Akash Sama­roo

Our as­sign­ment was to see if peo­ple were fol­low­ing COVID-19 pro­to­cols on Mara­cas Bay and it was a long-haired beau­ty with­out a face mask that caught our at­ten­tion.

Get­ting clos­er to the mo­tion­less fig­ure it was clear that this was no Good Fri­day ‘bobolee’ but rather a work of art.

From her black curly locks to her long tail fin, she leaned against a tree stump with her back to the wa­ter as if she’s been sur­vey­ing the sands for­ev­er.

And if ever there is an ex­am­ple of the say­ing ‘art is sub­jec­tive’ then it was her.

“I think it’s a bit spooky, sor­ry I don’t know if I’m al­lowed to say that, but it is spooky,” Lil­ly, a beach­go­er said to a Guardian Me­dia news team.

And there­in lies the sub­jec­tiv­i­ty, be­cause what is ‘spooky’ for her was, “Re­al­ly cool! My daugh­ter said mum­my look a mer­maid!” said Karise Hen­ry.

But who put our mys­te­ri­ous mer­maid there? What does her som­bre face mean? And on one of the holi­est days in the Ro­man Catholic re­li­gion, what is this myth­i­cal crea­ture, which is of­ten de­pict­ed as agents of de­struc­tion, try­ing to tell us.

Guardian Me­dia’s search took us first to one of the life­guard booths, they are usu­al­ly au courant with the go­ings on at the beach, af­ter all it is their of­fice.

“Who put the mer­maid there?” I asked pon­der­ing if such a ques­tion ever came up in jour­nal­ism school.

A wry smile and an am­bigu­ous an­swer fol­lowed.

“An old head, but he’s not around now, come back to­mor­row.”

I was off to­mor­row, so the search con­tin­ued.

“Ey Akash, you want a drink?” I did not, but I did want an­swers. And from the group of spir­i­tu­ous liquor con­sumers I got my big break.

“Ask them fel­las who does run the chair rentals, they put it up.”

Eu­re­ka. I ap­proached two mid­dle aged men un­der a white tent. Stacked beach cheers their back­drop.

“Did you all put up the mer­maid?”

One said no, the oth­er, yes.

That man is Ny­ron Mar­cano. Mar­cano said he was sit­ting with a man about three weeks ago and they were look­ing at a tree log with the top half miss­ing when in­spi­ra­tion struck.

“And he de­cide I will do a mer­maid be­cause it close to the beach so we came to­geth­er and went to a next guy from the vil­lage who did the weld­ing job, plus a girl to do the hair, a next guy to do the fi­bre glass and paint­ing and I put it up.”

Mar­cano said this was an ini­tia­tive by vil­lagers in Mara­cas.

So how long will it be on dis­play?

“As long as no­body in­ter­fere with it.”

And he’s hop­ing peo­ple look and don’t touch.

“Well, when I come out this morn­ing, I saw a lot of peo­ple tak­ing pic­tures and I think­ing, this thing could go re­al­ly vi­ral. Every­body say­ing this look­ing re­al nice and won­der­ful.”

In­ter­est­ing­ly enough Trinida­di­an-born British writer Monique Rof­fey won the Cos­ta Award for her book The Mer­maid of the Black Conch—a Love Sto­ry—a love sto­ry be­tween a fish­er­man and a mer­maid based on leg­end shared by the in­dige­nous peo­ple of the Caribbean.

It would have been quite an in­spi­ra­tion for the art­work but ac­cord­ing to Mar­cano this was not the case.

“The artist does do Car­ni­val cos­tumes and thing and he’s cre­ative and he said this is it, a mer­maid.”

The ‘artist’ was not in the vil­lage yes­ter­day nor did they have a num­ber for him.

Mar­cano said it is still a work in progress and our mys­te­ri­ous mer­maid does not have a name just yet.

Al­though a YouTube link show­ing the stat­ue be­ing erect­ed on Thurs­day night called her Am­era, the Mara­cas Bay Mer­maid.

So, some may call her spooky, oth­ers may think she’s in­ter­est­ing, she might be both. See for your­self.