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Cascade in Crime September 17

My friend Ferdy’s personal losses confirm the general view that crime, especially violent crime, has risen drastically in recent years.  His engineering friend was recently shot dead in a botched robbery.  Port of Spain has become dangerous to an extent unimaginable only few years ago.  Shots were fired the other day in his otherwise quiet neighbor of Cascade, a bedroom community barely a mile up Saint Anne’s Road behind the Savannah and botanical gardens.  Ferdy loves the hiking and the nature and small village life of Cascade, a valley community full of families and easy vibe, especially since they joined the city water system and the old well-fed reservoir became the town swimming hole.  Guns were hard to find in Port of Spain not long ago—blood feuds required cutlasses or sticks—but no more.  Now there are guns in Cascade.

“I thought they were fireworks at first,“ says Ferdy, shaking his head.  “But they were getting closer, and fireworks don’t move, you know.  Those guys were movin’ when they were firin’ their pistols.  I’ve never heard of this before.  This place is crazy.“ 

Closer to home, my student Eric’s auntie was kidnapped over the weekend but was rescued yesterday after a ransom was paid.  Two cops were charged and arrested, and a third has reportedly been taken into custody today.  The wealthy of Westmoorings must take care—some students have burly body guards that wait with our security team at the school entrance.  Visitors must pass through a sentry booth, in which one door will not open until the one behind it has closed.  (On a gusty day, I was once trapped in the cubicle by Bernoulli’s force.)  If the A-team of Marlon and Marvin and Michael and Deon and Anthony and Regan Ryan do have weapons at hand, no one ever sees them—but they most surely do. 

Rona laments the need for such precautions.  She is a grandmother with a long memory and brilliant white hair, trimmed short, and she possesses a kind heart for strangers such as myself.  Not so much for the old beggar collecting lunch money from me outside her place.  Rona is a one-woman operation at the TT Post, in the nearby village of Carenage, along a particularly narrow stretch of the coastal road.  She enforces order on this block, from her shack of a post office to the snack bodega next door and the fishmonger’s place across the busy road.  Even the wandering rogue roosters seem to respect her authority.  

“Ya shouldn't pay Mistuh George like dat.  He dudn't need da money.“

I accept Rona’s gentle recrimination.  Indulging my catholic guilt by feeding the poor does her no favors, insofar as I become a magnet for vagrants and truants, which is not good for business.  She hands me some forms to fill out in order to pick up my boxes of old clothes from the States.  They don’t look much like boxes anymore—the right-angle corners have become rounded after 5 weeks of transit on the high seas; the sturdy packaging tape is tattered and torn.  These things look like they floated here.  I inspect them for sargassum creep.    

A young speedster in a black convertible screeches his tires beside my precariously parked car, setting off the alarm and startling Mr. George, who is kind enough to hold the door for me and my clothes.  He calls me Papa with a wrinkled smile.  How would he know I am a father?  No time to consider—I have a blaring car alarm to disable.  

Rona gripes about the young hipster’s need to show off his shiny fast car.  Making a statement, acting conspicuous, is against the Trini grain.  I suggest it is more of a Yankee trait, and she does not disagree.  As friendly and helpful as she is, I present something of a threat to her ways.  I come from a place that contributes to the problems of her society; chiefly, disaffection of the young, consumer addiction, the rise in crime, incivility, and alienation.  This is what Rona laments:  a lost generation, globalized and increasingly rootless, preferring the ways of the States—the consumerism, the illiteracy, the ADHD, the loss of community, the loss of history, the pursuit of another’s identity and happiness.

“My grandson Roland cannot even use silverware—all he eats is hamburgers and french fries.  All he does is watch television and the computer.  Only a few years ago, Trinidad had only one TV station.  Everybody watched the same shows.  When the transmission was out, no one watched anything.“  She misses the shared experience of being Trinidadian, of being in this together, and she mourns the fact that the young ones think a night of pan music is worthless.  “They don’t lime.  You know what limin’ is?“

“It’s a party with friends, right?“

She shakes her head.  “No, it’s more Dan Dat.  When we lime, we are gettin’ rid of dee stresses of dee day.  Everybody living has stresses, but we all have it together.  We tell each other about our day, how so-and-so treats you bad, and everybody feels it.  That’s how it gets better.“  

The lime restores a necessary equilibrium.  Rona explains that the kids these days do not lime like their parents or grandparents.  Their socialization is stunted through some relentless media campaign.  They cannot, or they will not, interact with neighbors and family, as local custom fades in the cell phone noise and the drug traffic.  This disassociation is apparently a recent phenomenon here; and, hastened by a crashing petrol-economy, increased migration, and rising narco-mafia presence, the result is a rapid escalation in youth crime.  

Rona is not sure where Roland and his friends go after school these days, only that he skips family dinner and pushes his curfew in the city.  I am afraid to ask if he ever goes to Cascade, where boys with guns are reportedly running wild. 

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