Hyarima, who destabilised the Spanish occupation of Trinidad for a whole century beyond Baucunar’s stand at Mucurapo. In addition to all that must be done for our Caribbean ancestors, the Caricom Reparations Committee now led by Prime Minister Mia Mottley of Barbados must secure the return of the island of Baliceaux to the Garifuna people. This 320-acre island in the Grenadines is sacred to the Garifuna, descendants of the people known as the Black Caribs of St Vincent,
Nacho Calonge/Alamy Stock Photo
Members of the Garifuna community in Punta Piedras, Honduras, descendants of the exiled Black Caribs of St Vincent, re-enact their ancestors’ arrival
who were decimated in one of the most brutal episodes of British adventurism in the Caribbean. It occurred in 1796, when a British expedition led by General Ralph Abercromby, immortalised in Trinidad’s Abercromby Street, breached Britain’s treaty with the Black Caribs, captured St Vincent, killed their leader Chatoyer, rounded up the estimated 4,600 Black Caribs, and shipped them by Royal Navy to Baliceaux to await banishment to Roatan Island, just off Honduras. By the time they were shipped to Roatan Island, more than half of them had died from hunger and disease. In recent years, this internment camp of St Vincent’s Black Caribs has been listed for sale by its private owner at prices ranging from US$25 million to US$35 million, and promoted for its “huge potential for touristic development.” The offering of this gaping wound as a luxury item for sale is only possible because the starvation of memory leaves no spark for the raging at the past that is needed in the present to change the trajectory of our future. As history has repeatedly taught us, what happened in the past does not stay in the past. In 2020, the American Revolution of 1776 has sprung to life as Black Lives Matter, as African-Americans stake their claim to the American dream of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. No matter the scrubbing of memory or re-writing of stories, the past does not die. It lies ahead around the corner, waiting to trip us up one cool morning, when the sun is shining and the birds are singing and the air is suddenly rent by the sound of bullets and the scent of blood.
Sunity Maharaj is a director of the Lloyd Best Institute of the West Indies. This essay is part of a series reflecting on the Caribbean Identity and what it can be. An earlier version was previously published in the Trinidad and Tobago Express.
WWW.CARIBBEAN-AIRLINES.COM
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wish you were here
Shark Hole, Barbados This tiny cove on the southeast coast is one of Barbados’s almost secret treasures. Overhanging rocks surround a stretch of brilliant white sand, while a barrier reef protects the inlet from the wild waves and currents of the Atlantic. This sliver of bliss proves that good things can come in small packages. And the name? Derived from a longtime fishing story, apparently. Shark Hole has atmosphere galore, but no sharks.
Photo by Akira Joseph Photography
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NEED TO KNOW
Retha Ferguson/Pexels and Stockyimages/Shutterstock.com
Essential info to help you make the most of September and October — even in the middle of a pandemic
Don’t Miss Brooklyn’s Labour Day Carnival goes virtual 10
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The celebration of Caribbean culture on Brooklyn’s Eastern Parkway has been the sizzling grand finale of the NYC summer for over half a century. Each Labour Day — falling on 7 September this year — approximately three million people parade in Carnival costumes, wave national flags, and pump to soca rhythms at the West Indian Day Parade. In 2020 — not unlike many events affected by the COVID-19 pandemic — the festivities will take a different route. A virtual road will replace three-and-a-halfmile Eastern Parkway, and a compendium of film footage from previous Carnivals will bring the spirit directly into viewers’ homes. Energetic art and musical performances are also in the lineup, plus showcases from health and culinary masters. Visit the virtual stage at wiadcacarnival.org for more information and to register.
Sleepin International Hotel & Casino 288-289 Church Street, Queenstown, Georgetown, Guyana. (592) 223-4603, 223-4608, 223-4612 reservations@sleepinhotelandcasino.com
Sleepin International Hotel
24-25 Brickdam, Stabroek, Guyana. (592) 227-3452, 227-3467, 227-3478 stay@sleepininternationalhotel.com
Enjoy five-star quality ambience with room rates as low as US$80 + 14% VAT
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Courtesy Bocas Lit Fest
need to know
Take three T&T arts festivals move online For everyone in the culture business, 2020 has been a year of reinvention. As COVID-19 regulations have temporarily closed theatres, cinemas, and art galleries, arts producers have had to figure out how to reach audiences in new forms and on new platforms. Three popular festivals in Trinidad and Tobago have embraced the virtual challenge.
trinidad+tobago film festival (ttff) 9 to 15 September ttfilmfestival.com
Screens are essential features for any film festival. This year, from the Caribbean to Latin America, Europe to North America, the ttff is bringing the world to your own living room. On opening night, cricket fans around the globe are in for a treat with the feature-length documentary 501 Not Out — inspired by the extraordinary career of cricket legend Brian Lara. You can also join Academy Award–winning documentary director Orlando von Einsiedel and acclaimed UK film and television producer Lee Thomas for workshops on Zoom. Plus, explore 12
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livestreams of free online industry events, panels and presentations via Facebook.
NGC Bocas Lit Fest 18 to 20 September bocaslitfest.com
The Anglophone Caribbean’s biggest literary festival — celebrating its tenth year — has been running free weekly online events since May, culminating in a weekend of readings, debates and performances in September. Highlights include a “Future Friday” programme in which speculative fiction writers imagine how the Caribbean might evolve from the crises of 2020, and a commemoration of the fiftieth anniversary of T&T’s 1970 Black Power
Authors in the virtual NGC Bocas Lit Fest programme include (top row, left to right) Nalo Hopkinson, Malka Older, Karen Lord, Tessa McWatt; (bottom row, left to right) Richard Georges, Ingrid Persaud, Vahni Capildeo, and Canisia Lubrin
Revolution, alongside book launches, a virtual version of the signature Bocas “Stand and Deliver” open mic, calypso, drama, and more — all free, and streamed via the festival website and social media.
COCO Dance Festival
24 and 25 October facebook.com/COCODanceFest Creativity is not on lockdown, where dance is involved. As the world comes to terms with the strange new normal, and many of us grapple with a sense of alienation, T&T’s Contemporary Choreographers’ Collective (COCO) presents a virtual programme called ALIEN. Juried works, pieces by the festival’s founders and directors, and specially invited regional and international guests are all in the mix — streaming via online platforms including Facebook, with content remaining viewable for a limited time after first airing.
Activist, Global, Caribbean rooted. At The University of the West Indies (The UWI) we are committed to leveraging inter-disciplinary research, scientific expertise and activism to confront the most pressing development challenges facing our world, and especially our Caribbean region, like COVID-19, sustainable development and climate change.
In many ways The UWI’s contributions have helped shape the Caribbean’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic, recognised across the world as a best-case study. Concurrently, we continue to intensify climate action initiatives with global impact as the leader in the mobilisation of research and advocacy for a climate smart world. We believe universities are not built to serve themselves. So, at the heart of our mission World University Rankings Golden Age University Rankings Latin America Rankings Impact Rankings
as an excellent global university rooted in the Caribbean is the positive transformation of our region and the wider world. Learn more at www.uwi.edu
need to know
Fete
Courtesy Terri Lyons
by Blue Boy (now called Super Blue) “When most people hear the word kaiso, they think of songs based on social or political commentary. This song, though often labelled as merely soca, combined elements of soca and kaiso perfectly, and definitely brought on a party vibe with it.”
We Could Make It If We Try
by Black Stalin “Upliftment! This is a topic that will always be relevant. This track was released in 1988, and is still played today. It is what I would call a ‘forever topic.’ Somewhere in the world, an individual or an entire nation may need to be uplifted, and this song can do that.”
Corruption in Common Entrance
Top Five Terri Lyons’s calypso favourites Lessons about history, ethics, poetry, and ways of life are often taught in the lyrics of calypsos. But is an appreciation of rhythm overtaking the value of lyrics in Trinidad and Tobago’s music, as other genres soar in popularity? Calypso History Month, celebrated throughout October, is one way to remedy this and pay homage to our musical roots. T&T’s reigning Calypso Monarch Terri Lyons has been singing calypso since primary school. She’s worked alongside prolific songwriters, singers, and producers around the world, and as the daughter of calypso and soca legend Austin “Super Blue” Lyons (formerly known as Blue Boy), she considers her father to be her biggest inspiration. Here are her personal top five kaiso classics, and what makes them special. 14
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by Cro Cro (also known as the Mighty Midget) “It’s what kaiso is all about — not being afraid to speak on sensitive topics or calling names. This song spoke of issues that our people faced, hence giving a voice to the ones who felt as if their plights were being ignored. Not only is this one of my favourite kaiso songs, but Cro Cro is one of my all-time favourite calypsonians.”
The Hammer
by David Rudder “I am fascinated by the way he educates through song. King David Michael Rudder is here telling history through pure poetry in music that will make us dance.”
Gossiping
by the Mighty Shadow “This is one of my all-time favourites simply because it is so unique. This isn’t a topic most writers would think of developing as content for kaiso. Simple and effective. Most kaisonians follow what is trendy, but not Shadow. He always found a way to bring his unique vibe, in effect giving us what we as listeners wanted while mixing it with his own style. Another track that will forever be relevant, since gossip is rooted in Caribbean culture.”
need to know
All About . . . The Caribbean’s rarest stamps Courtesy Empire Philatelists
Handwritten letters from penpals in lands far away may have been a simple childhood pleasure, depending on your age. Curiosity about the postal service and even a fascination with postage stamps might have ensued, too. Stamp collecting is a fun and family-friendly activity with opportunities to learn history, explore the world, and maybe even earn income. Tremendously serious philatelists generally focus on a particular country or era. Which stamps do Caribbean philatelists consider the biggest treasures? As we mark World Post Day on 9 October, here’s a glimpse at three rare and coveted examples.
Trinidad’s Lady McLeod (1847)
Courtesy Empire Philatelists
According to the Smithsonian National Postal Museum, the Lady McLeod is the first adhesive postage stamp relating to “post by sea” — although privately issued. Comparatively, the Philatelic Society of Trinidad and Tobago claims it as the first stamp to be issued by a British colony. This renowned stamp was introduced to pre-pay for mail carried by the Lady McLeod steamer — named for the wife of Governor Sir Henry McLeod — which plied between the towns of Port of Spain and San Fernando, carrying people and cargo. A $1 monthly subscription fee payable quarterly and in advance was charged for letters, money, and small parcels, while non-subscribers were charged ten cents per letter. Today, eightyfive of these elegantly designed stamps are known to survive. One was sold last year for £7,000. Genuinely unused or mint copies are of the utmost rarity.
Jamaica one-shilling inverted-frame error (1919-1921)
A printer’s error created Jamaica’s rarest stamp, in which part of the design was rendered upside-down. It’s assumed that a sheet of sixty stamps was printed, with half of the sheet being delivered to a post office in Manchioneal, a small village in Portland parish, and the other half possibly sold in Kingston. Fewer than twenty were unused and only five exist in used condition. Mint examples sell for over £30,000.
British Guiana’s one-cent “Black on Magenta” (1856)
The stamp most notorious for creating a media buzz each time it’s sold or displayed is the exceedingly rare “Black on Magenta” from British Guiana, of which a single example is known to survive. Considered the most valuable stamp in the world, it was sold to upscale shoe designer Stuart Weitzman in 2014 for approximately US$9.5 million. In early 1856, Georgetown postmaster E.T.E. Dalton urgently needed stamps, so he requested the printing of an emergency issue:
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Postage stamps were introduced as a receipt to show the sender had paid the postage for letters and parcels. Before that, the person receiving the letter paid the postage. The first adhesive postage stamp was the British “Penny Black”, introduced in 1840. The main philatelic societies for collectors of Caribbean stamps are the British West Indies Study Circle and the British Caribbean Philatelic Study Group.
L O O K I N G FO R LA N D T O BU I LD Y OU R D RE A M H O US E ON ?
BWIA (British West Indies Airways, the predecessor of Caribbean Airlines) also made its postal contribution, by transporting mail on its first commercial flight to Tobago in 1940. Barbados and Jamaica housed the earliest post offices in the British West Indies in 1663 and 1671, respectively — long before the formal invention of the postage stamp. Many West Indian post offices used British stamps at first, with local stamps bearing the colony’s name eventually introduced. one-cent stamps for newspapers and four-cent stamps for letters. Stamps with different values but of the same design were usually printed in different colours. Not for this emergency issue, though. The printing firm did both values in black ink on magenta paper. The rushed job was of poor quality, so as a security measure to prevent forgery, Dalton asked post office employees to initial each stamp before selling them. Prior to making scarce appearances outside of bank vaults, this particular one-cent “Black on Magenta” was owned by a twelve-year-old Scottish boy named Vernon Vaughan. In 1873, while living in Demerara, he discovered the stamp postmarked 4 April, 1856. It was ink-smudged, had been clipped into an octagonal shape, and bore the handwritten initials “EDW”. Vaughan cleaned it up and added it to his stamp collection, then later sold it to a local collector for six shillings, which at that time was worth less than US$1. Several sales later, London stamp dealer Edward Pemberton identified the one-cent “Black on Magenta” as a rare issue. It was eventually bought by Philipp Von Ferrary, the most famous stamp collector of the early 1900s, for £150. In 1922 it was bought at auction by New York millionaire Arthur Hind for £7,343. It’s rumoured that Hinds was so fascinated with the stamp that he bought a second one-cent “Black on Magenta” and destroyed it so his would be the only one in the world.
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need to know Javon Cummins suggests this Bajan menu to try at home:
Courtesy Javon Cummins
Appetizer: Bajan soup (chicken, split peas, squash, pumpkin, herbs, sweet potatoes, and cornmeal dumplings) Main course: braised pork with spiced sweet potatoes and island vegetables Dessert: classic Bajan rum cake
Javon Cummins’s chilled sous vide pork with beetroot pudding, pickled gelée, parsley foam, and Scotch bonnet mango gel
Must Try The taste of invention Shelly-Ann Inniss meets chef Javon Cummins, star of Barbados’s thriving culinary scene — and learns how he transforms some of his favourite local ingredients Uncomplicated yet chic describes the offerings at the annual Barbados Food and Rum Festival. Outstanding local talent and homegrown produce are key ingredients of the epicurean masterpieces presented each year. Award-winning chef Javon Cummins is one of the youngest members of Barbados’s winning culinary team. He prides himself on staying true to his heritage by using familial traditions and local ingredients in his dishes, and at very elevated levels. If something looks appealing, people gravitate towards it. Cummins’s mantra is “people eat with their eyes.” At a Barbados Food and Rum Festival event a few years ago, Cummins impressed patrons with his take on Bajan pudding and souse — a popular Saturday meal. When Cummins presented his version like a work of art — using chilled sous vide pork with a beetroot pudding, pickled gelée, parsley foam, and Scotch bonnet mango gel — no one believed the foundation was the dish thousands of Barbadians stand in long queues on countless Saturdays to devour. “I pushed it to another level to make it look 18
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appetising,” he explains. Despite the numerous awards and accolades under his belt, this was the moment his name became etched in my brain’s hall of fame. The pudding in the Bajan version of pudding and souse is made with boiled sweet potatoes and seasonings. “Sweet potatoes are my go-to. If I need to do something and I’m not comfortable with it, I grab a sweet potato, because it is so easy to manipulate,” says the twenty-eightyear-old chef. Sweet potatoes can be mashed, creamed, made into flour, chips — you name it. Adding homegrown micro greens and edible flowers to enhance the appearance of the pudding and souse flaunted Cummins’s visual technique. Cummins first became interested in cooking at the age of seven, and got more passionate as he grew older. He recalls buying recipe books, flipping the
methods, and substituting ingredients to see what the final result would be. Perhaps it’s this burning curiosity and ambition that led him to become the youngest executive chef on the island three years ago, at Tapestry Restaurant on Barbados’s west coast. This is where his herb garden is planted, and where these fine ingredients make it onto his menu. Cummins believes the garden creates inspiration for his staff: “They feel a lot more attached to the food, since they can just pluck it and cook it.” There’s no ingredient Cummins doesn’t love, because each one pushes him to evolve. Take coconut and lemongrass, for instance. In one of the dishes he presented at the 2016 Taste of the Caribbean competition in Miami, he made an ice cream using the combination — and won gold. Since then, this has become his signature dessert. He hopes it will enter the product line of a top ice cream brand someday. “I have accomplished a lot,” Cummins says, “and once in a while I pat myself on my back, although I am hard on myself. I always want to evolve.”
The 2020 Barbados Food and Rum Festival, originally scheduled for 29 October to 1 November, was cancelled due to the COVID-19 outbreak. Keep an eye on visitbarbados.org for updates on next year’s festival
need to know
Courtesy El Museo del Barrio
On View
Courtesy El Museo del Barrio
Popular Artists at El Museo del Barrio
Top Sans titre (Le photographe) [Untitled (The Photographer)], by Micius Stéphane (c. 1945–1965, oil on masonite, 20 × 24 inches). Stephane’s work was informed by his previous occupation as a shoemaker. He paints his characters just as they are: ordinary people with ordinary experiences like him Above Sans titre (Portrait de femme avec les filles) [Untitled (Portrait of woman with two girls)], by Louisiane Saint Fleurant (not dated, oil on canvas, 30 × 40 inches). Saint Fleurant, a founding member of the Saint Soleil Group, is considered one of Haiti’s most renowned artists. Her tapestried Vodou-style portraits of mothers and their children take us back to the importance of oral storytelling in West African tradition and the strong bonds of family
See Popular Artists and Other Visionaries and read the online catalogue at popularpainters-elmuseo.org
Since its founding in 1969, New York City’s El Museo del Barrio has spotlighted the work of Caribbean and Latin American artists, with a special focus on Puerto Rico and its US diaspora. Its building on Fifth Avenue, facing Central Park, is a key location in the city’s art circuit — but El Museo’s latest exhibition is also its first to be unanchored in physical space, having been shifted online in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Popular Artists and Other Visionaries, which opened on 3 August and runs until 8 November, 2020, “examines the contributions of thirty schooled and self-taught artists working between the 1930s and 1970s in different parts of the Americas and the Caribbean” — drawing on both the museum’s permanent collection and “virtual loans” from other institutions. Curated by Rodrigo Moura, El Museo’s chief curator, and co-organised by staff members Susanna Temkin, Noel Valentin, and Kristine Santos, Popular Artists brings together works by artists from Puerto Rico, Haiti, Cuba, Brazil, and various other countries across Central and South America. “The show departs from the term ‘popular painters,’” explain the curators, “to identify artists working on the margins of modernism and the mainstream artworld. Popular visual sources provide the narrative thread of the exhibition,” touching on themes such as “migration, exclusion, marginalisation, cultural resistance, indigeneity, selfdetermination, and autobiography.” WWW.CARIBBEAN-AIRLINES.COM
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bookshelf Epiphaneia by Richard Georges (Out-Spoken Press, 90 pp, ISBN 9781916046849) Winner of the 2020 OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature, Richard Georges’s third poetry collection arrests us in the moment of catastrophe, asking how we might hold terror and fortitude in either cracked palm. Many of these poems witness the immediate aftermath of the physical and emotional devastation Hurricane Irma left across the British Virgin Islands in 2017. If you read what sound like impossible instances, scenes that seem plucked from the tomes of classic magical realism, take a closer look. Epiphaneia proves almost anything can be uprooted, that even the most seemingly solid bulwark of our collective human resistance holds little power against a storm. Here are poems that reward several concentrated readings to mine their full, harrowing flavour: in this world, men fly through the air on the demolished doors of their houses, like a nightmarish scene from a game no one wants to play in real-
Black Rain Falling
ity. Children ask questions of adults who ask the same things of the dispassionate heavens. Answers are slow, and hard to read when so much is crumbling or has been swept into the sea. Instructions for survival often read more like stolen bits of catechism, monuments to prayer: “Find your bearings in the darkness / by the light in the channel. / The light in the channel is a warship . . . Use anything you can to collect the rain. / Cup your hands to your ears if you must. / They must clear the mounds of coral from the road first. / The coral are not bones. / They are bright flowers.” Each poem here is an act of reckoning with an utter futility, an unbridled despair. To do this alone would be enough, but Epiphaneia does not rest there. Each poem, too, does the hard work of finding a path through the darkness: the pitch midnight of no electricity, of diminishing faith. The poems outstretch their bruised arms, asking us to believe.
Love After Love
by Jacob Ross (Sphere, 432 pp, ISBN 9780751574449)
by Ingrid Persaud (Faber & Faber, 416 pp, ISBN 9780571356195)
Welcome back to Camaho. In this tautly plotted, hyperreal crime fiction offering, the second in a series from Grenada-born, UKbased Jacob Ross, worlds of grisly brutality collide against tableaux of familial tenderness. Sometimes even the top crime fiction bestsellers cast the Caribbean as a hybrid nightmare/paradise: Ross continues to pierce persuasive needles of characterisation and conflict into that tired tapestry, fashioning us something altogether new amid the bloodspatter and cordoned-off police scenes. Michael “Digger” Digson gains amplified depth from his foray as protagonist in The Bone Readers, and again the novel’s scene stealer is the enigmatic Miss Stanislaus, Digger’s colleague who’s decidedly more than the sum of her parts. Reading, you swiftly get the sense that only Ross could serve up a feminist-centred narrative simultaneously attuned to the multiple pulses of sexual violence, pervasive colonialism, and secrets steeped in blood, rum, and time. Move over, Agatha Christie — Jacob Ross is in charge.
Making a family can be a perilous endeavour. So learn Betty, Solo, and Mr Chetan, when the idyll of their self-made domestic cocoon blooms a misshapen butterfly. Family, Love After Love reminds us, can be an ugly enterprise, no matter how much home-cooked food we bring to its table. Ingrid Persaud steers the world of her novel with a merciless kind of sensitivity, turning the very notion of a tiny existence on its clichéd head, rattling every cupboard in this narrative home for loose change, deep confessions, and dalliances sweeter than Demerara sugar. No one within these pages exists within the confinement of their archetype, either: Betty Ramdin is more than her collection of bruises, Solo is more than a shy only child, and Mr Chetan elides easy pigeonholing reserved for queer Caribbean characters. Fortify yourself: Love After Love is a take-no-prisoners trip into these three hearts.
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Reviews by Shivanee Ramlochan, Bookshelf editor
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playlist Rasanbleman (Red Moon) Paul Beaubrun (Ropeadope LLC) New York–based Paul Beaubrun is the son of Haitian music icons and Boukman Eksperyans founders Lòlò and Manzè. On his new album, the artist’s statement is succinct: “Rasanbleman [Kreyòl for ‘a large gathering’] is a project that was recorded LIVE at the Artists Institute in Haiti and includes many notable artists.” But that does not get to the heart of what the listener hears: a cornucopia of sounds from the New World
Soné Ka-La 2 Oddyssey Jacques Schwarz-Bart (Enja Records) “As long as I can remember, there was always gwoka and jazz music in my life,” says Guadeloupean saxophonist Jacques Schwarz-Bart. Gwoka drums are the basis of that island’s folk music, and on his new album Schwarz-Bart has fused the language of jazz with those native rhythms to forge a new aesthetic for the Antillean musician. This sequel to his original 2005 album updates that initial intent of making
Alive Rai (Whatsername Records) Looking at music created in the Caribbean outside of indigenous genres, one searches for clues to an exceptional character. Song lyrics sometimes provide hints for a new context to love, to awakening, to maturity. Rai’s debut five-song EP Alive, however, proves the universality and commonality of innocent emotions. As a young woman now living in Trinidad, she infuses familiar tropes that suggest modern Single Spotlight
Beautiful in June
Robert “Dubwise” Brown (Electrifying Grooves Records)
Instrumental smooth jazz has become a kind of soundtrack to the idea of escape to the Caribbean. Jamaican guitarist Robert “Dubwise” Browne has taken up the challenge of adding to the canon of earworms that define this sybaritic idyll. A slinky electric guitar with just enough echo recalls the signature sound of easy listening accompaniment to vacation and luxe exile. With a repeated lyric that says, “Beautiful in June / Like a summer 22
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African. Jamaican ska, Haitian kongo, rara, and rasin, African blues, jazz, and rock and more are all channelled into a recording that addresses the challenge of moving the representation of modern Haitian music towards a new standard. The album’s ten songs mindfully celebrate our Caribbeanness. Acknowledging the irony of releasing an album about gathering people together during a pandemic that demands social distancing, Beaubrun says, “Music can help you with finding yourself . . . at this moment. You can get together spiritually.” Yes! gwoka jazz a defining moment, and completes the journey of discovery that happens after fifteen years of travelling and playing music all over the world, and knowing one’s place in it. Voice (Malika Tirolien) and sax juxtapose to shine melodically over gwoka drum rhythms and harmonic dissonances provided by premier fellow Antillean jazz stars Grégory Privat, Arnaud Dolmen, Sonny Troupé, and American bassist Reggie Washington. Improvisation in the context of an Afro-Caribbean pulse long eschewed in modern jazz is a refreshing return to the centre. perspectives devoid of the tried-and-true. Guitar-driven pop-rock songs catalogue a life where desire, angst, and heartache reign. “My love is like a service station / Always helping all the time. / Your heart is like a bad reflection / Always yours but never mine.” With a local production that sparkles in its freshness, this short peek into a young life has the likelihood of becoming a template for the alternative rocker situated in an island life. It’s what’s in the heart that matters, not the surroundings.
afternoon,” one recognises that the island native who experiences no summer in these tropics is not the primary target for this song. The musical statement of instrumental verse and sung chorus featuring Brownie Bunch is repeated three times as if to desperately cement the idea of here being “a place to flee . . . that seriousness that comes only out of culture with four seasons.” The reggae bounce, the bubbling bass loop, the organ tone underneath are known to us here, and celebrate our islands effectively. Reviews by Nigel A. Campbell
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screenshots
“I was shooting with my heart”
Courtesy Esery Mondesir
Haiti has a long-established global diaspora, which has only grown since the 2010 earthquake that pushed the world’s first Black republic into further economic and political precarity. Esery Mondesir, a Haitian domiciled in Canada, is the director of a trilogy of recent documentary films about his country’s diaspora. Una Sola Sangre (2018) is a portrait of the Galde family, who have lived in Cuba for sixty years. The other two films — Paria, My, Brother, I Follow You, Show Me the Route to the Springs (2019) and What Happens to a Dream Deferred? (2019) — explore the lives of Haitian migrants in Tijuana, Mexico, who live in hope of entering the United States. Using his identity as a fellow Haitian as a starting point, Mondesir has made a textured triptych of films that reflect an exemplary empathy for their subjects, films that allow traditionally marginalised subjects agency in telling their own stories. He spoke with Jonathan Ali about his filmmaking process.
How did you come to make Una Sola Sangre? I met the Galde siblings in 2011 during a week-long vacation in Havana. I was captivated by the stories they shared with me, and suggested we make a film together. They agreed. The following spring, I went back to Cuba to start filming. Silvia, one of the sisters, had invited me to stay at her house, and it wasn’t long before my camera became a regular fixture in the community for the following two weeks and the many times I went back to capture additional footage. And how did you come to make the Tijuana films? In December 2018 I went to Tijuana to spend the end-of-year celebrations with fellow Haitians I had previously contacted online. What was impres24
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sive about those productions was how quickly those guys and I became comfortable enough to work together. Thinking back about it, I think it had to do with the fact that I was always transparent about what brought me there, and my own migration story. You characterise your subjects as “collaborators.” Can you elaborate? I came to filmmaking with a set of political values and life experiences. Questions of authorship and representation were important to me from the beginning: who is telling whose stories? When I first met the Galde family in Havana, I knew right away there was a story there that was worth telling, but I also knew that it was not my own story. Out of respect for the community, I needed to get them involved in the process of
making the film. The situation was the same in Tijuana. But I don’t want to be deceitful here by not recognising the power dynamics that exist between me, a trained filmmaker, and the subjects in my films. Although we share “one blood,” I walked into these communities from North America, and that fact carries with it a set of assumptions about my status, education, wealth, and social power. These dynamics are often beyond our individual control. What I can do is be mindful of them and not try to obscure them. What Happens to a Dream Deferred? is the most formally — and politically — dynamic of the films. I did not have much time to prepare shooting sessions with the guys in that film. So, the formal construction happened in post-production. I was shooting with my heart. My work in post[-production] was to take all that emotion and bring it into a conceptual framework so that it made sense in my head, too. Then you realise it’s all connected. It becomes clear that these guys’ chance at fulfilling their dream of becoming hip-hop artists is connected to the choice of a white Republican at the ballot box in Cleveland, Ohio, next November. These Haitians dress like Black Americans, sing hip-hop in Kreyòl and English, but they’re also fluent in Portuguese and Spanish. They are the face of our future. Can we now talk about how they reclaim their humanity? That’s the type of interrogation that I am interested in. Una Sola Sangre (40 minutes) Paria, My Brother, I Follow You, Show Me the Route to the Springs (20 minutes) What Happens to a Dream Deferred? (25 minutes) Director: Esery Mondesir Haiti
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round trip
Pete Oxford/Alamy Stock Photo
People travel to the Caribbean for many reasons: the warmth of our people, our stunning beaches, world-famous music and culture. Then there’s our wilder side: soaring mountain peaks and lush forests, rushing rivers and waterfalls, full of amazing fauna and flora. COVID-19 social distancing doesn’t have to mean being stuck indoors. Now is the time to explore the Caribbean’s natural wonders and outdoor adventures
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Dominica 290 square miles Highest point: Morne Diablotins, 4,747 feet
courtesy Dominica Tourism Authority
Northernmost of the Windwards, Dominica is famed as the Nature Island — and no place better deserves that nickname. Here are volcanic mountains soaring into the clouds, laced with cold rivers and waterfalls plunging into verdant pools, plus a shoreline of black volcanic beaches, and the Caribbean’s best whalewatching sites. Within easy reach of Roseau, Morne Trois Pitons National Park — a UNESCO World Heritage Site — has a landscape shaped by volcanic activity, including the celebrating Boiling Lake, at the end of a six-mile hike, with its waters geothermally heated to 90 degrees Celsius (don’t fall in). Not far to the west are Middleham Falls, a 250-foot cataract cascading into a mesmerisingly blue pool, deep in the forest. And Dominica’s crown jewel is the Waitukubuli National Trail, at 115 miles long the Caribbean’s longest single hiking trail, bisecting the island from north to south. The route takes a full two weeks to complete end to end — that’s a challenge for your bucket list.
Scotts Head at Dominica’s southwestern tip overlooks protected Soufrière Bay
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Simon Walsh
It takes a full two weeks to hike across Dominica, north to south, through stunning mountain scenery
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Janos Routonen/shutterstock.com
Dominica’s offshore waters are one of the Caribbean’s most reliable whale-watching locations
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Courtesy Antigua and Barbuda Tourism Authority
A lone egret stalks through the mangrove forest of Antigua’s North Sound
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Antigua and Barbuda 170 square miles Highest point: Boggy Peak, 1,319 feet
BlueOrangeStudio/Shutterstock.com
A kayak trip is the best way to explore the red mangrove forests of Antigua’s North Sound Marine Park, dotted with islets. Great Bird Island is the only place in the world where you’ll find the rare (and harmless) Antiguan racer snake, whose numbers are gradually increasing. Thirty miles north, Barbuda’s Frigate Bird Sanctuary in Codrington Lagoon boasts the world’s largest population of these impressive seabirds, with an estimated ten thousand birds. And the sea cliff that runs along Barbuda’s eastern shore offers a rugged hike with numerous caves along the route. Look out for the Darby sinkhole, seventy feet deep and three hundred in diameter, containing a small forest of palm trees and ferns, home to wild deer. Two miles away, Dark Cave contains a vast underground pond, home to tiny translucent blind shrimp, adapted to the almost total absence of light.
The famous pink beaches of Barbuda owe their hue to countless eroded seashells
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Temmuzcan/iStockPhoto
Barbuda’s Codrington Lagoon is home to the world’s largest colony of frigatebirds
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Montserrat 39 square miles Highest point: traditionally recognised as Chances Peak, 3,002 feet, but ongoing volcanic activity in the Soufrière Hills has created a dome estimated to be 3,051 feet above sea level
courtesy Montserrat Tourism Division
It’s impossible to overlook the relentless power of nature in Montserrat, the Caribbean’s Emerald Isle. In 1995 the Soufrière Hills Volcano, long thought dormant, woke with a bang. A series of eruptions covered vast tracts of southern Montserrat with a thick layer of volcanic ash, rendering nearly two thirds of the tiny island uninhabitable. Yet, a quarter-century later, Montserrat is once again a jewel for visitors, with one of the region’s friendliest populations, untouched beaches, incredible dive sites — and a wealth of nature, easily accessible from the new capital at Brades. The forested slopes of the Centre Hills and Silver Hill are woven through with hiking trails, on which the National Trust organises regular excursions. Try to spot the rare Montserrat oriole, the national bird, found nowhere else in the world — there’s even an Oriole Walkway Trail. And for an unforgettable lesson in geology, you can join a tour — conditions permitting, and always putting safety first — into the exclusion zone with a certified guide, for a dramatic close-up view of the volcanic forces that created the island.
Though the Montserrat oriole’s habitat was affected by the Soufrière Hills eruptions, its numbers are rebounding
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courtesy Montserrat Tourism Division
Montserrat’s unspoiled coast includes numerous small bays and beaches
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courtesy Montserrat Tourism Division
The lush forest of north Montserrat
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www.visitmontserrat.com
INFINITY VIEWS NO HIGH RISES
Guyana 83,000 square miles Highest point: Mt Roraima, 9,301 feet
Foto Natura, Courtesy Guyana Tourism Authority
Where to start with Guyana, the Caribbean region’s eco-tourism treasure? Maybe with the Pakaraimas near the border with Venezuela, dramatic table mountains surrounded by remote valleys, the source of some of Guyana’s mightiest rivers. Or with vast Shell Beach on the Pomeroon coast, nesting site for endangered sea turtles. Or with the Iwokrama rainforest along the Essequibo, a protected wilderness that’s home to jaguars and tapirs and hundreds more species. The best way to experience wild Guyana is through community-run lodges in Amerindian villages across the Rupununi Savannah, from Surama to Nappi, Annai to Karasabai, each offering rustic hospitality, proximity to amazing scenery and wildlife, and a chance to explore landscapes unlike anything in the insular Caribbean. And even if you can’t spare more than a day, an hour-long flight from Georgetown will get you to Kaieteur Falls — they may look spectacular in photos, but nothing compares to the real thing.
For wildlife lovers, the most coveted species to spot in the Guyanese wild may be the jaguar
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Nature Picture Library/Alamy Stock Photo
Guyana means “land of many waters” — and the mightiest of its rivers is the Essequibo
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Jamaica 4,240 square miles Highest point: Blue Mountain Peak, 7,402 feet
LBSimms Photography/Shutterstock.com
To explore wild Jamaica, you can start on the very outskirts of Kingston, where the dramatic Blue Mountains — famous for their coffee — form a towering backdrop. A hike to the higher elevations offers majestic views across the valleys as you ascend to cloud forest. To scale Blue Mountain Peak itself, you traditionally camp near the trailhead and set off in the wee hours, to catch the sunrise at the summit — some say that in the clearest weather you can even see Cuba to the north. Heading east from Kingston, Jamaica is dominated by its hills, whether rolling gently or plunging abruptly. The island’s most biologically diverse region is also one of its least known: the five hundred square miles of the Cockpit Country, south of Montego Bay. Imagine a landscape dotted with thousands of limestone sinkholes — the “cockpits” — thickly forested and home to rare species. For centuries, this was the stronghold of Jamaica’s Maroons, and a guided trek is one of the island’s biggest outdoor adventures.
Rafting on White River, near Ocho Rios on Jamaica’s north coast
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Photo Spirit/Shutterstock.com
The oasis of Secret Falls above Jamaica’s north coast
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Cayman Islands 102 square miles Highest point: The Bluff, 141 feet
Courtesy Cayman Islands Tourism Attraction Board
The Cayman Islands’ most awesome natural features are actually below the sea. There’s a reason this is one of the world’s most coveted diving and snorkelling sites. The most dramatic spot of all may be Bloody Bay in Little Cayman, where a sheer submarine wall begins at a depth of twenty feet, plunging a full mile down. Swimming out over the drop-off is an unforgettable experience. Grand Cayman is also surrounded by first-class dive sites: walls, caves, crevices, all teeming with fish and other species. If you prefer to stay dry, try your skill on a different kind of wall, rock-climbing on some of the Caymans’ vertiginous shoreline cliffs. The most popular sites have been outfitted with non-rusting titanium bolts for safety. For a less intense workout, explore Grand Cayman’s Mastic Trail, which takes you from mangrove forest through stands of silver-thatch and royal palms.
A nature walk on Grand Cayman reveals beauties of all shapes and sizes
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Andrew Burr, Courtesy Rock Iguana
The sea cliffs of Cayman Brac offer an exhilarating climbing experience
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courtesy Go Cuba
Cuba’s Viñales Valley is famous for its distinctive mogotes, sheer-sided limestone hills rising from a lush plain
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Cuba 42,426 square miles Highest point: Pico Turquino, 6,476 feet
courtesy Go Cuba
Nearly a quarter of the Caribbean’s largest island is protected in preserves and sanctuaries, including ten national parks — it would take months to properly explore them all, from the bird-filled wetlands of Cienaga de Zapata (with a million protected acres) to the sea turtle nesting sites of Guanahacabibes at Cuba’s western end. Hoping to spot the extremely rare and secretive Cuban solenodon, a nocturnal mammal that hasn’t been seen in the wild since 2003? Sierra Cristal, the country’s oldest national park, is the place to try your luck. Rock climbers head to Viñales National Park, to tackle its sheer limestone cliffs. For scuba divers, the number one spot is Jardines de La Reina National Park, an archipelago of reef-fringed islands off the south coast. But the loudest call of the wild may come from the Cuchillas del Toa at Cuba’s easternmost tip. This biosphere reserve protects dense rainforest, the table mountain known as El Yunque, and the three-hundred-foot waterfall Salto Fino — tallest in the Caribbean archipelago.
Vegas Grande Waterfall is a jewel of Topes de Collantes National Park near Trinidad de Cuba
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St Vincent and the Grenadines 150 square miles Highest point: La Soufrière, 4,049 feet
mbrand85/Shutterstock.com
Dominating the northern end of St Vincent, volcano La Soufrière last erupted in 1979, but in recent decades it’s kept quiet. And a hike to its crater rim must be the number-one eco-adventure on the island, with two alternate routes and the payoff of a once-in-a-lifetime view. Rugged volcanic terrain is the island’s signature. You can see it in the craggy lava formations around the Owia Salt Pond, where natural tidal pools are sheltered from Atlantic breakers, and in the waterfalls of the interior valleys, like the double cascade of Dark View Falls, reached by crossing a bamboo bridge, or the triple cataracts of Trinity Falls. You can find an easier but no less rewarding hike at Vermont Nature Trail, where a guided tour introduces you to the island’s lush flora, plus a chance to glimpse the rare St Vincent parrot in its wild habitat. South of the main island, the Grenadine archipelago is renowned for its seascapes — most unforgettably, perhaps, in the Tobago Cays.
A bamboo bridge is one way to cross a rushing river while hiking in St Vincent’s hills
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Courtesy St Vincent and the Grenadines Tourism Authority
Jagged volcanic rocks shelter the Owia Salt Pond from the wild Atlantic on St Vincent’s northeast coast
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Trinidad 1,814 square miles Highest point: El Cerro del Aripo, 3,084 feet
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Just nine miles off the coast of Venezuela, Trinidad is a piece of South America that broke off a few thousand years ago, and the island’s Northern Range is geologically the final spur of the Andes, disappearing into the Atlantic at Point Galera. Still largely covered with rainforest, those mountains are just one of Trinidad’s distinct ecosystems, which also include the Caroni and Nariva Swamps, natural savannahs in the central plains, and rugged offshore islets. This is a birdwatcher’s paradise, with 469 species counted on the island — one of the few places in the world with such a concentration in such a small area. But there’s much more: the eerie mud volcanoes of Devil’s Woodyard, the world-famous Pitch Lake, gorgeous north coast bays accessible only by boat or hiking on forest trails, and the Mt Tamana caves, home to vast colonies of bats.
The towering palms of east Trinidad’s Nariva Swamp are a favoured nesting site for blue and yellow macaws
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Adrian Bernard
Hundreds of rivers run through Trinidad’s Northern Range, still largely covered with rainforest
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Suriname’s interior is an unspoiled landscape of mountains, savannahs, forests, and rivers
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Suriname 63,250 square miles Highest point: Julianatop, 4,199 feet
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Scattered across the remote interior, Suriname’s rainforest lodges — many of them accessible only by plane — take you right to the heart of the country’s wild, pristine beauty. Some are perched on mountaintops, others beside winding rivers of colabrown water, stained by fallen leaves. Birds and monkeys cry in the near distance, insects whir constantly, and oxygen pumped out by the rainforest fills your lungs. The biggest jewel in the crown is the Central Suriname Nature Reserve, a UNESCO World Heritage Site covering nearly a tenth of the country, with habitats ranging from Amazonian rainforest to rocky savannahs and granite table mountains: the place to spot such eye-catching creatures as the vermilion cock-of-the-rock or the famous blue poison dart frog. If you can tear yourself away from the forest, Suriname’s coast also waits to be explored: like the nature reserve at Galibi and Matapica Beach, both sea turtle nesting sites on the Atlantic.
The blue poison dart frog is the most vivdly coloured inhabitant of Suriname's rainforests
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The Bahamas 5,358 square miles Highest point: Mt Alvernia, 206 feet
Courtesy Bahamas Ministry of Tourism and Aviation
The Bahamas is most famous for sparkling beaches and warm, shallow sea, but don’t overlook the other outdoor adventures scattered across these seven hundred islands. At Lucayan National Park in Grand Bahama you’ll find six different natural ecosystems in just forty acres, including one of the world’s largest underwater cave systems, with six miles of charted tunnels. For a glimpse of the islands’ natural vegetation, head to the Primeval Forest National Park in New Providence, where boardwalks and bridges traverse limestone sinkholes and stands of old-growth hardwood trees — or to the Leon Levy Native Plant Preserve in Eleuthera, where you can also learn how local flora are traditionally used in bush medicine. And Andros is the Bahamas’ eco-tourism hotspot. Here you’ll find the world’s third-longest barrier reef, over 124 miles long.
Exploring Thunderball Grotto in Exuma
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The seven hundred islands of the Bahamas are dominated by the pristine surrounding sea, home to diverse marine wildlife
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Orlando Romain, courtesy Grenada Tourism Authority
Grenada’s Adelphi Waterfall is a short hike from the village of the same name
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Grenada 135 square miles Highest point: Mt St Catherine, 2,757 feet
Hugh Whyte, Courtesy Unsplash
There’s a tale that Grand Etang, the crater lake perched high in the centre of Grenada, is bottomless. It’s not true, of course, but the hiking in the national park around the placid lake is worthy of legend, especially the trail to the summit of Mt Qua Qua — a six-mile round trip through elfin cloud forest, with a 360-degree view across the island from the summit. For birders, La Sagesse on the south coast is obligatory. This mangrove estuary with a nearby small salt pond and thorny scrub forest offers enough habitat diversity to attract one of the island’s most impressive concentrations of birdlife, especially waterfowl. At Grenada’s opposite end, Levera Beach is remote, windswept, wildly beautiful, and a major nesting site for endangered leatherback turtles, who come ashore at night during the annual nesting season (from March to August) to laboriously excavate the pits where they lay their eggs.
Teeming offshore reefs are among Grenada’s attractions for divers
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Hugh Whyte, Courtesy Unsplash
Just large enough for a few trees, this rock off Grenada's coast is a green refuge among the endless blue
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Discover Grenada
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Barbados 166 square miles Highest point: Mt Hillaby, 1,102 feet
courtesy Barbados Tourism Marketing Inc
Twenty-one miles long by fourteen wide, Barbados is a coral outcropping east of the Antillean chain, and this geology creates a distinctive limestone landscape. There’s no better place to explore it than Harrison’s Cave, an extensive subterranean system of caverns and tunnels, festooned with bizarre limestone formations. Known for hundreds of years, the cave system was surveyed only in the 1970s, and developed as a tourist attraction. An electric tram takes you deep into the earth past waterfalls and pools, for a drive-through spelunking experience. Geological history comes to the surface along the island’s east coast, where the rolling hills of the Scotland District fall abruptly into the Atlantic, met by waves that have travelled thousands of miles across the ocean. Mushroomshaped rock stacks are carved by constant erosion, and wave conditions make Bathsheba a magnet for surfers. For a glimpse at Barbados’s original vegetation, visit Welchman Hall Gully with its linear expanse of tropical forest — this is what almost all of Barbados looked like once.
Exploring a stretch of forest in the interior of Barbados
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courtesy Barbados Tourism Marketing Inc
Enjoying the view from Animal Flower Cave near the northernmost tip of Barbados
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Tobago 116 square miles Highest point: Pigeon Peak, 1,804 feet
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Since 1764, the forests of Tobago’s Main Ridge, running the length of the island, have been a protected reserve — the oldest in the Caribbean. In these hills and valleys you’ll find winding roads, quiet trails perfect for hiking and mountain biking, rushing streams, and dozens of waterfalls — some of them celebrated and easily accessible, like Argyle Falls, others hidden away and known only to local guides. If you’re looking for a panoramic challenge, try the hike up Pigeon Peak, near Charlotteville, where you’ll likely have the trail to yourself — unless you count the birds trilling and chattering in the trees above and around you. Or for an easier excursion with a swim at the end of it, head to No Man’s Land, a stretch of uninhabited coast near mangrove-fringed Bon Accord Lagoon, an important wetland habitat. Tobago’s natural splendour extends below the surface, too — with world-class diving sites around the island, teeming with life nourished by the Orinoco outflow.
A jaunty bananaquit, ubiquitous across Tobago
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Ariann Thompson
The mangrove forest at Tobago’s Bon Accord Lagoon is a crucial wetland habitat
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The summit of Christoffelberg looms above Curaçao’s largest national park
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Curaçao 171 square miles Highest point: Christoffelberg, 1,220 feet
Bruno van der Kraan, Courtesy Unsplash
At Curaçao’s northwestern tip, Christoffelpark — named for the mountain at its heart — is both a reserve for the island’s most biodiverse region, and the setting for outdoor adventures on its rocky trails traversing the distinctive thorny divi-divi forest. Look out for thickets of towering cactus and rare orchids like the Lady-of-the-Night, with its delicate fragrance. Orioles and hummingbirds lend flashes of colour, wild deer and rabbits scamper away, and you can’t avoid spotting one of Curaçao’s ubiquitous iguanas. As you climb Christoffelberg, clambering past huge boulders, views open up across the surrounding valleys to the shimmering sea. Nearby Shete Boka National Park — the name is Papiamentu for “seven inlets” — covers six miles of coast, from jagged limestone cliffs and arches to tiny coves where sea turtles nest. Don’t miss Boka Tabla, where waves crash spectacularly into an underground cavern, reminding you of the sheer power of the sea.
Curaçao’s limestone geology is riddled with natural caves and tunnels
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Chaloupe Bay and the wild majesty of St Lucia’s Atlantic coast
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St Lucia 238 square miles Highest point: Morne Gimie, 3,143 feet
Courtesy St Lucia Tourism Authority
The charming small town of Soufrière on St Lucia’s southwest coast is the gateway to the most picturesque part of the island. To start with, there are the Pitons: two volcanic plugs rising abruptly from the shore, lush forest clinging to their slopes and crevices. Gros Piton, the taller of the two, is the easier to climb, with a challenging but rewarding trail — a four-hour round trip, with St Lucia’s most incredible views at the summit. Not far inland are the Sulphur Springs, in the remains of an ancient volcanic crater. After a day’s hiking, when your muscles are sore, make your way to Diamond Gardens, where pleasantly landscaped grounds lead to outdoor baths with geothermally heated and mineral-rich water from the Diamond River. The most rugged side of St Lucia is the Atlantic coast, a stretch of small bays with crashing waves, and forested hills descending in cliffs. The Maria Islands off the southeast, accessible by boat, are a protected nature reserve, home to St Lucia’s rare endemic snake and lizard — the latter coincidentally sharing the blue, black and yellow of the national flag.
The canopy walkway near Dennery offers a bird’s eye view of the forest
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Patrick Struys, Courtesy Adam Cooper
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Adam Cooper — also known as foreigner, a Trinidadian DJ in Los Angeles — is pushing Caribbean culture forward by splitting it right down the middle, writes Amanda Choo Quan
L
ast year, I decided to fully immerse myself in the bikini-and-beads version of the Carnival experience. I worked out. For reasons still unbeknownst to me, I got a spray tan. I took to the road with a large group of people I largely liked. But I never felt fully free. It struck me just how confining pretty mas, despite my own nakedness, could be. The rope separating revellers from public was sacrosanct. An order kept in place for next year’s celebration.
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first met Adam Cooper — DJ, designer, and event producer — in Los Angeles in 2016. Under the name foreigner, working with Samantha Blake Goodman (alias Muñeka) and Kelman Duran (recently featured in Rolling Stone magazine), Cooper was producing and playing at a party called Rail Up, which centred Afro-Caribbean music within the larger Los Angeles underground scene. At 1 am, I’d take an Uber to a Boyle Heights warehouse, or a former Lincoln Heights mortuary. The car would halt, confusedly, before the inevitable throng of people — an eclectic crowd of art school kids, queer people of colour, and Caribbean people looking for a chance to hear something familiar. Some of us were all three, with Rail Up the only place to express it. And, blessedly, not with our words. “Prior to that, those sounds and those genres were not really prevalent [in LA],” explains Erin Christovale — LA-based curator, co-founder of the video series Black Radical Imagination, and sometime collaborator of Cooper’s. “I think he was really sort of like a trailblazer in that way, bringing those sounds to LA.” Thirty-four years old and Trinidadian by birth, Cooper grew up in Venezuela and Brooklyn. He studied international business at Howard University, where he, inhabitant of many cultures, was clearly affected by fractures within the student body. “You look at the main quadrangle . . . and you see the Caribbean students under the Caribbean tree, the African students over here, the Americans split up by what they are studying,” he recalls, in an accent so reflective of the merging of these identities, I couldn’t help but wonder where he stood. Perhaps with one; perhaps with all.
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In Trinidad, a satisfying party experience means hearing mostly (Trinidadian) soca and (Jamaican) dancehall. But in his LA events, Adam Cooper was repping the Caribbean by shirking the formula
In Trinidad, a satisfying party experience means hearing mostly (Trinidadian) soca and (Jamaican) dancehall, preferably Kartel-heavy, pulled back where necessary. But in his LA events, Cooper was repping the Caribbean by shirking the formula. Clad simply in jeans and a football t-shirt, he’d mix and slash gqom, a kind of minimal South African house music, with trap; batida, a type of Afro-Portuguese music, with dancehall. “When you think about the most popular [soca] song to come out, that you would hear playing in an underground scene or a club or American party, [it] was [St Lucian artiste Freezy’s] ‘Split in di Middle,’” Cooper says. And then, just when you expected to continue to hear the familiar — that year’s Road March contender perhaps, a little something to take you back home — he’d switch it up with something you’d never heard before. You’d still be wining on the sweaty concrete dance floor — but this time, wondering why you needed that glossy, slick soca track so badly in the first place. And, between songs, how making space for all Black music, particularly the underrepresented, particularly the obscure, is a way of making space for all Black people.
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hat I really love about what he’s doing,” says Attillah Springer — writer and guest speaker at one of Cooper’s most recent events, Carnival Tabanca — “is that, yes, you know soca is crucial and soca is central to the conversation . . . but how he’s centring liberation as part of that conversation is really interesting and exciting.” After our interview, Cooper enthusiastically sends me playlists for genres of music I’ve never heard of from across the region — our region. Shatta from Martinique, Rabòday from Haiti — a federation, if the original included these territories, of sound. I listen to it all, until I abandon myself and begin to move. “If you ask my brother what were his biggest qualms with me growing up,” Cooper says, “I would just play the same song on repeat, over and over and over and over, you know?” And whether propelled by a boyhood obsession with beats, or the foreigner’s mission to gather and locate his community, people are paying attention. Solo, Cooper’s performed at the opening of an exhibition by Lauren Halsey, a star emerging from the Los Angeles contemporary art scene; he’s also performed at the launch of fashion designer Yohji Yamamoto’s Y-3 line for Adidas. It makes sense that his work would be embraced by art spaces — not to mention the art school kids that frequent his events. Cooper’s rigour is partacademic, part-curatorial, experimenting with Pan-Africanist music and ideology in a West Coast city that can regard him with curiosity because it has little frame of reference for Trinidadianness — and in which he can, in turn, take more risks.
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Carnival, reconstructed Anjali Ramasunder, has built as a way to ensure that DJs can perform and get paid during COVID. The latest edition happens on Sunday 2 August, 2020 — Emancipation weekend in Trinidad and Tobago. In typical Cooper fashion, there is a meticulous roster of events reflecting talent from across the diaspora — each
even played as a Carnival King in Toronto. “He calls me the picturetaker-outer, but I call him the curator,” says Struys, “because I don’t see Adam as a DJ — I see him as the future of how Caribbean culture should be put out into the world outside of Trinidad, outside of the islands.” Together, they’ve produced Carnival Tabanca, a free, twelve-hour attempt to build a global, virtual Carnival band, hosted on Clubhouse, an online platform that Struys, along with partners Jasmine Solano and
one titled and “defined” in images displayed across his Instagram page. For example: “When d Parkway was nice, n. Etymology: Brooklyn,” defined as “Vivid memories of when Eastern Parkway on Labour Day was a carnival for the people by the people” — featuring noted NY-based DJ Back2Basics. In Port of Spain, #1000mokos, the moko jumbie collective, performs during the livestream on the streets of Belmont, to the music of Trinidad/UK duo Jus Now and Blase Vanguard. “Ride de cow print! Ride de cow
print!” commands the Dutty Politician — actually Cooper, in a suit presumably soiled with J’Ouvert paint — as he plays in the programme’s tenth hour, closing the entire show. A woman — as a matter of fact, four of her reflected on screen, a Rorshach of winery — rolls her hips on top of a cow-print bedspread. Her image becomes a digital backdrop for Cooper as he plays to a live global audience. The technology for Carnival Tabanca is supplied by Twitch, a platform typically used by video gamers. For this event, it allows revellers to dial in via Zoom to a virtual dancefloor, and to watch as their dancing images quadruple in trippy mirror reflections behind the Dutty Politician, obeying as he commands them to pick up something, anything. I’m watching in my bedroom, wearing whatever I put on that day. There is no wristband to collect. It’s almost like the riddle with a tree falling in the wilderness. If soca is livestreamed to your bedroom, offseason, can it be called Carnival? As seen in Carnival Tabanca, the answer is yes. “[It] was just a way for me to explore the unique elements of online programming, which allow you to kind of deconstruct certain things in ways that you can’t deconstruct them in a live setting,” says Cooper. The project was conceived after wondering whether, and how, Carnival 2021 would happen. All in all, it was viewed by 155,409 people.
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After our interview, Cooper enthusiastically sends me playlists for genres of music I’ve never heard of — Shatta from Martinique, Rabòday from Haiti
urtesy Ad am Co
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Courtesy Adam Cooper
This year, Adam Cooper has focused on deconstructing and re-adapting aspects of Carnival — creating a new model in anticipation of its postCOVID-19 evolution. He’s been working with Patrick Struys, another midthirties Los Angeles transplant from Canada — who was born in Trinidad, learned wire-bending as a child, and
“Carnival does not need to be a luxury product,” Cooper says, firmly making a case for a new model of representation of Caribbean culture
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ut Cooper is switching that up, too. He understands there is a fine line to walk between showcasing a sound and seeking its validation from the (white) establishment. And he’s clear that the latter is the antithesis to his new work — projects that privilege specificity and context. He has taken a stance against mixing, literally and figuratively, in a way that “erases identity and richness by trying to meld everything into one” — seeking instead to teach Los Angeles, through considered, community-oriented choices, about Trinidadian culture. “[In 2017], we had done a big Red Bull event, and of all of the people I could have chosen with the budget that I had, I said, you know what? Let’s put Laventille Rhythm Section” — Trinidad’s revered percussion band — “in the middle of a warehouse in East LA, and just see what happens,” he confides. So, what happened? “People lost it . . . they had never heard anything like it. That’s the ingenuity of Trinidadian art and creativity.” In 2018, I went to another event organised by Cooper — Junkyard J’Ouvert — held in June in an actual and very small junkyard, complete with mysterious trailers and broken-down cars. It was a US$9.99 party in Los Angeles, cheaper than anything similar in Trinidad. And it was vibes. Then there’s Roadblock™, an indoor party filled with cars and scissor cranes, bringing “the kind of block party session . . . found in the streets of Lagos, Kingston, Port of Spain, or Belize City” into a Los Angeles warehouse. “Carnival does not need to be a luxury product,” Cooper says, firmly making a case for a new model of export, of representation of Caribbean culture overseas — one that resists capitalism, classism, and Americanisation. “And I think that is one of the things that holds us back.” n
Amanda Choo Quan is a writer, activist, and 2020 winner of the Johnson and Amoy Achong Caribbean Writers Prize. On Twitter, she's @amandacq. On Instagram, for reasons unknown, she’s @supermegabess
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the deal
The
COVID
As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to spread, what measures can regional businesses put in place to survive the crisis? Natalie Dookie gets some expert advice on how to manage risks — and identify opportunities
Illustration by EamesBot/Shutterstock.com
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strategy
T
here’s almost no part of our lives that the COVID-19 pandemic has left untouched — and that includes our finances. Economic growth across the Caribbean is forecast to contract by 6.2 per cent in 2020. The International Monetary Fund has revised downward its growth forecasts for Caribbean economies, and as a result tourism-dependent markets such as Jamaica can expect double-digit contractions. Commodity exporters, including Suriname and Trinidad and Tobago, will also be impacted by price shocks and pressure from the global downturn, which has resulted in lower energy consumption. An overall reduction in financial flows from abroad, including investments, transfers, and remittances, could lead to a synchronised contraction across the region. Despite this grim outlook, Caribbean businesses can take steps to prevent this short-term crisis from becoming a longterm fiscal disaster. For tips on how to reduce the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on businesses, I spoke to three regional financial gurus.
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n 2019, JMMB, a regional banking institution with a presence in Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago, and the Dominican Republic, established a SME Resource Centre to provide support to clients throughout the business lifecycle. SMEs — small and mediumsize businesses — will be hardest hit by the crisis, according to the International Trade Centre’s recent COVID-19 Business Impact Survey. More than fiftyfive per cent of SMEs will be strongly affected, with one-fifth indicating they were at risk of shutting down permanently within the first three months. Given these findings, JMMB’s SME Resource Centre’s services have become even more relevant, says Shani Duncan-Falconer, senior corporate manager. “It is important for SMEs to approach the pandemic using a twophase strategy: they must first stabilise and return business operations to normalcy, or pivot and then plan for the future.”
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Tips on how to manage investments and improve financial strength during the COVID-19 crisis Courtesy Guardian Life of the Caribbean Reduce debt: — stop creating new forms of debt — create a savings fund — request lower interest rates on existing loan payments — consolidate all existing debt into one loan payment Stash cash: if you have liquid assets or assets that can be easily sold or exchanged for cash in a short timeframe, consider doing this • Explore new markets to invest in: be on the lookout for new and emerging markets that arise, and invest in them by purchasing shares or stock • Identify levels of risk: as risk levels increase, adjust lifestyle, spending, and investments • Increase savings: a savings fund can be used to diversify current investments which will allow you to capitalise on new opportunities • •
In the first phase, JMMB recommends that SMEs implement proper money management strategies to maximise cash flow, savings, and investments. “It is important to ensure that every asset owned by the company is contributing to the bottom line. Businesses should also itemise all spend, account for all sources of income, and examine receivables in order to encourage repayment,” says Duncan-Falconer. “For example, they can consider offering a
choose to generate additional cash flow by pivoting operations which initially require capital injection. If the projected cash flow indicates a positive impact, it is considered a good investment. JMMB has responded to the crisis by offering innovative new services. “Clients now have the opportunity to access a receivables loan which can be used to provide the business with cash flow,” says Duncan-Falconer. “Our structured debt option of loan consolidation results in clients having a single loan, a lower interest rate, and a lower monthly payment. We also created preapproved loan options and temporary overdraft and line of credit facilities, with the possibility of deferring the principal and/or interest payments. The bank has adopted a partnership approach to the pandemic, working alongside clients facing challenging financial circumstances to identify win-win solutions.”
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uardian Life of the Caribbean, an insurance and financial institution, operates in over four major territories in the English and Dutch Caribbean. With global insurance demand expected to slow as a fallout from the COVID-19 outbreak, Guardian Life president Anand Pascal is well placed to share his experience mitigating the effects of this crisis. “The first step is to assess the risk that COVID19 poses to your business,” he says. “There may be myriad risks. If your sales are generally made via face-to-face meetings or require gatherings, then you need to reassess your business model. Can you transition to a digital medium to conduct the same transactions? What are the risks to staff? Are there risks to your long-term reputa-
Despite the grim economic outlook, Caribbean businesses can take steps to prevent this short-term crisis from becoming a long-term fiscal disaster discount if creditors pay a certain percentage within a specific period.” Firms also need to calculate their projected cash flow in as much detail as possible, and review this monthly. Where cash flow projections indicate a surplus, companies can allocate a percentage towards creating an emergency fund to cover six months’ worth of expenses. This should be done using a short-term instrument which is easily accessible. In planning for the future, the defining factor for new spend should be: how does this impact the company’s bottom line? For example, a firm may
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tion and model if you mishandle your response to the COVID-19 scenario? All of this needs to be considered even before you tackle financial and investment issues.” Pascal recommends maintaining sufficient capital or cash reserves to meet core operating expenses. Non-core or discretionary expenses should be reduced as much as possible, as a result of decreased income and the uncertainty as to whether business will return to previous levels. He further advises that this may be a good period to invest. “Are your competitors having challenges? Maybe this presents an opportunity
for an acquisition. Consider investing in new technology that makes your business model more robust in the future. Businesses can also consider new product lines and distribution channels. There are many opportunities that will arise from the COVID-19 scenario. To take advantage of these requires remaining calm, assessing the moving parts around you, and being decisive. Speed will win in this scenario.”
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DO, a global organisation offering audit and assurance, business and outsourcing, tax and advisory services across twenty-three Caribbean markets, has developed a “Rethink framework” anchored on the “React, Resilience, and Realise” stages of response. This framework provides support to clients throughout the COVID-19 journey, identifying key stages, issues and opportunities to consider, as businesses work towards succeeding in the new reality. “At BDO, we see COVID-19 both as a danger and an opportunity,” explains Frank Soe-Agnie, partner advisory at BDO Suriname. “Businesses need to ensure they do not become paralysed by the pandemic, and seize the opportunities it presents, by accelerating operational improvements and transforming the way they work and how they do business.” Soe-Agnie advises BDO’s Surinamese clients on how to mitigate the effects of the pandemic. “The first response is reactionary: businesses go into crisis management and survival mode. In this phase, you adopt tight financial management controls. In order to do so, however, organisations must have access to accurate up-to-date financial information to support the decision-making process.” Soe-Agnie recommends businesses compile
the following baseline information: weekly and daily cash in and out flows, cash flow projections, and financial forecasts, along with a rolling quarterly budget. Ensure that you are aware of financial arrangements and contracts, including short- and long-term obligations, and tighten revenue generation cycles to make them more efficient. “Take advantage of quick wins,” Soe-Agnie says. “Know your fixed and variable costs, shift to variable where possible. Eliminate other unnecessary costs, but keep items key to the sales and customer retention processes. Explore the possibility of facility extensions at the bank and negotiate longer payment terms. Ensure your purchase management system is well-structured and centralised to avoid hidden expenses, and manage your supply chain, especially if output has slowed. In the long term, consider moving items out of the capital expenditure basket by exploring lease options.”
“The first step is to assess the risk that COVID-19 poses to your business. Can you transition to a digital medium to conduct the same transactions? What are the risks to staff?” Develop financial scenarios — what will you do if things get worse? If the business closes down? Make sure your pricing model is flexible — what can you do to lower prices and become more competitive? “Finally, prioritise ongoing investments, as these are your growth factors for the years ahead, and intensify communications with stakeholders — namely banks, business partners, key clients, and suppliers,” Soe-Agnie adds. “Ensure you share the impact and rationale of cost reduction and control measures with employees. You must get your human capital and talent on board with future plans and business models.” n
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Call of the wild The Caribbean is a biodiversity hotspot, with unique flora and fauna found nowhere else in the world. How much do you know about our region’s animals and plants? Test yourself with our quiz. Some of the answers can be found in our feature “Go wild”, starting on page 27 — or check the box below!
1. What extremely rare Cuban mammal hasn’t been spotted in the wild since 2003?
6. Which of these is an orchid species found in Curaçao’s Christoffelpark?
Anteater Solenodon
Flaming maiden Dragonsblood
Porcupine Raccoon
2. Dark Cave in Barbuda is home to what kind of marine life that has evolved to be blind? Hermit crabs Sea slugs
Shrimp Jellyfish
3. Which Caribbean island has two endemic parrot
Dutch soldier Lady-of-the-Night
7. What is Guyana’s national bird? Harpy eagle Scarlet macaw
Hoatzin Sun parakeet
8. Which Caribbean island is home to the largest butterfly in the Western Hemisphere?
species, found nowhere else in the world? Barbados Trinidad
Dominica Antigua
4. What kind of animal found nowhere else but St Lucia
Jamaica Puerto Rico
St Vincent Aruba
9. Which Caribbean territory has a plant species depicted on its official flag?
shares the colours of the national flag? A butterfly A spider
A hummingbird A lizard
5. What are the “animal flowers” of Barbados’s Animal Flower Cave?
Sea anemones Coral polyps 84
Seaweed Sea snails
WWW.CARIBBEAN-BEAT.COM
Belize Turks and Caicos
Cayman Islands Grenada
Answers: 1 Cuban solenodon 2 Shrimp 3 Dominica: the Sisserou and the Jaco 4 A lizard, the St Lucia whiptail 5 Sea anemones 6 Lady-of-the-Night 7 Hoatzin 8 Jamaica: the Jamaican swallowtail 9 A trick question: they all do! The flags of Belize, Turks and Caicos, and the Cayman Islands each include their coat of arms, which depict, respectively, a mahogany tree, a Turk’s cap cactus, and a pineapple; Grenada’s national flag includes a nutmeg fruit
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