Pe­ter Ray Blood

Ka­reem Mar­celle is a 21-year-old res­i­dent of Phase 3, Beetham Gar­dens, and was a stand out par­tic­i­pant at the April 19 in­stall­ment of Laven­tille Nights, an on­go­ing project be­ing held in Laven­tille and en­vi­rons by Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty, in con­junc­tion with I95.5FM. Born and raised in Beetham, a dis­trict tagged by law en­force­ment and many bu­reau­crats as "hot spot," young Mar­celle has risen above the ills as­so­ci­at­ed with such ill-re­put­ed com­mu­ni­ties and can be con­sid­ered a bea­con of hope for the na­tion's youth.

Hav­ing grown in ab­ject pover­ty, Mar­celle is cur­rent­ly em­ployed as a Fa­cil­i­ties As­sis­tant at Nid­co and is al­so pur­su­ing a bach­e­lors de­gree in law, through the Uni­ver­si­ty of Lon­don in­ter­na­tion­al pro­gramme.

Ac­com­pa­nied by moth­er Al­der­man Sher­ma Wil­son, Mar­celle left the large au­di­ence at the April 19 fo­rum with mouths agape as he re­lat­ed his sto­ry of sur­viv­ing a harsh ex­is­tence in an en­vi­ron­ment that most would con­sid­er op­pres­sive and ex­treme­ly chal­leng­ing.

"I am the last of sev­en chil­dren, my mom hav­ing four and fa­ther hav­ing sev­en," said Mar­celle. "Of all my sib­lings I am the on­ly child who was not chris­tened. But, we all had a nor­mal church life, me at­tend­ing ser­vices at the King­dom Hall.

"Ba­si­cal­ly I had a nor­mal boy­hood, play­ing with the chil­dren in my neigh­bour­hood, in spite of the ex­treme con­di­tions at home. We nev­er knew what it felt like to buy gro­ceries at the end of every month. Every day my mom would have to find means of pro­vid­ing meals for us. She be­gan sell­ing chick­en and chips at nights on the Beetham. Every day she would send one of the chil­dren in the shop to get a pound of lentil peas or a pound of rice.

"Pri­or to sell­ing the chick­en and chips there was one time when she put on a pot of wa­ter on the stove to boil with noth­ing to put in a pot or hav­ing a clue as to what she would feed her chil­dren that day. One day, as the pot boiled and we starv­ing, the wa­ter kept evap­o­rat­ing and my mom con­tin­ued adding wa­ter to the pot and as­sur­ing us that food would be ready soon. Per­haps by di­vine in­ter­ven­tion, a neigh­bour who had a gar­den brought some pro­vi­sion which she put in­to the boil­ing wa­ter, and sent one of us to the shop to buy some lentil peas."

De­spite his tri­als as a child, Mar­celle tried to di­rect his en­ergeies on his stud­ies. He said: "I at­tend­ed Sa­cred Heart Boys RC School, passed SEA for Daniel's Com­mu­ni­ty Col­lege, but was sub­se­quent­ly trans­ferred to Trin­i­ty Col­lege, Mo­ka, when Daniel's closed. Trin­i­ty Col­lege is an amaz­ing school and if I ever have chil­dren I would want them to go there. The school chal­lenges and push­es a stu­dent to achieve their best."

A sig­nif­i­cant fac­tor in Mar­celle's strug­gle with grow­ing up and ac­quir­ing grit and de­ter­mi­na­tion to suc­ceed came from a bro­ken fam­i­ly home. He re­called: "The chal­lenges I had with fam­i­ly life made school life for me that much more chal­leng­ing and dif­fi­cult. For ex­am­ple, when I was in Stan­dard Four go­ing up to Std Five, my fa­ther mi­grat­ed to Amer­i­ca. He said he would re­turn to Trinidad in three months but, af­ter more months passed by, he told us that he'd got­ten mar­ried, 'had moved on with with his life', and wasn't re­turn­ing.

"This took a very hard toll on my mom both emo­tion­al­ly and fi­nan­cial­ly. It al­so neg­a­tive­ly af­fect­ed us the chil­dren. I was a top stu­dent up to that time; an A grade stu­dent ac­tu­al­ly; but, from Std Five my grades be­gan drop­ping dras­ti­cal­ly.

"While writ­ing the Cre­ative Writ­ing pa­per at SEA I be­gan cry­ing and when the in­vig­i­la­tor en­quired I told her that it be­cause I was not scared of writ­ing the ex­am but was cry­ing be­cause of a prob­lem at home. She re­alised that some­thing more sig­nif­i­cant than writ­ing the ex­am was both­er­ing me and con­soled me. I didn't pass for the school of my choice which ac­tu­al­ly was Trin­i­ty Col­lege."

At the age of 13 Mar­celle's fa­ther re­turned for a vis­it and tried to seek for­give­ness from his chil­dren's moth­er and the chil­dren. "By that time," said Mar­celle, "we had moved on and mom was not the eas­i­ly for­giv­ing kind. By this time, we were strug­gling more; my two el­der broth­ers had dropped out of school. It was at this point in time that mom got in­to ac­tivisim and so­cial work. She be­gan work­ing with Wayne Chance at Vi­sion on Mis­sion and would ag­gi­tate aginst wrongs per­pet­u­at­ed on res­i­dents in our com­mu­ni­ty. It was through this she land­ed a job as a ra­dio talk show host with Pow­er 102.1FM, work­ing with the late Mar­cia Henville."

The trau­mas of Mar­celle's life got even more bizarre when he was writ­ing the NCSE at Trin­i­ty. He re­ceived news that his fa­ther had mur­dered his wife in the States, tried to burn down the en­tire con­dominum in which they lived, and tried to com­mit sui­cide. He was ad­mit­ted to a men­tal in­sti­tute. When his fa­ther was de­clared fit enough to stand tri­al two years lat­er, Mar­celle was now in Form Five, about to write CXC.

Mar­celle said: "He was sen­tenced around the age of 55 to 35 years-life in prison which means he would not be free be­fore age 90. The av­er­age hu­man life span is 80 and to me it was as if my fa­ther had died.

"The same way my grades dropped when study­ing for SEA they dropped al­so for CXC. At Trin­i­ty I dropped from be­ing among the top five stu­dents. I sim­ply stopped study­ing and fo­cussing in class. But, be­cause ed­u­ca­tion is a gift that doesn't just dis­ap­pear so I still man­aged to get eight CXC pass­es, though this was much low­er than what was ex­pect­ed of me which was noth­ing less than a schol­ar­ship.

"This was the hard­est part of my ed­u­ca­tion and fam­i­ly life. I went on to Form Six where I grad­u­at­ed with six Cape unit pass­es. From there I did an in­tern­ship at Nid­co. Af­ter I proved my­self I was hired and I am still there. I must work to pay for school and my tu­ition fees are in pounds.

"My man­ag­er at Nid­co is a God send in that he al­lows me time off to study. I am sit­ting my first year law ex­ams this year."

Am­bi­tion burns fierce­ly in the breast of Mar­celle. At the mo­ment he is heav­i­ly in­volved in com­mu­ni­ty and so­cial work. One of his pet projects is his an­nu­al chil­dren's Christ­mas par­ty held for the chil­dren of the Beetham Gar­dens com­mu­ni­ty. "This event is at­tend­ed by over 500 chil­dren," said Ka­reem, "but I am hope­ful that with the new gov­ern­ment I would con­tin­ue to re­ceive as­sis­tance. The last time I held the par­ty, I was as­sist­ed by then Min­is­ter of the Peo­ple Glenn Ra­madars­ingh, for­mer MP Nile­ung Hy­po­lite, SIS, the Of­fice of Law Em­force­ment Pol­i­cy, Nid­co and Nipdec.

"As for my fu­ture, the rea­son why I am do­ing com­mu­ni­ty work and pur­su­ing a law de­gree is be­cause I want to be the prime min­is­ter of Trinidad and To­ba­go.

"I am not on­ly do­ing law as that would be self­ish and that would on­ly be for me. As just an at­tor­ney at law I would on­ly be able to help my fam­i­ly and my­self but I am see­ing the need to help­ing my com­mu­ni­ty and the en­tire coun­try.

"The peo­ple who are ap­point­ed min­is­ters in this coun­try, whether it be those re­spon­si­bkle for giv­ing food cards or re­duc­ing pover­ty don't have a clue what it feels like to be re­al­ly hun­gry, or what it feels like to be poor. I know it, I've lived it, and I am de­ter­mined to do some­thing about it."