President Weekes bounces back

President Paula-Mae Weekes, is feeling and doing much better after she fell ill briefly on Tuesday night at the launch of Carifesta XIV at the Hilton Trinidad, St Ann’s.

An official at President House yesterday said, “I spoke to her this morning and she is up and moving around. I checked on her and she is doing fine.”

In delivering her address after she recuperated, Weekes encouraged all participants to exploit the opportunity and to use the festival as a launch pad for future projects and training in their respective countries.

Weekes said her expectations for next year’s festivities, which will run from August 16 to 25, are high given the impressive displays of creativity, energy and ingenuity seen since the inception of the event from 1972.

“I am excited to be at the event and thank you Minister of Community Development, Culture and the Arts for your kind invitation. I see myself as the quintessential Caribbean woman, perhaps because I spent three years at the Cave Hill Campus of the University of the West Indies, which was itself an incubator of much of the region’s talent. It was a huge melting pot of students from one end of the Caribbean to the other who oozed raw talent which was given free expression.

“I was carried away by the atmosphere and lack of artistic talent notwithstanding, became Brickhouse, campus calypsonian. You will be relieved to know that I will not be delivering any renditions tonight as my singular role is to welcome you to this 14th edition of the Caribbean Festival of the Arts, a role that I embrace with as much relish as I did my providentially brief performing incarnation.”

She said while the occasion is a wonderful opportunity for artists to perfect their talent and refine their brands, it also affords a platform to learn one from the other and to discuss ways and means of further collaboration in the arts even outside of the Carifesta framework.