Wild Tobago

Carlina Jules-Taylor talks with Pat Ganase about her journey to Tonci Chocolate, recently presented at the 2024 Trade and Investment Conference. (All photos courtesy Carlina Jules-Taylor)   In Dominica, my mother Marie Jules taught me to make drinking chocolate. Her father was an overseer on an estate with cocoa, coffee, coconut. She grew up with cocoa. Her mother, my grandmother, used to process everything on the estate. They squeezed sugar cane daily and boiled the juice to make visou (thick almost crystallised syrup) which was used to sweeten cocoa and coffee. My grandfather kept cows, so there was fresh milk to add to cocoa. This estate was in La Plaine.   The Taylor family: Tadijah, Theo, Carlina and Randy Marie Jules comes from Dominica to Tobago to help out I grew up in Roseau. My father was a fisherman, Elwin Jules. So my mother left the country and lived in a part of Roseau near the sea called Newtown. Everyone loves coffee but poor people could not buy a lot ...

Falcons, parrots, parakeets are all near neighbours according to Faraaz Abdool who considers the fates of native parrots on some islands of the Lesser Antilles. All photos courtesy Faraaz Abdool  For those of us familiar with the Budgerigar – colloquially known as “budgie” – they are built for flight much like falcons are. Long, tapered wings and a long tail propel and guide a bullet-shaped body with ease at bone-shattering speeds. Even the mint-green Rose-ringed Parakeet, Europe’s first introduction to this family courtesy Alexander the Great in 327AD, shares these characteristics.   Delving deeply into the most recent revisions of avian taxonomy, one would encounter a pair of surprising neighbours. Falcons, within the order Falconiformes , famous for their blistering speed and ruthless accuracy, sit adjacent to Psittaciformes : parrots, cockatoos, and their relatives. Indeed, all these birds lie along the same spectrum. A look at Budgerigars in their...

Anjani Ganase, Trinbagonian marine biologist, continues her weekly exploration of islands and the ocean. Today, she looks at alternatives in sustainable tourism through conservation and education, and imagines applications for the tremendous diversity of our own Tobago. This feature was first published in the Tobago Newsday on Thursday October 13, 2016 Follow Anjani Ganase on twitter: @AnjGanase Although Tobago has been tied to Trinidad for the past 127 years (since 1889), it is distinctly different in a lot of ways. For one it has built its own reputation as the quintessential tropical Caribbean island. Over the years, more people remember travelling to Tobago on family vacations than to Trinidad. It is considered to be the truer Caribbean island, less altered and more pristine. Even Trinis know this because it is where we go for a holiday. Tobago has a group of dedicated visitors, and we want to preserve this following and maintain these connections. But do we think t...