Joshua Seemu­n­gal

Se­nior Re­porter

joshua.seemu­n­gal@guardian.co.tt

Bras­so Seco, pa­tois for dry branch, was found­ed as a co­coa and cof­fee plan­ta­tion in the re­mote Paria Val­ley in the ear­ly 20th cen­tu­ry.

With a pop­u­la­tion of around 300 peo­ple, the vil­lage is ap­prox­i­mate­ly 16 miles north of Ari­ma and ac­ces­si­ble via the Paria Morne Bleu Road from the Blan­chisseuse Old Road.

The jour­ney to Bras­so is breath­tak­ing—at some points, you are left breath­less by the nat­ur­al beau­ty and, at oth­er times, by the ap­palling con­di­tion of parts of the road.

As one scales the Blan­chisseuse Road up in­to the North­ern Range, the air cools and light­ens, while the vi­brant green­ery of the trees glow. As one looks over the cliffs, the sharp­ness of the for­est green is in­ter­rupt­ed on­ly by the brown scars of one of the hills carved apart for quar­ry ma­te­r­i­al.

The new­ly-paved sur­face that ex­tends past the Asa Wright Na­ture Cen­tre ini­tial­ly of­fers a smooth dri­ve, al­low­ing you time to scan and ab­sorb your sur­round­ings. On a rainy day, the mist of clouds fills the wind­ing road­way, and you may see un­sus­pect­ing riv­er crabs gin­ger­ly emerge from the bush.

The flat, widened sur­face ends abrupt­ly around ten to 15 min­utes af­ter the cen­tre. The jour­ney then slows down con­sid­er­ably. Deep, con­nect­ed pot­holes caused by poor drainage and a lack of main­te­nance force dri­vers to an­gle their ve­hi­cles to avoid scrap­ing and punc­tured tyres. Com­pli­cat­ing mat­ters, the road is just wide enough to ac­com­mo­date two av­er­age-sized ve­hi­cles. Should a larg­er ve­hi­cle like a garbage truck ap­pear, stop and wait for in­struc­tions.

Chil­dren in rur­al
ar­eas suf­fer­ing

On the cor­ner, be­fore the road starts to de­scend in­to the junc­tion sig­nalling the be­gin­ning of Bras­so is Las La­pas, Michael and his wife, Asha, own a shop sell­ing drinks and home­made food to vis­i­tors.

A short walk away, their house over­looks the val­ley’s moun­tain range to the sea. The friend­ly, down-to-earth cou­ple have three young chil­dren—two boys,  ten and 13 years old, and a girl who is nine.

Life in Las La­pas isn’t what it once was, Michael says. In pre­vi­ous years, he says, it was eas­i­er to make ends meet but mon­ey just doesn’t stretch the same any­more. He farms while his wife runs the shop.

“The pol­i­tics are get­ting worse and worse. Not a day the State gives even a head­pin to­wards this place. We don’t get many peo­ple stop­ping by; maybe a lit­tle hol­i­day or a week­end, you might get a lit­tle sale.

“You know what we need up here? We re­al­ly need school trans­porta­tion. For­get deal­ing with big peo­ple ... but for chil­dren. I find they should do bet­ter for the younger ones, es­pe­cial­ly in rur­al ar­eas. The rur­al ar­eas are suf­fer­ing,” he laments.

School max­is used to come to the area un­der the na­tion­al school trans­port ser­vice, but that stopped many years ago. Now, it costs him $200 a week to hire a taxi to take his two younger chil­dren to the pri­ma­ry school in Bras­so. His el­dest son took the Sec­ondary En­trance Ex­am­i­na­tion ear­li­er this year and passed for a school in Ari­ma. That presents an ex­pen­sive dilem­ma.

“So that will be close to $100 a day for him alone. It’s $25 a head to go down there to Ari­ma. In most of the rur­al ar­eas, peo­ple might be Cepep work­ers, min­i­mum-wage peo­ple. They could do a lit­tle bet­ter than this. Every­body knows in­fla­tion sky­rock­et­ed, but at least chil­dren, they should do some­thing with ed­u­ca­tion be­cause right now, it’s like ed­u­ca­tion is more for the high­er class,” Michael says.

His wife, Asha, says giv­en the dif­fi­cul­ty of get­ting trans­port in­to Ari­ma, she re­quest­ed a trans­fer for her son to at­tend Blan­chisseuse Sec­ondary School. She laments, how­ev­er, that the process has been prob­lem­at­ic.

As I bid them good­bye, they ask me to please do my best to get school trans­porta­tion for the area. And coun­try man­ners be­ing coun­try man­ners, they gift­ed me three pom­mer­acs. It’s the sweet­est pom­mer­ac I’ve ever tast­ed.

Lack of trans­port
af­fects jobs, schools

A large blue sign at the junc­tion sig­nals that Bras­so Seco is eight kilo­me­tres away and Ari­ma is 20km in the oth­er di­rec­tion. Next to the sign is a lone­ly bus shed that serves as a shel­ter for pedes­tri­ans when rain falls. Its wood­en in­te­ri­or is hand paint­ed with rich tones of blue, black, brown, and green. The paint­ings tell tales of the ear­ly days of Bras­so–a woman putting bread in a brick oven, vil­lagers singing parang, and a man break­ing open co­coa pods. The de­cline down the moun­tain in­to the vil­lage is steep. Every so of­ten, the sound of wa­ter cas­cad­ing down a small wa­ter­fall dis­turbs the sound of tyres nav­i­gat­ing the pot­holes. What should be a 25-minute dri­ve in­to the vil­lage cen­tre from Las La­pas ends up tak­ing clos­er to 40 min­utes be­cause of the road’s con­di­tion. The vil­lagers wave to every­one who pass­es but look cu­ri­ous­ly, won­der­ing why strangers have come this far.

As I en­ter the vil­lage, I see two young men, in their ear­ly 20s, speak­ing out­side of a wood­en shop paint­ed in bright blue. One of them spoke will­ing­ly. The oth­er, bare­back and tat­tooed from neck to an­kle, lis­tens ap­pre­hen­sive­ly but at­ten­tive­ly.

“I re­cent­ly get through with an Un­em­ploy­ment Re­lief Pro­gramme (URP) job there. It takes me a while to get a job op­por­tu­ni­ty. I used to live in Mor­vant. I got my card, but I nev­er got called.

“It’s kind of like a dou­ble-edged sword when you talk about job op­por­tu­ni­ties be­cause it’s kind of like you could see an op­por­tu­ni­ty, go be­hind it and you not bound to get through, or you could not know the op­por­tu­ni­ty even ex­ists. I think re­al young peo­ple are un­aware of the op­por­tu­ni­ties. First things first, be­cause a lot of things are word of mouth, the on­ly way a youth man could get an op­por­tu­ni­ty is through some­body aware of the op­por­tu­ni­ty, but there are not enough peo­ple aware of the op­por­tu­ni­ties,” 25-year-old Andy says.

He says while there are lim­it­ed op­por­tu­ni­ties in Forestry, the Min­istry of Works, or Cepep, more fre­quent­ly, to avoid pa­per­work, peo­ple turn to agri­cul­ture or clean­ing jobs that would earn them be­tween $100 to $200 a day. But still, many oth­ers, es­pe­cial­ly youths, are left un­em­ployed, he laments.

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• From page 10

“I re­cent­ly had a con­ver­sa­tion with my moth­er and she said young peo­ple don’t want any­thing be­cause there are Cepep gangs avail­able. It’s prob­a­bly a per­son­al is­sue or prob­lem where the in­di­vid­ual feels they are bet­ter than that, or they may feel they are not good enough. They may think I dropped out of school, so I should do what­ev­er. Not think­ing it’s an op­por­tu­ni­ty and it’s a start.

“Even with the per­cep­tion of school. A child will see that they could get mon­ey every day, so they think, why go to school? Then school­ing up here, you have to get up very ear­ly … The bus doesn’t run again. One of my friends, he’s work­ing in Asa Wright right now, thank God. But for CXC, he let me know that he missed most of his ex­ams on the grounds of no trans­port. It takes away the zeal for a youth man or child to say they are go­ing to school. It seems like a re­al task. A re­al hard task,” he says.

De­vel­op our roads

Dri­ving fur­ther in­to the vil­lage cen­tre, it’s clear that Bras­so Seco, rel­a­tive to oth­er rur­al ar­eas, is de­cent­ly de­vel­oped in­fra­struc­tural­ly. The hous­es, most con­crete, are well built with one or two cars in many dri­ve­ways, while the pri­ma­ry school and health cen­tre look mod­ern and prop­er­ly main­tained.

The road is emp­ty and there’s hard­ly a sound to be heard. Then voic­es from the bar next to the foot­ball field–the lim­ing spot–ap­pear. Over a beer, three vil­lagers, born and raised in Bras­so, talk about vil­lage life. We join in. To talk.

Al­bert, born in Bras­so 60 years ago, be­lieves the stan­dard of liv­ing in the vil­lage has im­proved over­all. He re­calls the days, up to the ear­ly 90s, when there was no cur­rent in the area. Now, he says, there is wa­ter and elec­tric­i­ty read­i­ly avail­able. But while Bras­so is iso­lat­ed from many oth­er parts of the coun­try, he says res­i­dents here al­so feel the ef­fects of in­fla­tion. Most Paria peo­ple work for $100 to $150 a day, he says, but that’s no longer enough to be com­fort­able.

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• From page 11

“Paria is a re­al­ly nice place, but it re­al­ly nice for the peo­ple who are com­ing, the out­siders, to de­vel­op the area. It is not as nice for the peo­ple who are ac­tu­al­ly from here. The re­al Paria peo­ple. When school opens, it has about 14 to 15 chil­dren trav­el­ling from up here to go to school up there and it have no trans­port. The on­ly trans­port we have up here is per­son­al trans­port and they try their best to as­sist the chil­dren.

“So, as a child, you might start to go to school, and then all of a sud­den be­cause of trans­porta­tion, chil­dren may have to stop go­ing on cer­tain days. We don’t want any big bus up here, you know. We want one of those big max­is work­ing in town,” he says.

Across from the con­crete bar ta­ble, Joseph, a Rasta­far­i­an who has al­so lived in Bras­so his en­tire life, agrees with Al­bert. He says the lack of pub­lic trans­port is crip­pling the vil­lage, deny­ing youth a fu­ture.

“That over there is a bus shed, but we have no bus. If you don’t have a fam­i­ly to ac­com­mo­date your child out there dur­ing school time to ease up costs, you are in trou­ble.

“To bring pub­lic trans­port to the area, they need to dig up the road and fix it up nice­ly. Put up re­tain­ing wall, widen the road, to ease up the trans­port prob­lem. Peo­ple are com­ing in­to the area to de­vel­op, buy­ing lands, so the road needs to de­vel­op too,” Joseph says.

They say two PTSC bus­es used to ser­vice the route in the morn­ing and evening, but when the bus dri­ver re­tired, he was nev­er re­placed.

Up­on leav­ing the gen­tle­men at the bar, we no­tice three young men–two of them teenagers–walk­ing in boots and car­ry­ing cut­lass­es and a large cro­cus bag. They were walk­ing around col­lect­ing fruits to pos­si­bly sell. The youngest, Mark, is 15 years old. He has spent most of his va­ca­tion hus­tling to make a lit­tle mon­ey. But he was al­so do­ing that dur­ing the school term. He, like many oth­er of the vil­lage’s chil­dren, missed many days of school. Some have dropped out. One of Mark’s friends said he dropped out, but Mark in­sists he hasn’t. Not yet, at least.

“It’s re­al hard to get trans­port to out there. A $100 every day. It had a maxi that used to come up, but it stopped. That maxi stopped com­ing up here long be­fore COVID. I have to miss school some days be­cause of the cost. Yeah, I does take a hus­tle and work … I does go to school, but I miss be­cause of the trans­port is­sue. As school opens back, I’ll be go­ing. But it’s once in a while when things get tight, I don’t go.

“It have oth­er chil­dren too. Some­times it’s six of us in a car go­ing out. If you don’t get trans­port, you go back home. You know how much time I wait and I can’t get any­thing and I had to go back home. You see sev­en, half sev­en, and you have to go back home. It’s me, Ash­ton, Sheron, Amy, Kali, Ami, Sofia, Saman­tha. All of us have to go through that,” he says be­fore walk­ing off.

Be­tween 2020 and 2022, ac­cord­ing to the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion’s da­ta, at least 151 pri­ma­ry school pupils dropped out of gov­ern­ment schools, while an­oth­er 2,663 stu­dents dropped out of gov­ern­ment sec­ondary schools.