SUNDAY 7TH SEPTEMBER, 2014 – UWI TODAY
15
New look
and feel at
The UWI
Pharmacy
For years, it was tucked away
at the side of
the Health Services Unit building, innocuous
and equally unnoticed and forgotten by staff
and students alike. Then pharmacist, Nisha
Ramsundar, lobbied Department Head, Dr Neil
Singh for the façade to be redone, the profile lifted,
and the range of services expanded. He needed
no convincing, and by July 2013, the necessary
approvals were granted. In September 2013,
reconstruction began and in a month’s time the
new UWI Pharmacy opened its doors – just in
time for the new academic year.
By then, Nisha Ramsundar had left, and a
new pharmacist, Andhra Maharaj, was hired to
continue the makeover.
Maharaj, who came with six years of retail
pharmacy business behind her, has worked for
the past year to build it along the lines of the
retail model she knows, making it a community
pharmacy, but adding the benefit of being a
department of the Health Services Unit.
“We want to engage both staff and students
in the pharmacy. We want them to feel that it is
their go-to pharmacy; not just for medication
or prescription filling but because we offer
convenience, we offer confidentiality and we offer
compassion.”
As a result of the connection to the HSU,
the pharmacy takes on additional roles, such as
offering information to students on healthmatters,
and making vaccines available.
“We nowoffer the chicken pox vaccine and the
influenza vaccine. We encourage persons to walk
with their immunization cards when coming for
these vaccines,” said Maharaj. “We also offer OTC
medication, vitamins and supplements, personal
care products, stationery, gift items and snacks
and drinks.”
They participate in in the Guardian Life
Provisor programme, which allows an “on-spot”
80% discount off prescription medication. This
applies mainly to staff, as students receive 80%
cash-back off their medication at a later date.
But that is not all, she says proudly.
“We recently added CDAP to the list of
services that we offer, which provides citizens
of Trinidad and Tobago with free prescription
medication for various chronic diseases. We hope
with this fresh new look and expansion of services
and products offered, that we are better able to
serve the campus community.”
BOOKS
The place is a small island nation,
Trinidad. The time is
just over a year: thirteen months between Labour Day in
2009 and July 2010.The personae dramatis belong to a small
family: Charles Butcher, his wife Marie Elena also known
as Elena or Lena or Mrs B, their daughter Ruthie; specific
friends and extended family. The Butchers and their set are
middle class, upwardly mobile, creole Trinidadians.
Trinidad of Elizabeth Walcott-Hackshaw’s first novel
(her previous work,
“Four Taxis Facing North”
is a collection
of short fiction) resembles the island we are all familiar with,
those of us who live here. Murder rate and road deaths are
standard on the daily news. Crime, violence and corruption
in politics are commonplace markers in the humanscape.
Almost as pervasive is the sybaritic tropical landscape: the
beach, “down the islands,” the hotel swimming pool, the
Savannah. An existence that is hedonistic on one hand,
hemmed in by the fear of violent crime on the other, is real
life for the Butchers and their set. In their creole culture,
routines include Maracas on Sunday; playing mas around
their own cart is an annual ritual.
We see in Elena – Mrs B – the child left by her mother
in the care of a kind but reserved spinster aunt. She never
developed the means or desire to express an emotional side,
and seems unwilling or disinclined to bridge the divide that
might bring her closer to her husband or daughter. The
story may be the mother’s, but Walcott-Hackshaw allows us
a look at
her
absentee mother. She also exposes the hearts
of daughters who would be different from their mothers,
but are not.
The year brings change that is not quite predictable, and
cracks of introspection appear inMrs B’s otherwise seamless
life. She stands aside to regard the daughter who is already
a big woman, unfathomable. The sense of loss is persistent:
the lover, the child, the passing years.
Perhaps
“Mrs B”
was inspired by Gustave Flaubert’s first
novel, “Madame Bovary” (1856-57). The realist style, the
precise and spare phrasing, even the architecture – three
parts, each with discrete chapters – frame a worldview that
might owe its definition to nineteenth century literature. Be
that as it may, a classical foundation is an excellent place to
start.Think
“Pride and Prejudice”
which preceded
“Madame
Bovary.”
But this is not a story stuck in a bygone age. Here is
a 21
st
century world where women like Mrs B are fortunate
and perhaps fewer than we know: the independent kept
woman; free to travel alone; given “space.” We may or may
not like her, but we know someone just like her.
It is by nomeans a feminist novel, though it is a woman’s
view. What
“Mrs B”
is, is a year in the life of a Trinidadian
“everywoman” who has fulfilled society’s expectations of
wife and mother. Almost 50, self-reflection comes slowly,
an unremarked process. Subterranean changemay be taking
place, but do we know?
Flaubert’s adventures of
“Madame Bovary”
were
written – and serialized – to titillate in an age with fewer
freedoms, fewer entertainments. Walcott-Hackshaw’s
“Mrs
B”
achieves its momentum at a casual walking pace, perhaps
deceptively so. It imposes a cinematic distance – we see the
action – with minimal dialogue and evocative settings. The
human activities have a backdrop of scenic lushness and
variety – of Trinidad, its forested hills and shores. This is the
kind of book that might easily become a film or, serialized,
a Trini soap opera.
This is also the kind of book that the education council
may put on the syllabus of high school students. You can
imagine the questions on examination papers. Like mother
like daughter: discuss how this applies toMrs B and Ruthie.
How does the environment of Trinidad as described in
“Mrs
B”
influence the actions of the characters. Is Charles Butcher
the typical Trinidadian man?
Elizabeth may be Derek Walcott’s daughter. Whatever
challenges or examples she may have imbibed from her
famous father, this is her own voice, her unique perspective.
“Mrs B”
is an elegant first novel with the delicate sensibilities
of a Trinidadian woman.
“Mrs B”
Elizabeth
Walcott-Hackshaw
Peepal Tree Press,
England, 2014
The
Trini
Every
woman
B y P A T G A N A S E
Photo by Abigail Hadeed
