This place is a ghost town
“This town, is coming like a ghost town All the clubs have been closed down This place, is coming like a ghost town Bands won’t play no more Too much fighting on the dance floor Do you remember the good old days before the ghost town? We danced and sang, and the music played in a de boomtown This town, is coming like a ghost town Why must the youth fight against themselves? Government leaving the youth on the shelf This place is coming like a ghost town” (The Specials-1981) I was walking around Mandela Park when I saw a vignette so poignant I stopped.
A children’s birthday party in the park. Soca music. A father hoisting a chubby sleepy toddler on his back, then holding the hands of a little girl. A mother carrying a baby bag, tiny shoes.
It was an ordinary dry season evening: You know it. Warm air, dust kicked in the air by footballers on the grass, crisp leaves on baked earth; the snow-cone man making his way home; a young man leaning against a fence watching the orange sun going down in a blaze of saffron light; Breeze carrying the fragrance of the dry cannonball tree.
This family got into their car and drove off, the girl child waving sweetly at me. “Get home safe,” I said, waving back, holding their memory close, rationing the moment as if they were endangered.
No matter how lovely the light, there are some areas we speed by, not looking left or right. Fathers and mothers who say to one another, “We not going anywhere. It too dangerous.”
Some areas up hills, on beaches, and cane fields, that are so splattered with human blood we pretend they don’t exist. We want our ordinary lives.
Most of us don’t get too close to the ghost towns, the ghoulish killings. Eleven over the Easter weekend alone.
Each one the chilling narrative of a horror story. The man dressed as a policeman killing a parlour owner. The man and woman bleeding to death in their car while their assassin speeds off. The taxi driver shot in the head for his earnings by a passenger.
Bullets flying like peas between 150 gangs, for a piece of turf. Ghost town stuff. Look away. Draw your curtains. Don’t go out.
Round two of the park. A little sprint.
I see two men trying to break open a car in a darkened spot. I did not want to be a witness. I turned away and bumped into a runner. I warned him about the car thieves and told him, “Careful. We are the worlds 12 most murderous country!”
We walked towards safety, the floodlights. The man tells me his name. Jose. He is among the 40,000 Venezuelans recently granted amnesty in Trinidad. to live and work here.
“That’s nothing. Venezuela is the 2nd highest murder rate in the world. Before Chavez, the elite left the masses poor. After Chavez, the socialist government control destroyed us.”
Jose said, “I am 24, from a middle-class family. My parents are professors. I am a petroleum engineer. We had a good life. Then, supermarkets disappeared. Transport disappeared.
We got water twice a month. There were long lines for food. People lost weight, 15kg, 20kg. I couldn’t recognise them.
“Soon people were killing for shoes, money, phone, food, anything. The very minds of the Venezuelan people were corroded as hope drained. “Hearing him, I had an uneasy feeling. Venezuela has the biggest reserves of oil in the world, greater than Saudi Arabia. Oil didn’t save them. It’s not saving us. Our tanks too are dry, infrastructure unstable, our people murderous, finances precarious, institutions wobbling.
Jose said “When I arrived last year, it was difficult to get work: new country, a new language, many cultures. The living water and the UN helped me. I, an engineer, cut grass, all day in the hot sun. Now I work in a restaurant. We Latinos have to work better and harder than the locals because our lives depend on it. Local workers mock my work ethic, call me a con man. Many Venezuelans live in terrible conditions.”
He got emotional recalling the recent incident when 30 Venezuelans drowned en route to Trinidad. ”I don’t know how I feel. Some days all the answers are here, other days, very far.
Everyday it’s worse. You can’t do anything for your family, friends, neighbours, your country. Nothing for all the people you love.”
As I head home hoping the car thieves don’t shoot anyone, I wish for Jose and an entire generation of our youth, a life where they believe a home, a job, a life of hope, an evening with family outdoors in safety is ordinary, not extraordinary. By saving the refugees and our raging youth from ghost towns, we may save ourselves.