TRINIDAD's RAILWAY

The first railway line was between Port-of-Spain and Arima, the center of the island’s expanding cocoa industry, a distance of 15.5 miles, was opened on August 30, 1876. 

The first known railway on the Trinidad island was a horsedrawn line called the Cipero Tramway, which was built in the 1840s by a Scottish planter named William Eccles to transport produce from his sugar plantation to the wharf at San Fernando, 30 miles south of Port of Spain.

In 1859 the Cipero Tramway, an agricultural line from the Cipero Wharf in San Fernando to Usine Sainte Madeleine sugar factory was completed. The tramway used mules as motive power. In 1861 the line was extended east to the town of Mission (later renamed Princes Town). In 1864 the first steam locomotive, “Forerunner”, was introduced.

The Trinidad Government Railway (TGR) was originally built in to connect Port of Spain to Arima.  The railway was extended to Couva in 1880, San Fernando in 1882, Cunapo (now Sangre Grande) in 1897, Tabaquite in 1898, Siparia in 1913 and Rio Claro in 1914. Siparia was the last destination on the train line and the site now serves as the panyard of the Siparia’s Deltones Steel Orchestra.

December 28th, 1968 is recorded as the last day of passenger train services in Trinidad. But railway historian and researcher Glen Beadon has discovered that a train did run one last time after that historic date. Beadon said that on Tuesday 7th January 1969 Engine No. 42, was seen steaming for one last outing.

The railway system was put out of commission to make way for motor vehicles, as they were seen at the time as the future of transportation, a poor judgement on those incharge at the time. The railway covered 173 km (107 mi). After the end of World War I, the appearance of the automobile led to changes that culminated with the phased closure of the railway.

On 11 April 2008 the Trinitrain consortium was chosen to plan and build two new Trinidad Rapid Railway passenger lines. This plan was cancelled in 2010, the government said Trinidad could not afford such a project as it was estimated to cost more than $10 billion.

The rapid railway trains could help Trinidad with its traffic problem, everyday drivers are stuck in traffic costing them 2 to 3 hours of their valuable time. High-speed trains can generally reach 300–350 km/h (190–220 mph). On mixed use HSR lines, passenger train services can attain peak speeds of 200–250 km/h (120–160 mph). These trains can hold as much as 400 passengers.

We may never see another functioning train system in Trinidad in our lifetime, some researchers estimate that in the years 2035 to 2040 Trinidad may be financially stable to start a rapid railway system.

SOME PHOTOS TAKEN FROM MR RONALD RAGHUNANAN FACEBOOK POST

 Frankly those who don't have children should be given extra for saving the planet from more parasites

 

THE EDGE’S 20 GREATEST GUITAR MOMENTS, RANKED

A uniquely creative guitarist who has powered one of the world’s biggest bands for 40 years and counting, let’s trip through the wires to look at 20 guitar highlights from the strings and pedals of the man they call The Edge.

It’s four decades since U2’s debut album Boy introduced the world to the angular, delay-soaked guitar lines of The Edge. Since then, the band have gone on to conquer the world’s airwaves and arenas in a number of different incarnations, ranging from earnest, politically charged new-wave flagbearers to wide-eyed art-rock musicologists to purveyors of irony-laden alt-rock and ever onward.

At the heart of their sound, U2’s guitarist has undergone his own process of constant reinvention. But even as his gear stash has grown from a couple of guitars, a handful of pedals, a Vox and some gaffa tape to become a touring rig that looks like a Guitar Center warehouse, he’s stayed a step ahead of his imitators, managing to refine but never jettison the simplicity and directness of his playing.

The Edge has often referred to being “at odds” with the guitar; and has characterised his playing as a “struggle or a fight” with the instrument. Here, we choose 20 battles he most definitely won, some against all the odds, among an exhaustive back catalogue of sonic explorations.

20. One

By the end of their first all-conquering decade in music, U2 may have been the biggest band in the world, but all was not well. Reconvening to record the follow-up to the bloated misstep Rattle And Hum at the Bowie-haunted Hansa Studios in Berlin in October 1990 (the month Germany officially reunited), the band found themselves stalked by the dreaded cliché – musical differences. Bono and The Edge wanted to experiment with dance elements, while Clayton and Mullen wanted to return to the old sound, and they disagreed over the quality of their new material.

However, they got over it when a song descended on them in a jam session to uncover their old chemistry and reunite them. One began life as a proposed middle section for a different song, but underwent further transformation when producer Brian Eno persuaded them to deconstruct it; Daniel Lanois and Edge removed the acoustic parts and instead added more aggressive guitar to undermine the “too beautiful” overall sound. They achieved their goal, with The Edge wrapping the song in layers of Gibson-branded cotton wool for its intro before adding a layered, heartrending soundscape of lachrymose Les Paul bends from Daniel Lanois and a series of modulated licks, forever building to the song’s anthemic outro figure.

Did you know?

The Edge began exploring the Gibson model catalogue beyond the Explorer and Les Paul in earnest during Achtung Baby and One also features The Edge’s 1959 Tobacco Sunburst ES-330, which can be seen in one of the song’s three videos.

19. Mysterious Ways

With the jam-tune they’d titled Sick Puppy having already provided the seed of One, which would eventually become perhaps their greatest song, the band returned to the idea to see if they could turn the rest of it into something. Sick Puppy consisted of Adam Clayton’s rolling bassline over a dance beat from a drum machine, but a breakthrough was made when The Edge found a soupy auto-wah-based preset on his Korg A3 Performance Signal Processor, with SPC-01 Guitar to hand he came up with the song’s disarmingly simple but mighty two-note, one-chord riff and funky solo interlude. The lessons seem to be you should never abandon a sick puppy, and you should never dismiss a preset, even if it is called ‘Funk Wah’.

Did you know?

Live, The Edge uses a Rickenbacker 330-12 model for Mysterious Ways, tuned to E♭.

18. With Or Without You

Another song, like One, that came together in the studio while the band were harbouring fears of creative drought, sonically speaking, With Or Without You was a great leap forward for U2. It’s the first U2 song to feature Bono singing in a confessional lower register and Larry Mullen experimenting with an electronically enhanced drumkit; but the key ingredient was once again The Edge, whose use of a prototype of the Infinite Guitar he’d just received in the studio added an EBow-like haunting quality that elevated its sound.

It’s another example of winning simplicity and it was the band’s first US No. 1 single. The Edge believes the triumphal riff at the song’s ending is an encapsulation of his minimalist guitar approach, telling author Bill Flanagan in 1996: “The end of With Or Without You could have been so much bigger, so much more of a climax, but there’s this power to it which I think is even more potent because it’s held back.”

Did you know?

The prototype Infinite Guitar was created by Edge’s friend Michael Brook. It was a kit based on a modified Squier Stratocaster with an inbuilt sustainer created from the feedback between an electromagnetic transducer and a Seymour Duncan pickup, paired with a dedicated rack-mounted unit. The setup has given guitar tech Dallas Schoo several electric shocks.

17. Desire

U2 followed the phenomenal success of 1987’s The Joshua Tree with what was pretty much the most back-to-basics statement possible: Desire, their first single from Rattle And Hum, began with a clattering open E chord before ripping into a raw and fiery interpretation of the Stooges’ 1969, itself based on the timeless Bo Diddley beat. The Edge, however, seemingly couldn’t resist subverting the simplistic formula by using one of rock ’n’ roll’s most lavish guitar creations – the Gretsch 6137 White Falcon – to deliver this burst of refreshingly unadorned, in-your-face rhythm. He also added a frantic John Lee Hooker-on-speed solo and a middle section with a faux killswitch-style effect and some neck-bending modulation – all a far cry from the Starship Enterprise-style guitar effects he’d become associated with.

Did you know?

Desire won the 1988 Grammy for Best Rock Performance by a Duo or Group With Vocal and was U2’s first UK No. 1.

16. A Sort Of Homecoming

After the stark and earnest 1983 War album and tour had turned the band into an arena-rock monster in waiting, U2 saw the predictable path mapped out before them and collectively decided on a creative volte-face that would take them in an artier direction. Producer Brian Eno and engineer Daniel Lanois were persuaded into the fold, Eno left cold by their bombast but intrigued by the notion of experimenting with the band’s sound in the ambience of Slane Castle in County Meath.

Album opener A Sort Of Homecoming leaps out of the speakers with the results of their many experiments. Driven by more sophisticated rhythms than before, it’s an astonishing soundscape awash with layer upon layer of heavenly reverb and delay: its shimmering arpeggios collapse into waves of lush harmony, tempered with the physicality of strummed string scrapes, open strings, delay trails, fingerslides, acoustic and the piercing top end of The Edge’s Vox… it’s an underrated monument to the atmospheric sonic powers the guitarist can summon from his setup.

Did you know?

Coldplay’s Chris Martin is a fan, telling Rolling Stone: “The first song on The Unforgettable Fire, A Sort of Homecoming, I know backward and forward – it’s so rousing, brilliant and beautiful. It’s one of the first songs I played to my unborn baby”.

15. Love Is Blindness

Bono wrote this song during the Rattle And Hum sessions on piano, intending to send it to Nina Simone, but although the band decided it wasn’t ‘U2 enough’ to put on that album, they kept it nonetheless. The song resurfaced during the making of Achtung Baby, when Edge was going through a divorce. When it came time to record his guitar solo for the song, he poured all of his emotion into a frenzy of angry, cathartic tremolo picking. Bono recalled that: “When we went for the take, one string broke and he just kept playing harder and harder. Another string broke. And he has such a light touch, ordinarily, he’s so gentle. All that left him for a kind of rage. And yet there’s not one bum note in there.”

Did you know?

The Edge recalled to The Times: “There was this idea going around during the session that distracting musicians during the course of playing can sometimes, especially on solos, knock the musician out of a predictable path, so they were trying to knock me about and I was not enjoying this concept at all. So I stopped and more or less told them to leave me alone. Then I put down the solo that we ended up using, and it’s one of my favourites”.

14. Zooropa

Beginning with a dramatic sci-fi sound collage of piano, bass, sampled snippets of radio voices and other sound sources, Zooropa is soon dominated by its mighty main riff, combining a filter pedal with two delays on different settings to render what’s being played underneath practically unrecognisable. A prime example of U2’s fastidious approach to recycling, The Edge put together the song’s demo of two halves by compiling a recording of a Dublin jam session with the best bits from a cassette recording of a soundcheck from a few years prior, a collage approach to composition perfectly in keeping with U2’s postmodern aspirations at the time.

Did you know?

The Edge earned his first production credit on a U2 album for Zooropa, appearing as a co-producer alongside Flood and Brian Eno.

13. Unknown Caller

2009’s No Line On The Horizon featured a number of songs created in a makeshift studio in a Riad in Fez, Morocco over a two-week period, a fruitful time for the band. One of these, Unknown Caller, exemplifies the anything-goes mindset. Beginning with the sound of birdsong – that most typical of arena-rock clichés – it puts The Edge’s doubled guitar parts front and centre; unusual pinched chord rhythms contrast with bold chiming arpeggios and single-note lines, while Bono intones surreal mystery text messages before giving way to an interlude featuring a French horn and church organ. The song’s guitar solo, a soaring melodic improvisation that’s as close to conventional rock playing as The Edge ever strays, is the one from the tape of the original single-take performance.

Did you know?

Guitar tech Dallas Schoo told Q this was “one of Edge’s major solos in his life – you won’t hear better than that on any other song”.

12. Gone

1997’s Pop was retrospectively described by Bono as “really the most expensive demo session in the history of music” and the tour’s postmodern stage show, featuring giant lemon-shaped mirrorballs and olives on towering cocktail sticks, was an ambitious but confusing experiment in irony. But it was, for The Edge at least, an opportunity to extend his sonic reach, deploying sounds like the violent, ghostly swoops used throughout Gone. Album producer and engineer Flood described the tone, nicknamed the ‘747 sound’, in an interview with Guitar Player in 1997: “It’s him using his Korg SDD delay heavily fed back and then going into a couple of different fuzz pedals and a Whammy pedal. One of the fuzz pedals was a Fuzz Face. I can’t remember what the other one was, to be quite honest. But the way he’s got it set up, the guitar starts feeding back in a controllable way that sounds very uncontrollable,” adding that he used a semi-hollowbody Epiphone or Gretsch with the setup.

Did you know?

Pop has many experimental guitar moments: Discothèque’s opening sound is an acoustic through a filter pedal and an ARP 2600, for example.

11. New Year’s Day

The Edge is not just a guitar player, either, as this first UK Top 10 hit released in 1983 demonstrates. Live, he’d have to play sustained 12th- and 7th-fret harmonics through delay, then switch deftly back and forth between the piano and guitar within a single beat of a bar, while seated. It’s a tricky switch of mindset to segue from plangent piano melody to playing the song’s searing guitar solo, beginning on the 19th fret of the high E string, and while it may be an ergonomic challenge of his own making, it’s still an impressive stunt to pull off.

Did you know?

The Edge switched from playing his black 1973 Fender Stratocaster on this song to his faded Alpine White 1975 Gibson Les Paul Custom, which he bought in 1982 and is thought to have used on the original recording: the latter instrument was auctioned for his Music Rising charity in 2007, fetching $240,000.

10. Bad

This U2 fan favourite from The Unforgettable Fire soundtracked the moment in Live Aid that spurred them to megastardom – Bono pulling a fan out of the audience and dancing with her as the band looped the song’s riff became a defining moment in the rock mythology of the era. Though it was a spontaneous act, the moment couldn’t have been better chosen to demonstrate The Edge’s ability to transform a handful of simple notes through a delay into a rich, hypnotic, quasi-religious experience: the band had chosen to record in Slane Castle to make their album as live-sounding as they possibly could, and now it was out in the world, the Live Aid performance had shown exactly what they were trying to capture.

Did you know?

The Edge told Guitar World: “[With Bad], I remember working with Brian Eno, and the idea was to keep this two-chord mantra going, keep it going, keep it going, as long as we could stand it, and then bam! We made this chord change, and it was dramatic. Songs like that fascinate me”.

9. Sunday Bloody Sunday

The opening track from 1983’s War album was written by The Edge during a period of self-doubt: in the It Might Get Loud documentary, he recalls: “I remember feeling, well, can I write? Am I a writer? Or am I just a guitarist?” The piece of music he “scrambled to put down” became Sunday Bloody Sunday, an audacious, nonpartisan political statement, partly inspired by the 1972 incident in Derry where British troops killed unarmed civil rights protestors. Over Larry Mullen Jr.’s martial drumbeat (recorded in an echoing stairwell in a Dublin studio), The Edge picks out a clarion-call arpeggio, adds strummed barchords and a ringing harmonic interlude before his solo, which encapsulates all his anger and frustration in a descent and then rise along the second (B) string, milking the dissonances of the ringing open first (E) string for all they’re worth along the way.

Did you know?

The electric violin on the song was played by Steve Wickham, who met The Edge at a bus stop in Dublin and asked if U2 wanted any violin on their album.

8. Even Better Than The Real Thing

What a difference a pedal makes. Initially little more than a Rolling Stones-like riff from the Rattle And Hum sessions, Even Better Than The Real Thing came to life when the Edge bought a DigiTech WH-1 Whammy pedal and added the song’s startling two-octaves-up intro. Ultimately, the finished product is a tour de force of catchy riffery, culminating in a masterfully constructed slide solo where The Edge builds the song’s energy anew, progressing from languid beginnings to a Doppler-effect climax: incidentally, even his slide style is unconventional, given that he plays his slide parts in standard tunings and uses the bottleneck on his middle finger, rather than the more conventional choice of third or fourth.

Did you know?

The song was originally called The Real Thing, but was retitled when Brian Eno insisted the song needed to be “more ironic”.

7. I Will Follow

The very beginning. U2’s first track from their debut album is an instant classic of post-punk and is their most-performed live song. Featuring a sophisticated and enigmatic lyric that Bono wrote from his mother’s perspective, I Will Follow’s mesmerising lick and menacing bassline combine to leave an indelible impression: the famous clip from It Might Get Loud, where The Edge teaches the riff to Jimmy Page and Jack White, underlines its timeless rock ’n’ roll energy. Not that the song didn’t hint at hidden depths to their sound – producer Steve Lillywhite added judicious glockenspiel, and Bono revealed that: “The percussion in the drop was a bicycle spinning, wheels upside down and played like a harp with a kitchen fork.”

Did you know?

The Edge used his 1976 Gibson Explorer for the recording of the first album, and says its lack of bass response was a factor in defining his sound. “I used to stay away from the low strings, and a lot of the chords I played were very trebly, on the first four, or even three strings. I discovered that through using this one area of the fretboard I was developing a very stylised way of doing something that someone else would play in a normal way”.

6. Until The End Of The World

Judas Iscariot betrays Jesus Christ in this biblically proportioned riff-fest from Achtung Baby – no apologies for the number of entries from that album in this list, though: The Edge had taken his playing to a higher plane of expressiveness and creative freedom. Until The End Of The World begins with a red herring squeal of torturously EQ’d Whammy before launching into a series of pneumatic hard-rock hammer blows, octaves, tremolo-picked flurries, characteristic picked harmonics and a guitar solo full of string slides and Slash-esque legato that launches itself out of swells of noise pollution. The It Might Get Loud excerpt where he demonstrates the song unaccompanied offers a fresh appreciation of the craft involved.

Did you know?

Note the capo on the 3rd fret, altering the song’s tonality and enabling The Edge to access the ringing open strings to give his licks extra character and grit.

5. Beautiful Day

2000’s All That You Can’t Leave Behind reconciled the old and the new aspects of U2’s sound, reuniting the band with Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois. Bono asserted more than once that the band were “reapplying for the job… of best band in the world”, and after the trials of previous album, Pop, it was a much-reinvigorated U2 that unleashed lead single Beautiful Day on the world. The most exultant rock song to mention tuna fishing ever written, it tastefully mixed the electronic experimentation of Eno while resurrecting the classic Edge guitar sound: when Edge switched in his Explorer, Vox and delay units to create the song’s icing-on-the-cake final riff, the band were initially reluctant to return to such a heartland signature of their past. But The Edge won out, adding the final piece to a guitar symphony that blended disparate tones and parts into a triumphant whole.

Did you know?

Michael Stipe of R.E.M. is the song’s biggest fan, saying: “I wish I’d written it, and they know I wish I’d written it. It makes me dance; it makes me angry that I didn’t write it”.

4. Pride (In The Name Of Love)

U2 sound engineer Joe O’Herlihy recorded an Edge chord progression during a soundcheck on the War tour and the idea eventually became the seed for Pride (In The Name Of Love), the centrepiece of The Unforgettable Fire album and one of U2’s torch songs. The Edge had recently upgraded his erstwhile Memory Men in favour of the superior clarity and modulation possibilities of two Korg SDD-3000 rackmounted digital delays, and on this, their triplet repeats enable The Edge’s deceptively simple parts to either chime out across the mix or provide a storm of percussive propulsion. The guitarist has said it’s one of his favourite guitar parts and it’s surely one of the most outright epic guitar performances ever committed to tape.

Did you know?

Chrissie Hynde from The Pretenders contributes backing vocals, though she’s credited as Mrs Christine Kerr.

3. Where The Streets Have No Name

The documentary It Might Get Loud has a sequence where The Edge listens to his old four-track demos of Where The Streets Have No Name, and even at this stage of its development, it’s blindingly obvious that the circling, cathartic opening lick the guitarist had summoned from his sonorous 1973 Strat was a ready-made classic. Perhaps it was the pressure to do it justice that meant the song’s birth was a painful one – it took two weeks of work to get it across the line, frustrating producer Brian Eno to the point that he wanted to erase the multi-track. “He’d actually decided to do it,” The Edge recalled. “But the assistant engineer wouldn’t go. He stood in front of the tape machine, saying, ‘Brian, you can’t do this.’ And so he didn’t, but it was close.”

Did you know?

Daniel Lanois recalled to Mojo: “It was a bit of a tongue-twister for the rhythm section, with strange bar lengths that got everybody in a bad mood. I can remember pointing at a blackboard, walking everybody through the changes like a science teacher”.

2. Bullet The Blue Sky

Jarringly sequenced straight after With Or Without You on The Joshua Tree, Bullet The Blue Sky found The Edge channelling the spirit of Hendrix to soundtrack Bono’s impassioned lyric about the effects of punitive US foreign policy on the people of Central American countries such as Nicaragua and El Salvador, where he’d witnessed military jets and gunfights on an Amnesty trip in 1985. Bono had pointedly asked Edge to “put El Salvador through an amplifier”, and the guitarist slathered Larry Mullen’s Bonham-esque drums in howls of feedback, descending scrapes of slide,  atmospheric sound effects and hard-edged funk stabs with a fire to rival that of Band Of Gypsys’ Machine Gun.

Did you know?

The Hendrix connection was strengthened by the inclusion on Rattle And Hum of an excerpt from Jimi’s rendition of The Star-Spangled Banner preceding a live performance of the track.

1. The Fly

Famously described by Bono as “the sound of four men chopping down The Joshua Tree”, The Fly encouraged the singer to invent a new ‘persona’ to deliver the song’s pithy aphorisms, his voice ranging from a menacing breathy telephone-EQ’d whisper to a soaring gospel falsetto. But bug-eyed sunglasses or not, even his contribution to the track is decisively upstaged by the abrasive six-string soundscape that spikes the song with regular jolts of electrifying energy.

The tone used is an unholy fusion of flange, wah, delay and dirt, and as producer Daniel Lanois has confirmed that many of Achtung Baby’s guitar parts were created using one of the two Korg A3 processors Edge brought to the sessions, it’s safe to assume the unit is involved somewhere in the signal chain. Live, The Edge has varied the guitars he’s used to play it over the years, including a Strat, a Les Paul and even a Line 6 Variax 700 acoustic. Additional guitar sounds were added on top of the original mix, on the fly as it were, to create the phasing artefacts in the song’s intro.

Yet it’s the track’s solo section where the Edge really outdoes himself, using the springboard of a complete cycle of the song’s verse-to-chorus section to create a series of licks that range from whammy-bar swoops to descending and ascending runs that seem to reach their apex before finding new places to go. The ultimate example of The Edge creatively rinsing his guitar effects for every drop of emotional content, The Fly is his crowning six-string moment.

Did you know?

When David Bowie visited the band after they’d finished The Fly, he told them they should re-record it.

 Why do you think taxes and prices go up the same day? 

The cost of living keeps rising to make sure people keep suffering. 

How else could there be men with millions when most suffer.

The truth is, there’s more than enough. 

No one has to suffer.

 I'm going to go out on a limb and say, based on your casual use of the word "libtard" (which is clearly derived from the derogatory term "retard" and is clearly meant to be derogatory in this instance) and your assertion that a transphobe with a persecution complex is a "strong female role model," that you probably have a *little* more in common with the goose-stepping pro-eugenics crowd than most folks to your left do.

 Knollys Tunnel was named after the acting Colonial Govenor of Trinidad and Tobago, Sir Clement Courtenay Knollys, who officially opened the new railway tunnel on August 20th, 1898

 

In the original Old Testament eve was not Adam’s first wife. God made Adam and his first wife out of clay. She was part human the top half part snake the bottom half. She was a disobedient wife so Adam had god kick her out of Eden which the name Eden being the garden  that started man was taken from the Sumerians they had it first by thousands of years. Then god took Adams rib and made eve his obedient wife. It was Adam’s X wife that tricked eve into eating the apple not Satan a talking snake but Adams X wife half woman half snake. That entire story came from the Egyptians. They had a half snake half woman in an apple tree poring apple juice down from the tree on to a man and the ancient drawing speaks volumes. The fact the Bible changed it self from that earlier story to a talking snake shows how fake it is just changing its story to suit the priest as they go along. 

 

Joseph Charles, the creator of Trinidad and Tobago’s famous Solo soft drink, was born Serjad Makmadeen in Princes Town in 1910. 

The son of an East Indian immigrant father and Martiniquan mother, Charles became a gardener at age 10 in order to assist his family financially. In 1922, he moved to St. James and began working at a bakery, where he became a top salesman by cultivating a loyal clientele. 

In later years, he purchased the “Delaware Punch” soft-drink company on Patna Street, St. James. He and his wife bottled their drinks manually, producing one bottle of soft drink every two minutes. He sold the drinks to customers while continuing his bread delivery service. 

When Charles attempted to market the drink to foreign investors, no one responded to his letters signed with his given name. He decided to change his name to Joseph Charles, which immediately garnered investors. 

During World War II, Charles decided to purchase the entire stock of a Canadian bottling company that was shutting down because there was a shortage of glass bottles. When he received them, they were all printed with the word “Solo” and the image of a pilot having a drink after completing a solo flight. Charles decided to keep the bottles and have the name “Solo” become the brand name of his soft-drink company, with their trademark heavy glass bottles. This is how Solo Beverages began.

Solo Beverages has consistently supported local endeavours such as sports (The Trinidad & Tobago Great Race), music (the Solo Harmonites) and talent shows like Scouting for Talent and Mastana Bahar. 

 

 

 A Giant headstone marking the spot where we all used to live and play and slaughter the innocent.

 .....CORONAVIRUS   INFORMATION.....

*Spain has declared emergency which may extend to March 2021*

 *UK ANNOUNCED ONE MONTH LOCKDOWN, FRANCE 2 WEEKS.*

*GERMANY FOR 4 WEEKS*

*ITALY ALSO TO FOLLOW SHORTLY...*

*ALL THESE COUNTRIES CONFIRMED SECOND WAVE IS MORE DEADLIER...*

                     SO WE HAVE TO TAKE UTMOST CARE AND MAINTAIN ALL PRECAUTIONS*.

*

*WE WILL NOT BE ABLE TO TAKE THE 2ND PHASE OF LOCKDOWN...*

*COVID-19 CRUCIAL INFORMATION*

◉ Due to the collapse of the health system, we, the health professionals, have prepared this message for the people, in case you do not want to risk going to the hospital immediately;

  __________

  ◉ Symptoms appear from the third day after infection (viral symptoms).

   ➙ 1st phase;

  ◉ Body pain

  ◉ Eye pain

  ◉ Headache

  ◉ vomiting

  ◉ Diarrhea

  Runny nose or nasal congestion

  ◉ Decomposition

  ◉ Burning eyes

  ◉ Burning when urinating

  ◉ Feeling feverish

  ◉ Scuffed throat (sore throat)

  ➙ It is very important to count the days of symptoms: 1st, 2nd, 3rd.

  ◉ Take action before the onset of fever.

  ◉ Be careful, it is very important to drink plenty of fluids, especially purified water.  Drink plenty of water to keep your throat moist and to help clear your lungs.

  __________

  ➙ 2nd phase;  (from 4th to 8th day) inflammatory.

  ◉ Loss of taste and / or smell

  ◉ Fatigue with minimal effort

  ◉ Chest pain (rib cage)

  ◉ Tightening of the chest

  ◉ Pain in the lower back (in the kidney area)

  __________

  ➙ The virus attacks nerve endings;

  ◉ The difference between fatigue and shortness of breath:

  • _Lack of air is when the person is sitting - without making any effort - and is out of breath;

  • Fatigue is when the person moves around to do something simple and feels tired.

  __________

  ➙ It takes a lot of hydration and vitamin C.

  __________

  Covid-19 binds oxygen, so the quality of the blood is poor, with less oxygen.

  __________

   ➙ 3rd phase - healing;

  ◉ On day 9, the healing phase begins, which can last until day 14 (convalescence).

  ◉ Do not delay treatment, the sooner the better!

  __________

  ➙ Good luck everyone!

  It is better to keep these recommendations, prevention is never too much!

  • Sit in the sun for 15-20 minutes

  • Rest and sleep for at least 7-8 hours.

  • Drink 1 and a half liters of water per day

  • All food should be hot (not cold).

  ➙ Keep in mind that the pH of the coronavirus ranges from 5.5 to 8.5.

  So all we have to do to eliminate the virus is to eat more alkaline foods, above the acid level of the virus.

  As;

  ◉ Bananas, Lime → 9.9 pH

  ◉ Yellow lemon → 8.2 pH

  ◉ Avocado - pH 15.6

  ◉ Garlic - pH 13.2

  ◉ Mango - pH 8.7

  ◉ Mandarin - pH 8.5

  ◉ Pineapple - 12.7 pH

  ◉ Watercress - 22.7 pH

  ◉ Oranges - 9.2 pH

  __________

  ➙ How do you know you have Covid-19 ?!

  ◉ itchy throat

  ◉ Dry throat

  ◉ Dry cough

  ◉ High temperature

  ◉ Difficulty breathing

  ◉ Loss of smell and taste

  __________

  DO NOT keep this information just for yourself, give it to all your family and friends.

  🔥🍃🌹🍃❤️🍃🌹🍃🔥🍃

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Did You Know - The amazing story of the Cocal (Manzanilla)

SO there was once this man, a hundred years ago, living at a research station on the Gasparee Isle, and studying fish. One day he decided to take a trip over to Trinidad’s east coast to see if he could get lucky with a tarpon, grouper or giant catfish. 

Since cars were only invented a few years before and only the super-rich Trini had one, Harry Vincent and some partners took horses and buggy across the island, trotting through places since changed beyond recognition, until he got to that epic strip of land, now the focus of everyone’s attention. 

Vincent would later write about his adventures in a book, describing the Cocal, plantation of coconut palms between Manzanilla Point and the Ortoire, in ways present-day visitors would readily identify with – sun, sea, the booming sound of the surf, a seashore wide and billiard board smooth at the low tide, clean except for the driftwood coming from the Orinoco, a place where people can think big in a small, and small-minded island. 

He described the work of the coconut estate, and of how the nuts were picked and husked to make rope, how the copra was dried to be taken to the shipping depot near the L’Ebranche River, for the weekly pick-up by RMS Kennet coastal steamer. 

The steamer had to avoid the treacherous Carpenters rocks at Manzanilla Point, which, the historians record, gave birth to the Cocal when coconuts (not native to here) took root along the coast after floating ashore from an East Indies vessel headed to South America, but which struck the rocks and sank in the 1700s. 

So detailed was Vincent’s account, that he even wrote down what he ate that day, a menu that holds the clue to why there are only about 40 of those adorable manatees surviving precariously in the Nariva River. 

After commenting on the fine leather made from one of the harpooned 600-pound sea cows, Vincent said he sat down for a delightful dinner of Mayaro oysters, chip chip soup, forcemeat balls of minced paludes, roast lappe, cirique sauce in white wine, boiled grouper, ailerondes stewed, Seville orange sauce, blue rock crab, Mayaro soles, iced coconut cream with seaside grape jelly, and some potted manatee brains on toast, washed down with some contraband Dewar’s whisky, and vatted rum. 

Vincent wasn’t the first to fawn over this special part of Trinidad. It was described by English novelist Charles Kingsley as he approached on horseback from the north in 1869, who wrote: All this while the dull thunder of the surf was growing louder and louder; till, not as in England over a bare down, but through the thickest foliage down to the high-tide mark, we rode out upon the high-tide mark, we rode out upon the shore, and saw before us a right noble sight; a fiat, sandy, surf-beaten shore, along which stretched, in one grand curve, lost in a haze of spray, 14 miles of Coco palms. This was the Cocal; and it was worth coming all the way from England to see it alone. I at once felt the truth of my host’s saying, that if I went to the Cocal I should find myself transported suddenly from the West Indies to the East. Just such must be the shore of a Coral Island in the Pacific. 

This description, too, would receive the endorsement of locals who come to this beach, also with their rum, and sometimes their worries, to bathe, cook, fish, and drown. Others know it as the place to hold undisturbed Hindu pujas and Spiritual Baptist rituals. 

Kingley’s reconnoitre of the Cocal also took him to the very wetland that reminded us last week that man cannot always conquer nature, when the water from the Nariva Swamp created new channels across our puny road to get to the sea. 

He wrote: Inside the Cocal, two hundred yards to the westward, stretches inland a labyrinth of lagoons and mangrove swamps, impassable to most creatures save alligators and boa constrictors. But amid this labyrinth grow everywhere mighty trees, balata in plenty among them, in every stage of decay; dying seemingly, by gradual submergence of their roots. 

Kingsley also wrote about the plantation house in which he stayed, describing: A large and comfortable house, only just rebuilt after a fire, stood among the palm trees, between the sea and the lagoon; and behind it the barns, sheds engine-houses of the coco-works; and inside it a hearty welcome from a most agreeable German gentleman and his German engineer. 

Both writers recorded their travel south towards Mayaro (the amber hue of the palms, sea beans, the Negro workers), of using the seashore as their highway, and of crossing the Nariva and Ortoire rivers by ferry. 

So we took a drive to the disaster zone last week to see what remains of this description. It’s still one of the most satisfying places you can visit in Trinidad. 

That plantation house has been replaced by a newer structure but you can still see some of the original support buildings and abandoned barrack houses, now the property of the Manatee Conservation Trust, which acquired 500 acres of the Cocal in 1997 from Huggins Trust Ltd, which had owned the operations for a good 100 years. 

But the Cocal’s history is at least twice as old, extending all the way back to Spain’s 1783 Cedula of Population which allowed French planters and their slaves to emigrate to the island with their slaves (the British would conquer Trinidad 14 years later) Mayaro-born historian/writer Michael Anthony knows quite a lot about this, and about the history of that road ruined by the floods. 

According to Anthony’s research, the Cocal is a Spanish word for an abundance of coconut trees. 

Some of those trees were already in existence, Anthony knows, since the map of Trinidad drawn by Captain Frederick Mallet, who was part of Sir Ralph Abercromby’s invasion force in 1797, shows the coconut trees drawn on that coast. 

Anthony said the Cocal belonged to the Spanish Cabildo, but when the Cabildo was abolished in 1840 and a Town Council was formed in Port of Spain, it took over. In 1853 when Port of Spain got a Borough Council, the Borough Council inherited that responsibility. 

The Bovells are known to have leased the Cocal as an estate, from about 1880, worked it for a long period, with that strip of road (which then amounted to no more than a sandy track) used by workers to access the plantation and move produce. 

Anthony said: “When the first (private) buses ran from Sangre Grande to Mayaro at the end of the 1920s, they were forbidden to drive through the Cocal and had to await low tide. In fact no vehicles were allowed through”. 

Vehicles would travel along the shore to the Nariva and Ortoire rivers, where ferries took them across (quite a few tumbled off, residents remembered), which allowed them on to Mayaro. 

Anthony said, in the 30s, that strip of road now used was strengthened and opened for public use. The Cocal, which improved from gravel to macadam, was paved around 1942. In 1971 (the Minister of Works then was Victor Campbell), Anthony recalled a breach of the road as a result of a similar kind of flood event. 

Anthony, who remembered making the ferry crossing once, said the first bridge to be built across the Ortoire near the coast was in 1951. 

Just where the ferry once landed at Ortoire lives Eugene Metoo, 79. He remembers all of it. Grenadian-born, schooled in the fields of a cocoa planation, Metoo remembers that flood of 1971, of working the Cocal climbing those coconut trees in the 50s, picking 1,000 nuts for $2 a day, doing it the old-fashioned way (a tool called a bicycle which he still has) before a back injury, and a downturn in the industry sent him to the sea as a fisherman. 

He has lived all but the first years of his life among those coconut trees and in that swamp. 

While State officials wait for the water to subside and consider how to reconnect Mayaro, Metoo had some advice. 

“They fixing this for people living down here yes, but that road and them coconut trees is for everybody in Trinidad,” he said.

Photo: Crossing the Ortoire by ferry. This image appears in the book "The Sea Fish of Trinidad, written by Harry Vincent.

 Why can’t people recognise the difference between a method of ruling and a method of social system? Communism has absolutely no relevance to who gets in power, that’s decided by democracy/dictatorships etc. Communism is the idea that business is publicly owned etc. It bugs me so much how people don’t understand that a dictatorship is what they’re against (one guy telling us all what we can and can’t do).

 

 

Yeah I was willing to hear Ice Cube out but now he’s retweeting posts that’s equating Joe Biden to Adolph Hitler...That’s a bridge too far for me...It also highlights a real serious issue that happening right now among a lot of Black men in amerikkka right now...There are actually Black men that are inadvertently contributing to wh*te supremacy and the Trump campaign by not being politically aware, let alone politically savvy...It’s these same basic, type of dudes that champion money over everything else and treats capitalism like not just their religion but as their entire sense of spirituality in a way that highlights the depths of the present African-Amerikkkan man’s brand of anti-intellectualism...I recently heard a statement that explains this syndrome in it’s most simplistic terms in saying that there are simply too many Black men that want to be wh*te men, in the sense that these dumb asses really honestly believe that getting ‘the bag’ will clear them of any and all racism in a country that have never not been racist towards them, no matter rich or poor...This isn’t on Black women at all because the average Black Woman in amerikkka ain’t politically stupid enough to buy into a premise that is to this level of simplicity...Typically the Black Woman In amerikkka is far more politically sophisticated than the average Black man...All of this is best exemplified by some of this dumb shit that Ice Cube has been saying and doing lately...Nah I ain’t about to totally cancel dude but right now I ain’t fuckin’ with Cube but I am seriously disappointed in this mf right about now tho..

Most people in general or not on the financial level that ice cube is on so he has a lot to lose if trumps not elected he thinking of his low are no tax bills people wake up its about his financial stand not what he can do for the black community his family well being and his money comes first all he need us for is to buy are watch his movies.