Kali­fa Clyne

It is rather dif­fi­cult to imag­ine the woman with the slight frame and the white hair walk­ing slow­ly ahead of me as a fiery in­de­pen­dent sen­a­tor in T&T's Par­lia­ment for 15 years. That, how­ev­er, is ex­act­ly what Louise Horne was, from 1976 when she was first cho­sen by then T&T Pres­i­dent Sir El­lis Clarke to 1991 when she of­fi­cial­ly re­tired. "You are right on time. I just start­ed some gar­den­ing," she says spread­ing her arms to in­di­cate the rows of pot­ted plants, ros­es and an­thuri­ums, lin­ing her walk­way and placed around her house. She leads me down a nar­row hall, hang­ing on the walls on ei­ther side are cer­tifi­cates, awards from sev­er­al or­gan­i­sa­tions and black and white pho­tographs from a time when colour pho­tos were not an op­tion. She stops and points out a diplo­ma from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Ed­in­burgh where she stud­ied di­etet­ics. "I was once re­spon­si­ble for the food at all off the hos­pi­tals in the coun­try," she ex­plains. She leads me to a com­bined liv­ing and din­ing room and in­sists that I sit wher­ev­er com­fort­able.

When I do, she leaves the room, re-en­ter­ing with a gold medal giv­en to her by the Dr Er­ic Williams Memo­r­i­al Com­mit­tee. It is a Fa­ther of the Na­tion, medal of Ho­n­our. The red, white and black rib­bon falls through her fin­gers. She al­so shows me a por­trait of Williams, al­so giv­en to her by the memo­r­i­al com­mit­tee. My eyes take in my sur­round­ings. She no­tices. "It's an old house. The fur­ni­ture is old."

She ex­plains that noth­ing in the house had changed since she was a young girl, more than 70 years ago. She ex­plains that she was born in that very house in Ari­ma and in­her­it­ed it from her par­ents. She shows me old crys­tal glass­es, table­cloths and teapots and wood­en fur­ni­ture over a cen­tu­ry old. She points at one par­tic­u­lar glass de­canter. "My moth­er would say de­cent peo­ple do not put glass bot­tles on their din­ing ta­ble," says Horne, smil­ing at the mem­o­ry. "The se­cu­ri­ty mon­i­tor on the wall of her liv­ing room seems out of place. She ex­plains that she used to have break-ins but all that has stopped. The break-ins al­so ex­plain the barbed wire on the wall and gate. She says she wants to show me some­thing and leads me to the back of the house where there are over a dozen copies of Sen­ate Hansards. Each con­tri­bu­tion she made dur­ing her three Sen­ate terms are marked. "This is the proof. I'm not just say­ing I was there, I was there and I talked," she says. To­geth­er we look at her first Sen­ate sit­ting, dat­ed Oc­to­ber 12, 1976.

We land on the date No­vem­ber 16, 1976, the Re­form Pro­vi­sions Bill. "I spoke about food for the chil­dren. At that time a lot of peo­ple didn't have work and that meant no food for fam­i­lies. A lot of peo­ple were go­ing hun­gry at that time," says Horne. We al­so look at her con­tri­bu­tions to the Nar­cotics Bill and the Births and Death Reg­is­tra­tion Bill. In her con­tri­bu­tion she asks for pen­sion to be in­creased from $30 to $60. At my raised eye­brow she ad­mits that $60 would seem like a small num­ber now but was not back then. "I grew up in the days when you paid for a seat in the Catholic church," she says. She says she has nev­er re­gret­ted not get­ting mar­ried or hav­ing a fam­i­ly. "I was in Sen­ate for 15 years. You think mar­ried women could do that kind of thing and still take care of the house?" She re­mem­bers many spe­cif­ic things about her life, like teach­ing Lord Kitch­en­er (Ald­wyn Roberts) at Ari­ma Boys' Gov­ern­ment School and fend­ing off the ad­vances of Amer­i­can sol­diers sent to T&T dur­ing World War 11.

She tells me that the few vis­i­tors she gets are ei­ther peo­ple in­ter­est­ed in her plants or re­porters like my­self. There is a woman that comes to help her with her dai­ly chores. She has trav­elled the world on gov­ern­ment trips, nam­ing New Zealand, In­dia, Eng­land and most of the Caribbean is­lands as past des­ti­na­tions. Louise Horne is 100-years-old and she has con­tributed decades of her life to T&T.

She start­ed the na­tion­al school feed­ing pro­gramme, though she can't re­call what year. One of the many cer­tifi­cates on her wall shows that she was in­volved with the Co­terie of So­cial Work­ers, pro­vid­ing free meals to chil­dren. She re­ceived the Medal of Mer­it (Gold) in 1972 and has pub­lished a book on The Evo­lu­tion of Mod­ern T&T. She says it is im­por­tant to know the be­gin­ning of our prob­lems in or­der to solve them.