Family home

AS TOLD TO BC PIRES

My name is Antonia Grazette-De Barros and I love to make other people smile.

I’m originally from Carenage, L’Anse Mitan, the little-little back road.

Now I reside in Barataria with my husband Mark De Barros.

We don’t have any children as yet but we want. Family life is the best thing.

My Grazette family still close-knit, still go to the same church together, plan if one person pregnant, we have transport, everything in order.

I was in my mom’s food place and Mark came by. We had a mutual friend he would come with and we would interact.

And then Mark started to come by himself. And that is how it kick off from there. That was, like, 2011.

Once the mutuality is there, and you all could communicate, you have the same goals, heading in the same direction to accomplish things, like getting your own home and stuff.

I have four sisters and two brothers.

I am the middle child for my mother, a hard position. You doing the majority of the work when Mummy gone. You have to make sure you cook, clean, mop out, sweep out, iron school clothes, not just for you.

But those are the days that bring back the memories, now that you grow up and living with your husband and your sisters with their significant others. Is times like that you’s really miss.

I come from a big-big, close-knit family and we all reside in one yard, aunts, uncles, cousins, everybody together.

When parents go to work, we home with we grandmother. We making sweetbread, we making pone, we making khurma, all kinds of dramas we making.

We had childhood days playing moral, hopscotch, hide-and-seek. Climb tree, fall down and get cut. All good memories.

Primary school was St Ursula’s Girls’ Anglican.

When I wrote SEA, they had now start zoning children and I end up getting zoned Diego Martin Junior Sec with my brother for three years.

Then I end up at South-East Port of Spain for two years.

The school wasn’t bad at all. They had really good teachers like my food and nutrition teacher, Miss Benjamin, and my maths teacher, Mr Ali, my homeroom teacher.

I enjoyed school and did well… in subjects that I liked! But I made sure I didn’t fail the other subjects.

I’m a believer. When you see so much misery in the world, that is when your faith is being tested.

You have to know that when you say you are for God, you have to stand for God.

If BC Pires asks what God did for me, I reply, well, he send his son to die to take away the sins of the world. Because he know that his people would fall short. We would fall short at times. Nobody’s perfect. The perfect being was here already!

When BC Pires says that all religions were designed to elevate men and subjugate women, I say that it’s the first time I ever heard somebody say that.

And I’ve never thought about it in that perspective. That is food for thought.

I learned to cook in my childhood and, while I can’t say I could cook everything, I could cook the majority.

I love food on the whole but if I was to say I had a specialty dish, I like anything pasta. You could win me over with noodles, Alfredo, anything.

I left school in 2010 but went back to lower and upper six do accounting, principles of business, sociology, economics, management of accounts, communications studies and all these other subjects.

And then I did a business management diploma and a human resource degree.

Now I’m going through the process of doing early childcare.

I’ve worked in retail for quite a while.

I love making people smile, making children happy. When I cook food, being able to warm somebody heart.

Just being around me, since I’m small, I always talking, making funny jokes, making people laugh.

My mother Alicia Bonaparte is a perfect example. How strong she is. How independent she is.

I am always happy so I am always laughing.

I watch stand-up comedy, but I don’t have any aspirations to try stand-up comedy. No Antonia Netflix special coming up.

I’m funny enough for my family with we inside joke. But I not funny enough to go up on Netflix and them thing. I have stage fright so I not too much for the spotlight. This Trini to the Bone will be the first spotlight anybody ever shine on me.

So no comedy special in ten years. But maybe a cooking channel. Or something with education for children.

I don’t want to bring it up but is get you down when you see people on the street homeless and you don’t have anywhere where you could shelter them, rain falling and they crunch up on the wall. They hungry, they asking for food to eat. These things does really make me sad.

We out here, we going to work, we have a government. We could at least try to help out these people.

Sometimes I will cook on a Sunday and say, “Mark, let we go and give the people some food and drink.”

These are things my heart does go out for. You can’t help everybody but the one or two you could help, is bring a sense of peace and comfort.

For relaxation, I probably go down by my mom.

My area in Barataria is very quiet and peaceful and nice. But you away, you not around anybody you familiar with.

I miss Carenage bad. I would move back. Closer to family is better. It always have some hustle, bustle, you hearing music outside, people laughing. You could peep outside, talk with your neighbour. The nice little chit-chat now and again.

I love Carenage but I wish we could find a way to work out that one-way-in, one-way-out situation.

But other than that, the area is very nice.

A Trini is an island buddy. Somebody who could bring a touch of flavour to your life, a different spice to your country.

Anywhere we go, you must know we from Trinidad, just by the way we move. We from Trinidad, the land of sun, sea, music, soca.

To me, Trinidad and Tobago is my home but it is a family calmness.

When I look at Ukraine, how the president stand up with his country, if that was to happen here, you would want to be safe. You would want to be alive.

But knowing my family is here, in Trinidad and Tobago, everything is family in Trinidad. So I would say family in Trinidad and Tobago is home, not Trinidad and Tobago.

Read the full version of this feature on Friday evening at www.BCPires.com