He­len Dray­ton

The soucouyant is a su­per­nat­ur­al be­ing who dis­guis­es her­self in many dif­fer­ent forms. At night, she sheds her hu­man skin and be­comes a ball of fire. Or she takes the form of an an­i­mal. She does this to cast spells on peo­ple and turn them in­to an­i­mals. Just be­fore dawn breaks and the cock crows, she slips back in­to the skin of the old hag she is.

She'd tak­en pos­ses­sion of Greyfri­ars Church on Fred­er­ick Street a long time ago, hav­ing turned her­self in­to a fat, greedy rat. She in­fest­ed Pres­i­dent's House, the Mag­nif­i­cent Sev­en around the Queen's Park Sa­van­nah, the ceme­tery in the sa­van­nah, the once-trea­sured Sa­van­nah Grand Stand, the moun­tains and the rain for­est, the swamps, la­goons, rivers and coast­lines.

The soucouyant is not on­ly in these places de­stroy­ing the beau­ty that be­longs to our chil­dren, she's al­so in the in­sti­tu­tions of jus­tice, the Red House, Pub­lic Ser­vice, the Gov­ern­ment, and man­i­fests her­self in ho­n­ourary ti­tles to suck the blood from the trea­sury and de­stroy the na­tion's her­itage.The soucouyant in Greyfri­ars Church has been strik­ing out at the nat­ur­al en­vi­ron­ment. She has vo­ra­cious ap­pet­i­tive and is gut­ting the land­scape's body, and coars­en­ing its once charm­ing char­ac­ter.

So when Mr Al­fred Galy or­dered the de­mo­li­tion of a 177-year-old cap­i­tal city land­mark, all he did, ad­mit­ted­ly in a cal­lous way, was to re­veal the soucouyant's an­i­mals. All he did was em­pha­sise the con­tempt suc­ces­sive gov­ern­ments have had for her­itage build­ings. He showed up, more clear­ly than in the past, what back­ward­ness is, and the shal­low no­tions of progress.

He spot­light­ed a warped val­ue sys­tem so well demon­strat­ed by mas­sive projects that bring more chaos and anger in a lit­tle is­land than add any­thing of val­ue to the qual­i­ty of life. Galy left naked the lethar­gy, in­com­pe­tence, my­opia of gov­ern­ment and blind­ness of cap­i­tal­ism.

From me­dia re­ports, it ap­pears lo­cal and cen­tral gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials knew the build­ing would have been sold. If by chance they didn't know, then the lo­ca­tion of the church in the heart of the city, its age, and its de­te­ri­o­rat­ed state war­rant­ed ac­tion a long time ago to pro­tect it and the health of its en­vi­rons.

Her­itage build­ings need not be­come a drain on the trea­sury. There are op­por­tu­ni­ties for preser­va­tion through pur­pose­ful use. Putting them to pro­duc­tive use by com­mu­ni­ties, or turn­ing them in­to mu­se­ums for the ed­u­ca­tion of chil­dren, and sim­ply to en­hance the city, are ex­cel­lent ways to pre­serve them.

Mr Galy is a busi­ness­man. He saw an in­vest­ment op­por­tu­ni­ty in prime prop­er­ty, so he pur­chased a di­lap­i­dat­ed build­ing–a build­ing that no­body seemed to have cared about pri­or to its sale. The Gov­ern­ment and the Port-of-Spain City Cor­po­ra­tion had am­ple op­por­tu­ni­ty to pro­tect it as a her­itage site. The church may have had op­por­tu­ni­ties to part with it in a way that would have pre­served its struc­ture. But, it had no faith!

The Greyfri­ars Church nes­tled in the cap­i­tal city, ush­ered in Pres­by­te­ri­an­ism to Trinidad in 1834. It was one of the sev­er­al el­e­gant struc­tures that im­bued Port-of-Spain with an at­trac­tive char­ac­ter of his­tor­i­cal depth. But the soucouyant has been suck­ing away at the city's core in­creas­ing­ly bring­ing it in­to a state of sham­bles. We haven't added any in­dige­nous cre­ativ­i­ty to com­ple­ment the crafts­man­ship of its re­main­ing her­itage struc­tures.

The soucouyant made a pact with the dev­il to dis­man­tle the foun­da­tions of our so­ci­ety, while crow­ing in self-praise and putting on vain­glo­ry stunts to high­light what are ac­tu­al fail­ures hid­den in tin­sel. The cants of mam­mag­ists are what we hear in cheap pub­lic­i­ty while the soul of the coun­try–its love­ly cul­ture–is un­der back­hoes and be­ing torn down to crum­ble like the walls of Greyfri­ars Church. We are re­mov­ing foun­da­tions with no re­place­ments of sub­stance.

The irony is, ear­li­er this year the coun­try cel­e­brat­ed 100 years of Port-of-Spain as the cap­i­tal city un­der the theme Stronger than Pride. What an op­por­tune time it was to re­flect on the past, brain­storm the kind of city we should build and the lega­cy we will be­queath to fu­ture gen­er­a­tions.

There was an op­por­tu­ni­ty to show the younger gen­er­a­tion how to pre­serve valu­able en­dow­ments while shap­ing an in­spir­ing fu­ture. But no. Mash up in­stead, then hyp­o­crit­i­cal­ly blame a busi­ness­man for win­ing with the soucouyant. Where's the pride?

Where are the val­ues of in­de­pen­dence–lib­er­a­tion from medi­oc­rity, from de­struc­tive be­hav­iour and un­fet­tered greed? Where's the lead­er­ship to har­ness the na­tive ge­nius of our artists and em­ploy them to weave colour­ful, in­dige­nous, threads that blend with the cre­ative ge­nius of pre­vi­ous gen­er­a­tions?

This gen­er­a­tion of en­tre­pre­neurs, ar­chi­tects and builders should be tak­ing up the man­tle of re-en­gi­neer­ing the cap­i­tal city in a man­ner that serves the fu­ture well-be­ing of so­ci­ety while pre­serv­ing its rich her­itage and frag­ile en­vi­ron­ment. In­stead, its his­tor­i­cal build­ings are left to va­grants, ad­dicts, stray dogs and ver­min, then de­stroyed. Soucouyant bite us.