AS TOLD TO BC PIRES

My name is Piero Guerrini, and 28 years ago, I came to Trinidad for ten days. I’m still here.

I come from Grande Riviere, but I was born in Italy.

My father used to be a coalminer in Belgium and he would talk about how wonderful it was for him, as a young man, to go from Italy to a different country. He always passed me this idea of travelling. Since I’m 20 years old, I’ve been travelling.

I became a photographer, because it combined my lifestyle and my desire very well. I travelled so much.

Until I reached Trinidad and Trinidad chose me. From the first day, it was love at first sight.

I’m vegetarian. I’m against industrial food.

My life has been divided into three parts.

I was a photographer and then I was a hotelier on the beach.

Not many people know the first part: I was a professional footballer. I used to play No 10. Of course. Long hair.

Everybody said Piero is going to be a great footballer. I had big promise in Italian football. I tried for Juventus, Bologna.

I got a back injury when I was 19 and start to have problem.

My only child, Aurora, 23, started doing a masters degree on a scholarship at Oxford and her professor said, “You can skip the masters and go straight for the PhD.”

I’m very proud of her achievement.

She is the president of the Conservative Students Association. I don’t know, maybe she rebelled (against me) by becoming a conservative. She tells her friends her dad is a hippie.

I lost my father two years ago and, to be honest, I was losing my way.

I was single, frustrated, working all the time. I wasn’t happy. I wasn’t sleeping well. I had gained some weight.

And then, in two wonderful months with my mother, she told me all the things she hadn’t before. How my parents met, what they did together.

When I came back, I start to think, “I need not to be alone any more.”

And then I met Sali. The lockdown gave us the possibility to really get to know one another. She is my “one.”

You have to go back to who you are, the person you really are. You have to not be afraid to (allow) yourself (to come) out.

I lost 20 lbs.

Now I am the Piero I know I wanted to be. Now I sleep well.

[caption id="attachment_900499" align="alignnone" width="485"] Piero Guerrini is from Grande Riviere, but was born in Italy. He came to Trinidad for ten days, 28 years ago, and "from the first day, it was love at first sight." - courtesy Salisha Stanley[/caption]

Every year, as a photographer, I did a series called, “The World of” (that year’s Nobel Literature Prizewinner) and so I came to Trinidad to photograph Derek (Walcott).

The year before, I’d gone to South Africa, when Nadine Gordimer had won the prize.

Back then, the “BeeWee pass” (let you) go in all the BeeWee destinations for US$300. So I went in 14 different islands.

But Trinidad was immediately, immediately, the place I was looking for.

I had a part in Damian Marcano’s short film Cheese, but I don’t know anything about music or movies after the 90s.

When I go to show her a film, Sali alwa