At least two com­mu­ni­ties have com­mit­ted to tak­ing charge of their her­itage el­e­ments fol­low­ing the in­au­gur­al LiT­Tour-Jour­neys Through the Land­scapes of Fic­tion from Trinidad and To­ba­go-last week. The Ma­yaro His­tor­i­cal So­ci­ety has com­mit­ted to take ac­tions for com­plet­ing ren­o­va­tions of the his­toric old Ma­yaro Post Of­fice, in­clud­ing set­ting up a restora­tion fund, "rather than sit and wait" as they have been for some eight years, for some oth­er body to re­pair the build­ing.

This break­through fol­lows a meet­ing with par­tic­i­pants in the in­au­gur­al LiT­Tour, led by au­thor Kris Ram­per­sad, who of­fered sug­ges­tions on how the com­mu­ni­ty could move for­ward to re­alise plans for the build­ing while en­gag­ing with oth­er bod­ies and au­thor­i­ties in the ef­fort.

The build­ing is iden­ti­fied as part of the lit­er­ary her­itage of the is­land in Ram­per­sad's book LiTTscapes-Land­scapes of Fic­tion from Trinidad and To­ba­go and else­where. "We have re­ceived some sound ideas from this vis­it and are ready to move for­ward," said lo­cal his­to­ri­an and au­thor, Michael An­tho­ny, who ac­com­pa­nied the tour and has been cham­pi­oning restora­tion of the build­ing for the last 30 years.

Ram­per­sad ex­plained that Ma­yaro be­came the des­ti­na­tion of the LiT­Tour to demon­strate how such his­toric her­itage el­e­ments can be put to use, stim­u­late eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty and gen­er­ate in­come for the dis­trict, while con­tribut­ing to the up­keep of the build­ings. The old post of­fice is fea­tured as an im­por­tant lit­er­ary house as the set­tings of many of An­tho­ny's sto­ries in LiTTscapes. LiT­Tours are be­ing con­duct­ed in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Pub­lic Trans­port Ser­vice Cor­po­ra­tion's Know Your Coun­try Tours.

Dur­ing the LiT­Tour, which in­clud­ed read­ings from works like San­dra Street, Green Days by the Riv­er and A Year in San Fer­nan­do, An­tho­ny al­so gave in­sights in­to the Ma­yaro set­tings of his sto­ries and lit­er­ary char­ac­ters. Mean­while, San­gre Grande was al­so a PiTTstop for par­tic­i­pants in the in­au­gur­al LiT­Tour.

Chair­man of the San­gre Grande Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion Kesh­war Ma­haraj wel­comed the LiT­Tour and an­nounced plans to re­store the for­mer San­gre Grande Post of­fice to serve as a mu­se­um of the his­to­ry of San­gre Grande. The old Grande Post Of­fice is al­so fea­tured as one of the dis­trict's sig­nif­i­cant his­toric her­itage build­ings in LiTTscapes. He al­so an­nounced plans for a lit­er­ary her­itage ac­tiv­i­ty cen­tre with­in the cor­po­ra­tion's new ad­min­is­tra­tive cen­tre.

In San­gre Grande, lo­cal scouts read se­lec­tions from LiTTscapes and the nov­el Be­tween Two Sea­sons by painter/au­thor James Isa­iah Bood­hoo's.

Oth­er par­tic­i­pants in the LiT­Tour in­clud­ed renowned sketch artist An­tho­ny Tim­o­thy who sketched as­pects of the jour­ney, head of the Min­istry of Work's His­tor­i­cal Restora­tion Unit, Rawle Mitchell; Gia Gas­pard Tay­lor of the Rur­al Women's Net­work; con­ser­va­tion­ist jour­nal­ist Heather Dawn Her­rera among oth­ers.

Cus­tomised and oth­er LiT­Tours are avail­able through re­quests to lol­leaves@gmail.com or 377-0326. LiTTscapes is avail­able at lo­cal book­shops and de­tails through www.kris-ram­per