Joshua Sur­tees

In weary tones, Ak­i­lah Jaramo­gi tells me how the thieves broke in to her Fondes Aman­des Com­mu­ni­ty Re­for­esta­tion Project and points out the route they used to make off with the ex­pen­sive equip­ment that she as­sumes will be sold for drugs.

The NGO, which has been serv­ing the com­mu­ni­ty of St Ann's, Port-of-Spain, since the 1980s, has now been bur­gled twice in three years, and while Jaramo­gi, who found­ed the project with her late hus­band, is putting on a brave face along with her staff, it is a body blow to an or­gan­i­sa­tion which sur­vives on min­i­mal gov­ern­ment grants and em­ploys 25 peo­ple with­in the com­mu­ni­ty.

All the com­put­ers were stolen, in an ap­par­ent­ly pre-planned rob­bery in the ear­ly hours of Jan­u­ary 31, as well as a flat screen tele­vi­sion used for ed­u­ca­tion­al pre­sen­ta­tions for school­child­ren and forestry equip­ment for plant­i­ng trees and pre­vent­ing for­est fires.In all, $30,000 worth of prop­er­ty was tak­en, but the most valu­able thing, Jaramo­gi feels, is the in­for­ma­tion stored on the com­put­ers. Years of hard work on var­i­ous projects has been lost, on­ly some of which was backed up to an ex­ter­nal hard dri­ve.

"We lock up the build­ing as much as we can, but we like liv­ing in an eco-style, we don't want to be liv­ing in jail," she says when asked if they op­er­ate a sys­tem of trust at the project's base camp, a beau­ti­ful­ly con­struct­ed wood­en eco-lodge at the foot of a hill in St Ann's.

It would in­deed be a shame if bur­glar proof­ing had been in­stalled. It would change the whole au­ra of this or­gan­ic, ex­treme­ly peace­ful en­vi­ron­ment. Breeze blows through the gaps in the wood­en beams and un­der the eaves of the gal­vanised steel roof. It's a world away from the air-con­di­tioned win­dow­less of­fice blocks down­town.

Above us, the trail winds up in­to the hills where the herb gar­den, plant nurs­ery and a the­atre for per­for­mances nes­tle in­to their en­vi­ron­ment. If you car­ry on to the top, Cowin Col­lett tells me dur­ing a tour, you would reach the La­dy Chan­cel­lor Es­tate and then Mar­aval. He has worked for Jaramo­gi for 14 years, straight from school.

Some of Col­lett's co-work­ers were cry­ing and an­gry on the morn­ing the theft was dis­cov­ered. At first they won­dered whether it was an in­side job–a mem­ber of staff didn't turn up to work the fol­low­ing day, arous­ing sus­pi­cion, but he ap­peared the next day and was just as shocked as the oth­er em­ploy­ees that some­body would choose to steal from an in­de­pen­dent com­mu­ni­ty project.

The on­ly lead Jaramo­gi was able to give the po­lice was a small sil­ver or white car she spot­ted parked near the thatched-roof shel­ter with a light on in­side. She feels the thieves were watch­ing, hid­den in the bush."I smelt a cig­a­rette. I have a nose for fire," she says. "If a fire is burn­ing way over in the Beetham or La­dy Young or Mar­aval, I can smell it. I could smell a cig­a­rette."

Jaramo­gi's "fire nose"

Her "fire nose," as she calls it, is es­sen­tial in her job. The re­for­esta­tion project's aim is to pre­vent for­est fires in the dry sea­son, to re­plant trees where fires have de­stroyed them and to ed­u­cate the com­mu­ni­ty. It's a vi­tal job the NGO does, not on­ly to re­duce the num­ber of for­est fires but to re­duce flood­ing. When hill­sides are burnt and bare from fall­en trees, soil ero­sion takes place and dead logs, leaves, silt or branch­es clut­ter the wa­ter­ways, cre­at­ing flood risks.

Jaramo­gi, a Rasta­far­i­an since the late 1970s and a de­scen­dent of the Merikins in south Trinidad, is deeply in tune with na­ture. In the 1980s she and hus­band Tacuma be­gan plant­i­ng fruit trees and herb bush­es in St Ann's. The site was des­ig­nat­ed a fire cli­max zone."Each year the veg­e­ta­tion dur­ing the dry sea­son would be brown and dry and fires would start from the bot­tom of the hill, which was a dump site.

"A lot of the de­cid­u­ous trees are bare, bam­boo grass­es shed their leaves, there's leaf lit­ter on the ground and peo­ple light fires or hunters go smok­ing out an­i­mals.You get wild­fires or slash-and-burn farm­ers who want to plant mar­i­jua­na or agri­cul­ture, and it just burns up every­thing and spreads and de­stroys," she says.

The project al­most nev­er got off the ground.WASA sent them an evic­tion no­tice in­form­ing them they were on State land and had to re­move their crops. Eden Shand, the then St Ann's MP, vis­it­ed the site and was blown away by the work they were do­ing. He du­ly de­clared it wor­thy of gov­ern­ment sup­port."He got the en­vi­ron­men­tal agen­cies to­geth­er and we mo­bilised the com­mu­ni­ty," says Jaramo­gi. And that's how the project re­al­ly took off.

When her hus­band died in 1994, Jaramo­gi con­tin­ued the work. It was 1999 when the project be­came a reg­is­tered NGO and 2000 when she re­ceived her first of­fi­cial gov­ern­ment grant al­low­ing her to pay em­ploy­ees rather than re­ly­ing on vol­un­teers and donors.

Who steals from acom­mu­ni­ty-based NGO?

As to why crim­i­nals would tar­get her or­gan­i­sa­tion, Jaramo­gi says, "The place is so...be­yond com­plex right now, so rigid and in­se­cure." She means T&T as a whole, not Fondes Aman­des, which is usu­al­ly an oa­sis of calm."And when some­one comes and takes what it is yours and when you try to talk about it, you feel you shouldn't say any­thing, that's the lev­el of law­less­ness and un­car­ing."She's re­fer­ring to a sto­ry in the pa­pers about a wit­ness in a crim­i­nal case who had been threat­ened and killed to pre­vent her giv­ing ev­i­dence.

We dis­cuss the is­sue of un­em­ployed youth, those who lime on the block, in­dif­fer­ent to work­ing for a liv­ing, com­mit­ting pet­ty or se­ri­ous crimes."Trinidad al­ways had a laid-back way of life."If you feel to work, you work, es­pe­cial­ly in rur­al com­mu­ni­ties there's al­ways food around you can live off. You don't have a lot of bills to pay, peo­ple sur­vive for long pe­ri­ods with­out be­ing gain­ful­ly em­ployed.

"But now, with the Amer­i­can in­flu­ence, they want the big sneak­ers, the fan­cy phone and the big-screen TV in the crib, but they don't want to work for it so they steal and rob," she says.We talk about CCTV and the fact that in cap­i­tal cities like Lon­don you can't move any­where in pub­lic with­out be­ing on film.In T&T it is eas­i­er to hide and dis­ap­pear on and off the streets mak­ing po­lice de­tec­tion work that bit hard­er.

"The di­rec­tions giv­en to us by the po­lice were we should get cam­eras–but, as an NGO, some­one needs to pay for that. It's not a busi­ness gen­er­at­ing in­come and ex­pens­ing costs. When we get a grant for x, y, z they give you that flat."They tell you, 'We can't pay salaries just tools and equip­ment.' We don't ever have ex­tra cash ex­cept when we have oc­ca­sion­al pri­vate donors," she says.

In this con­text, in­ci­dents like this theft can be crip­pling. Right now the staff have brought in their own lap­tops and an old desk­top com­put­er to work on.They are us­ing pen and pa­per and the teach­ing ses­sion with chil­dren from the In­ter­na­tion­al School that morn­ing had to be done with hand­clap­ping and singing in rap­so style rather than an ed­u­ca­tion­al video shown on the stolen tele­vi­sion."I had them singing, 'This is our earth we need to sur­vive, let's plant some trees and keep them alive,'" says Jaramo­gi, smil­ing.

The ex­cit­ed chat­ter of chil­dren fills the air out­side.Bliss­ful­ly un­aware that any crime has been com­mit­ted, they have en­joyed their morn­ing, learn­ing about their lo­cal en­vi­ron­ment in a place that will con­tin­ue do­ing what it does, re­gard­less of this cal­lous and sense­less crime.