Lisa Allen-Agos­ti­ni

Grena­da Day 15

Some­times I think, "Maybe I should stay." Over the East­er week­end Grena­da was shocked by the mur­der of a man killed over a gam­bling dis­pute. That same week­end, a young man was chopped and hos­pi­talised.One source put Grena­da's mur­der rate at 11.5 per 100,000 last year. (Grena­da's pop­u­la­tion is 108,000.) The same source put T&T's at 35.2.Every­where I go in Grena­da, the mo­ment I open my mouth and the Tri­ni jumps out, Grena­di­ans tell me how much they love T&T. Then they add: "But it spoil now, man."

It's hard to ar­gue with them when there were over 400 peo­ple mur­dered in T&T last year alone.When I walk in town at home I take off my wed­ding ring. Bet­ter to hide the lit­tle bit of gold than to have some viper or piper wrench it off my hand–pos­si­bly tak­ing the hand with it.Here in Grena­da men and women walk fear­less­ly with gold and jew­els flash­ing, giv­ing nary a thought to ban­dits.It's not un­com­mon to hitch­hike. I've done it my­self, and have giv­en rides to hitch­hik­ers in the car I bor­rowed for a few weeks. It would be un­think­able for me to hitch­hike in Trinidad, as one man re­mind­ed me, squeezed up next to me in the cab of a truck.

I'm not try­ing to say Grena­da is with­out crime; of course not. In the same ar­ti­cles re­port­ing the East­er mur­der, there were re­ports of a man get­ting eight years for steal­ing and caus­ing griev­ous harm to a per­son. It's not all kites fly­ing and bougainvil­lea in bloom here.But, hon­est­ly, I've nev­er felt safer.This week­end I'm com­ing home to a coun­try ter­ri­fied, scan­dalised, ap­palled–add your own ad­jec­tive of out­rage here–over the as­sas­si­na­tion of Dana See­ta­hal, SC.

for your Free Tri­al of the Dig­i­tal Guardian.

No pay­ment de­tails re­quired, for your Free Tri­al.