Scared straight to Barbados

AS TOLD TO BC PIRES

My name is Marla Dukharan and I’m paranoid.

For the very good reason that my husband was shot in a robbery attempt.

My husband was shot on February 20, 2018, the week after Carnival.

My husband, Richard Raphael Ramkissoon Snr, said our son had to have his name and I was, like, “I doing all this wuk and I not going to get to name this child? No!”

So our son is named Richard Raphael Vivekanand Ramkisoon. Our daughter is Sophia Ananda.

There is no literal translation but I guess “Anand” means “bliss, salvation.” Vivek and Sophia both mean wisdom.

I come from a Hindu background, but a quite secular one.

I grew up eating meat, including beef. When my mom, Shanti, was not around, my dad, Raj, would open a can of corned beef for us.

I went to UWI Prep School, Lakshmi Girls,’ St Augustine Girls’ under legendary principal, Anna Mahase.

I did my MSc in economics at UWI, St Augustine, choosing psychology for my electives because all economic actors – the central bank governor, the finance minister, the CEO, the housewife – are human beings.

In St Augustine Girls' High School, I opened a macroeconomics text by John Beardshaw and fell in love like I’ve never fallen in love since.

I’m not joking. Economics was my salvation. If I won the lottery, I’d still be an economist.

I never felt that way about a man. My husband knows this.

I’ve always believed in God but I don’t believe in religion, a man-made construct. And usually constructed to keep women in their place.

I don’t believe, I KNOW there is an omnipotent, omniscient God capable of, not just intervention in human affairs, but capable of miracles!

In delivering Sophia, her heartbeat was slowing, I was losing consciousness after many hours of labour. I was exhausted. I kept saying, “Lord, help me!”

This overwhelming feeling of calm came over me and the Lord said, “Why are you struggling? I am here. Let go. And let me handle this.”

And that’s what I did.

Since 2009, TT has been on a steady, relentless and now accelerating decline. Acceleration usually happens when you’re getting to the tipping point.

In Trinidad, not only the economy but, I think, democracy itself is in decline, in that you have about one-third of electorate that is increasingly non-tribal – but we only have two choices. And each iteration of those two parties gets weaker (every election).

Trinidad is deteriorating from within, from its soul all the way out.

On February 20, 2018, my husband drove out of his compound gate in Arima at about 4.30 pm. A car cut him off and blocked him.

They thought he had the day’s cash deposits on him but he didn’t.

My husband was shot at point-blank range. The bullet entered the left side of and went straight across his abdomen.

It’s still lodged in his hip today.

If not for his cousin, Dr Faisal Daniel, and the surgeon, Prof Vijay Naraynsingh, my husband would not be alive today – and even they didn’t expect him to make it. Vijay said, “Make sure and bring the children.”

Much later, when Richard was safe, he said he had to almost admit defeat and stop operating because there was so much shock and internal bleeding.

Vijay Naraynsingh had to take my husband’s intestines completely out of his body and go through 22 feet of intestines, inch by inch, holding them up to the light, to make sure there was no perforation.

He told me the bullet had passed through Richard in the most harmless way a bullet could possibly go through an abdomen, straight through the bladder without perforating the intestine, kidneys or any other organs.

The homicide rate is determined by two things: the level of violent, life-threatening crime; and the level of healthcare.

With poor healthcare, you have a greater chance of violent crime ending up as a homicide statistic.

The sad thing about TT is that the majority of people who get shot would not have the care and attention Richard got.

The average person doesn’t realise the kind of impact violent crime has on a whole family, an extended family and generations in a family.

We are all, in Trinidad, just boiling frogs. We make incremental adjustments as things deteriorate slowly without even realising our countries, our lives, our families and our societies are being destroyed.

My children now recognise TT as a broken place (that let) something like this happen to their father and no one be held to account. They associate Trinidad with pain, insecurity and fear.

That is the loss our country has suffered: that there will be hundreds, if not thousands, more like them, like us, that you don’t hear about.

But that doesn’t make it less real.

I was working for a Bajan company and they’d always wanted me to be based in Barbados. I’d actually negotiated hard to remain in Trinidad because my daughter was doing her SEA in 2018.

After the shooting, they knew I was suffering and they said, “Why don’t you come to Barbados now?” And I’ve been in Barbados since.

After the shooting, I didn’t sleep for months.

Even now, when I’m in Trinidad, I have to take (medication) to get to sleep. I lie in bed and, every noise, I feel somebody is coming to get me. You always have to look around. You don’t go to your car if you see someone hanging around in a car park.

I don’t think about these things in Barbados.

I can only live in an apartment building now, with neighbours all around me. In, like, strength in numbers.

I can’t imagine being in a house with a yard, where a man could jump through the window.

When I land in Trinidad, I get tense. When I leave, I relax.

For ten years now, boarding a plane in Trinidad is like taking a stiff drink: you just feel better immediately.

Just leaving one of my kids alone to go pick up the other, to go to the supermarket – I would never do that in Trinidad.

I love my country and I so want to see it succeed and to see people flourish. But so help me God, I really hope I don’t ever have to go back to live in Trinidad.

I do feel a sense of obligation.

But I feel a greater obligation to my family. I can’t save the world but I can save my children.

Maybe one day, when my children are grown, I’ll go back and play my part. I do what I can from outside already, behind the scenes.

A Trini is the happiest person alive. So happy that we become apathetic. The treasury could bu’n down and we jamming still.

To me, TT means the potential to be paradise.

But it is an unrealised potential.

Read the complete version of this feature on Saturday at www.BCPires.com