DEAR EDITOR: To get straight to the point, on May 1 we went to the Holy Rosary Church and prayed particularly for those multitudes of Africans who died or were broken by their capture and voyage across the dark Atlantic; and not forgotten were the souls who crossed the “Kala Pani” (dark waters) from India and the Kwangdong coast of China.

Healing a spiritual wound

Fr Clyde Harvey, well prepared and deeply reflective, led us from ritual and remembrance in the schoolyard through a narrow doorway into the church and gathered us around Christ’s Sanctuary.

As I write, I realise the stirrings of so many ashes of memory, so much blindness to the pain and terror of those who died…in the capture and the crossing (revisit the Amistad movie).

We prayed for healing of broken families, for the healing of memories and for Jesus to receive the souls to rest in peace in His Kingdom. And we sang the Libera (set us free!)

An American study asserts that over the entire period of slavery, at least twenty million Africans were transported to the New World. Those arrive alive. Today their descendants populate the Hemisphere and elsewhere.

Today the Holy Rosary Church, the most beautiful in our Archdiocese is being restored. Scaffolding up, a roof to build, paint and plaster to follow.

Pause to reflect that originally commenced in 1892, this church took 18 long years to be completed (1910).

Whose labour quarried the limestone and shaped each block in Laventille? Who cast and moulded the columns, who laid and polished the tiles? Who hauled up the bells for the steeple with muscle and rope?

I know this church quite well – in its construction and imposing presence, it is one small testimony to the mighty engine of imported labour that transformed Trinidad and Tobago from a forested and swampy wilderness. And that, my friends, is historical fact..

We thank Fr Harvey, the Mawasi drummers and the parishioners for helping so many of us to “Remember the Passage” of our ancestors, and for collectively not only praying for their rest but celebrating all those who survived.
Arthur L. Mc Shine
Port of Spain

Dear Editor, Please allow me to express my heartfelt joy and congratulations to our under-17 football team (Junior Soca Warriors).   I wish them all the best in their preparations for the 2007 FIFA Under 17 World Championship.

It is my hope and desire that we experience victory at the Gold Cup.   Send the strongest team to the Gold Cup.  Please, do not leave out our 2006 World Cup Soca Warrior heroes.  Select the players for the Gold Cup on the merit of fitness and performance.
Committed Soca Warrior fan