RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

For more than three decades, Ju­nior Bis­nath has ded­i­cat­ed his life to keep­ing chil­dren off the streets and on stilts.

The San Fer­nan­do cul­tur­al icon has trained hun­dreds of young peo­ple in the art of Moko Jumbie walk­ing, tak­ing teams from some of the coun­try’s most dis­ad­van­taged com­mu­ni­ties on­to na­tion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al stages, in­clud­ing the FI­FA World Cup.

Bis­nath’s decades of vol­un­teer work re­ceived in­ter­na­tion­al recog­ni­tion when Ugo Blan­co, Res­i­dent Rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the Unit­ed Na­tions De­vel­op­ment Pro­gramme (UNDP) Mul­ti-Coun­try Of­fice for Trinidad and To­ba­go, Aru­ba, Cu­raçao and Sint Maarten, vis­it­ed his home and pledged to ex­plore ways of sup­port­ing his youth de­vel­op­ment ef­forts.

Dur­ing the vis­it, Blan­co praised Bis­nath’s life­long com­mit­ment to pre­serv­ing T&T’s cul­ture while cre­at­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties for vul­ner­a­ble young peo­ple.

“When you meet some­one who does this for the coun­try, for the cul­ture and for the youth, it’s such a plea­sure, and I feel priv­i­leged to be part of this some­how,” Blan­co said.

“I’ve been here for three years, and every time I see Moko Jumbies, I think this is some­thing spe­cial. It sends a big mes­sage to the world.”

Blan­co said the UNDP’s work ex­tends be­yond eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment and in­cludes cre­at­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties for young peo­ple to chan­nel their tal­ents in pos­i­tive ways.

“The UN and UNDP are here to sup­port the coun­try to reach its full po­ten­tial, to pro­mote cul­ture and to find ways for the youth to chan­nel all this en­er­gy and pow­er in a good way,” he said.

“I think Moko Jumbie is a great ap­proach to that, and I think it can ben­e­fit the sus­tain­able de­vel­op­ment of com­mu­ni­ties through­out the coun­try.”

Blan­co said em­pow­er­ing young peo­ple re­mains cen­tral to the UNDP’s work.

He added that the or­gan­i­sa­tion is al­so work­ing with the Gov­ern­ment and oth­er in­sti­tu­tions to build ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence ca­pac­i­ty in T&T.

“AI is al­ready chang­ing our so­ci­eties, our economies and our job mar­kets,” Blan­co said.

“We are work­ing with dif­fer­ent in­sti­tu­tions to make sure AI be­comes a tool for peo­ple. It’s not go­ing to sub­sti­tute us or take our jobs; it’s go­ing to help us cre­ate a bet­ter world.”

Blan­co said UNDP al­so re­mains com­mit­ted to sup­port­ing mi­grant com­mu­ni­ties, in­clud­ing chil­dren who have lim­it­ed ac­cess to ed­u­ca­tion.

Bis­nath, af­fec­tion­ate­ly known as the “Con­struc­tive Ter­mite”—a nick­name giv­en to him by the late prime min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning be­cause of his habit of con­stant­ly build­ing and cre­at­ing—used the op­por­tu­ni­ty to make a rare re­quest for as­sis­tance.

The self-taught in­ven­tor, artist and Guin­ness World Record hold­er, who built what was recog­nised as the world’s longest pen­cil, said he hopes to com­plete his un­fin­ished home and es­tab­lish a per­ma­nent mu­se­um ded­i­cat­ed to T&T’s cul­tur­al his­to­ry.

“All I need right now in my life­time is to fin­ish build­ing my home and my mu­se­um,” Bis­nath said.

“I’m not ask­ing for mon­ey. If I get build­ing ma­te­ri­als, we could fin­ish build­ing our home and mu­se­um where lots of peo­ple will come and ed­u­cate them­selves.”

The mu­se­um, he ex­plained, would house a grow­ing col­lec­tion of arte­facts con­nect­ed to the coun­try’s cul­tur­al icons.

Among its trea­sures are a gui­tar once owned by ca­lyp­so song­writer Ner­lyn Taitt, a pen gift­ed by ca­lyp­son­ian Mer­chant and a shoe au­to­graphed by Lord Kitch­en­er af­ter it de­tached dur­ing a per­for­mance at Skin­ner Park.

Bis­nath said every struc­ture around his prop­er­ty has been de­signed to ed­u­cate vis­i­tors.

“My gate is like an open book. When you walk through that book, you learn about the his­to­ry and cul­ture of Trinidad and To­ba­go,” he said.

For more than 30 years, Bis­nath has taught Moko Jumbie walk­ing in schools through the Na­tion­al Com­mis­sion for Self Help and oth­er com­mu­ni­ty pro­grammes.

He has al­so trav­elled in­ter­na­tion­al­ly, train­ing per­form­ers in coun­tries in­clud­ing Zim­bab­we, Eng­land and Ger­many.

His stu­dents have rep­re­sent­ed Trinidad and To­ba­go at ma­jor in­ter­na­tion­al events, in­clud­ing the FI­FA World Cup.

“I would like to see Moko Jumbie con­tin­ue in schools just like pan,” Bis­nath said.

“Pan was re­ject­ed for so many years, and now it’s the na­tion­al in­stru­ment. When you have knowl­edge, knowl­edge is to pass on.”