Joshua Seemu­n­gal

Well-known lo­cal Rasta­far­i­an leader Glen­roy “Bon­go Grease” Halls re­mains home­less more than two months af­ter his Marigold Dri­ve, Siparia home was de­stroyed by fire. The act­ing All Man­sions of Rasta­fari chair­man, who is al­so a pop­u­lar nutsman in San Fer­nan­do, has been liv­ing with a close friend since the in­ci­dent.

And while he’s grate­ful for his friend’s sup­port, he said he des­per­ate­ly needs a place to call his own again, es­pe­cial­ly as he’s deal­ing with a se­ri­ous kid­ney is­sue that may soon re­quire surgery.

Halls has a con­di­tion called staghorn stones which, if left un­treat­ed, will like­ly de­stroy his kid­ney and/or lead to life-threat­en­ing in­fec­tions.

“It is not easy to come back from this. This is re­al pain, re­al pain. When I study this thing, I just feel to cry,” Bon­go Grease said while walk­ing through the burned re­mains of his home.

The two-sto­ry struc­ture was de­stroyed by the fire, which means it will like­ly have to be bro­ken down and re­built from scratch.

The home, in which he’s lived his en­tire life, was pur­chased by his late moth­er, who worked mul­ti­ple jobs to pro­vide for her fam­i­ly.

“Af­ter I worked so hard to pro­vide for my own fam­i­ly, I am at the age where I was sup­posed to be rest­ing, but now I have to study the stress of this sit­u­a­tion. It’s re­al­ly not easy nah boy. There’s no quick fix,” he lament­ed.

At the time of the fire, Halls was al­so tak­ing care of his niece, who re­cent­ly lost her moth­er—Halls’ sis­ter. She too is now with­out a per­ma­nent home, stay­ing tem­porar­i­ly with rel­a­tives. Frus­trat­ing­ly, Halls’s at­tempts to get as­sis­tance through the re­spec­tive so­cial grants are yet to be processed, leav­ing him in lim­bo.

The T&T Fire Ser­vice’s in­con­clu­sive in­ves­tiga­tive re­port hasn’t helped with the process, he said.

“I’ve start­ed tak­ing off the gal­vanise from the place. The rea­son why this as­sis­tance is need­ed as soon as pos­si­ble is be­cause of the weath­er we are hav­ing these days. I wouldn’t like the gal­vanise to fly in­to the neigh­bours’ prop­er­ty and pos­si­bly cause more fires. The rain­wa­ter is al­so un­der­min­ing the struc­ture fur­ther,” he said.

For­tu­nate­ly, Halls said, he’s been re­ceiv­ing as­sis­tance from friends and mem­bers of the lo­cal and in­ter­na­tion­al Rasta­far­i­an com­mu­ni­ty to keep him afloat.

On Oc­to­ber 22, All Man­sions of Rasta­fari—a lo­cal Rasta­far­i­an or­gan­i­sa­tion—will be host­ing a fund-rais­ing dance at the Twelve Tribes of Is­rael head­quar­ters in Sea Trace, Diego Mar­tin, for Halls called “My Broth­er’s Keep­er.”

Through­out his 40-plus years as a Rasta­far­i­an, Halls has ded­i­cat­ed him­self to help­ing oth­ers in­side and out­side of his com­mu­ni­ty. Dur­ing the pan­dem­ic, he gave out ham­pers and pro­duce from his home gar­den to needy fam­i­lies in Siparia and oth­er parts of the coun­try. And even as he deals with the hard­ship of los­ing his home, he is fo­cused on help­ing oth­ers in the fu­ture.

“Pain is a mes­sage and the mes­sage is wake up. I may be the one who has to save a lot of peo­ple who may come and go through cer­tain tribu­la­tions, and in­stead of go­ing mad and get­ting de­pressed, I’ll be able to han­dle it and as­sist and show them a way out, to strength­en them, es­pe­cial­ly the way Trinidad go­ing right now,” he said. “If you don’t prac­tice love, you’ll nev­er see the ex­cel­lence and gift of it.”

Bon­go Grease is hop­ing the pub­lic will pull him out of a trag­ic sit­u­a­tion that is seek­ing to break him.

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Do­na­tions can be made to the Roy­al Bank ac­count of Make­da Halls (Glen­roy’s daugh­ter) - 110000003908629.