The man be­hind the first-ever di­nosaur ex­hi­bi­tion in the Caribbean ex­plains how his ex­pe­ri­ence in the en­er­gy in­dus­try gave him the idea to change the way we see the earth. Lyn­don Bap­tiste most­ly dis­liked school. In ad­di­tion to be­ing unim­pressed with most of his teach­ers, who didn't en­cour­age their pupils to ask ques­tions, he found learn­ing te­dious since every­thing was in bor­ing text­books. Sev­en­teen years af­ter leav­ing sec­ondary school (with a sigh of re­lief), this South boy is in­tent on chang­ing the way chil­dren learn about Sci­ence. Bap­tiste has brought the first-ever di­nosaur ex­hi­bi­tion to the Caribbean–A T Rex Named Sue.

The ex­hi­bi­tion, which fea­tures a full-size cast of the most com­plete Tyran­nosaurus rex ever found, opened at the Na­tion­al Acad­e­my for the Per­form­ing Arts, Port-of-Spain, on May 10. In the last three weeks, thou­sands of school­child­ren from across the coun­try have seen it. Be­sides be­ing a chance to get out of school for the day, the stu­dents were re­al­ly amazed and ex­cit­ed by Sue's tow­er­ing skele­ton, the doc­u­men­taries on di­nosaurs, and try­ing out all the in­ter­ac­tive ex­hibits. Many come with their dig­i­tal cam­eras and phones to take pic­tures of Sue, which mea­sures a whop­ping 42 feet long, and tow­ers above their heads. A mod­el of her skull, which mea­sures five feet in length, is al­so a hit since the chil­dren can get up close and touch it.

In­ter­ac­tive ex­hibits show them how Sue found food–us­ing her pow­er­ful sense of smell. Oth­ers al­low the kids to see the world through her eyes, and ex­pe­ri­ence how her arms moved.

The well-known BG Sci­ence Bus has set up shop in the base­ment, where groups can com­pete to as­sem­ble minia­ture di­nosaur skele­tons and learn about the hun­dreds of dif­fer­ent types of di­nosaurs that ex­ist­ed over mil­lions of years. D Rex, a minia­ture ro­bot­ic di­nosaur, can move and re­spond to com­mands. Sci­ence teach­ers can take pho­tos of the var­i­ous bones (such as the pelvis and legs) to use in teach­ing, to point out dif­fer­ent as­pects. In the Di­no Dig Pit where 36 bones be­long­ing to a T Rex are buried, com­pet­ing teams have five min­utes to dig in­to the sand and see what they can un­earth. You can al­so buy di­nosaur games, books, puz­zles and toys. A T Rex Named Sue is just the first of many edu­tain­ment events that Bap­tiste hopes to bring to T&T through his com­pa­ny, Cayenne In­ter­na­tion­al Events. He is look­ing at 70 dif­fer­ent types of events with the hope of bring­ing them to the Caribbean; in­clud­ing one com­pris­ing ro­bot­ic an­i­mals to teach chil­dren about ro­bot­ics, and Bod­ies: The Ex­hi­bi­tion fea­tures re­al hu­man bod­ies that have been pre­served right down to sinews and veins through a tech­nique called plas­ti­na­tion.

"Our main ob­jec­tive is to open the minds and hearts of the youth through in­no­v­a­tive ed­u­ca­tion­al and en­ter­tain­ing ex­pe­ri­ences," Bap­tiste ex­plained. "It is very im­por­tant to blend ed­u­ca­tion with en­ter­tain­ment be­cause that's how you get through to the youth. Every­thing is mul­ti-me­dia now. "These kids know how to play XBox from prac­ti­cal­ly ba­bies. Hope­ful­ly, in time, we will see that there are more ways to teach than just book, book, book, like in my days." The 34-year-old, who has been liv­ing in Lon­don for the last decade, got the idea of pro­duc­ing "edu­tain­ing" events from the most un­ex­pect­ed of places: an en­er­gy con­fer­ence for ex­ec­u­tives in Sau­di Ara­bia. Bap­tiste was the Busi­ness De­vel­op­ment Di­rec­tor of an in­ter­na­tion­al busi­ness event and con­sul­tan­cy com­pa­ny with branch­es in Cairo and Bahrain. The fo­cus was on the de­vel­op­ing re­gions of the world: The Mid­dle East, North Africa, Asia and South Amer­i­ca, where they bring to­geth­er peo­ple, ser­vices, in­for­ma­tion and prod­ucts.

His re­spon­si­bil­i­ties in­clud­ed at­tract­ing spon­sors, get­ting them in­volved and or­ches­trat­ing con­nec­tions be­tween in­dus­try pro­fes­sion­als. Be­fore that he had worked with CWC As­so­ciates Ltd, which of­fers pro­fes­sion­al train­ing, con­fer­ences and ex­hi­bi­tions in en­er­gy and in­fra­struc­ture. He had spent five or six years with CWC be­com­ing the busi­ness de­vel­op­ment man­ag­er for Sau­di Ara­bia, vis­it­ing the coun­try reg­u­lar­ly, and spend­ing two to three weeks at a time. He learned a lot about the en­er­gy in­dus­try, meet­ing high-lev­el ex­ec­u­tives and ex­perts in the field. Of­ten the con­fer­ences were the place where the Sau­di gov­ern­ment would an­nounce its up­com­ing con­tracts; ex­plain to con­trac­tors and in­ter­est­ed par­ties how to get in­to the mar­ket, how to go through the ten­der­ing process, that sort of thing.

Be­ing a black man in his po­si­tion in the Mid­dle East, he raised a few eye­brows, but soon made a name for him­self through his pro­fes­sion­al­ism and rep­u­ta­tion for get­ting the job done. Then one day a par­tic­i­pant who had been to quite a few en­er­gy con­fer­ences griped about how they all seemed to be the same, year af­ter year, and he wished it could be more in­ter­est­ing, in­ter­ac­tive and a learn­ing ex­pe­ri­ence for ex­ec­u­tives as well as the gen­er­al pub­lic. Bap­tiste thought about it, and re­alised that this was a niche wait­ing to be filled in these coun­tries too. In the US and Eu­rope, chil­dren love to go to mu­se­ums be­cause they have been us­ing in­ter­ac­tive me­dia and de­vices to com­ple­ment their fos­sil ex­hibits for a while now. Places like T&T, how­ev­er, had next to noth­ing in the way of edu­tain­ment.

While many might think this field is a gam­ble in a glob­al re­ces­sion, Bap­tiste ar­gues, "You can't sit down and do noth­ing, and don't in­vest. You have to do some­thing to get things go­ing again." Bap­tiste's ex­pe­ri­ence as a busi­ness de­vel­op­ment di­rec­tor has served him well with his new ven­ture. A T Rex Named Sue has a most ap­pro­pri­ate ti­tle spon­sor–en­er­gy com­pa­ny At­lantic LNG–with SM Jaleel (Chub­by, Kool Kidz), BG Trinidad & To­ba­go, UTT, Vem­co Ltd (Ker­ry­gold), Pi­ran­ha In­ter­na­tion­al Ltd, and Green Cy­clone In­cor­po­rat­ed as co-spon­sors. "Sue was sup­posed to be ei­ther in Bahrain or Trinidad," Bap­tiste ex­plained. "But since I'm from Trinidad we de­cid­ed to try it out here first."

More In­fo

A T Rex Named Sue runs every day un­til to­mor­row,

at the Na­tion­al Acad­e­my for the Per­form­ing Arts

in Port- of-Spain.

For more in­for­ma­tion, call 296-8541.