Christine Newallo-Hosein Tower of immense inner strength

Fifty-two-year-old Newallo-Hosein tells WMN it has always been family first for her. She, her husband and four children formed an even tighter bond by always making time to sit and discuss any and everything.

“I find so often that young people grow up and they are oblivious as to what is happening around them and I didn’t want my children to be like that. I wanted them to be au courant with world events. We would sit at home and discuss any issue and this practice had started when the children were very young,” she explains, adding that it was a habit that helped her when her son, Imran, 20, was kidnapped in 2005, and when her daughter, Hannah died at 23 after long struggle with Lupus – a chronic, inflammatory, multi-system disorder of the immune system. Newallo-Hosein seemed to have come to terms with her daughter’s passing.

“She was very close to our God, so she sensed she was going and started to put things into place. She got up on that Wednesday morning. I would normally take her to work. I would wake her up, but I decided I wouldn’t. I would get dressed and give her extra time to rest. After I had my bath, I went to wake her and she said she wasn’t going down.

“I was tempted to ask her if she wasn’t going down today or wasn’t going down at all, but I just didn’t ask. That day she got up, cleaned the entire house, and put up the Christmas tree and called her sister to gift wrap her gifts. Her sister was like, ‘what is wrong with you? It’s November, nobody wraps their gifts now.’ She told her, ‘I am going to die so I need to wrap my gifts.’ Of course her sister did not take her on

“That evening I came home really irritable, and she was not breathing properly. She wanted to go for a drive, so I said come let’s go for a drive. Normally I am the one who would drive. I said ‘let me drive and let your father hold you’ because he was very close to her. She said ‘no, I want you to hold me’. I said ‘let daddy hold you, he would pet you and love you up’, but she said, ‘mom, I want you to hold me,” Newallo- Hosein recalls.

That same night, Hannah was taken to hospital where she suffered a massive heart attack. She had, just days before, graduated from the University of the West Indies (UWI), St Augustine campus.

Newallo-Hosein recalls that her daughter’s last wish was that she would not be put on life support. But it was a battle between her and her husband – he did not want to let his little girl go and she wanted to respect her daughter’s wish of no life-support. Hannah lingered on for 18 days, until she left this world on her own.

As she speaks with WMN the mother and grandmother reflects on the days when her children were young and compares how she raised them and how she now deals with her three grandchildren. Inasmuch as she would give her life for them she tolerated no misconduct then or now. “I don’t spoil them. I don’t think it’s right to spoil children. I love my grandchildren to death, but I don’t spoil them. We have fun, and we indulge at times, but no spoiling. I find it concerning when children are misbehaving and they are not being corrected, or they don’t listen.

“Discipline does not mean that you have to be militant. I know children will be children and they will play and run and get into trouble. Parents need to be more responsible for their children, where they go and what they do. Parents need to make the right decisions now.”

But raising children and politics are not the only skills the MP has. She boasts a “wicked callaloo, a mean pelau, an awesome oxtail, and salt fish buljol mmmm,” Newallo-Hosein says with a smile. And she enjoys a good car rally, with all the speed and revved up engines.

So now that her children are all grown up how does she fill that gap in her life? Newallo-Hosein reminisces on an experience her mother had and vows never to repeat it. “There was something that stood out in my own life and it remained with me in the way I raised my own children. When I was at home with my parents, my mother went through the ‘empty nest’ syndrome. There were six of us, and when we all moved out, she did not seem able to cope with it.

“I don’t think she ever got over it. I saw how painful it was for her to transition, but I made a very strong mental note that I would not suffer that same empty nest feeling.”

Newallo-Hosein used the time to further her studies at UWI, where she pursued Communications Studies and languages. And now with her political aspirations she certainly has her hands full.

“Instead of taking the little that you have and grumble, just enjoy it. That is how I manage my time. I realise that if I did not make a conscious decision to put in place activities to deal with that empty nest syndrome, I would have suffered the same thing my mother did.”

Her commitment as Opposition MP is to serve the people. While she was disappointed that the PP was not given the opportunity to serve another term, Newallo-Hosein pledges that she will work with her constituency to make their environment a better one.