Today, at this moment, this little outpost is full of Jehovah’s Witnesses. Despite a bit of bad press locally in recent weeks, sharing a bus stop with a group of these somewhat specialised Christians is preferable to finding yourself rubbing shoulders with gangsters and thieves. In fact it’s quite a reassuring experience.

These are mainly teenagers, with a few young adults shepherding toddlers.

Everybody is smartly dressed.

The teenage boys share a kind of flexible uniform: no jeans or T-shirts here. Each has on a fresh-looking, ironed, brightly coloured plain shirt — a salmon pink one here, an apple green one there, a mustard yellow one and a sky blue number. They’re all wearing beige trousers — proper trousers with creases front and back – and, either for protection from the sun or as a gesture of youthful exuberance, a straw hat worn at a slightly rakish angle.

The wackily-positioned hat has been used for many years as a declaration of the wearer’s individuality, and in the case of the baseball cap, the quest for an original angle seems to preoccupy some young men (who would no doubt prefer to be called dudes) to the exclusion of all else.

Little do they know that previous generations were at it too. In The Catcher in the Rye, J D Salinger’s 1951 classic novel of teenage tribulation, our hero wrestles with the conundrum of how to position his red hunting hat: “I swung the old peak way around to the back—very corny, I’ll admit, but I liked it that way. I looked good in it that way.” So there they are, the young Jehovah’s Witnesses (what’s the collective noun? A suspicion of witnesses? A courtroom?). Their pleasant demeanour makes a refreshing change. Then the bus comes and distributes the human scenery to various parts.

When we make the return trip late that afternoon, the place to wait is outside a small supermarket, where the cast is altogether different. Behind the counter sits an irritable 14-year-old Chinese girl, T-shirt sweeping down her slim, untouched body and bearing the slogan, “Good girl with bad…” You can’t see the last word for the counter. Attitude? Handwriting? Breath? She looks like the good part, so let’s leave it at that. Wandering the aisles, looking for sugary drinks, is a short, dark, curvy girl about the same age, with an outrageous wiggle for one so young. Perhaps she can’t help it, but it looks so out of place on her that I have to manoeuvre in front to look at her face. Full, pouting lips accentuated by the brightest scarlet lipstick in the universe. She’s like a cartoon little temptress, a worry to her family and reliant on the rest of the world to do the behaving for her.

Outside in the shade sits a man selling small red peppers and taking occasional sly swigs from a flat half bottle of rum that he keeps safe down the front of his underpants.

Finally the bus comes and takes us down to the beach, to revel in the hissing remnants of a scorching day and let the sea work its effortless magic on tired, sweaty bodies.

At the top of the beach sits a man of perhaps 30 years, playing a flute. He can’t be a busker because he’s in the wrong place, too far away from the passers-by to relieve them of their unwanted change. He seems miles away in his head.

The man with the flute plays and plays, to no one and everyone.

At least he’s not a relentlessly booming sound system, churning out someone else’s bass-heavy mediocrity as if it were in some way unique.

He’s too young to have been at Woodstock, but maybe he feels deprived, denied the chance to do all that hippie stuff when it was fashionable, and resolved, perhaps with herbal assistance, to live out the dream here and now.

He looks like the offspring of one of those 50-something American women who turn up in hot, dusty places, skinny as twigs, burnished by the sun, weighed down with backpacks, with long, dry hair bunched up out of the way and “Independent” spelled out in sparks from their eyes.

You would like to invite her to use your shower, but she would no doubt be affronted and tell you to get your bourgeois, conformist frame out of her self-determined orbit. She’s probably got a Porsche mothballed back in Cal i fornia while she lives out her late rebellion, but here she would rather be on the bus with the real people.

As we negotiate another All Fools Day, we try to charm what we fear by rituals and talismans, the jet beads and the guards, the chains of prayers guaranteed to provide protection and everlasting life and prosperity. And to make assurance doubly sure, we invest in the latest technologies of security, fortifying our homes and body guarding our possessions and our persons against the threat of death.

This April presents us with the image and example of the One who became a Fool for us so that we could really walk in the shadow of death unafraid, because we know how to come out on the other side. Jesus Christ walks ahead of us, the point of attraction that draws us towards full humanness and away from the destructiveness of envy and greed, of fighting to secure ourselves against one another.

We would celebrate the Paschal Cycle of Jesus’ saving death and Resurrection must follow His invitation and example and go into the grave with Him. We cannot conquer death if we stay outside weeping, we have to go into the lair of death and bury all the habits and behaviours that belong to Satan so that we can really live our allegiance to Christ.

We are people who say, “God is good, but the other fellow eh bad neither.” That is a recipe for confusion as we try to walk two opposing paths heading to totally opposite destinations.

We are presented with a choice – look stupid and stop taking part in the corrupt practices that can get us promoted, or at least a little something, be a fool and refuse to buy the test paper to guarantee our place in the best schools, keep your dignity and see if that will carry you in the bank while more flexible persons get the desired spots, continue with this Church thing and see if that will help you better than going by persons who have powers! As we continue to lament the culture of death in our society and in the world, we need to look with the eyes of Christ at what is really at the root of our dis-ease, and from that perspective make a real and radical choice that will take us beyond processions and vigils to the following of a Christ whose genuine love for us led him to choose the way of generosity and surrender and ultimately a shameful death so we could find a way out of the grave and into fullness of life. A hard choice, but the only way forward into Life.

I would like to commend all of those individuals who have been writing to the newspapers to highlight the ills of our present education practices and their continuous calls for significant changes to the system.

The problem is that we have been writing and talking and no one is listening. So what do we do now? Perhaps a more strategic approach is needed where we can target the individuals responsible for the poor performance of the Ministry of Education. What are the roles and responsibilities of the senior officials at the ministry? Aren’t they the ones who should be leading the innovative thinking there? Isn’t it the responsibility of any manager/ CEO to point the way forward for their respective institution/ establishment? Have they been doing that? Sadly, the answer is a resounding “no.” In fact, at a meeting of principals earlier this year, a senior official from the ministry admitted that he is “running around like a headless chicken putting out fires.” Isn’t his admission a true indication of his performance during his entire tenure in office? Can anyone recall a single instance where those who occupy high offices at the ministry would have demonstrated their ability for innovative thinking, that would have created an avenue for improvement of education in TT ? The hierarchy in the ministry is comfortable in allowing CXC to dictate our level of success/ failure rather than formulate strategies for advancement in education and by extension progress in the entire country.

Has anyone given thought to alternative exams and assessments at the Form 5 level from UTT /UWI/COST AATT ? Many of our educators and school administrators have brilliant innovative ideas to help our schools and our students but we continue to be stifled, ignored and sometimes chastised by the ministry when we refuse to toe the line.

Do our leaders in the ministry have the qualities necessary to make a positive difference? It is time for all of them to do some serious introspection and to be honest with themselves.

They do not fit the bill and should vacate their respective posts to allow new intelligence to take charge of TT ’s education.

Let us start rocking the boat if we want to see progress. Let us do all in our power to influence change in the ministry.

We all need to start highlighting and publicising the flaws, inefficiencies, stagnation at the Ministry of Education. Let’s do this for our future generations.

J MILLER via email

Trinidad seasonally gets wind and weather coming from the south __ it is not all Atlantic trade winds from the north-west; and pollution in the southland thereby already makes its way north. The idea that pollution from the proposed smelter will not affect the north of the island is a fantasy.

Air pollution and air-collected pollution coming from the South will increase. There are many other reasons why former Prime Minister Patrick Manning would have decided against the smelter: * The ground in the South is unstable and volatile, being volcanic in substrate.

* Trinidad does not have adequate predictable water resources to make smelter supply certain.

* Trinidad’s small area means nearly the whole artesian network outside the Northern Range is the affected template — and including dammed lakes and ponds.

*The proposed man-made island would stagnate waters in large areas of the Gulf.

* We still do not have the technical capacities for real environment monitoring.

Some reasons were economic: investors want devaluation ahead of development; and the smelter would make the nation beholden to the cyclic cycles of aluminium and to the cartelism going with it.

Also, the shadowy producing- cost base makes it difficult to determine just how competitive the plant would be and how to set prices — more devaluation.

Waste has to be shipped out and liquid waste has to be pre-packaged or risk storage and piping-spillage, on-land and dockside.

This PNM and certain offshore interests turned on Manning and their true feelings have started showing. With that rebellion the People’s Partnership was given its turn and now it is time for the piper to be paid.

Manning declined the smelter when the nation had reserves. Today there are no reserves and the PNM intends to put the country into debt to meet all these commitments they made.

E GALY via email

The first question to come to mind — and which must be answered urgently and credibly if societal collapse is to be averted — is why? Children, regardless of race, class or status, are by nature seldom models of appropriate behaviour.

They must be brought to book and taught — usually by example — how to be “civilised” little people.

That responsibility, of course, falls first and foremost on the parent or parents of the child. After that the child has to be educated and part of their education is “discipline” which, although it is not a school subject, was always a vital part of the curriculum of a school.

Why the change today? Obviously, we now have to face the fact that possibly both parents of today’s wayward children and the school system have to bear joint responsibility for this state of affairs. The answer to me is simply to make each of these parties responsible for what takes place under their aegis.

In particular I would draw reference to many of the “violent” scenes captured on video of events at these schools by (I presume) students as I would hope that teachers and staff would be trying to quell the fracas rather than recording it. In those videos there is a complete lack of adult supervision. Apparently, break time is break time for both student and staff.

When I went to school we were supervised (often without knowing it) at all times during the school day and, having gone to an English boarding school, I can assure you that we got away with nothing.

Before that I attended Naparima Girls in San Fernando and I again assure you that there we were well supervised also.

Unfortunately, today the violence seems to be erupting in “government” schools and I can only lay the blame at the feet of those in power for the same. Economic downturn notwithstanding, those schools are responsible for each and every child under their care and supervision.

The answer to simple-minded folk like me is obvious. The children must be “policed” (and here I don’t mean the Police Service but simply supervised and overseen) by responsible adults.

They must also be suitably punished for any infringement of the rules — which in my day included walking up a staircase on the wrong side. Obviously, the staff at both these institutions had a rota worked out where a certain number of them were “on duty” at break time.

In my school days, at break time you could not stay in the classroom and had to get out into the “open air” (weather permitting, of course). At all times pupils were “supervised.” Hopefully also these “badjohn” children are receiving the appropriate attention. How many of them come from deplorable home conditions it is difficult to say, but surely children like that display certain characteristics and can be sent for early assistance to avoid them becoming next-generation thugs and criminals.

The future lies in our hands. By that I mean the present adult generation.

And not just as postulated by the Father of the Nation — in the school bags of the children.

VIRGINIA VERITY via email

FIFA, the international governing body of football, must be made to understand that teams should not suffer because of officiating errors as happened to TT last Tuesday in the World Cup qualifier against Mexico.

Like is done in cricket, FIFA must give teams the benefit of instant appeals — via TV video replays — adjudicated by the fourth official.

Spectators, FIFA depends heavily on your support, so let your voices be heard.

It may seem improbable what I suggest, but the longest journey begins with one footstep. An avalanche begins with one snowflake.

And remember David slew Goliath.

So let’s take the fight to FIFA and protest, and go viral with it.

Let’s move this mountain of injustice.

We can do it.

Censuring the on-field officials is a must, but it is not enough.

In one instance, the Jamaican referee appeared to have been instructed by the Mexican coach to give Kevin Molino a yellow card.

He should be banned — along with the linesman who ruled our gem of a goal offside — from ever officiating another game.

TT should not have lost to Mexico. I demand justice for all soccer teams now.

VINDA RAMSINGH via e-mail

Run For Food is the second in a series of events organised by the World Food Day National Committee in recognition of World Food Day (WFD) 2017. WFD is held annually on October 16 and this year’s theme is Climate is changing. Food and agriculture must too.

Yolande Agard-Simmons, member of the Committee, and Head of Communications and Events at the Ministry of Agriculture, Land and Fisheries, said Run For Food was Trinidad and Tobago’s version of the Hunger Run.

Hosted by Massy Stores and the committee with support from the Agriculture Ministry, the event will also include an aerobic burn out and a farmers’ market.

Giving details, Agard-Simmons said the Ministry would have a booth to provide persons with seedlings, Massy Stores suppliers would provide samples of their products, NAMDEVCO will be there supplying complementary fresh fruit salads, and from 1 pm, produce would be on sale at the farmers market.

“There are three reasons why we are going this. Firstly, to sensitise the population to grow food for themselves, to encourage them to demand locally grown food to stimulate local production, and to encourage the population to est nutritious food to help them live healthy lives,” she explained.

Agard-Simmons said registration costs $60 and a significant portion of the money would be donated to charitable organisations including the United Way and the Foundation for the Enhancement and Enrichment of Life. People can register online at raceroster.com, or register someone as a gift.

Massy Stores representative, Anthony Choo Quan, said his organisation found the run to be a good fit as Massy was the largest retailer of food in the nation.

Also because the one of the aims of the race was to sensitise the public of how important it is for people to feed themselves.

“It is important for us to support local production, to support local farmers. Since we are the largest retailer, we service the industry by selling a lot of local produce and manufactured products. It is also a great CSI initiative to help inform and encourage the every citizen to grow food,” he said.

Choo Quan said the world’s population was growing so food production should too, and that food security was important for every nation. He added that if people do not support local farmers, thereby providing a demand, the farmers would not continue to grow food.

“If every country does their part, or can produce food to feed themselves, then we would not have an issue” he said.

While Run For Food was the second committee initiative, the first was the Plant Torch in which seven primary schools with active 4-H Clubs participated. A balata seedling was given a school and the club members were given instruction for the care of the plant.

The students kept and cared for the plant for several days and then it was passed on to another school.

Agard-Simmons said not only did the Plant Torch teach children how to take care of plants, but the passing of the plant represented the sharing of the responsibility of achieving the goal of food security.

This year, the schools that participated included Valencia South Government Primary, Hokett Baptiste Primary, Exchange RC, Cedros Government Primary, Siparia Hindu (SDMS) Primary, St Thomas Mayaro Primary, and Sisters Road Anglican Primary.

The balata seedling would be planted at the Botanical Gardens on April 5.

Agard-Simmons said the students were very happy to be part of the second annual Plant Torch.

“It helps children to be more aware of, and have a greater appreciation for what belongs to us,” she said.

Other WFD activities would include competitions (poster, essay, art, photo, quiz, home gardening, etc), field trips, exhibitions, seminars and panel discussions.

Run For Food is the second in a series of events organised by the World Food Day National Committee in recognition of World Food Day (WFD) 2017. WFD is held annually on October 16 and this year’s theme is Climate is changing. Food and agriculture must too.

Yolande Agard-Simmons, member of the Committee, and Head of Communications and Events at the Ministry of Agriculture, Land and Fisheries, said Run For Food was Trinidad and Tobago’s version of the Hunger Run.

Hosted by Massy Stores and the committee with support from the Agriculture Ministry, the event will also include an aerobic burn out and a farmers’ market.

Giving details, Agard-Simmons said the Ministry would have a booth to provide persons with seedlings, Massy Stores suppliers would provide samples of their products, NAMDEVCO will be there supplying complementary fresh fruit salads, and from 1 pm, produce would be on sale at the farmers market.

“There are three reasons why we are going this. Firstly, to sensitise the population to grow food for themselves, to encourage them to demand locally grown food to stimulate local production, and to encourage the population to est nutritious food to help them live healthy lives,” she explained.

Agard-Simmons said registration costs $60 and a significant portion of the money would be donated to charitable organisations including the United Way and the Foundation for the Enhancement and Enrichment of Life. People can register online at raceroster.com, or register someone as a gift.

Massy Stores representative, Anthony Choo Quan, said his organisation found the run to be a good fit as Massy was the largest retailer of food in the nation.

Also because the one of the aims of the race was to sensitise the public of how important it is for people to feed themselves.

“It is important for us to support local production, to support local farmers. Since we are the largest retailer, we service the industry by selling a lot of local produce and manufactured products. It is also a great CSI initiative to help inform and encourage the every citizen to grow food,” he said.

Choo Quan said the world’s population was growing so food production should too, and that food security was important for every nation. He added that if people do not support local farmers, thereby providing a demand, the farmers would not continue to grow food.

“If every country does their part, or can produce food to feed themselves, then we would not have an issue” he said.

While Run For Food was the second committee initiative, the first was the Plant Torch in which seven primary schools with active 4-H Clubs participated. A balata seedling was given a school and the club members were given instruction for the care of the plant.

The students kept and cared for the plant for several days and then it was passed on to another school.

Agard-Simmons said not only did the Plant Torch teach children how to take care of plants, but the passing of the plant represented the sharing of the responsibility of achieving the goal of food security.

This year, the schools that participated included Valencia South Government Primary, Hokett Baptiste Primary, Exchange RC, Cedros Government Primary, Siparia Hindu (SDMS) Primary, St Thomas Mayaro Primary, and Sisters Road Anglican Primary.

The balata seedling would be planted at the Botanical Gardens on April 5.

Agard-Simmons said the students were very happy to be part of the second annual Plant Torch.

“It helps children to be more aware of, and have a greater appreciation for what belongs to us,” she said.

Other WFD activities would include competitions (poster, essay, art, photo, quiz, home gardening, etc), field trips, exhibitions, seminars and panel discussions.

In a statement issued late Friday afternoon, the State agency said the decision to remove Parmassar was pursuant to findings of a forensic audit; initiated by its board in February 2016, “into the award of certain contracts by the company.” The EMBD’s corporate secretary, Cherisse Bengochea, has been appointed acting CEO.

“The EMBD continues to remain focused on executing its mandate and plans in support of its core functions,” the company stated.

Contacted for further information about the matter, an official at the EMBD informed Sunday Newsday that they “cannot comment on the contracts under question.” “This is a confidential matter that is being treated with at the board level. The statement we issued is all that we can share at this point in time, given the nature of what is under review,” the EMBD official said.

Trendsetter Hawks triumphed in the Under-9 and Under-11 categories, while Cap Off Youths emerged victorious in the Under-13 section. In the Under-9 section, Trendsetter Hawks needed kicks from the penalty spot to prevail 1-0, after a goalless scoreline at the end of regulation time.

In the semis, Trendsetter Hawks also needed penalties to oust W Connection 2-1 after a 1-1 regulation time scoreline – Ishan Miller scored for Trendsetter Hawks while Jadon Pollard netted for W Connection.

And Camron Burke notched a pair as Crown Trace brushed aside Central Soccer World 2-0.

And, in the Under-11 category, Trendsetter Hawks blanked Crown Trace 3-1 in the final, courtesy of a pair from Russell Francois and one from Lindell Sween. Jaden Bartholomew was the goal-getter for Crown Trace.

Jaron Pascall found the back of the net as Cap Off Youths edged Crown Trace 1-0 to claim the Under-13 trophy.