Kali­fa Clyne

From Bel­mont to Beetham Gar­dens to Mor­vant and the hills of Laven­tille, the East Port-of-Spain area, once known as Yoru­ba vil­lage holds an im­por­tant place in T&T his­to­ry. The pre­dom­i­nant­ly Afro-Trinida­di­an area gave the world steel­pan, mas ex­tra­or­di­naire George Bai­ley and mas­ter artist Leroy Clarke. Yet, the cul­ture-rich area al­so holds sto­ries of high crime ac­tiv­i­ty, pover­ty and ne­glect. A bal­anced view of Yoru­ba vil­lage is set to be ex­posed to the world in the form of a doc­u­men­tary film on the com­mu­ni­ty. A film meant to show dif­fer­ent sides of the peo­ple, cul­ture and her­itage of the Yoru­ba peo­ple and T&T as a whole. One of the pro­duc­ers of the film, Oba Kiteme spoke with T&T Guardian about the rea­son be­hind mak­ing the film and what au­di­ences would gain from see­ing it.

Kiteme said he felt the film was nec­es­sary and im­por­tant to the de­vel­op­ment of East Port-of-Spain. He said the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance had spo­ken about mak­ing East Port-of-Spain a her­itage vil­lage, but hadn't out­line what he meant. Kiteme be­lieved it was im­por­tant for the com­mu­ni­ty to have a say and de­fine what a her­itage vil­lage was, and so the premise for a film on the Yoru­ba vil­lage was born. The film be­gan shoot­ing on May 12 with a pil­grim­age from Tokyo pa­n­yard to Yoru­ba square, along with a tra­di­tion­al Yoru­ba mas­quer­ade cer­e­mo­ny called Egun­gun. While the ti­tle of the film spec­i­fies Yoru­ba vil­lage, Kiteme said the film's fo­cus would be on all the African vil­lages that con­tributed to the de­vel­op­ment of T&T. He felt that me­dia through­out the years had paint­ed a pic­ture of East Port-of-Spain as hooli­gans and peo­ple who craved hand­outs, but the film, he said, would make a state­ment.

The film will at­tempt to pro­vide a bal­anced view for an au­di­ence that has been bom­bard­ed with neg­a­tives and "mis­in­for­ma­tion." It would show that the peo­ple of East Port-of-Spain con­tributed sig­nif­i­cant­ly to the growth of T&T. "The dirt they used to fill the land where the trea­sury build­ing now rests was dirt tak­en from East Port-of-Spain," he said, adding that sev­er­al ma­jor play­ers in the en­ter­tain­ment in­dus­try hailed from the area. "When for­eign­ers hear of T&T, they hear of David Rud­der and Ca­lyp­so Rose, they don't hear of Man­ning and Row­ley. "En­ter­tain­ers are the peo­ple who make T&T fa­mous and we, Yoru­ba peo­ple have con­tributed great­ly to that," said Kiteme. He said the pur­pose of the film was to pro­vide di­a­logue be­tween the past and present, and be­tween those on the out­side and those on the in­side of East Port-of-Spain.

Kiteme felt that res­i­dents of East Port-of-Spain were too of­ten taught to be ashamed of their her­itage and com­mu­ni­ty. He said the film would do its part to tell a dif­fer­ent sto­ry about res­i­dents, and to of­fer them a dif­fer­ent way of look­ing at them­selves, to see their an­ces­tors in a dif­fer­ent light. He said it would al­so be used to high­light the mea­sure of ne­glect of this area of the na­tion's cap­i­tal. With­out hes­i­ta­tion, Kiteme said he be­lieved the rea­son for the com­mu­ni­ties be­ing ne­glect­ed was that they were pre­dom­i­nant­ly African ar­eas. He lament­ed that the peo­ple of East Port-of-Spain had not giv­en them­selves an iden­ti­ty, and had in­stead al­lowed out­siders to la­bel them. This la­bel was one filed with neg­a­tives and de­ri­sion.

Asked to de­scribe the true iden­ti­ty of the East Port-of-Spain res­i­dents, Kiteme said they were and ought to see them­selves as hero­ic sur­vivors of a bar­rage of sus­tained and pro­longed vic­tim­i­sa­tion. Yet, he stressed that it was im­por­tant that they did not see them­selves as vic­tims, but as every­day he­roes in a bi­ased and neg­li­gent so­ci­ety.

Kiteme and his team of cul­tur­al afi­ciona­dos are hop­ing to wrap up film­ing of the doc­u­men­tary this year.

They have so­licit­ed fund­ing from a num­ber of pri­vate and Gov­ern­ment agen­cies, and have so far re­ceived fund­ing from the Na­tion­al Lot­ter­ies Con­trol Board and the Min­istry of Arts and Mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism. How­ev­er, Kiteme point­ed out that the fund­ing they had re­ceived was a drop in the buck­et, amount­ing to less than ten per cent of the bud­get need­ed to ful­ly fund the film. He is hop­ing that oth­er or­gan­i­sa­tions would recog­nise the cul­tur­al and so­ci­o­log­i­cal val­ue of the film project, and show sup­port to the project.

A com­mu­ni­ty East Port-of-Spain, he said, had con­tributed a lot to the na­tion but had re­ceived very lit­tle, and he is hop­ing that the Yoru­ba Vil­lage doc­u­men­tary can do its part to help turn the sit­u­a­tion around.