In the exercise yard at remand prison, at Golden Grove, Arouca, Terrence Morris sat alone thinking about a message just delivered to him.

The Trinidad and Tobago prison programmes officer said the Wishing for Wings Foundation wanted to know how members of the prison debate team felt about writing jingles addressing covid19 in TT.

Morris along with Marlon Lee and Kenyatta King from the Remand Prison debate team; Aaron Charles of the Carrera Prison debate team and Arnold Ramlogan of the Maximum Security Prison (MSP) debate team had all been asked to participate in the project sanctioned by the prison service.

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[caption id="attachment_895866" align="alignnone" width="1024"] Terrence Morris -[/caption]

Morris, who once worked as a certified crane operator in Point Lisas, thought about the stigma society had of Remand Prison inmates.

“People always say, ‘Nothing good comes out of remand prison’,” says Morris.

Once again, he knew he had the chance to prove everyone wrong.

“When I went outside for exercise and airing in the yard, I sat by myself the whole hour and thought, ‘Ms (Debbie) Jacob (head of the Wishing for Wings Foundation) wants a covid19 jingle. For some reason she chose me. She believes in me. There’s something she knows about me that I don’t see. I can’t sing, so I thought I’d write a poem.’”

Morris says, “I wrote, ‘Corona virus, the world’s worst disease…’ I knew there was nothing else I could say for that first line. I knew my brother living in England was in lockdown so I decided the next line would be, ‘Hide in your homes, people, please.’ I had a cellmate who believed he had contracted covid19. I remembered how he was acting, lying there shaking so I described him in the third line. I probably wrote my poem over about 20 times.”

In prison, there’s no way to social distance so Morris says he sleeps with his mask on. He hopes that people in the “free world” will take wearing masks and social distancing more seriously.

“All I wanted is for my voice to be heard,” says Morris. “It’s a message coming from the prison. If you don’t want to hear, you are going to feel. I am 34 and I never saw anything like this. I heard of Ebola and Swine flu, but I believe covid19 is so bad. Every morning I get up and pray. There’s a lot of madness going on. We hope we can help with these ads.”

Meanwhile, other inmates answered the request for covid jingles, which would become a co-production with prisons.

[caption id="attachment_895861" align="alignnone" width="320"] Prisoners Marlon Lee and Terrence Morris demonstrate physical distancing at the Golden Grove facility. - Photo courtesy Prison Service[/caption]

Marlon Lee, an ordained Spiritual Baptist minister and calypsonian singing under the sobriquet Bitter Honey, says he believed a covid19 jingle could reach people who were not listening to Government. Lee is the son of calypsonian Sugar Aloes.

“I decided some people are bored with speech, but people might hear my song. While c