Ada Fran­cois knows what a true Tri­ni Christ­mas is sup­posed to be like.

Fran­cois has lived long enough to know that it’s sup­posed to in­clude de­li­cious food, re­fresh­ing drinks, a fresh­ly-paint­ed house and fam­i­ly.

But on this, her 91st Christ­mas, many of those el­e­ments are miss­ing as Fran­cois does not feel as though she has any rea­son to cel­e­brate Christ­mas this year.

Fran­cois did not cel­e­brate her 91st birth­day last month ei­ther.

Days be­fore her birth­day, Fran­cois had at­tend­ed the fu­ner­al ser­vice for her first great-grand­son, 15-year-old Sha­keem.

Sha­keem was killed by po­lice in a shoot­ing in­ci­dent which claimed the lives of five peo­ple from Trou Macaque, Laven­tille.

The oth­er four shot dead were Sha­keem’s 17-year-old best friend Kudiem Phillip, Shaun­dell St Clair, Mishack Dou­glas, and Nicholas Bark­er.

The shoot­ing took place at the side of Fran­cois’ house on Oc­to­ber 24.

Still griev­ing over Sha­keem’s death, Fran­cois does not plan to cel­e­brate Christ­mas this year.

“I still feel as though he is here. I feel him but I know he is not here any­more,” Fran­cois told the Sun­day Guardian.

Sha­keem used to help Fran­cois with her Christ­mas prepa­ra­tions.

Fran­cois lives in a house foot­steps be­hind the house where Sha­keem lived with his fam­i­ly.

A string of Christ­mas lights on that house is now the on­ly ex­ter­nal sign that it is the Christ­mas sea­son.

Where­as a scat­ter­ing of bul­let holes, some cir­cled in red, dried blood and shat­tered win­dows are among the signs of what hap­pened the night of Sha­keem’s death.

Sha­keem’s dried blood can still be seen on the couch where he and Phillip were shot by po­lice.

If not for sheer luck or di­vine in­ter­ven­tion, Fran­cois could al­so have been killed in the shoot­ing in­ci­dent.

Fran­cois usu­al­ly re­lax­es in a chair in­side her kitchen.

It was where she was seat­ed when the Sun­day Guardian vis­it­ed the com­mu­ni­ty.

Two bul­let holes from the fa­tal shoot­ing in­ci­dent are in that chair. Mere mo­ments be­fore the fa­tal shoot­ing took place Fran­cois had got­ten up from that chair.

Fran­cois could have al­so lost her grand­son Dr Aaron Jack, 28, dur­ing the in­ci­dent. Jack was ly­ing down on a couch in­side Fran­cois’ house when the shoot­ing took place. An elec­tric fan is cred­it­ed for stop­ping two bul­lets which seemed to be on a tra­jec­to­ry to­ward him.

All around Fran­cois’ house is ev­i­dence of the shoot­ing which hap­pened that fa­tal night. There are bul­let holes in her walls, lou­vres shat­tered by bul­lets, and apart from the chair and fan, a strain­er and oth­er uten­sils were dam­aged.

Crime scene in­ves­ti­ga­tors have left a yel­low plas­tic num­ber 14 mark­er near the elec­tric fan in the Fran­cois home, giv­ing an idea of ex­act­ly how many bul­lets were shot that night.

“I have tried to pre­serve every­thing as is, as it hap­pened,” Jack said.

Sha­keem and the four oth­ers who were shot dead all lived with­in close prox­im­i­ty of each oth­er.

The deaths have tak­en a toll on the area.

“We spent all of our mon­ey on fu­ner­als. We don’t have mon­ey to spend on Christ­mas now. Nor­mal­ly, I would have al­ready paint­ed my house but not this year,” a man from the area who re­quest­ed anonymi­ty said.

The Po­lice Com­plaints Au­thor­i­ty (PCA) has vis­it­ed the area and spo­ken to in­di­vid­u­als there as part of their in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the mat­ter.

The PCA is cur­rent­ly in­ves­ti­gat­ing 44 deaths in po­lice-in­volved shoot­ings this year.

Ten of those deaths, in­clud­ing that of Sha­keem and the four oth­ers in Trou Macaque, hap­pened since Gary Grif­fith was ap­point­ed Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er.

Last year, 46 peo­ple were killed in po­lice-in­volved shoot­ings.

Grif­fith has sig­nalled his in­ten­tion to meet gun­fire with gun­fire in his war against crim­i­nals, as he tries to en­sure the coun­try’s mur­der toll does not cross the 500 mark again next year.

But crime has not been the on­ly thing to have caused a ma­jor damper on Christ­mas cel­e­bra­tions around the coun­try this year.

Flood vic­tims still trau­ma­tised

On Oc­to­ber 19, flood­ing dev­as­tat­ed sev­er­al com­mu­ni­ties in the North East­ern por­tion of Trinidad, in­clud­ing Green­vale Park in La Hor­quet­ta.

When the Sun­day Guardian vis­it­ed the area this week, on­ly a few hous­es had dec­o­ra­tions up as­so­ci­at­ed with Christ­mas.

The build­ing hous­ing the Green­vale Park Po­lice Youth Club seemed to ex­hib­it the most Christ­mas cheer in the area, with gar­lands placed on the build­ing’s ex­te­ri­or as a well as a Christ­mas tree.

The So­cial and Com­mu­ni­ty Ser­vices De­part­ment of the Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (HDC) re­cent­ly sought to bring Christ­mas cheer by parang­ing res­i­dents and dis­trib­ut­ing 35 ham­pers to the el­der­ly and res­i­dents with dis­abil­i­ties.

An­dre Brig­gs, who is vi­su­al­ly im­paired and al­so us­es a wheel­chair, was one of those who re­ceived a ham­per.

“It was nice of them to show some form of em­pa­thy in terms of giv­ing me a lit­tle cheer. But at the same time, things ain’t hap­pen­ing be­cause I don’t have a sink to cook. And there were things that were sup­posed to be in place but you have to thank God for small mer­cies still,” Brig­gs told the Sun­day Guardian.

Brig­gs said months af­ter the dev­as­tat­ing flood­ing he is still try­ing to come to terms with what hap­pened.

“I’m still try­ing to re­cov­er from what hap­pened. Things are mov­ing slow­ly but sure­ly,” he said.

Brig­gs’ next door neigh­bours at Culpep­per Av­enue are al­so still try­ing to cope.

They are, how­ev­er, one of the few hous­es in the area with a Christ­mas tree on their porch.

The five-foot-tall tree was put up to help six-year-old Blessed Alexan­der have a sem­blance of a Mer­ry Christ­mas.

“Right now the Christ­mas spir­it is not here to tell you the hon­est truth. Be­cause the cup­board is still on the ground and we still have dirty wa­ter, what can you re­al­ly do in­side a house like this,?” Alexan­der’s moth­er Pearl War­rel said.

“And even though I didn’t re­al­ly plan on cel­e­brat­ing it I’m do­ing it for my daugh­ter, but for my­self, I don’t have the zeal. I don’t have the zeal to even buy any­thing to put in the house, but just to make her (Blessed) hap­py that is the rea­son I’m even try­ing.”

War­rel said she felt like cry­ing when the parang band came to ser­e­nade them.

“This sit­u­a­tion is heart­break­ing. As I’m paint­ing the walls are flak­ing and I said you see me, I feel to give up for the hour, but I’ll try to do a lit­tle thing for her,” she said.

While Christ­mas dec­o­ra­tions may be miss­ing from the com­mu­ni­ty, there are still signs of the flood­ing that dev­as­tat­ed the com­mu­ni­ty months ear­li­er.

At the side of the roads are dis­card­ed de­bris and there are at least three cars on blocks with rem­nants of flood wa­ter dam­age.

Dis­missed work­ers in lim­bo

An­oth­er cause for a bleak Christ­mas for some this year were the dis­missals that took place through­out the coun­try, in­clud­ing at state-owned Petrotrin and TSTT.

Petrotrin of­fi­cial­ly shut its doors on No­vem­ber 30.

Steve was one of those who was af­fect­ed by the clo­sure. He was a tem­po­rary work­er with Petrotrin for just over five years.

Out of over 2,000 tem­po­rary work­ers who worked at Petrotrin on­ly 1,060 qual­i­fied for sev­er­ance pack­ages. Steve was not one of them.

“All I have to look for­ward to re­al­ly is the back­pay,” he said.

The pay­ment of that back­pay, how­ev­er, has now been pushed back to Jan­u­ary.

“I won’t be cel­e­brat­ing Christ­mas this year. I feel I have no rea­son to cel­e­brate and even if there was a rea­son I don’t have the mon­ey to do it,” he said.

News of the im­pend­ing clo­sure of Petrotrin start­ed since around Au­gust. This gave Steve at least some time to pre­pare men­tal­ly for it.

TSTT work­ers were not as lucky. In mid-No­vem­ber, TSTT re­trenched 503 se­nior and ju­nior staff. An ad­di­tion­al 51 were sent home from the State-owned telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions com­pa­ny ear­li­er this month.

“This is what a Tri­ni Christ­mas seems to be nowa­days if you lucky enough to still be alive with all the crime that tak­ing place, you have to hope you still have a job,” Steve said.