Caribbean Datebook (March/April 2016)
Your guide to Caribbean events in March and April, from St Patrick’s Day in Montserrat to jazz in Tobago
Issue 138 (March/April 2016)
Word of mouth (March/April 2016)
Dry season is now literature season in the Caribbean, with half a dozen festivals bringing writers to readers, plus a new exhibition in London captures the heyday of lovers rock
Let them bloom: Kristin Frazer
Designer Kristin Frazer of the British Virgin Islands creates swimwear inspired by desert blooms, to flatter bathing beauties of all shapes
Easter fare
No Caribbean holiday is thinkable without a delicious menu — and Easter weekend is no exception. Nazma Muller shares recipes for seasonal dishes from up and down the islands: Jamaican Easter bun, Bajan-style fried flying fish, and Martinique’s spicy matoutou crab stew
Stories of what-if
Call it sci-fi, speculative fiction, fantasy — it’s one of the world’s most popular genres of storytelling, and a growing wave of Caribbean writers are bringing our voices, culture, and history to tales of mythical pasts and thrilling futures, lost worlds and faraway planets. Philip Sander talks to sci-fi authors Nalo Hopkinson, Tobias Buckell, Karen Lord, and R.S.A. Garcia
Troy Weekes: “We too can be creators”
Barbadian Troy Weekes, systems designer and education entrepreneur, on rethinking how children learn and how Caribbean people interact with digital technology— as told to Tracy Assing
Angelo Bissessarsingh: back in times
For Trinidadian Angelo Bissessarsingh, what started as a childhood obsession with yesteryear artefacts grew into a passion for researching and writing about history that’s helped reignite public interest in T&T’s complicated past. Judy Raymond tells the story of a young historian’s archive and love for what once was
Wild as the wind: the Pointe-à-Pierre Wildfowl Trust
Picture a lush oasis of lakes surrounded by green forest, where rare ducks swim among waterlilies, cormorants sun themselves on overhanging branches, and the cries of parakeets fill the air — and all this in the middle of an oil refinery complex. Andre Bagoo visits Trinidad’s Pointe-à-Pierre Wildfowl Trust, celebrating five decades of nurturing endangered birds
St Lucia’s Rodney Bay: “Floating, the hills clear in their distances”
For St Lucian writer and cultural activist John Robert Lee, the sheltered beach at Rodney Bay, on the island’s north-western coast, is a place of idyllic childhood memory and peaceful respite
Nassau, The Bahamas
Many visitors come to the Bahamian capital in search of the Caribbean’s “big three” attractions: sun, sea, and sand. There’s plenty of those on New Providence Island, but Nassau is also a creative hub, home to a vibrant arts and craft scene, amazing food — and, of course, the famous festival of Junkanoo
Have internet, will travel
Think of almost any imaginable human behaviour or need, and you can bet someone’s built a website for it. Travel is no exception. Georgia Popplewell compiles a handy survey of the best travel websites and apps to help you make the most of your trip — to the Caribbean or anywhere else in the world
Voyager among gods
Eighty years ago, an African-American anthropologist stepped off a boat in Kingston, at the start of a journey to investigate Caribbean religion and spirituality. Zora Neale Hurston is better remembered for her fiction, writes James Ferguson, but her book Tell My Horse remains a fascinating record of Jamaica and Haiti in the 1930s
Flying season
Breezy dry season weather across the Caribbean makes Easter the perfect time to test your kite-building and -flying skills
