Newsday begins its community series today.
We will highlight TT’s often forgotten people who are making a difference and the communities in which they live.
Carol Quash
THE escalation of violent crime in Trinidad and Tobago has left communities mentally and emotionally scarred – some more than others – with people fearing to venture into what have been deemed at-risk areas.
But while the view from the outside may be one of doom and gloom, people from in these communities have other stories to tell – stories of promise and projections, of silver linings amid dark, ominous clouds.
“La Horquetta is a community with a lot of potential,” resident and standard two teacher at La Horquetta South Government Primary School Rhonda Jones told Newsday on March 12, as she sat with her students in the noisy schoolyard during their lunch break.
Jones, a 2024 Hummingbird Silver medal recipient for Community Service and Sports and Trinidad and Tobago United Teachers’ Association’s Frank B Seepersad Memorial Award for Teacher of the Year 2019, is well-known throughout the community for the positive work she does there and the motherly stance she takes with the young.
“I came to live here when I was 16 while attending Malick Senior Comprehensive. Now I’m 57; I’ve lived my life here, basically,” and has since been fiercely advocating for the betterment of the community, with a special focus on the young people, and in a holistic way.
Jones is always planning team-building activities, such as the Easter Sunday sports day, which sees the entire community come out to support.
“We have a march-past, obstacle races, novelty races; the community really comes together for that event.”
Then there are events like pageants, calypso shows, African drumming classes, and pan classes at the panyard.
“Right now I have 11 boys learning African drumming, with four of them on the autism spectrum...
“I do cultural stuff to get them engaged. The girls are doing a dance that I am choreographing,” she chuckled.
“I’ve been doing this for 25 years, and I’ve taken a few cultural courses at UWI, so I think I have an idea of what I’m doing.
And then there is the La Horquetta Pan Groove (LHPG), founded by the Robinson brothers, who moved to the community when they were in their teens.
[caption id="attachment_1145669" align="alignnone" width="1024"] LH Pan Groove captain/founder/drill master Kirt Robinson, gives a history of the band from inception, at the band’s Phase 5, La Horquetta band room. [/caption]
“The band started with people from various bands in Port of Spain who were from Phase Five and different parts of the country,” Kirt Robinson said of the LHPG when Newsday visited the panyard.
“My brother (Roger) made miniature pans you could play,” until, with the assistance of someone who worked off-shore, he got drums to make standardised-sized pans.
“We used to practise under the street light,” and eventually, when neighbours started to complain about the noise and the pans hampering easy movement on the street, they we
