Joanne Brig­gs

Of all the items that 94-year-old Pearl Mas­si­ah trea­sures most in her home, a Pyrex mea­sur­ing cup is one. Af­ter all these years, the cup has re­mained in its pris­tine state. No chip, no fade. It is as clear as the day she re­ceived it as a prize for her cook­ery skills as a young stu­dent at Tran­quil­i­ty Girls' School. She was eight years old at that time.

Cook­ery has been her life, from four years old when she watched her moth­er, a teacher, pre­pare meals for the fam­i­ly, Mas­si­ah said the kitchen has been her sanc­tu­ary. Even now, her kitchen does not look over­worked.

Her table­top and coun­ters are pro­tect­ed with plas­tic al­though she con­tin­ues to pre­pare her own meals. Her "ba­bies" are her Sears stain­less steel pots–which are more than 30 years old and in ster­ling con­di­tion.

"My hands are my God's gift," she said. "Not sweet (hand) so much but the bless­ing was there."

Yet her black cakes were in de­mand to ship to Eng­land. Not to men­tion, she was a mas­ter at jub-jub for so­cials and pas­try tarts for meet­ings. She is per­haps re­spon­si­ble for three gen­er­a­tions of women who have been able to man­age their house­holds through her de­vel­op­ment of the Home Eco­nom­ics cur­ricu­lum.

For many who are fa­mil­iar with the name, Pearl Mes­si­ah is con­sid­ered a lo­cal pi­o­neer of home eco­nom­ics in T&T. She for­mu­lat­ed the syl­labus for teach­ers.

Back when she start­ed, it was known as do­mes­tic sci­ence and served as an un­der­stand­ing for fu­ture home­mak­ers to man­age their house­holds.

There is the as­sump­tion that tak­ing care of a fam­i­ly re­quires lit­tle ef­fort; some hold the view that it is based on fem­i­nine or moth­er­ly in­stincts that give way to cook­ing, clean­ing and even sewing.

But the Caribbean Home Eco­nom­ics As­so­ci­a­tion's de­f­i­n­i­tion of Home Eco­nom­ics em­braces an ap­proach that re­quires more than com­mon sense.

It de­fines the sec­ondary school sub­ject as "the field of knowl­edge and ser­vice pri­mar­i­ly con­cerned with the strength­en­ing of fam­i­ly life." Facets of Home Eco­nom­ics fo­cus on fam­i­ly re­la­tion­ships, nu­tri­tion­al needs, child de­vel­op­ment, tex­tiles, gar­ment con­struc­tion, and man­age­ment of re­sources.

When Mas­si­ah start­ed her jour­ney in the field, she was ten years old. As a post Stan­dard Five stu­dent at Tran­quil­i­ty Girls, she was groomed by teacher Lily Jor­dan to pre­pare meals for the teach­ers. Back then she used a coal pot and some­times a big box oven.

Af­ter Se­nior Cam­bridge, she went the Catholic Women's Teach­ers Col­lege where she did do­mes­tic sci­ence train­ing with Moth­er Vin­cent.

"I al­ways want­ed to be a teacher," she said. "I come from a fam­i­ly of teach­ers from my moth­er, Er­i­ca In­nis, who taught at Princess Town, St Madeleine, Oropouche, and San Fer­nan­do RC Schools. My un­cle Berke­ly was al­so a teacher and the first town clerk in the San Fer­nan­do Bor­ough Coun­cil."

Mas­si­ah taught at Wood­brook Sec­ondary be­fore leav­ing for Eng­land on schol­ar­ship. She earned it af­ter pass­ing the City and Guilds ex­ams. She was so good that she got an ex­emp­tion from the sec­ond ex­am.

Three years lat­er, she re­turned to Trinidad in time for the open­ing of the John Don­ald­son Tech­ni­cal In­sti­tute.

Work­ing there, she vis­it­ed schools, de­vel­op­ing the sec­ondary school pro­gramme on be­half of the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion.

"I trained the teach­ers at John D who were sent to five sec­ondary schools. I gave them notes about food, cook­ery, how to pre­pare a bal­anced meal," Mas­si­ah said.

"I taught them to be good home mak­ers, taught them the val­ue of foods–the nu­tri­tion­al val­ue and how it af­fects the body. I taught them how to shop. I took them gro­cery shop­ping and en­cour­aged them to read the la­bels first. It's all round train­ing of the woman in a home–in every as­pect."

She was al­so the su­per­vi­sor of school meals; this was be­fore the present day box lunch.

"I got to see what the stu­dents were be­ing fed," she ex­plained.

"I used to trav­el in my lit­tle car, vis­it­ing schools around the coun­try. In fact, when I had my Mor­ris–and I re­mem­ber the num­ber, P 6590– I was the third woman to dri­ve in the coun­try."

In her per­son­al life, Mas­si­ah re­mained un­mar­ried. That is not to say she didn't have suit­ors, but she said the re­la­tion­ships sim­ply didn't work out. She has no re­grets about re­main­ing sin­gle, though, and has ded­i­cat­ed most of her life to teach­ing oth­ers.

She has passed on all that she knows in the kitchen to her stu­dents