Matthew Chin

Re­porter

matthew.chin@guardian.co.tt

Eden John, a lo­cal re­searcher and en­tre­pre­neur, pri­ori­tis­es her am­bi­tions over re­la­tion­ships and naysay­ers. John is adamant that her busy sched­ule is not a bar­ri­er to her ob­jec­tives, but rather the path that will get her there as she jug­gles the de­mands of run­ning an agouti farm and in­vest­ing in her tea busi­ness.

As a first-year part-time stu­dent in the MPhil Live­stock pro­gramme at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI), her re­search fo­cus­es on neotrop­i­cal an­i­mals, par­tic­u­lar­ly the shy and hairy agouti, which she has grown fond of over time. Her dai­ly rou­tine en­com­pass­es vis­its to the agouti unit at the UWI Uni­ver­si­ty Field Sta­tion, lo­cat­ed in Mount Hope, where she su­per­vis­es the an­i­mals and makes sure their en­clo­sures are cleaned.

“I go to the unit, take care of the agoutis, clean up every­thing, and then I would come back up to UWI,” John said. “Right now, my re­search is to do with a chem­i­cal process to know the pro­tein and fat con­tent in the agouti’s liv­er and (flesh), and I’m al­so work­ing with the chem­istry de­part­ment on do­ing amino acid and fat­ty acid analy­sis on the agouti’s heart and the (flesh) it­self.”

She al­so not­ed that the agouti’s flesh on the farm is health­i­er com­pared to some of the do­mes­tic an­i­mals, such as cows and pigs. Be­ing around the agoutis dai­ly, she un­der­stands their be­hav­iour, in­clud­ing their sur­pris­ing abil­i­ty to climb when nec­es­sary.

“If I move too fast, yes, they’ll get star­tled. But they would start to climb. We have tall cages, floor to ceil­ing, and they’ll climb that, if there’s an open­ing, they’ll just dive out. They are very ag­ile,” John said.

Be­fore en­rolling at UWI, John stud­ied at the East­ern Caribbean In­sti­tute of Agri­cul­ture and Forestry (ECI­AF) at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go (UTT) for two years, where she earned a Diplo­ma in Agri­cul­ture.

While an agouti’s di­et typ­i­cal­ly con­sists of fruits, nuts, and seeds, an­oth­er ob­ser­va­tion she has made re­gard­ing their ap­petite oc­curs when their hunger takes con­trol.

“If the agoutis are very hun­gry and have ac­cess to a chick­en, they’ll de­mol­ish that chick­en. One time, the guard said he heard a chick­en bawl­ing. When I reached in the morn­ing, there were no feath­ers in the cage; they ate every­thing,” John said.

She al­so men­tioned that agoutis pos­sess in­cisors ca­pa­ble of tak­ing off your fin­ger and oth­er ex­trem­i­ties if you’re not care­ful. This is why, she said, wear­ing boots and know­ing their be­hav­iour­al traits is im­por­tant when han­dling the ro­dent species.

Spilling the tea

Be­sides be­ing a stu­dent, John is al­so an en­tre­pre­neur. The 26 year old start­ed her tea busi­ness, Green Pro­duce Ltd, which of­fers cus­tomers a va­ri­ety of teas such as lemon­grass (fever grass), bay leaf, cin­na­mon, sor­rel, gin­ger, and turmer­ic. She plans to ex­pand the en­ti­ty by util­is­ing oth­er lo­cal plants in her teas via mix-and-match­ing. The teas are lo­cal­ly grown and pes­ti­cide-free. Green Pro­duce Ltd was re­vamped and of­fi­cial­ly launched in 2021.

She ad­mit­ted that her tea busi­ness is not one of her goals but that the idea had tak­en form while study­ing agri­cul­ture. The idea came to her when she was as­signed to cre­ate a prod­uct for an ECI­AF fair dur­ing her fi­nal se­mes­ter.

“Talk­ing with my fa­ther, we de­cid­ed to do lo­cal teas. My grand­moth­er had most of the teas grow­ing by her. I did the pack­ag­ing of the tea bags, the la­bels, the lo­go, every­thing; it was a hit. A lot of peo­ple liked it,” John said.

John al­so ad­mit­ted that us­ing Can­va (an on­line app for cre­at­ing so­cial me­dia graph­ics) was a big help when she start­ed to con­cep­tu­alise and cre­ate the de­signs for her pack­ag­ing. This al­lowed her to by­pass the ex­pense of pay­ing a graph­ic de­sign­er to do the work.

She added that her fa­ther’s teach­ings were the source of her en­tre­pre­neur­ial grit.

“I have al­ways had my fa­ther’s words singing in my head since I was young: Be your own boss. There’s noth­ing wrong with work­ing for some­one, but strive to sus­tain your­self and not be de­pen­dent on any­one,” John said.

“With those words run­ning through your mind con­stant­ly, I de­cid­ed to fo­cus on do­ing a tea busi­ness.”

Thanks to a gor­geous piece of pri­vate­ly owned es­tate, she gath­ers leaves and roots from lo­cal plants that act as the foun­da­tion for her busi­ness.

She shared with the Sun­day Guardian WE mag­a­zine that one of the ways she gets cus­tomers to keep drink­ing her bay leaf tea is due to its strong flavour. “It’s not a lo­cal va­ri­ety of bay leaf; it’s African, there’s more po­ten­cy in it,” John said.

The wel­fare of an­i­mals

Al­though it can be said that many Trin­bag­o­ni­ans love their dogs and cats, there are, un­for­tu­nate­ly, in­stances of an­i­mal ne­glect that oc­cur dur­ing the hol­i­days when fire­works dom­i­nate the sky. As an an­i­mal lover her­self, John urged mem­bers of the pub­lic to take care of their beloved com­pan­ions and to re­mem­ber that they, too, have feel­ings like us.

“If you have pets, that’s your child, you’re not go­ing to leave your child to starve or let them wan­der the road while fire­works are go­ing on,” John said.

“I have one agouti; I call him my son. Every time I go to the unit, he’s right there by the gate watch­ing me. When I bring the feed, he’s right by me. The rest of them are very skit­tish, but he’s more do­mes­ti­cat­ed; I have a bond with him.

“An­i­mals have feel­ings. You don’t want to treat them bad­ly, and they in turn treat you bad­ly, so, for me, the end goal of the work I’m do­ing is to have an agouti farm. You want a prod­uct from the agouti; there­fore, you need to treat and care for the an­i­mals so you’ll get the best qual­i­ty prod­uct in the end.”

Time

John stat­ed that she was run­ning out of time for any­thing be­sides study­ing out­side the lab, where re­search and rig­or­ous lab work are done.

“I like the arts, but in the last two to three years (acrylic paint­ing) fell to the way­side be­cause of school and go­ing to the farm, do­ing re­search, and then the or­ders for the teas. I re­al­ly don’t have time to do any­thing,” John laughed. She added, “I hope to do the PhD pro­gramme soon.”

She added that some peo­ple had ques­tioned why, at the age of 26, she was still un­mar­ried and de­vot­ed to live­stock. She replied to these in­quiries by say­ing she would rather fo­cus on her ed­u­ca­tion and is sure that a ro­man­tic part­ner would find her when the time is right.

Eden John is a part-time MPhil Live­stock stu­dent at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI), St Au­gus­tine. She is orig­i­nal­ly from Ari­ma and has two sib­lings, Es­ther and Joshua.

To get in touch with John, check her In­sta­gram ac­count–

@green_pro­duce_ltd_teas

or email

green­pro­duceltd.teas@gmail.com

RAPID-FIRE QUES­TIONS

1. Be­y­once or SZA?

SZA.

2. Favourite movie?

I haven’t seen a movie in a long time.

3. Which is cuter: agoutis or capy­baras?

I like the capy­baras; they’re cute, and they have the lil’ nose and small ears.

4. One sur­pris­ing fact about Eden John?

I’m very in tune work­ing with live­stock. I will con­tin­ue do­ing the teas, but hav­ing my own farm and my own live­stock unit is what I aim to do.