Wild Tobago

Pat Ganase recommends shopping for outstanding local products. Published in the Newsday on December 11, 2025 (Photos by Pat Ganase)   The malls are decorated with nutcrackers and fairies and wonderlands foreign to our tropical weather. The grocery aisles are energized by Christmas classics, from traditional carols to soca parang. All in the effort to drive sales. Businesses, corporations and some economists promote the positive effects of Christmas: more (even temporary) jobs in retail and service sectors, increases in production and spending, uptick in travel and tourism, and in some instances, generous donations to charities. While Christmas revenues in Western countries may amount to one-fifth of annual income, there is a downside to Christmas production and spending that ought to be considered: stress for consumers especially those who just cannot make ends meet; the ensuing financial struggle for those with credit cards; over-consumption and waste that result in environmen...

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 ...