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Thursday, February 20, 2025

Tobago Heritage Festival launches virtually

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1301 days ago
20210729
A young couple takes part in the re-enactment of the Moriah Ole Time Wedding at the Moriah Moravian Church during Tobago Heritage Festival activities in 2015. As part of the ceremony, it was customary for the wedding party, well-wishers and others to parade through the village’s streets.

A young couple takes part in the re-enactment of the Moriah Ole Time Wedding at the Moriah Moravian Church during Tobago Heritage Festival activities in 2015. As part of the ceremony, it was customary for the wedding party, well-wishers and others to parade through the village’s streets.

Tobago Heritage Festival Committee

Camille McEach­nie

For the sec­ond con­sec­u­tive year, the To­ba­go Her­itage Fes­ti­val was launched vir­tu­al­ly.

The launch of the event, now cel­e­brat­ing its 34th year, took place on Wednes­day (Ju­ly 28). The event is a cru­cial part of To­ba­go’s cal­en­dar, as it show­cas­es all as­pects of the is­land’s cul­tur­al his­to­ry.

In bring­ing greet­ings dur­ing the show, To­ba­go Her­itage Fes­ti­val Com­mis­sion Lim­it­ed’ chair­man Dr Denise Tsoiafatt-An­gus said the theme, Re­silient To­ba­go - Re­mem­ber­ing Her Roots with Re­spon­si­bil­i­ty, cap­tures how To­bag­o­ni­ans should deal with the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.

“The theme is re­mind­ing us of who we are and that re­gard­less of the cir­cum­stances that we have, it is with­in us to bounce back,” she said.

“We have a re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to re­mem­ber our roots, show ap­pre­ci­a­tion for what our an­ces­tors have done, and un­der­stand that we have a re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to pre­serve the mem­o­ries and al­so to build on them and fos­ter free­dom and pros­per­i­ty for fu­ture gen­er­a­tions.”

THF­CL CEO John Arnold, who al­so spoke dur­ing the launch, said the fes­ti­val has to be cel­e­brat­ed re­gard­less of the cir­cum­stances, as it’s im­por­tant to pre­serv­ing the is­land’s her­itage.

“De­spite the try­ing times of the pan­dem­ic, cer­tain­ly we have to find in­no­v­a­tive ways to still cel­e­brate this fes­ti­val,” Arnold said.

He said pa­trons could look for­ward to see­ing the shows vir­tu­al­ly and can learn to dance, sing and beat African drums at the Her­itage Acad­e­my. Arnold said they can al­so view art dur­ing the Ex­po Art show.

The oth­er of­fer­ings on this year’s her­itage cal­en­dar in­clude the Folk Fi­es­ta, Ms Her­itage Per­son­al­i­ty Show and the Eman­ci­pa­tion Con­cert in the form of a the­atre-like we­bi­nar se­ries.

To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly Chief Sec­re­tary An­cil Den­nis chal­lenged To­bag­o­ni­ans to cre­ate year-round fes­ti­vals to be part of the Des­ti­na­tion To­ba­go prod­uct to the world.

This year’s fes­ti­val is ex­pect­ed to run un­til Sep­tem­ber 11, 2021, with a bud­get of $1.5 mil­lion, Arnold told Guardian Me­dia.

The former temporary site for the Scarborough Market at Milford Road, which will now be used for a new farmers’ wholesale market project.

The former temporary site for the Scarborough Market at Milford Road, which will now be used for a new farmers’ wholesale market project.

Dad sat­is­fied with mur­der tri­al out­come

Kurt Sa­landy, the fa­ther of mur­der vic­tim Kolen Sa­landy, says he is sat­is­fied with the hang­ing sen­tence passed down to Al­varo Ayres for the 2009 mur­ders of his 16-year-old son and his 15-year-old friend Ron­del Thomas.

The bod­ies of Sa­landy and Thomas were found at French Fort on Sep­tem­ber 19, 2009, af­ter their par­ents re­port­ed them miss­ing.

Al­varo “Josey Wales” Ay­ers was sen­tenced to hang by High Court Judge Althea Alex­is-Wind­sor on Tues­day, af­ter she found him guilty of the dou­ble mur­der at the com­ple­tion of his judge-alone tri­al. Ay­ers was al­lowed to briefly ad­dress the court af­ter the sen­tence and main­tained his in­no­cence.

Speak­ing to To­ba­go To­day, Sa­landy said he was hap­py his son had fi­nal­ly re­ceived jus­tice.

“I’m sat­is­fied with the ver­dict and the sen­tenc­ing as well, it took a while with the ver­dict and that is the as­pect of the jus­tice sys­tem we are not com­fort­able with at this point in time, but nev­er­the­less, be­ing that wheels of jus­tice turn slow­ly, it re­al­ly did de­liv­er for us and with that said, I’m to­tal­ly sat­is­fied with the out­come.”

Ayres, orig­i­nal­ly from Bethel, To­ba­go was ar­rest­ed and charged with the mur­der of the teen boys. Fel­low ac­com­plice Gary Mo­hammed was killed dur­ing a shootout with po­lice in the Moru­ga For­rest in Oc­to­ber 2009.

Sa­landy’s re­mains were first found by a re­li­gious group pray­ing in the area and Thomas’ re­mains were found a short dis­tance away by po­lice while in­ves­ti­gat­ing the dis­cov­ery of the first body. The bod­ies both bore marks of vi­o­lence to the neck and throat. The au­top­sy re­port re­vealed that Sa­landy suf­fered chop wounds, a frac­tured neck and blunt force trau­ma, while Thomas al­so suf­fered chop wounds, blunt force cer­vi­cal trau­ma and mul­ti­ple neck frac­tures.

To­ba­go To­day was un­able to reach the moth­er of Ron­del Thomas, Ann Thomas, for com­ment.

Pets reck­less­ly aban­doned at an­i­mal shel­ter

The ad­min­is­tra­tor at the To­ba­go Di­vi­sion of the Trinidad and To­ba­go So­ci­ety for the Pre­ven­tion of Cru­el­ty to An­i­mals (TTSP­CA), Jacquie James, is plead­ing with peo­ple to take the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of pet own­er­ship se­ri­ous­ly. This is due to a re­cent up­surge in peo­ple reck­less­ly aban­don­ing pets at the shel­ter dur­ing the night and when the shel­ter is closed.

James said she sus­pects that peo­ple do this to avoid con­tribut­ing to the shel­ter when they turn over their an­i­mals.

“In many cas­es, what they would do is that they would fling them over the fence, they would tie them to the shel­ter ve­hi­cles, they would put them in the rub­bish hold that we have at the front and then when we come in the morn­ing, we would see an­i­mals just run­ning all over the premis­es,” James said.

With­in re­cent times, James said the prac­tice has be­come preva­lent as sev­er­al peo­ple have lost their jobs and can no longer af­ford to take care of a pet. She said some peo­ple have al­so been re­port­ing that the an­i­mals wan­dered on­to their premis­es and they are hand­ing them over in­stead of “poi­son­ing the an­i­mals.” She said what­ev­er the rea­son is for re­lin­quish­ing own­er­ship, there is a process.

“Come in the shel­ter be­tween 10 am and 4 pm, in­di­cate why you are giv­ing the an­i­mal up be­cause it’s a safe haven re­gard­less. We don’t bash in­di­vid­u­als, if you are un­able to take care of the an­i­mal, you are un­able to take care of the an­i­mal and some peo­ple feel that they have to pay, it’s just a do­na­tion.”

Per­sons can go to the shel­ter and have a con­ver­sa­tion with staff mem­bers about the rea­son for re­lin­quish­ment and sign a form giv­ing up the rights to the an­i­mal, James said. The shel­ter does, how­ev­er, re­quire a do­na­tion for spe­cial pro­ce­dures, in­clud­ing spay­ing neu­ter­ing de­worm­ing and flea treat­ments.

Farm­ers get whole­sale mar­ket

The Di­vi­sion of Food Pro­duc­tion, Forestry and Fish­eries is in the process of set­ting up a whole­sale farm­ers’ mar­ket at the for­mer tem­po­rary mar­ket site at Shaw Park.

This new fa­cil­i­ty pro­pos­es to reg­u­late the sale of pro­duce grown in To­ba­go and stim­u­late the lo­cal econ­o­my. Chair­man of the Farm­ers’ Whole­sale Mar­ket Com­mit­tee, Karen Shaw, said the new ini­tia­tive pro­pos­es to cre­ate an ex­clu­sive com­mer­cial trad­ing space for To­ba­go farm­ers.

“The Farm­ers’ Whole­sale Mar­ket will on­ly car­ry qual­i­ty lo­cal­ly-pro­duced agri­cul­ture pro­duce at vol­umes and prices reg­u­lat­ed by the De­part­ment of Mar­ket­ing,” Shaw said.

The pro­gramme is cur­rent­ly in the reg­is­tra­tion process and meet­ings are be­ing held with farm­ers to de­ter­mine mu­tu­al agree­ment on vol­umes and pric­ing, as well as a start date. Ac­cord­ing to Shaw, reg­is­tered mem­bers will gain sev­er­al ben­e­fits.

“Reg­is­trants will be in­cor­po­rat­ed in the over­all plan­ning process. The de­part­ment will be able to ad­vise farm­ers on what to plant, when to plant and how much to re­duce and mit­i­gate against glut in the sys­tem.”

She said ex­ten­sion of­fi­cers will al­so be as­signed to each farmer to en­sure that they are in sync with the pro­gramme and to al­so mit­i­gate against prae­di­al lar­ce­ny. Farm­ers are al­so be­ing en­cour­aged to ap­ply on­line at the di­vi­sion’s Scar­bor­ough, Shaw Park and Shir­van Of­fices.

The chair­man al­so urged buy­ers, such as ven­dors, green­gro­cers, per­sons in the hos­pi­tal­i­ty sec­tor and the school feed­ing pro­gramme, to sup­port the Whole­sale Farm­ers’ Mar­ket, as it in­creas­es food pro­duc­tion, which will, in turn, re­duce the food im­port bill, in ad­di­tion to gen­er­at­ing lo­cal busi­ness to dri­ve the lo­cal econ­o­my.


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