Turn, turn, turn

Someone living in Tobago once said to me: “The thing about Tobago is that you can wake up one day, realise you have been here for 20 years and wonder ‘What have I done with that time?’”

Some say that Tobago is the place where time stops. That timeless feeling may be why many people are drawn to vacation or, in some cases, live on the island. They relish being removed from the rigours of worldly clocks and calendars, to be guided by only the natural markers of sunrise and sunset, surrendering to whoever and whatever comes and goes between.

Sometimes people in Trinidad say to me, “I don’t know how you can live in Tobago! I could only last a few days!”

Then there are those, spanning a spectrum from young to retirement/post-retirement age, who tell me they dream of dropping everything and running off to live on the sister isle – to slow down and enjoy a simpler, sea-filled, generally safer-than-Trinidad life.

Tomorrow, September 26, I return to Tobago after two weeks of relaxation and reconnection in Trinidad.

“Relaxation in Trinidad?” was the general shocked response from those I told I was going. Usually it is the other way around – people run to Tobago to "let go."

Believe it or not (because I personally find it unbelievable when I think about it), the two weeks I spent hosting a yoga retreat and visiting a few friends in England in 2018, and these two weeks in Trinidad, have been my longest times away from Tobago in ten years.

October 8 will make it a decade since I moved there. In that time (which flew in the blink of an eye), with the exception of one-four-day-long trips to Trinidad now and again, I have not been anywhere else.

I have met people in Tobago who never left the island at all or (as a Tobagonian I know revealed recently about himself) have never even been to the other end of the island.

Those of us who have travelled to various parts of the world or lived abroad may never truly know or understand what it feels like to have never left one’s place of birth – especially if that placee is a small island around which one can drive in a day. How much can one experience, grow and learn as a proverbial goldfish in a bowl?

It is all relative. An astronaut might ask a similar question about those of us who have never left planet earth.

Looking back on my decade in Tobago, I can say that the NGO which naturally evolved from my activities here and the purpose to which I have committed myself through it (the reduction of animals’ suffering through rescue and welfare) are largely what have kept me here, and increasingly occupied me, for this long. I do not know what would have inspired me to remain here otherwise.

Ironically, my feeling/decision to come to Trinidad for two weeks was motivated by the need to step away and rest from that major part of my daily routine. As you know from my articles, I often write about Tobago-based animal-related issues, most of them traumatic or upsetting to the average person who has a modicum of compassion for other living creatures.

To actively deal with, hear about and/or be called upon to help with these cases on a daily basis can take its toll. People often ask me: “How do you do it?!”

Even though immersed in this calling myself, I could objectively ask the same question of a fellow animal-rescuer/friend of mine living on the other side of the island. She too deals daily with multiple trials and tribulations of animal neglect and cruelty in her village and environs.

Sometimes she calls me, crying, sounding almost unintelligible as she gushes out the latest horror story – ones that are becoming so gruesome that I do not bother to mention or write about them.

These heinous acts are compounded by the fact that the repeated cruelty is accepted as being the norm – so nothing is done about it but a shoulder shrugged, a blind eye turned, a mouth zipped silent as to "whodunnit."

Whether in Tobago or Trinidad, those of us who deal repeatedly with distressing animal-related (and/or human-related) cases that cry out for resolution and justice are often like hamsters on wheels, running, running, running, with the feeling of going nowhere.