Sylvia Kacal an extraordinary life

Seeing there was not an empty pew in All Saints for her memorial service one would think she was a local celebrity, frequently photographed and featured in the local media, but Sylvia Kacal shied away from publicity. She preferred to work behind the scenes to get things done, quietly, efficiently, tirelessly, with a minimum of fuss and bother. Born in 1939, Anne Sylvia Kacal nee Greenwood grew up in Yorkshire, England. On leaving school she went to the University of London where she graduated with a BA in modern languages; she taught for a short time before going to Bristol University to get a teaching diploma. She was always an outdoors person. She was a girl guide and became president of the Guides Club in Bristol where, due to their common interest in Guiding and Scouts,  she met Vlad Kacal. In 1963 they married; Vlad brought his bride to meet his family in Trinidad in 1964. Exciting as the prospect may be for any young bride, adjusting to the climate and culture of Trinidad isn’t always as easy as those giving interviews to the Press often claim. Many a lonely, bored, expatriate British wife had forced her husband to cut short his contract taking him, and his much needed skills, back to the UK. Sylvia sympathised with their plight; this prompted her to join with other UK expatriate wives to found the UK Women’s Club in 1966 to help the newly-arrived find their feet in TT.

As if founding the club and three small children, born in ‘66, ‘68 and ‘71, weren’t enough to keep Sylvia busy, she also found time for the family business outlet “Kacal’s Woodworking, Artists in Wood” and the adjoining art gallery in the Hilton Shopping Arcade. This began Sylvia’s solid contribution to art in Trinidad because she was not afraid to take risks on young, unknown artists; on those breaking free of the traditional tourist market of chattel houses, seascapes, landscapes and Carnival. Tourists were the gallery’s bread and butter: what made the Hilton’s the most exciting art gallery in Trinidad were exhibitions that broke the mould. Shastri Maharaj was but one painter to have his very first exhibition, thanks to Sylvia’s encouragement. Due to the economic decline of the mid-eighties, the gallery closed, yet Sylvia kept up her membership of the Art Society and continued to encourage new talent, arranging exhibitions in banks, the atria of shopping malls, and one on Primitive Art at the National Museum. Sadly, her marriage came to an end in ‘77. However, she did not, like many other expatriate wives whose marriages ended in divorce, pack herself and children back to Britain; she stayed, and for the next eighteen years worked as a class teacher at St Andrew’s School. Sylvia stayed in Trinidad so that the children would not be separated from their father. Her children testify that he came to see them every day; that whatever the disagreements between their parents, they never felt obliged to side with one parent or another.

Their father was always consulted, included in any major decisions affecting the children and their future because, for Sylvia, her children were more important than her loss of a partner. Encouraged by Bishop Anstey teachers Pat Rudell and Claire Henderson, Anne-Marie Kacal became interested in bird-watching and the natural environment and wanted to go on field trips with the Field Naturalist’s Club. Since her daughter was too young to drive, Sylvia too joined the Field Naturalist’s club to chauffeur Anne-Marie and take part in club activities. Did she know this would, eventually lead to a new career for herself — and a career in training bird-watching guides for her daughter? Perhaps . . . Word got around in official circles that Sylvia was a person who could get things done. She was asked, and agreed to serve on the Wetlands committee — nor was that her only appointment to a government committee. She was appointed executive officer for the “Day of 1,000 Trees.” Finding that the Field Naturalist’s Club studied nature but had no mandate to protect the environment, especially the Northern Range that suffered catastrophic losses of natural vegetation in the ‘87 dry season, in the following year, together with Eden Shand and other concerned conservationists, Sylvia was a co-founder of the Caribbean Forest Conservation Association and served four years as the Association’s first president. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. Her children remember how much Sylvia enjoyed Jouvert, coming home exhausted, smeared with mud, grease and laundry blue — and blissfully happy. In 1995, aged 56, Sylvia went back to school — to Cave Hill in Barbados to study for, and obtain, her Master’s Degree in Environmental Management. Back home in Trinidad she began her new career. To gain practical experience in environmental management she did voluntary work training guides in the ecotourism sector — mainly turtle tagging and watching on the North and East Coasts. She worked as an environment officer with Carib Glassworks on their “Freddie Frog” glass recycling programme. She redrafted the Wildlife Conservation Bill.

To gain more experience, she did short stints of voluntary work in Vietnam and, if memory serves her children, Sri Lanka. With that experience on her CV she was able to bid for and obtain contracts to work in Africa, first in Tanzania, and for the past 3-4 years in Malawi. She would take a six or nine month contract, return to Trinidad for a month or two or more to catch up with a growing family, then bid for another contract. Sometimes her contract would involve visiting eco-lodges, indeed much of her work brought her into contact with the hospitality industry in Malawi, one of the poorest countries in Africa. In training local guides she encouraged them to shake hands, to look visitors in the eye, she’d advise owners of basic local tourist accommodation what visitors needed: ie a mirror, a hook for a towel in the bathroom, a bedside light on a bedside table, or a hint to serve local fruit for breakfast instead of imported, expensive cereals. Her last contract was with the Mulanje Mountain Conservation Trust — a massif rising out of a plain covered with tea estates. Shortly before her death she co-ordinated search and rescue efforts to find Dutch medical missionary, Linda who had wandered away from the main party — never to be found again. Such were Sylvia’s skills in dealing with bureaucrats and government ministers the world over, that she persuaded the authorities to order a helicopter into the area to search for the missing woman. Feeling very tired, having just taken part in a game count on the mountain only a week or two after rescue efforts were abandoned, on Monday, October 20 she got sick with malaria. Some strains of malaria in Malawi are very virulent, some are drug resistant. On Friday, October 24 Sylvia Kacal died as she was being driven from the small mission hospital in Mulanje to the hospital in the capital Blantyre, where doctors said that even had she fallen sick in Blantyre, they could not have saved her. Her death has robbed the environment of Malawi — and Trinidad — of a champion who worked tirelessly, and with great compassion, to conserve natural resources while helping people to help themselves. Anne Sylvia Kacal was a private, caring person who shunned the spotlight; she was an environmentalist who, nevertheless, put people first. She was loved, respected, honoured by many. She is most sadly missed.