Resh­ma Ra­goonath

"Tri­ni to the bone!"That's how Tam­mi Sul­li­man, a Trinidad-born tele­vi­sion jour­nal­ist based in the Cay­man Is­lands, could eas­i­ly be de­scribed.Sul­li­man, 34, who grew up in Can­taro, San­ta Cruz, is one of the Grand Cay­man's lead­ing fe­male jour­nal­ists and is cur­rent­ly em­ployed at Cay­man 27, a lo­cal tele­vi­sion sta­tion.She de­scribes her­self as a "jack of all trades" at the sta­tion, since she is not on­ly an an­chor­woman, but a cam­er­a­woman, pro­duc­er, scriptwriter, stand­by weath­er­girl and host of cur­rent af­fairs pro­gramme, The Pan­el.Sul­li­man, speak­ing with the T&T Guardian in a re­cent in­ter­view at the Unit­ed Na­tions En­vi­ron­ment Pro­gramme Glob­al Land and Ocean Con­nec­tions 2 Con­fer­ence, Mon­tego Bay, Ja­maica, at­trib­uted her mul­ti­task­ing skills to her Trinida­di­an her­itage.

She said is proud to dis­play her na­tion­al­i­ty wher­ev­er she goes."I have been af­ford­ed all of these skills with­in the tele­vi­sion news in­dus­try that al­low me to move around wher­ev­er I need to move and that cer­tain­ly makes me more mar­ketable. The end re­sult is a woman who is very proud to al­ways rep­re­sent her coun­try no mat­ter where her voice or her face is be­ing heard or seen," she said Sul­li­man at­tend­ed St Joseph Con­vent, Port-of-Spain and the Uni­ver­si­ty of Toron­to.She ad­mit­ted that at uni­ver­si­ty she was still search­ing for her call­ing when the jour­nal­ism bug bit her."I start­ed to be­come in­volved in the stu­dent pol­i­tics and in the life and the Uni­ver­si­ty of Toron­to when some­body ap­proached me about writ­ing for the pa­per and I said 'Ok that's in­ter­est­ing.'

"There came a point where I had to choose, am I go­ing to be­come in­volved in pol­i­tics or am I go­ing to be some­one who is go­ing to write about it? I chose to write about it," she ex­plained.Sul­li­man's ca­reer in jour­nal­ism pro­gressed from there as she be­came the news­pa­per's news ed­i­tor and sub­se­quent­ly, the ed­i­tor-in-chief.

She lat­er worked at a Cana­da-based news­pa­per and was ap­proached for a po­si­tion at a tele­vi­sion sta­tion."I went in, did a test and the rest is his­to­ry," she said.Sul­li­man said she dreams of com­ing back to T&T and build­ing a life with her nine-year-old daugh­ter Leila."Tam­mi is not 100 per cent her­self un­til she is in the land of the hum­ming bird and one day hope­ful­ly one I will make it back," she said.She said she is a sin­gle moth­er and "every­thing I do is for my daugh­ter.""I think that forces me to be even bet­ter at what I do be­cause I know she is watch­ing and she sees her mum­my at work," Sul­li­man said.While com­ing home is her as­pi­ra­tion Sul­li­man said she finds so­lace in work­ing in Grand Cay­man be­cause, "I am still with­in the re­gion and in the West In­dies."

She said she strong­ly be­lieves in the idea of Pan Caribbeanism (re­gion­al in­te­gra­tion)."So as long as I am con­tribut­ing to a Caribbean is­land I feel ok with­in my­self. In the Cay­man is­lands it is a very di­verse com­mu­ni­ty, very sim­i­lar to what we have in T&T," she said.