Pao­lo Ker­na­han

As a child I was ter­ri­fied of the La­dy Young Road. My fa­ther was one of those dri­vers; he had an im­pa­tient, lead foot and ne­go­ti­at­ed those curves as if that lurch­ing old Chrysler was on rails. I now use the La­dy Young every op­por­tu­ni­ty I get; it spares me the psy­chosis-in­duc­ing crawl on Wright­son Road and Ari­api­ta Av­enue.

There has al­ways been some­thing lib­er­at­ing about di­vert­ing on­to the La­dy Young, ris­ing above the sta­sis of the city's clogged ar­ter­ies be­low, catch­ing glimpses of Port-of-Spain from above.Late­ly I have been notic­ing an un­wel­come trans­for­ma­tion; it's been picked up by oth­er en­raged cit­i­zens who've writ­ten to the news­pa­pers. There seems to have been a spike in land grab­bing along the once scenic route, chang­ing the face of this once beau­ti­ful la­dy.

The route's name­sake, La­dy Young, was the wife of Sir Hu­bert Winthrop Young, Gov­er­nor of the is­land from 1938 to 1942. He com­mis­sioned the project around 1939 with the as­sis­tance of the US army corps of en­gi­neers.Late­ly there's been a flur­ry of ac­tiv­i­ty on ei­ther side of the road. I un­der­stand that land north of the wind­ing as­phalt strip be­longs to the Catholic Church and oth­er pri­vate own­ers. Land to the south is state-owned.

This is on­ly to em­pha­sise what has elo­quent­ly been out­lined in a mis­sive to the ed­i­tor: the con­struc­tion does not point to land­less un­for­tu­nates.No one there is clap­ping to­geth­er gal­vanise just to keep dry. There is a street lead­ing to a house on the south­ern side of hill; even a very of­fi­cial look­ing street sign! Sun­set View Road.

Peer­ing through an­oth­er pas­sage­way, I saw on­go­ing work on a two-sto­ry con­crete house (not red clay blocks, mind you). Back­hoes work fu­ri­ous­ly at build­ing road­ways to these set­tle­ments; this is not the work of the cash-strapped.Giv­en the gra­di­ent of the hill in some places, a re­tain­ing wall would be nec­es­sary. There is no store in Port-of-Spain which sells a re­tain­ing wall for any­thing un­der a mil­lion dol­lars.

Par­tic­u­lar­ly trou­bling is one method of site prepa­ra­tion. Sub­stan­tial swathes of the south­ern side of the La­dy Young Road burned right down to the grav­el over the past few weeks be­fore that brief respite of in­clement weath­er rolled in. This was al­most cer­tain­ly de­lib­er­ate, a cost ef­fec­tive means of clear­ing the land for con­struc­tion. On the north­ern side of the road, bill­boards are go­ing up and a large sny­ackitt is now al­most a full-ser­vice neigh­bour­hood gro­cer.

The look­out will soon as­sume the gar­ish drag-mall aes­thet­ic which has over­tak­en the Mara­cas look­out, hideous, per­ma­nent, steel vend­ing stalls and all. It is hor­ri­fy­ing!You want to get a de­cent pho­to­graph of the coast and you have to work your way past every­thing from pick­led pineap­ple to a gui­tar pickin' urchin who has yet to turn over his song sheet, just to get a glimpse of the view that is be­ing blocked by all these eye and ear sores.

Now at the La­dy Young look­out you can scarce­ly have a con­ver­sa­tion over the snow-cone man crushin' his bloody ice.As­saults on the La­dy are noth­ing new. In or­der to feed the de­mand for ag­gre­gate for a high­way ex­pan­sion project, one min­is­ter of works au­tho­rised a well-known con­trac­tor to scrape the fill ma­te­r­i­al from the hill­side above the La­dy Young Road.

Notwith­stand­ing ob­jec­tions from The Quar­ries Ad­vi­so­ry Com­mit­tee, cit­ing fears of flood­ing and land slip­page, the project was green lit and the chair­man of the ad­vi­so­ry com­mit­tee was fired for wan­ton­ly of­fer­ing his ad­vice.That scar on the land­scape is now ours to cher­ish; at least a sys­tem of steps was cre­at­ed to min­imise land­slides. With the ram­pant de­vel­op­ment sweep­ing the area to­day, it cer­tain­ly does not ap­pear that any such pre­cau­tions have been en­ter­tained.

Res­i­dents of Bel­mont have le­git­i­mate cause to sleep with one eye open as the rainy sea­son threat­ens with not a blade of grass to slow the venge­ful tor­rents.The al­most in­vis­i­ble side streets present an­oth­er prob­lem; ve­hi­cles bar­rel out of these paved blind spots and in­to on­com­ing mo­torists who have lim­it­ed op­por­tu­ni­ties to stop giv­en the vol­ume of traf­fic cou­pled with the steep de­cline.

I've read that a tour of the area was con­duct­ed by the San Juan/Barataria Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion, the lo­cal gov­ern­ment body with re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for the La­dy Young Road. This was done pre­sum­ably to low­er the vol­ume of some pub­lic grum­blings over the mat­ter.Noth­ing will come of that tour and the ac­count sug­gests an or­ches­trat­ed manouevre to en­sure that the peo­ple with that "good hair" who like to bel­ly ache about poor peo­ple just keep dey tail kwart.

The prob­lem with squat­ting is that if it is not at­tend­ed to with an ag­gres­sive pro­phy­lac­tic strat­e­gy, it can rapid­ly metas­ta­sise be­yond cure.As is al­ways the case, our au­thor­i­ties wait un­til a bur­geon­ing cri­sis presents as in­cen­di­ary so­cio-po­lit­i­cal quag­mire from which there is no egress. I writhe with night ter­rors that soon my fair La­dy will be fair no more.