Echoes of the Past

One Small Step For Me

October 28, 2025by

This blog post offers a personal glimpse into life in Trinidad around 1969, a time marked by the transformative global events explored in the companion article, 1969 – A Year of New Beginnings, which quietly set the rhythm of everyday life in the 21st century.

Around the same time that mankind was making two giant leaps, I took my first small step towards getting an education. In September 1969, I started attending the Gran Couva Roman Catholic School. The school was actually located in Pepper Village where I lived. It was the only primary school in the area and students from nearby villages such as Gran Couva in the west and La Vega in the east also attended this school. The school population at that time was about 150.

Location of Pepper Village in Central Trinidad

The school was less than 300 metres from my home. I walked to school in the morning with my two older sisters, returned home for lunch, walked back to school again, and finally returned home later in the afternoon. The students from the nearby villages were not so fortunate. They had to stay in school all day.

It was a Roman Catholic school and all the students prayed together in the morning, before going for lunch, after returning from lunch, and before being dismissed in the evening. Once a year, representatives from the Gideons International organization came to the school to drop off copies of the King James Version of the New Testament. This was how all the students came to possess a New Testament regardless of their faith.

I am not sure if my parents knew about this. Perhaps they weren’t aware, or if they did, they didn’t mind or didn’t care. The important thing was that their children were attending school and they made sure that we had all the materials needed for success. They were so occupied in providing for their children that they probably had no time to evaluate what was being taught, trusting the education system to give their children opportunities that they themselves never got. Doubtlessly, they would have heard the Prime Minister, Dr. Eric Williams, saying to the first cohort of students who wrote the Common Entrance Examination a few years earlier in 1962, “you carry the future of Trinidad and Tobago in your school bags.”

“You, the children, yours is the great responsibility to educate your parents, teach them to live together in harmony…To your tender and loving hands, the future of the Nation is entrusted. In your innocent hearts, the pride of the Nation is enshrined. On your scholastic development, the salvation of the Nation is dependent…you carry the future of Trinidad and Tobago in your school bags.”

Dr. Eric Williams, August 30, 1962
First Prime Minister of Trinidad and Tobago (1962-1981)

I remember using my first handheld device the year that I started school. It was a slate. The teacher would show us how to form letters and digits on the slate using chalk and then erase the writing using a small piece of sponge. We would also draw on large sheets of paper using charcoal.

It seemed that all we did in the first years at primary school was writing letters and drawing with charcoal. Later, we would move on to better technology: the ink pen. The desks had a special place for the ink bottle. I was thankful that the ink was the same colour as my blue shirt since my hands, shirt, and books were often smudged with ink.

One of the best things in school were the many informative posters made by teachers and others which were hung on the walls around the classroom (some of the walls were the blackboards of adjacent classrooms). I studied them in detail whenever I got bored. One poster left a distinct impression on me. It was about a resourceful cat. The cat was thirsty and stared longingly at a half-filled jug of water. There was no way he could reach the water. He then got a brilliant idea: he could drop small stones into the jug until the water level was high enough for him to get the water. This he did and he was soon able to enjoy the water from the jug. Today, the cat would probably be called a critical thinker.

The story conveyed by the poster in my primary school is sometimes called the “The Story of the Thirsty Crow” where the cat is replaced by a crow. The picture on the left shows the crow dropping pebbles into the jug to raise the level of water.

Across the road from the school was “The shop” where we would get our daily supply of “Paradise Plum” (a sweet loaded with sugar) and delicacies such as red mango and preserved plum. On an incline, overlooking the school was the kitchen of someone’s house converted into a small shop that sold mostly items for young school children. The prices were better than the shop but it was scarier climbing the creaking stairs and going into someone’s kitchen to make a purchase instead of the “official” shop which was directly opposite the school.

On the way home for lunch, I soon got into the habit of buying a Solo soft drink. My favourite was Grape but I also enjoyed the pure sugary taste of Cream Soda. I held on tightly to my Solo making sure it didn’t fall as I made my way up the hill and then down again to my home. During lunch, I stared and stared at the bottle, looking at what I thought was the one of the men who had recently landed on the moon. Life was coming together in a wonderful way. I was happy to be going to school and having the luxury of gulping down my own Solo, knowing that the man pictured on the bottle had achieved the impossible for mankind. Many years later, I would learn the real story behind the man on the Solo bottle. But that is a story for another day.