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Around Trinidad and Tobago
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Blanchisseuse must not be forgotten - Pt 3
Blanchisseuse Fishing Center
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Staff Article
Interview Recorded: March 01, 2005
Posted: March 07, 2005
The fishing industry is bad too. We used to be very well supported in the fishing area, but dat is no more. One, it is very expensive; fishing now is very expensive with things like the boat, gasoline and engine. I will say too, dat de fisher-men of themselves are destroying their own selves, because, in de end of de times, is man self destroying man, not nobody else.
You find certain time in de year, around July, August, September, de fish come by de rocks to lay an' dat is de time the fisher-man find, there they could go an' catch out de fish. So when dey catch out de fish, yuh cyar come back, yuh suppose to go out to sea to catch the fish. I think dey have laws, but dey doh enforce the laws. You have de lobster, is de same t'ing. Ah fella go to catch lobster 'cause he want ah dollar and he catch de lobster with de eggs, you have de turtles with de same thing. You have hunters hunting right through de year, an' hunting season close in February. No measures are being put into place to deal with these things.
Coming back to de fishermen again, they have the nets, and they put the nets around, the trawlers pass and when they take one they throw, so it destroy the fishing ground. Ah see in de papers last week, just now we won't have any fish in Trinidad. Friends and Fisher Men of the Sea have been addressing the issue of protecting the grounds all de time. There wasn't a good response at all. What they are saying is, on the North Coast, you have a certain distance you could come in with trawlers, and people come anytime. If you do see ah coastguard they come and they go back and when you leave and you go back in de afternoon, you have the whole night and they trawl de whole night, an' in de morning time, they leave and they go out. Those are the things of destruction in the fishing industry. So you just have a big fishing area and the fish price will always be high. You have very little people participate in the fishing industry as a livelihood now, about ten or fifteen. We have a problem in Blanchisseuse. The people doh get together. The only thing that survived in Blanchisseuse in the past fifty years is the Village Council, but no groups went past five or six or months in anything. You have no PTA, no Fisherman association, nothing at all, so it becomes hard when you have to deal with everything. The whole North Coast is suffering from that aspect of getting together as ah people and fighting for what you want and getting it.
The problem is selfishness in a way. Again I going back to when we used to be in Best Village concert, when we had no light an' we had to pump the gas lamp to have the rehearsals. Since we have electricity, we stopped, and we went and we win the finals for five consecutive years. Mind you, when we were going in those days, we had to pass through Arima to go to Port of Spain, an' when yuh come back from the competition is two three o clock in the morning you reach back home, but then everybody was happy, everybody participated. So sometimes ah watch the selfishness. You get dat at Christmas time. Yuh not going to drink or eat, but everybody going by dey neighbour and socialize, now everybody satisfy to stay at home. That has gone completely out of Blanchisseuse. Education should be the main thing of the parents, of us the elders, who have not encouraged or bring our children with us when we say 'yuh have to go'. Long ago when somebody dies in Blanchisseuse, ah will go back to dat again, I think many of the cultural dances were from de wake, 'cause when yuh go to ah wake, everybody will bring de milk or de sugar, an' whole night yuh dancing, an' yuh "qua-qua" with yuh bamboo, an' yuh play morals an' all those things. These things are no more.
If somebody dies now, an' yuh not ah favorite, yuh eh getting no body in de wake. Whole night yuh have everybody singing at de table. Some of the things they recorded come from de wakes. I remember Phil Simmons an' all dem use to come here, they dancing and they writing. All those fellas who use to come here like Aubrey Adams, they use to come all de time here in Blanchisseuse, an' is for those things they come to collect the culture and go and make money. These are some of the things longtime dat was good in de community. The togetherness, dat love and happiness, dat joy, those things have completely died out. Is selfishness dat taking place and unless that aspect of it cannot come back and the parents making sure that the child 'has to go', it gone. If you having sports in school, ah child says he not going, the parents say a'right. The parents must say yuh have to go, you are part of the school an' so it is from dat stage it starts. That is what send us back and I doh know how dat coming back, but it should come back.
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View Blanchisseuse Photo Album at:
www.trinisoca.com/gallery/blanchisseuse
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