Today is Thursday last week. I am sad. I am really, really sad.
It's not turning out to be such a good year, there are too many people dying, and I don't mean Michael and Fawcett. The news just came through that a young woman, Camille Daniel, in the prime of life, has been shot in the back of her head by a man young enough to be her son, as she tried to obtain help by driving her car into a police station.
For some reason this hurts more than the other deaths we have had to deal with. Perhaps it's because she tried something, she refused to go quietly, she fought back in the only way she could and paid for it with her life. She probably saved her friend who must now live with that for the rest of her life. She was brave or fed up or, like most of us, angry with the stupidness and nastiness going on in the country. At least her death was instantaneous and painless, unlike that of ten-year-old Tecia Henry who must have kicked and screamed and fought whilst her life was being choked out of her. How she must have suffered in those last few moments!
Even if the will is subdued, by drugs or force, the body will fight for survival. The body does not go easily into death, especially a young healthy body. It wants to live, to grow up, to love and be loved. To walk the streets; to go to school; to see Mummy once more. Did she squeal in anguish as those who killed her approached? Did she cry silently, as so many of our children cry as they are raped and buggered and butchered?�Alone, alone, all alone. And to think that people knew where she was. You mean no one could find it in themselves to go and rescue a little ten-year-old girl? Who did she call upon in her last moments? Not the self-proclaimed "father of the nation" or the Minister of National Security, a joke name if there ever was one, busy reciting his thoughtless mantra in Parliament of "better days ahead," singing calypso just as Camille was being murdered in his "model" police station.
It's been five years since the honourable Prime Minister made his infamous statements that "crime is temporary" and that he knows who "Mr Big" is. Since then over 2,000 people have been murdered, about 400 a year, in a country where, prior to 2000, the average number of deaths was about 100. How many more must die? Are these gentlemen capable of understanding what a death means to a husband, to a mother? Do they ever mourn the tragedy that is taking place in T&T under this Government'? Do they realise that this will be their legacy? This is what we will remember. Not the empty tall, tall buildings downtown or even the air-conditioned police stations that shut off the police from the street.
The best the Prime Minister could do was to smirk and insinuate in that peculiarly offensive way some members of his administration have, when they claim that as "big boys" they "know something" about the situation but "are not at liberty to say anything about it." Nothing like a good dose of mauvais langue to titillate the masses, eh? The "I know something that you don't know syndrome," so "I in ah better position than you, I more important!" attitude of so many local politicians coming out in full force whilst the other "big boys" belch, pass gas and smile knowingly at each other. Was that the very best you could do, Prime Minister? A child was murdered and that is your response? For God's sake, sir, what do the circumstances have to do with the murder of a child? �
I mourn the death of two females, one a child about to become a woman, the other a woman cut down in full bloom. But by weekend most Trinidadians had forgotten them and were more concerned with the death of a foreign musical genius, a man accused of paedophilia, who had done his best to change his appearance over the years from a pleasant, handsome black man to a repulsive whitish woman. His doctor was from Trinidad crowed the other two Sunday dailies! Not this newspaper, thank God. The Vox Pop of my Sunday Guardian had more useful things to do and asked the question of several citizens: "What are your suggestions to curb the spiralling crime rate in the country?" The first two people who answered reflected the reality of life in "Calypsoland." One said: "More Sunday schools." That deserves an exclamation mark! The other said: "Get rid of the Prime Minister because he is not helping the country." I mean, really!
