AT­TIL­LAH SPRINGER

Where must I find my rest­ing place?

Over the hills, across the val­ley

I am sure I can see

Too much pol­lu­tion

Too much

-Rest­ing Place, Burn­ing Spear

I was sleep­ing with the ra­dio on. To have some­thing to take up the silent spaces when I wake up and can't go back to sleep and can't be both­ered to turn on the light to read. I heard the word Trinidad in a dream and my heart pound­ed me awake like an alarm go­ing off.

I have a mo­ment of ab­solute ter­ror, in which I can't hear the rest of what the an­nounc­er has said. I imag­ine all man­ner of chaos has erupt­ed in Trinidad. In the sec­onds it takes to go from sleep to wake I imag­ine all man­ner of hor­rors, ma­jor enough to come to the at­ten­tion of BBC's World Ser­vice.

And then the an­nounc­er says that thou­sands of Leatherback tur­tles had been killed on a beach far away in a place called Grande Riv­iere. I see it in my mind's eye, a ha­lo of black in the sky, a cir­cle of cor­beaux com­ing clos­er and clos­er. Cor­beaux with their grace and im­pres­sive wing span from a dis­tance, come clos­er and land on the beach and lose all their dis­tant beau­ty and be­come clum­sy and aw­ful glut­tons feast­ing on the car­cass­es of tiny dead tur­tles and de­stroyed eggs. And va­grant dogs who have been spend­ing the day comb­ing the beach for a meal, their nos­trils prick up and they smell the car­nage on the breeze.

The men just fol­low­ing or­ders and clear­ing a beach in nest­ing sea­son in a coun­try so blessed to be cho­sen as one of the few spe­cial sa­cred places on Earth where these gi­ant, an­cient crea­tures come to plant their fu­tures. A small sac­ri­fice of en­dan­gered an­i­mals. And I see in the ap­proach­ing dawn the ter­ri­ble sight of dogs crunch­ing the tiny bod­ies of those tur­tles in teeth ac­cus­tomed to garbage and the oth­er dis­cards of hu­mans.

The sto­ry is over be­fore I open my eyes to the dark­ness. The re­porter moves on to some­thing else. Some Eu­ro­zone cri­sis. Some mas­sacre in Syr­ia. And some part of me is slight­ly re­lieved but al­so sort of dis­ap­point­ed. That we on­ly make it to the news for mur­der­ing tur­tles. In my mud­dled in-be­tween sleep I guess I was mix­ing up the oth­er news sto­ries. There was a re­port from else­where about peo­ple tak­ing to the streets.

And I guess part of me had hoped that Trinida­di­ans had reached enough of a point of in­dig­na­tion about any of the var­i­ous things that should make us in­censed enough to send us out on the streets. The en­vi­ron­men­tal­ists are the on­ly ones re­port­ed as be­ing con­cerned about the dead tur­tles. In a coun­try of wild-meat lovers, maybe a sto­ry of dead tur­tles will nev­er prompt na­tion­al out­rage.

In a coun­try of yes peo­ple and com­plain­ers and pas­sive­ly ac­cept­ing mass­es, I'm not sure what will ever prompt us to take to the streets. There's al­ways some di­vi­sion we will find to keep us from work­ing to­geth­er to put an end to what­ev­er is caus­ing of­fence. And sure­ly the de­struc­tion of thou­sands of tur­tles is a high­ly of­fen­sive thing.

But there are so many oth­er ex­am­ples of de­struc­tion that should have caused na­tion­al of­fence but didn't. Most Trinida­di­ans have for­got­ten, if they ever even knew, that in 2004 when the 800 acres for the Union In­dus­tri­al Es­tate was be­ing cleared dur­ing the East­er week­end, the work­ers who were as­signed to clear the land are re- port­ed by wit­ness­es from the com­mu­ni­ties to have blud­geoned star­tled mon­keys to death as they tried to flee the in­vad­ing bull­doz­ers.

Eight years have passed and still no one has been brought to book for that crime. Nor for the crimes that fol­lowed, with the peo­ple of those com­mu­ni­ties hav­ing to deal with the res­pi­ra­to­ry ef­fects of liv­ing in a dust­bowl. The EMA in typ­i­cal fash­ion said, well it wasn't that many tur­tles any­way.

That is not a great de­par­ture from the gen­er­al modus operan­di of the EMA. Who, to be fair, is true to its name and has no re­al in­ter­est in pro­tect­ing the en­vi­ron­ment. Pro­tec­tion of tur­tles is a far less im­por­tant thing than man­ag­ing the staff who kill them.

Pro­tect­ing a com­mu­ni­ty is far less im­por­tant than man­ag­ing the ex­pec­ta­tions of the big mon­ey who want to set up their plants to make more mon­ey and give a few low-pay­ing jobs to the sur­round­ing com­mu­ni­ties as if that in any way can com­pen­sate them for their loss of qual­i­ty of life.

It's hard for me to go back to sleep af­ter the news sounds a Trinidad alarm in my heart. I am haunt­ed by grin­ning dogs with tur­tles' flip­pers in their jowls. But the dogs have hu­man faces and the cor­beaux are wear­ing suits. And the tur­tles are the lives of all of us. Wait­ing to be man­aged or pushed out of the way.