Back Chat Issue 30

I left Trinidad and Tobago in December and am now back in Sri Lanka. But I look forward to receiving Trinidiary. Your talk on Emancipation Day was right on! We have the same problem in Sri Lanka, as you know, and have been at war for it. I hope fervently that that will never happen in T&T.
Good luck, and keep talking.
//Sri Lanka


I have just been reading your thoughts on Emancipation Day this year...tomorrow? When Aristide was there for this occasion some years ago I was even a guest at the formal event in the Hilton. However, this was just one of many events I had the privilege to attend during my many many visits, fieldtrips with University students and other interested groups over the last 25 years or so! You can imagine that I have more than just a visitors interest in T&T and that I feel very much at home among all my friends and acquaintances on both islands. Also I have reached the conclusion that your small areas of land on the surface of our troubled blue planet reflect in a curious way the rest of the world...whatever concerns people in T&T is on the agenda of many other much larger countries....and you are falling into the same traps or reach the same solutions as elsewhere in the world!
This "talk" is only one of your many "editorials" which I have been
reading....and I am disappointed when you do not include one....with the
same sentiments that you express. Sometimes I feel that I want to cry with you, sometimes I feel sad about the topics you raise but always there is this enjoyable typical Trinidadian sense of humour coming through which leaves no doubt about the mentality of the people. In addition I hear you write with that unmistakable melody of dialect and frequently it makes my day here......and carries me mentally across the Atlantic to the T&T I love.
This is just a simple thank you for you!
//Germany


Your Emancipation message is worth copying to all the newspapers in this country. You see due the large amount of illiteracy in this country
unfortunately their source of information remains the printed matter (rhymes with waste matter) .Why do we allow them to be more of a dominant influence that the intelligentia.  I must add though that my perpective on the Indian part is that the Hindu religion is a culture..a dominant culture..not a sub culture but a competing culture to an already non existent culture as we have failed miserably under 32 years of PNM adminitration to establish a culture of our own.  The India indians laugh at the locals trying to forge their identity. The Africans denounce and ridicule the locals as they are descendants of slaves.  Amazingly this information continues to be buried as people lack the courage to speak the truth... we must continue to flatter as we need something and wont work for it.  Hmmmmm I wonder who taught us that..God bless you whatever your ancestry
//T&T


and to add ah bit more...I just hope that de  Trini's dem go stay sweet and nice and doh forget that  "all ah we is one". 
Happy Emancipation Day folks.
//UK

My compass does point back to Italy, and when u tink about it after the
Caribs and Arawaks did have arrive here, de next man to join de lime is
Cristrobal Columbus. Now we no longer have a discovery day in his honour, so how about an Italian Arrival day. And we Italians not so selfish we willing to let the Spanish and Portuguese share our day. But not the French Creoles, let them get their own day.
//T&T