My name is Dr Everold Hosein and I am the political leader of the Green Party, the least-well-known political party in Trinidad and Tobago.
I was born many, many years ago in the small sugarcane village of California, where everybody mind your business.
My father, a tailor, and my mother, a seamstress, had six children and a two-room barrack house. No pipe-borne water, no electricity.
Not sure they finished primary school. But my father read the newspaper every day and had great debates in his tailor shop and my mother taught me long division with a piece of charcoal and a brown paper bag.
We eventually got an upstairs-downstairs house, with water and toilet in the house. Quite an adjustment from the latrine.
Every morning I swept the black soot from the Brechin Castle sugar factory off our gallery.
I work now as a consultant to the WHO, Unicef and other UN agencies.
I live now wherever my head hits a pillow. Some nights it is at home in Indianapolis, some in New York. Some nights it is the Chaguanas family home of a Presentation College friend. Some wherever I am working.
I have not been to Carnival in almost 57 years.
I wouldn’t say I hate modern soca. But after a few songs, I am a bit tired of it.
I am an old man, so my favourite performer has to be the Mighty Sparrow.
There is much in the world I am sad about. In my work with the UN, you just can’t escape the deep poverty in villages all around the world. What people have to do to find food and water. People being taken advantage of. The violence.
The TT Green Party is not affiliated with any other Green Party. But we do follow news coverage of Green Party work in a few European countries, like Germany.
The TT party has a concern about protecting the environment and dealing with climate change. Our Green Party priorities are fixing education and health care and economic diversification.
It is fair to say the TT Green Party is directly connected to me, perhaps in the same way the PNM was once directly connected to Dr Eric Williams.
I initiated the formation of the party, with five others serving on an advisory board.
We began the national jog/walk in California, my birthplace, back in October 2019 and got as far as La Brea.
I doubt this will lead to a cult of personality. I don’t think I have the characteristics around which a cult of personality can be built. I lack that kind of charisma.
I think I understand how politics in Trinidad and Tobago works. And there is not much to like.
Sleeping on pillows outside my land of birth says nothing about my personal dreams for a glorious, fantastic TT and how we can get here.
Our leaders sleep on pillows in TT, but their dreams are of Brooklyn. Or Miami. Not about fixing education in TT.
Some clever journalist described the Green Party as TT’s least-well-known political party. It is funny and true. We are working towards changing that designation.
Français 
English (Canada) 