WONG SANG:

BEST VILLAGE IS DYING

 

By Clevon Raphael

Independent

April 7, 2000

Page 19

 

Best Village, the unique show/contest which saw villages such as Siparia and Barataria earn their place on the cultural map is now in its dying throes.

 

But all is not lost - if those now in charge of the annual event make an effort to ensure that standards set during its formative years and developed during the ensuing decades be brought back to play.

 

This from "Mrs. Best Village" herself, Joyce Wong Sang, who was there from its inception in 1963, until she was unceremoniously dropped in 1986, when there was a change of government - from PNM to the NAR.

 

"I am not in the least casting aspersions on those now running the programme.  It is just that I feel it is not being run in the right way and it is not just my opinion.  I have heard similar sentiments by villagers who are not pleased with the way the competition is being run," she said in the living room of her comfortable home at upscale Ellerslie Park, last Friday morning.

 

Wong Sang who steadfastly refuses to disclose how old she is - "You don't ask people their age", she protested with a smile - was the guiding light of the Prime Minister's Best Village Trophy Competition in her capacity as secretary.

 

She discharged her duties in a no-nonsense manner which caused people to sometimes view her as autocratic, but when you got to know the real Joyce Wong Sang she was in no way near that fearsome.

 

As she explained sitting in a couch surrounded by paintings, cushions, and other oriental artifacts:

 

"No.  I do not agree that I was a harsh boss.  I think one has to have standards if you are doing anything and you cannot move from those standards.  You have to be firm especially when you are dealing with so many people who feel you can bend the rules to suit them."

 

"If you start to do that when would you stop?  I think because I stood up for high standards, they thought that perhaps I was too firm at times."

 

But let's rewind.  Joyce was born the fourth-to-last of 12 children to Stella and Albert Moyou, "somewhere behind the bridge" (she honestly doesn't remember exactly where), and attended Tranquillity Government School before moving on to St Joseph's Convent in Port of Spain.

 

After a short stint at George F Huggins, she joined the public service in the early 1960s and in 1963, was assigned to the newly formed Best Village programme, by accident.

 

Wong Sang:

 

"At that time Dr. Williams had just completed a meeting-the-people exercise and he decided that a forum was needed where the people could showcase their cultural talent which was hitherto not being exposed."

 

"In that same year hurricane Flora hit Tobago, and the person who was designated to head the programme was sent to the sister island so I was appointed to head the programme."

 

"That was how it all began."

 

Preliminaries were held in the various districts and the lucky - and proud - ones took pride in representing their respective communities in the finals at the Grand Stand of the Queen's Park savannah, in Port of Spain.

 

In time the competition was expanded to include a Best Village Queen, and the popular Folk Fair where indigenous foods and drinks, soft and alcoholic, were put on show.

 

Then came the routing of the People's National Movement by the National Alliance for Reconstruction in the general elections of 1986, which she felt was the beginning of the end of the competition.

 

Wong Sang, whose sister Evelyn was the second wife of the country's first Prime Minister Dr. Eric Williams, refused to concede that she was forced out by the NAR administration.

 

"I don't know what you mean by forced out.  When they came into power they found it necessary, even up to today I don't know why, to send me to another department.

 

"I mean the point about it is that I still had a few more years service to go and I figured I would have stayed there, right?  At that time the Best Village began to go down with my exit.

 

"I am not boasting, I am simply stating a fact; it just began its downward slope.  Today it is apparently in its death throes."

 

Why?

 

Wong Sang who said she was not asked but if requested would gladly offer her assistance to the present organising committee, added:

 

"Simple.  Standards have dropped.  To me they are just putting together all kinds of performances together and you are not getting the authentic culture forms like the pique, bele, bongo, parang and what have you."

 

"Everybody wants to have a 'new' Best Village but they must realise that it took some 25-plus years to fashion a programme that helps people to bring out their own culture, and you cannot change that overnight especially by people who probably did not study what it is all about."

 

"Just run it; but it is not a tram or a train.  It is not run like that at all."

 

Is Best Village, even though it still retains much of its original format salvageable?

 

"Of course it is salvageable, and this can be achieved by their being serious about what they are doing.  Set proper standards in a way where it is respected in the sense that not anything goes; proper judges and make sure their rules are always carried out."

 

Saying that she was blessed to witness at first hand the myriad art forms churned out over the years by the competition, Wong sang argued that were it not for the competition the country's rich cultural tapestry would have remained lost to the national community.

 

"I was fortunate to se a lot of folk culture that will never be seen again in this country…the real folk, the true folk," she says wistfully.

 

Is she hurt by not being asked to lend her expertise to the running of the competition today?

 

Shaking her head in the negative, she says philosophically:

 

"Trinis are like that, it is nothing new.  I am not hurt by it because I knew that would have happened anyway…but it took so many years to build it."

 

"It is so sad what has happened because it played such an important part in people's lives.  Performers and those assisting their respective villages felt a sense of pride, a joy in being part of the whole event.  You know it was empowering communities in that special way."

 

"Sadly those things are no longer there."

 

After retiring from the public service she was given a contract to manage the East Side Plaza on George and Charlotte Streets, in Port of Spain, which was not renewed when it expired in 1996.

 

Her husband George, to whom she had been married for "40-something" years passed away last year.  They have two grown children both living abroad and doing well in the field of computer technology.

 

These days "Mrs. Best Village" is just praying that her pet project be given a new fillip.

 

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