Shutdown

I drove to work through ghost towns today. I made it to work in a little over half the time I usually take. When I dropped my son off 10 minutes before the start of school, he was the only child there. People have been staying home today out of fear of the call to shutdown in protest against crime.

I made it a point to come out because although I’m all for protest, and I’ve marched several times and carried several placards in my time, I don’t agree with “Shutting down the country”. It goes against our interest as a people. People aren’t staying home in protest, they’re staying home out of fear.

The organizer of the 3-day protest, a broadcaster on an Islamic station called Ishmael, (oh yes, he happens to be Muslim) was arrested last night under the Terrorism Act, which allows the police to hold someone without charge for 3 days. He was taken by 4 armed plainclothes cops in unmarked cars from his business during a barbecue. His friends and families thought it was a kidnapping as they did not identify themselves as cops, and formed a human barricade. Needless to say, it didn’t end nicely. Ishmael has also had his TV programme yanked and his license to rally on Saturday revoked.

When a government reacts to the voice of the people this way, things will only get worse. When the police comply with these draconian measures, we all have to be afraid. I didn’t support the protest, but I support the right to protest. What will happen when we get that right taken away?

Update:
In a desperate bid to save face after the stupid and high-handed arrest of Mr. Ishmael, the government has frantically perused the law books for something they can charge him with. They've come up with a beauty: they've charged him with distributing a flyer without the printer's name and address on it. He is now out on $10,000 bail. I've been in Public Relations for 15 years, and I never knew this was illegal.
I guess now I know.

No place to hide

Some time in the early hours of yesterday morning four men burst into the home of a female police office and executed her, her family and a visitor who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. The hit was ordered from behind prison walls by a man she had just put away for murder. Everyone was riddled with bullets, except a 5 year old girl who hid. A neighbour who heard her screaming says it chilled him to the marrow.

I’ve heard of a mass hits ordered in Jamaica, but it is unprecedented in this country. It is a horror that we have never even imagined, in spite of all that has gone before. The cops are not taking it lightly. They’ve said that their response will be swift and proportionate. They’re not kidding. Within hours they burst in on a man who lived a few streets away from the cop, dragged him out of his bed, set him against his fridge and shot him in the head. This is only the beginning.

We are going to experience a wave of violence like we never have before. When I first heard the news I was driving to work. I felt physically ill. Pains all over my body. My first thought was to stop the car, call Rawle and tell him we have to get out of this place. But where can we go? There’s no place to hide.

There’s a groundswell of protest that’s building. There have been calls to shut down the country for two days, starting tomorrow, in protest against the Government’s inability to stem the tide. People are stocking up on gas, food and water. There will be mass stayaways from work. There may even be street blockages, hopefully no clashes with the cops.

I appreciate the gesture. I’ve done my share of protesting. But I’ve lost faith in the power of protest. Our government, especially our Prime Minister, is so arrogant and so self-obsessed that they have lost the ability to listen to the will of the people. This protest will change nothing.

Downtime

I really am a hypocrite. Always moaning about downtime this, downtime that, and how I never get any. Ran away on my lunch hour to a nearby beauty salon for a facial. It was glorious: tender fingers touching my face, sweet smelling aromatic oils, mellow CDs, birds twittering, heated, vibrating chair...and I was itching to get up.

I must have Restless Allover Syndrome. I'm lying there with my eyes closed, and this divine lavender mask hardening on my poor mistreated face, in a darkened room. Chair heating up to soothe my aching back. I could have taken a nap. Did I? Nooo. Instead I'm peeping at my watch to see how much longer I have to lie like this. What? You mean I have to lie here in utter luxury in the middle of the day while this stuff soaks into my thirsty skin for A WHOLE FIFTEEN MINUTES? Noooo!!

Incredubly, I actually called the technician and asked her to hurry it up, because I have to get back to work. I must be mad.

Sometimes, I wanna slap myself.

On second thought...

On second thought, I don't think I like this drug. I got up this morning feeling odd as hell. My hands have been shaking so much i can barely type this. My head feels full of cotton wool. Getting high is definitely not for me. I looked up this tofranil and don't like what I see.

It's really called Imipramine and it as a list of side effects as long as my arm. none of them good. I called my doctor and told him i want out. He says to use it every other night instead. We'll see how that goes, but if I still feel like this in a few days, i'm stoppong cold turkey. I'd make a very bad junkie.

MMMMellowwww.

I've never been one for drugs. Never been high (childbirth narcotics excluded), never been any drunker than two glasses of wine will get me. Never smoked anything, period, much less anything that could get me jailed. But my doctor is trying a drug on me called Tofranil for a bladder problem I have. (Don't ask. Put that in your Too Much Information file and forget I said it.) And as it turns out, it's also an anti-depressant with some very interesting side effects.

He told me to take it the very last thing before I go to bed. Now, after three nights, I can see why. In fifteen minutes flat, things start to look groovy. Sleep comes a little easier, and even when I'm awake, I'm just chillin' in the dark, feelin' mellow.

Not bad. Not good, though. Groggy isn't a sensation I enjoy. But given the amout of sleep I've been losing to anxiety lately, it's a welcome break. It's a 30 day prescription, so maybe over the next month or so, you can expect more cheerful blogs.

$8 MIllion? No, thanks.

Last night there were choppers pacing our neighborhood, across the sky and back, across and back. I fell asleep listening to them. When I left for work this morning, there was a chopper flying overhead. Slowly. Searching.

I assumed they were looking for the kidnap victim who as snatched a few miles away from my house on New Year's Eve (Or Old Year's Day, as we call it in Trinidad). But I heard on the news that he was found on Saturday morning, about a mile from my house. He'd escaped his captors and wandered in the forest for a day.

The other lady, who has been missing for 3 weeks, hasn't been found. Even though the ransom has been paid, she was not released. I think about her a lot because although we never formally met, she had her reflexology treatments scheduled after mine, so when I left, she was usually coming in. I remember her as being cheerful, down to earth and talkative, a regular person who didn't let her money give her airs. The police has a suspect who claims that they shot her in the chest more than a week ago, chopped her into pieces and buried the pieces.

And we call ourselves civilised.

Meanwhile, in other news, the state Lotto is now over $8 million, with record lines at the lotto shops. Why? Who would want that kind of wealth in a place like this, at a time like this? This country has made success a liability. When you succeed, you put your family at risk, because there are those who will not forgive you for having what they are too lazy, too cowardly to work for themselves.

Even though we don't gamble, I asked Rawle what he'd do if he won it. He said we'd either have to hide the money or leave the country "for a little while". Lovely. The penalty for having money is either living in fear or uprooting yourself and your children from everything they know.

To be honest, though, I've always said how much I love Trinidad, and how I'd never leave it, no matter what. Now, I'm not so sure.

Inso-mania

Couldn't sleep last night. Third night in a row. Turned up for work an hour and a half late this morning. Third day in a row. I used to be an insomniac, back in the days when having no children allowed me the luxury of staying up all night and worrying about stuff. I hadn't thought I'd be visiting that planet again.

But I couldn't sleep last night. I lay there worrying about this country and what a scary place it has become, and about the two kidnap victims we're still hoping will come home. One of them has been missing since a week before Christmas. At night, I lie in bed and hear the helicopters pass over my house. Lookng for them.

Murders have kept pace with the number of days in the year. People are killing people in such an off-hand manner that you'd think it was all a game. Two government councillors shot in seperate incidents. One survived seven bullets, one didn't live after he took three to the head. One girl shot in the face for being a police informant, another man disemboweled in an argument over his dog.

As a nation, we're losing our soul. What will be left for my children by the time they grow up?

An even uglier tree

I thought I had the ugliest Christmas tree in the world, but it seems that I was suffering from delusions of grandeur. Have a gander at the one in my office. No, I did not Photoshop it.