Olympic Nostalgia, a Snippet from a Badminton Athlete in Trinidad and Tobago

-

As a former competitive badminton player, I was glued to the t.v. during this year’s Olympic Games. I enjoyed the badminton, tennis, volleyball, track & field, and swimming. Watching the badminton matches especially, evoked a sense of nostalgia because a lot of the players were in my age group. Some I had competed against in the Pan American (PanAm) Games and regional Caribbean tournaments. If I had continued badminton, I’d like to think that I would’ve reached that stage. The Olympics were what I had aimed for in my training years. But I was still really proud of the Olympic players. I knew them from the PanAm region and the Caribbean so it was nice to see that representation. I had stopped training during the coronavirus pandemic and associated lockdowns in Trinidad and Tobago in 2020-2022. Lockdown started about two weeks before my teammates and I were supposed to compete during a national tournament. It was a big year for us and we were training really hard. But suddenly we heard reports of a coronavirus circulating throughout the world. At that point we didn’t really take it super seriously until it directly affected Trinidad and Tobago. The country went into lockdown which meant that recreational sports and big gatherings were shut down. My teammates and I were all sad about not being able to compete because it was going to be an Olympic year and we were looking forward to competing in tournaments when points would go toward our qualifications.

When the country came out of lockdown, I was knee-deep in university studies and my zeal to return to high intensity training was gone. I was going into my third year of undergraduate study. My club had resumed training. A lot of my teammates were back out. But I didn’t feel particularly motivated to return to training. I hadn’t had the best first year at university and that motivated me to study harder to graduate with honors. So going back to my club was not a thought, even recreationally. In essence, I retired. Currently, I’m doing a Master’s degree in Gender and Development Studies at The University of the West Indies, but my love and passion for the sport has never left. I miss it dearly. And who knows… maybe the court misses me too?

By Ananda Ramsingh

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Plastic Straws: A Small Convenience with Big Consequences

-
When I was ten years old, I visited Matura Beach in northeast Trinidad with my family for turtle watching. While seeing the turtles up close was surreal, the experience stands out for another, more devastating reason. Our tour guide shared a story I remembered for years to come. She had rescued a turtle that had a plastic straw stuck inside its nose. The idea that one tiny plastic straw could cause so much harm to an animal gutted me. At the time, I found it disturbing, but I didn’t fully understand the severity of the situation. So, I continued using plastic straws, unaware of the larger impact. Now, at twenty, I understand the complex and troubling interconnections between plastic straws, human health, and marine ecosystems. This realisation motivated me to focus my anthropology project on the use of plastic straws, and their environmental and health impacts. My goal was to explore why, despite widespread awareness of their harmful effects, people still choose to use them. In my mini...
Read more

Racial Stereotypes Replicated in Fantastical Animations

-
When I was younger and anime came on the cartoon channels, I knew it was time to go to bed. One night, during the vacation, I sat down and watched an episode of a fantasy program of Japanese origin. I was enchanted with the magic, monsters, and overarching storyline I had never seen in an animated show before. As the years went by, and I watched more anime, first on t.v. and then on streaming platforms, I noticed a pattern in the skin color of the anime characters. I realized that this magical world was infused with the prejudices of the world in which I lived. For my mini-ethnographic project, I sought to understand the attitudes Caribbean youths have toward the profiting of racial and cultural stereotyping in some of their favorite anime shows. In the anime programs that I watched, I had made two casual observations that I wanted to explore for my mini-ethnographic project. The first, there were only a few dark-skinned characters and, the second was that the darker-skinned characters...
Read more

Wheels and Warming: The Climate Costs of Transportation in Small Islands

-
What are the linkages between human behaviors, transportation infrastructure, and climate change? What is black carbon? These are some of the questions that guided my mini-ethnographic project in Caribbean Anthropology. “Black carbon is formed by the incomplete combustion of fossil fuels, wood, and other fuels” (Climate & Clean Air Coalition 2020). Also known as soot, emissions of black carbon can contribute to climate warming, decrease of crop yields, and death of living organisms. Because I’m constantly on the road in Trinidad, driving my own vehicle, I had casually observed lots of exhaust from vehicles. I learned this exhaust can contain carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide, among other greenhouse gases that can be damaging to the environment. I decided to do participant-observation with fellow drivers in Trinidad and Tobago (in person) as well as (virtually) in the neighboring island of Saint Lucia to consider how peak hour traffic contributed to emissions. Although thes...
Read more