Demolishing homes and hearts

“I am numb. I no longer hear the sound of the machinery now,” Brenda (not her real name) told me as I commented on the loud rumble. Nearby, the excavator was completing its job of flattening the shell of the house that had been standing as recently as the previous day.

Brenda’s seven-year old daughter had burst into tears when she first saw a home (across the road from theirs) being demolished in the early days of the government’s process of acquiring residential lands in Crown Point and Bon Accord for the purpose of airport expansion.

“Mummy, is our house next?” she had sobbed.

The woman of "the house across the road," whom Brenda described as a "healthy older woman" who would sweep her yard and tend to her animals every morning, had died – according to Brenda, from a heart attack that had occurred shortly after residents began receiving notice that they must relocate.

Residents believe that high levels of stress related to the land acquisition process, inadequate compensation for property and authorities’ failed promises are responsible for increased incidents of strokes, heart attacks and deaths in the community.

Brenda, whose blood pressure has risen to alarming heights in recent times, is all too familiar with stress. Her husband suffered two strokes and a heart attack after the acquisition process bulldozed its way into their lives.

With no offer of counselling from authorities, Brenda is taking it upon herself to seek therapy for her daughter, upon whom she does not want this destabilising process to have a long-term impact.

“I always decorate for Christmas,” Brenda revealed. “But 2020 was the first Christmas no one in the community decorated. No one felt like it because ten days before Christmas they got notices from Nidco to move.”

While the quiet community where animals once grazed and children played amidst fruit trees expands daily into a wasteland, more than the physical is being lost. Relationships, simple community living and the bounty of nature are also being reduced to extinction.

One resident, now in his fifties, watched tearfully as the mango tree he had climbed as a boy was uprooted by the excavator and cut to pieces with a chainsaw.

“That real hurt me. That mango tree older than me! It never stop bearing. It always had mango on it. We used to climb up, eat ‘til we belly full, then come down.”

He had to sell all his sheep and goats (with the exception of one, which he couldn’t bear to give away), as rental places won’t allow animals.

“We in a pandemic,” he said. “What’s the rush? They tell us, 'Wear mask,' yet they want us to move from homes where we safe...to go and rent and mix up?”

Another affected resident, 60 years old, refuses to move. She and her husband own a large home with downstairs apartments that will provide them with post-retirement income.

She explained why, in 2018, she became "somebody vulnerable": “The government came in the area of Tobago, Bon Accord, asking the people, or in fact telling the people that they want to acquire their lands and their homes. We must move within six months.

"I think it was very disrespectful, because we all are people.

“I, at this age, cannot build a home. Changes are very good, yes, in some instances, but I cannot face the hardware, I cannot face contractors or builders to build a home.

“Most of the people in the community are over 60. Those who have moved, they cannot even self-walk. They might not be fully bedridden, but they are not flexible enough to get around to build a home.

"Can you pay rent at the age of 60? You have no work, no job, cost of living is very high. Poverty in this country is at a peak. We are people too. Why are you doing this to the poor people?”

The heartbreaking stories heard from or about these vulnerable residents make me wonder:

Why is this project going ahead without consideration for the overall well-being of generations of residents whose entire lives are being uprooted?

How can adults, many of whom barely understand the land acquisition process themselves, begin to explain this traumatic, life-changing situation to their children and grandchildren? How can the people of TT rally with these residents to demand and ensure that they receive proper compensation and treatment?

In one resident’s poignant words: “Progress and development are nothing without humanity.”