7 News Belize

Celebrating Carrie Fairweather Belgrave
posted (January 14, 2011)
Yesterday evening Belize lost one of its most outstanding women, well-known seventy -seven year old Carrie Fairweather Belgrave.

Fairweather-Belgrave had been battling pancreatic cancer since the latter part of last year; she lost her fight with the disease at the KHMH yesterday evening around 6 due to respiratory complications.

Most of us came to know and love her on the screen as "Granny Tomasa" in the series "Noh Matta Wat".

But Fairweather-Belgrave wore many hats, she was an entrepreneur, writer, actress, and poet. We take a look at a slice of her life starting of with one of her last public appearances in early December at the launch of her book: "Parchment Pages" Speak to Me in Poetry:

Carrie Fairweather Belgrave
"They say I am strong, well it the spirit that is strong because GOD brought me back. i was dying. I was walking, laughing, talking getting on a flight thinking of eating a steak in London, in Miami and I was told in a hospital that I had pancreatic cancer that could not be healed, it was too late, it has already pass the size and they had to accept that. Thank God he gave me the grace to accept it because I feel there was 3 parts to us, the moon, the life we live on earth and the spiritual and then I ask God to help me to enter his kingdom and to prepare my soul for the spiritual to meet him. I cannot say that I am not hurting because I am only human but he is moving away fear from me. i do not fear, it is my time."

Andrea Polanco
"You work with Carrie Fairweather Belgrave before. What was it like working with her on "Noh Matta Wat"?" Steve Berry, Co-Founder & Director of "Noh Matta Wat"

Steve Berry, Co-Founder & Director of "Noh Matta Wat"
"From when I first met Ms. Carrie, you know they say sometimes 'love at first site' Ms. Carrie is one of those people, she just endures you to her. She gets in front of the camera and takes the character of somewhere else. I have heard the poetry in the books which is even better because again it's her reflections; it's her attitude, her feelings that have been in the words. Yes I defiantly look forward of reading the book because there are a lot of poems in the book that I have not actually heard her recite. But like the documentary that I did on her, she goes the entire gamut of her life, once you start off talking about growing up being a little girl growing up in Dangriga, she talked about her first marriage which was very an abusive marriage - physical abusive, she talks about when she first went to the states and came back for her children and endure a lot more of being abuse and then going back to the states she talks about the troubles and the struggles she had and the successes that she had. I am a better person for having not only done the documentary but also cutting it, editing it, watching it now. It is a very inspirational piece of work."

Our thanks to 13 productions for that video. More on the wit, wisdom and good grace of Ms. Carrie can be seen in the recently produced documentary "A Remarkable Woman," which is also available through 13 Productions.

Fairweather-Belgrave is survived by her husband, seven children and a host of grand and great-grandchildren. According to her husband, the funeral is tentatively set for next Saturday January 22nd, but that has not been finalized.




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