02/11/2010
Taj Weekes is reggae artist raised on the island of St. Lucia in the West Indies. His music seeps with progressive lyrics, those that explore the failings of the system and those that paint pictures of a universal love that promotes compassion. He and his band Adowa are in the process of completing what will be his third album entitled "A Waterlogged Soul Kitchen."
Weekes founded They Often Cry Outreach (TOCO) in 2008 to help underprivileged, at-risk and orphaned children in the Caribbean through sport, education and wellness programs. The foundation has provided hundreds of soccer balls as well as numerous team uniforms for children in St. Lucia. Now the campaign has added the significant problem of diabetes to its list of concerns. In 2009, the organization provided 2700 diabetes blood test kits to an island that has more diabetes per capita than any place in the Western hemisphere.
Justine Ketola: How did TOCO go from soccer balls to diabetic kits in St. Lucia?
Taj Weekes: It all revolves around health concerns. If you really check it out, if you bring soccer balls to children, you get them moving anyway. Why we are suffering from it is because of diet more than anything else, but it also has to do with a lack of excercise.
Was it something specific that changed in St. Lucia, are there or changes culturally where people were once more active?
What I think has happened is that St. Lucia is that it is actually doing the best, or it is one of the islands that has been doing the best in the Caribbean, for the last 25 years. Dollar-wise we havent changed we have just been $2.75 to the US dollar and in that sense we are kind of choking on fortune's fuel.
People have become more prosperous in their heads than in actuality, so we all drive and we all eat out and plus the American culture has been really well exported to the islands so we have our Kentucky and our McDonald's and our Chuck E Cheese, so people have been eating more of that kind of food. And not moving around as much as they used to. You know when I went to school I walked home for lunch but now we are packing lunches and bringing fast food to school. So that has affected it in a way.
