Melis­sa Doughty

For Dounne Alexan­der health and na­ture are syn­ony­mous. One can­not ex­ist with­out the oth­er. The UK res­i­dent, who is the founder of Gram­ma's, a herbal food man­u­fac­tur­ing busi­ness; Zara's herbal tea and the Join­ing Hands in Health cam­paign, be­lieves the cure to most, if not all, of man's al­i­ments can be found in na­ture. The Tri­ni-born busi­ness­woman, more­so, be­lieves if the Caribbean were to main­tain its vir­ginal, lush veg­e­ta­tion and green­ery then, with­in a few years, the re­gion would be in­dis­pens­able to larg­er coun­tries like the UK. Alexan­der is on a nat­ur­al mis­sion. She wants the world to be awak­ened to the many health ben­e­fits that can be found right in the back yard. She calls her­self a spir­i­tu­al herbal­ist and who is al­so an au­thor, mo­ti­va­tion­al speak­er and moth­er among oth­ers, has won ten na­tion­al awards for her work; among them a 2012 award for her con­tri­bu­tion to Trinidad and To­ba­go dur­ing the coun­try's 50th an­niver­sary of In­de­pen­dence. She was al­so vot­ed as one of the 50 most pow­er­ful black women in Britain. For all her suc­cess, Alexan­der has not for­got­ten her Caribbean roots which in­spired her line of nat­ur­al prod­ucts which led to her suc­cess. In fact, her up­bring­ing in T&T was the im­pe­tus for her fa­mous Gram­ma's Herbal Pep­per Sauce, start­ed in 1987. Her bi­og­ra­phy tells the sto­ry.

It reads: "In 1964, at 15, Dounne moved to Britain with her par­ents and sib­lings. Af­ter leav­ing sec­ondary school at 17, she worked for more than 22 years as a bac­te­ri­o­log­i­cal & chem­i­cal lab­o­ra­to­ry tech­ni­cian and a Hous­ing Man­ag­er for a Hous­ing As­so­ci­a­tion. Mar­ried in 1971, had two daugh­ters but to es­cape mar­i­tal abuse, in 1986 she took up mar­tial-arts and with­in six months took back com­plete con­trol of her life and start­ed a new life as a sin­gle-par­ent. This was the pe­ri­od of Britain's emerg­ing new en­ter­prise cul­ture and de­cid­ed that the best way to se­cure her­self and chil­dren's fu­ture would be to start up her own busi­ness. As a full time work­ing moth­er on a low in­come, who has man­aged to raise her chil­dren on nu­tri­tious, home-cooked meals-Dounne recog­nised that the na­tion was mov­ing in­to a dan­ger­ous­ly un­healthy-eat­ing phase of ar­ti­fi­cial, processed, junk foods and ready-made meals ... en­cour­aged by man­u­fac­tur­ers, re­tail­ers and the gov­ern­ment. Fore­see­ing the long term dam­age to present and fu­ture gen­er­a­tions, she recog­nised a unique niche in the "spe­cial­i­ty health-food mar­ket" and six months lat­er, GRAM­MA'S was born from the tiny kitchen of her flat. With­out any for­mal busi­ness train­ing, ex­pe­ri­ence, qual­i­fi­ca­tions, col­lat­er­al or fi­nance-Dounne per­son­al­ly cre­at­ed, de­signed, pack­aged and pro­mot­ed Gram­ma's Herbal Pep­per Sauces. With­in three months, she sin­gle­hand­ed­ly ne­go­ti­at­ed them in­to Britain's most pres­ti­gious de­part­ment stores Har­rods and Fort­num & Ma­son.

By the end of that year, her sauces al­so took pride of place on the shelves of oth­er de­part­ment stores around the coun­try in­clud­ing Sel­f­ridges, Har­vey Nichols, Ben­talls, Rack­hams, How­ells and Kendale Milne. In 1990 she even­tu­al­ly raised the fi­nance re­quired via the gov­ern­ment's Small Firms Loan Guar­an­tee Scheme to es­tab­lish her first fac­to­ry." Alexan­der said grow­ing up in pol­lu­tion free Trinidad, she nev­er knew what it was like to be ill con­stant­ly. Her love for na­ture was un­de­ni­able as she out­lined dur­ing the tele­phone in­ter­view with the T&T Guardian, the heal­ing pow­er of sour­sop in the fight against can­cer and the med­i­cinial val­ue of pure char­coal. Alexan­der's ul­ti­mate dream, for which she has al­ready ac­quired the land in Erin (south­ern Trinidad), is to build a na­ture re­sort where peo­ple can come and re­ceive nat­ur­al treat­ment of all kinds, from acupunc­ture to some of her herbal tea. When Alexan­der vis­its Trinidad from Oc­to­ber 19 to 24 she plans on ed­u­cat­ing the pub­lic on the pow­er of these foods that are found in abun­dance here.