At 11am on a Mon­day morn­ing, the Bri­an Lara Prom­e­nade is usu­al­ly fair­ly peace­ful. Few peo­ple pass by quick­ly, un­doubt­ed­ly late for work, and the Prom­e­nade is adorned with cau­tion tape and sleep­ing va­grants. How­ev­er, if one makes one's way to the end clos­er to the cathe­dral, the at­mos­phere changes rad­i­cal­ly. Scores of the el­der­ly and not so el­der­ly gath­er to drink and lime. The ma­jor­i­ty of them are home­less and spend their nights on the very same square. On this day, some men are eat­ing cur­ry, which was brought to them by two well-dressed men. Though these men came from many dif­fer­ent parts of the coun­try, they have one thing in com­mon–ei­ther by fate or by choice they came to the prom­e­nade. The love they re­ceive from each oth­er every day has them stay­ing.

Shane James of D'Abadie was put out of his home one year ago by his on­ly son af­ter his moth­er died. He walked from D'Abadie to Port-of-Spain look­ing for some­where to sleep and some­thing to eat. He stayed be­cause of the at­ten­tion he has re­ceived from the group of men who have been oc­cu­py­ing the area which they re­named Bay Rum Block. Every­day this group of men gath­ers to drink Bay Rum, lime and tell sto­ries. They lis­ten to each oth­ers' ail­ments and at night they pro­tect each oth­er from un­want­ed at­ten­tion. When asked about his place in the work­ing world, Shane said that most prospec­tive em­ploy­ers saw him as poor choice be­cause of his age and the Shin­gles on his right arm. He said that the peo­ple around him were what kept him sane. Ges­tur­ing to one of the well-dressed man at his side, he stat­ed that he was the rea­son for the group. The man seemed pleased to be recog­nised and in­tro­duced him­self as Ken­neth Phillips. He proud­ly stat­ed that while he did not live on the prom­e­nade he went down there every day to "check on his boys."

He bought them clothes and drinks and kept them well en­ter­tained.

An­oth­er man, James John, was evict­ed from his house six months ago af­ter a fam­i­ly dis­pute and has since been liv­ing on the Prom­e­nade. Un­like the oth­er men, he wants to find a place to call his own. He was put out of the near­by shel­ter af­ter re­fus­ing to be searched by one of the se­cu­ri­ty guards be­cause he saw it as an in­tru­sion of his per­son­al space. Rather than stay in an un­com­fort­able sit­u­a­tion, he de­cid­ed to brave the home­less life. While he en­joys the lim­ing and drink­ing, he fears turn­ing in­to a full-fledged al­co­holic if he stays in the Prom­e­nade any longer. John is ea­ger to work but af­ter los­ing his right hand in a car ac­ci­dent he is un­able to se­cure a steady job. While gov­ern­ment does give him fi­nan­cial com­pen­sa­tion for his in­jury he states that it is not enough to live on. He is quick to add how­ev­er, that he is not liv­ing, he is mere­ly alive; just strug­gling and sur­viv­ing. The oth­er mem­bers of the gath­er­ing all nod their heads slow­ly in agree­ment.

It is good that these men have found a group with whom they can iden­ti­fy, how­ev­er, the men all want more from life. Many of them ex­pect to spend the last of their days on the prom­e­nade drink­ing Bay Rum. They don't ex­pect help from any­one and have re­alised that if they want to get any­thing done they must do it on their own. While they are able to pro­tect each oth­er and keep each oth­er com­pa­ny no one in this coun­try should have to live in such a way. Be­hind their smiles one can see the sad­ness; they all want bet­ter for them­selves. For now, they have learnt to live day by day with each oth­er, beg­ging passers-by for mon­ey. The ques­tion is, will their lifestyle ever change or are they tru­ly doomed to liv­ing on the streets for the rest of their mis­er­able lives?

Shin­gles

Her­pes zoster (or sim­ply zoster), com­mon­ly known as shin­gles, is a vi­ral dis­ease char­ac­terised by a painful skin rash with blis­ters in a lim­it­ed area on one side of the body, of­ten in a stripe. The ini­tial in­fec­tion with vari­cel­la zoster virus (VZV) caus­es the acute (short-lived) ill­ness chick­en­pox, and gen­er­al­ly oc­curs in chil­dren and young peo­ple. Once an episode of chick­en­pox has re­solved, the virus is not elim­i­nat­ed from the body but can go on to cause shin­gles–an ill­ness with very dif­fer­ent symp­toms–of­ten many years af­ter the ini­tial in­fec­tion.

(wikipedia.com)