As a uni­ver­si­ty fo­cused on us­ing re­search for the up­lift­ment of its com­mu­ni­ty, the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI), St. Au­gus­tine, the pre­mier ter­tiary in­sti­tu­tion in the re­gion, pro­duc­ing world-class schol­ars, be­lieves sci­ence should be ac­ces­si­ble to the pub­lic. We of­fer this me­dia se­ries, UWI Sci­en­tists Speak, where our sci­en­tists, three of whom were re­cent­ly award­ed the high­est award of the na­tion – the Or­der of the Re­pub­lic of Trinidad and To­ba­go, will present some of their work.

This week, we hear from Dr Deb­bie Mc­Collin, who dis­cuss­es the re­search done by the Caribbean Coro­na Chron­i­cles Oral His­to­ry Project to doc­u­ment and analyse the im­pact of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic on the Caribbean peo­ple. Dr Deb­bie Mc­Collin is a lec­tur­er in The De­part­ment of His­to­ry at The Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, St Au­gus­tine, and Re­gion­al Co­or­di­na­tor of The Caribbean Civil­i­sa­tion Re­gion­al Unit of The UWI.

–Prof Rose-Marie Belle An­toine, prin­ci­pal, UWISTA

“The great­est les­son I learnt from the pan­dem­ic is that life changes in the blink of an eye … so we need to love … be flex­i­ble … and be our broth­er’s keep­er.”

These words from Dean­na Gomez-Peyr­e­fitte, an en­tre­pre­neur from Be­lize, echo through­out the Caribbean. Dean­na is part of an ex­cit­ing new project called The Caribbean Coro­na Chron­i­cles Oral His­to­ry Project, emerg­ing from The Caribbean Civil­i­sa­tion Unit and the De­part­ment of His­to­ry in the Fac­ul­ty of Hu­man­i­ties and Ed­u­ca­tion at The Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, St Au­gus­tine.

The out­break of SARS-CoV-2, or COVID-19, was de­clared a pan­dem­ic by the World Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion (WHO) on March 11, 2020, and be­came one of the most dev­as­tat­ing pub­lic health dis­as­ters in world his­to­ry. The COVID-19 out­break com­plete­ly desta­bilised glob­al eco­nom­ic and po­lit­i­cal sys­tems and trans­formed so­cial and cul­tur­al prac­tices in every world na­tion. The Caribbean, a di­verse re­gion eco­nom­i­cal­ly de­pen­dent on in­ter­na­tion­al trends and in­dus­tries, was deeply af­fect­ed by this cri­sis. Manda­to­ry quar­an­tine, bor­der clos­ings, pub­lic shut­downs, so­cial dis­tanc­ing and com­pul­so­ry mask-wear­ing were in­sti­tut­ed, and in­dus­tries and ser­vices were brought to a stand­still–as health au­thor­i­ties world­wide fought to con­tain the dead­ly con­ta­gion. The race for a vac­cine in­ten­si­fied! Amid this so­ci­etal chaos, in­no­va­tion in dig­i­tal tech­nol­o­gy and en­gage­ment and work-from-home op­por­tu­ni­ties flour­ished. The lives of Caribbean peo­ple were dra­mat­i­cal­ly trans­formed.

In the face of such his­tor­i­cal cir­cum­stances, it was in­cum­bent up­on schol­ars of His­to­ry and the Hu­man­i­ties to find ways to cap­ture and pre­serve the essence of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic ex­pe­ri­ence and study and com­pare the im­pacts of this epic cri­sis on Caribbean peo­ples. The Caribbean Coro­na Chron­i­cles Oral His­to­ry Project was de­signed to an­swer this very need. Con­duct­ed by a team of nine re­searchers from the Caribbean Civil­i­sa­tion Unit and the De­part­ment of His­to­ry, the goal of this three-year project is to record and be­gin to as­sess the rev­o­lu­tion­ary changes caused by the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic (and sub­se­quent lock­downs) on the lives of Caribbean peo­ple and so­ci­eties. Util­is­ing the Zoom Web Con­fer­enc­ing plat­form for in­ter­views and UWI­Space and YouTube as the dig­i­tal repos­i­to­ries–an on­line pub­lic archive is be­ing cre­at­ed of 200 record­ed and tran­scribed in­ter­views of peo­ple of var­i­ous vo­ca­tions across the Caribbean.

Over 70 in­ter­views with Caribbean cit­i­zens have al­ready been made ac­ces­si­ble to re­searchers through the project web­site. In tar­get­ing in­ter­vie­wees, the re­search team fo­cused on the di­ver­si­ty of gen­der, age, so­cio-eco­nom­ic sta­tus and ge­o­graph­ic dis­tri­b­u­tion across the Caribbean and with­in Caribbean ter­ri­to­ries (ur­ban and rur­al). With in­ter­vie­wees, for ex­am­ple, from T&T, An­tigua and Grena­da in the east­ern Caribbean, to Be­lize in Cen­tral Amer­i­ca and the di­as­po­ra Caribbean com­mu­ni­ties in North Amer­i­ca, this project al­ready boasts a rich com­pos­ite of Caribbean ex­pe­ri­ences. Once com­plet­ed, it is ex­pect­ed to be a sig­nif­i­cant his­tor­i­cal source for COVID-19 pan­dem­ic re­searchers across the world.

In these can­did in­ter­views, Caribbean teach­ers and stu­dents re­vealed the trau­ma as­so­ci­at­ed with the dra­mat­ic shift to on­line teach­ing and learn­ing. Mem­bers of the en­ter­tain­ment in­dus­try de­tailed their per­son­al sto­ries of grow­ing debt due to the loss of in­come as a re­sult of event pro­hi­bi­tions and the gen­er­al lock­down. Busi­ness­men and em­ploy­ees de­scribed the se­vere im­pact of the de­cline in busi­ness and the loss of jobs,  but al­so their new­found av­enues for com­merce. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, re­li­gious lead­ers, gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials and non-prof­it or­gan­i­sa­tions pro­vid­ed in­sight in­to the Caribbean’s ex­ten­sive pan­dem­ic re­lief ef­fort. In­di­vid­u­als di­rect­ly en­gaged in the fight against COVID-19 are al­so rep­re­sent­ed; doc­tors, nurs­es and oth­er med­ical staff from across the Caribbean open­ly de­scribed their har­row­ing ex­pe­ri­ences dur­ing the pan­dem­ic. COVID-19 sur­vivors were a spe­cial group of in­ter­est to the re­search team. Via the archive, these sur­vivors shared their com­plex en­coun­ters with the lo­cal pub­lic health sys­tems through their hos­pi­tal­i­sa­tion, quar­an­tine and re­cov­ery from this dead­ly virus.

The project web­site, caribbean­coro­nachron­i­cles.com, serves as the plat­form for ex­hibit­ing The Caribbean Coro­na Chron­i­cles Oral His­to­ry Archive. This archive (cur­rent­ly ac­ces­si­ble but sched­uled to be com­plet­ed in Au­gust 2024) makes this rich pool of in­ter­views freely avail­able to the pub­lic, aca­d­e­m­ic re­searchers, doc­u­men­tary mak­ers, an­a­lysts and pol­i­cy­mak­ers. This project of­fers crit­i­cal first-hand ac­counts of the Caribbean COVID-19 pan­dem­ic ex­pe­ri­ence that will un­doubt­ed­ly help to strength­en our fu­ture pub­lic health re­spons­es.

If you wish to par­tic­i­pate in this im­por­tant project, please email us at caribbean­coro­nachron­i­cles@gmail.com