Senior Reporter
There was a time when the roads through Felicity were little more than tracks cutting between fields of sugar cane and rice.
Houses stood on wooden posts. Kitchen gardens provided food for families. A neighbour with chickens could exchange with another who had peas or provisions. And on some Sundays, instead of every household cooking separately, one family prepared enough food to feed several homes along the street.
For 43-year-old Shannon Mahadeo, those stories and some of his own childhood memories explain the character of the central Trinidad community better than any road map ever could.
“The meaning of Felicity is happiness,” Mahadeo said, standing along Cacandee Road.
But Felicity’s story stretches much further back than his generation.
The wider Chaguanas district was once dominated by sugar estates connected by donkey-cart roads, mule tracks and waterways. Historical records preserved by the National Library and Information System Authority show that those routes extended towards the coast in areas where Felicity and Cacandee developed.
By 1869, British writer Charles Kingsley recorded travelling through the Chaguanas sugar district and visiting a distillery at Felicity.
The district’s transformation was also deeply connected to Indian indentureship, which began in Trinidad in 1845 as sugar estates sought a new labour force after Emancipation.
Generations later, the descendants of those workers established homes, businesses, farms and religious institutions across central Trinidad, helping to shape communities such as Felicity.
Life among cane, rice
and boats
Mahadeo says the evidence of that past was still all around him when he was growing up.
“We was engulfed in cane fields and rice fields,” he recalled.
Felicity was also closely linked to fishing, he said, a tradition which remains visible in the boats found throughout sections of the community.
“We is a fishing village also,” Mahadeo said. “As you could see, it have a lot of boats around.”
For generations, fishing offered another livelihood, particularly for residents who did not pursue formal education or professional careers.
But Felicity was never defined by one occupation.
Mahadeo remembers it as a sporting community where cricket and football thrived, and as a place where religion, rather than dividing neighbours, became part of a larger culture of coexistence.
“Religions do not separate us,” he said. “We live with love and we support one another.”
That description of Felicity is also familiar to Imam Rasheed Karim, a businessman, community advocate and Islamic religious leader who has spent virtually his entire life there.
Karim jokes that his connection to the village may last from cradle to grave.
“Born, bred, living, and maybe dying too,” he said with a laugh. “Whatever the Lord has planned for us.”
Faith and community
For Karim, however, loving Felicity also means speaking openly about what he believes the village still lacks.
Karim remembers a community where movement itself was difficult.
“Growing up in Felicity, there was a lot of hardship,” he said.
“Road, drainage, different facilities even transportation would have been hard at certain periods of time.”
It was one of those practical difficulties, he said, that eventually influenced the establishment of an Islamic place of worship within Felicity.
Karim recalled serving as an imam outside the district and realising that some Muslim residents in Felicity struggled to attend worship because of transportation costs and household finances.
“I saw it fit to establish a mosque in Felicity,” he said.
Today, Karim remains identified with the Felicity Islamic community.
The Islamic presence stands alongside Felicity’s much larger and longstanding Hindu heritage, part of what both men describe as a community in which faith traditions learned to exist alongside each other.
Karim said Felicity remains a place he would struggle to leave.
“Felicity is a very, very good place to live,” he said.
“I wouldn’t trade it for nothing.”
For Mahadeo, the strongest evidence of Felicity’s old community spirit can be found in memories of ordinary life.
He remembers a village before the widespread construction of today’s concrete houses.
“When I was around nine years of age, majority of the houses around here wasn’t concrete houses. Was more board houses,” he said.
Some were even fashioned partly from earth.
Most families kept some form of kitchen garden.
If one household had something another needed, people traded.
“If you want chicken,” Mahadeo explained, “somebody go get some peas and they go get a chicken and they split it—like barter trade.”
Along Light Lane Street, where he grew up, another custom sometimes emerged on weekends.
“One of the household go cook for all the houses around,” he recalled.
“So everybody enjoy a meal one Sunday.”
That practice, he said, represented something larger than food.
“The villagers one was unity. Always unity.”
It was a value deliberately passed down by the older generation.
“The older heads literally preach that in us,” Mahadeo said. “They instil them values.”
He believes his generation now has an obligation to do the same for younger residents.
“We try to coach the youths in a sense to go positive,” he said, “Same way like the ancestors coach we, the older heads, we try to follow suit to do good and be something better than we could be.”
A village left to
fend for itself
Karim sees Felicity’s evolution somewhat differently.
The village has expanded, houses have improved and generations have moved into business and professional life, but he believes public infrastructure has not advanced at the same pace.
He pointed particularly to the closure of Trinidad and Tobago’s sugar industry and its effect on communities historically tied to agriculture.
“When the sugar industry failed and they closed the industry, they didn’t have any remedial plans to really and truly lift the communities,” Karim contended.
“The community were left alone to fend for themselves.”
It is a view he expresses strongly, and his criticism stretches across political administrations rather than one party.
Karim argues that governments of different political colours have made promises to Felicity without delivering enough of the infrastructure residents require.
Among the facilities he wants to see are improved fishing infrastructure, easier access to fuel for fishermen, a health facility, a properly developed cremation site, improved recreational facilities, stronger elderly-care services and a permanent police presence.
“Felicity needs proper representation,” he said.
His criticism of political representation is pointed, but Karim insists his position is not about allegiance to either of the country’s major political parties.
“Whether it’s UNC, whether it’s PNM, whoever represents the people,” he said.
“Represent them correctly.”
Residents driving development
Karim believes much of Felicity’s modern development has been driven by residents and private businesses themselves.
“A lot of private sector investors really and truly have this community alive,” he said, pointing to local construction firms, hardware businesses, supermarkets and entrepreneurs.
His own community work, he said, has extended into care for elderly people.
Karim said he established a geriatric home that accepts people regardless of their religion or ethnicity.
“It’s not for Muslim. It’s not for Christian. It’s not for Hindu, it’s for everybody,” he said.
But even there, he said, the surrounding infrastructure has been a struggle.
“I am representing that group of people who are the unfortunate ones in the community of Felicity and environs,” he said.
For him, speaking publicly is part of the responsibility of being both a religious and community leader.
“People need to be represented,” Karim said.
Flooding, roads
and security
For Mahadeo, the development debate becomes clearest when rain falls.
Flooding and drainage remain among his greatest concerns.
He said there are times when parents must physically lift schoolchildren through flooded sections of roadway.
“Sometimes I just be watching schoolchildren walking in the road and literally parents have to lift them up because the road flooding,” he said.
“Better drainage works and things could do something better for our village.”
He is also calling for deteriorated roads to be repaired.
And like Karim, Mahadeo wants a stronger police presence.
“I wish we could have a little police post in our village,” he said.
He believes cameras can deter criminal activity but said visible policing would provide residents with greater reassurance amid concerns about burglaries and home invasions.
“Cameras is a deterrent,” Mahadeo said, “but the police presence could be a big deterrent.”
