Kali­fa Clyne

It's al­ways a fear­ful thing when the hero needs to be res­cued.

The set­ting

Rain­bow Res­cue is a home for boys who have no homes, be­tween the ages of eight and 18. For the past 14 years, the home has pro­vid­ed what is es­sen­tial­ly par­ent­ing for more than 100 boys, from boys plucked out of the des­o­late streets of Port-of-Spain to boys forcibly tak­en away from ne­glect­ful and abu­sive par­ents. These boys have nowhere else to go and no one else to turn to. The home's cur­rent lo­ca­tion is a mod­est three-bed­room house on Jern­ing­ham Av­enue in Bel­mont. It hous­es 13 chil­dren. In the small front yard is an area des­ig­nat­ed for foot­ball.

The back sto­ry

Al­most 16 years ago, Judy Wil­son, a busi­ness­woman, de­cid­ed she want­ed to vol­un­teer and give back to the com­mu­ni­ty. She talked to some friends about feed­ing the home­less, but was giv­en hor­ror sto­ries about crazy va­grants chas­ing af­ter peo­ple and so steered clear of that par­tic­u­lar cause. While in church one day she came across a sto­ry about home­less chil­dren and lat­er on vol­un­teered at a home in Port-of-Spain. In that time, she start­ed do­ing out­reach projects, go­ing to Port-of-Spain and talk­ing to home­less chil­dren, try­ing to per­suade them to stay at a home. "It's hard for them to ad­just. They get used to the free­dom and wild­ness of liv­ing on the street and be­ing giv­en a sched­ule and hav­ing to stay in­doors be­comes un­nat­ur­al to them," Wil­son tells me. Some­where along the line, the chil­dren at the home she vol­un­teered with be­gan com­ing to her home. She would feed them and talk to them and try to help where she could. "One morn­ing, I woke up and saw two of the boys sleep­ing in my yard. When I asked them about it, they told me they could not go back be­cause af­ter three strikes, they were out." Wil­son said she per­suad­ed the co-or­di­na­tor at the home to take the boys back. Short­ly af­ter, she found her­self hous­ing chil­dren at her own home. The boys she cared for at the time came di­rect­ly from the streets, and brought with them the habits learned there–ly­ing, steal­ing, ob­scen­i­ties and fight­ing. She sub­se­quent­ly start­ed Rain­bow Res­cue at a house in St James and moved two years lat­er to a prop­er­ty in Bel­mont leased to her by the North West Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty.

A vil­lain

"There was a man named 'Tony'. He was a street ven­dor and he would sell things chil­dren would like - can­dy, stick­ers and small toys. I found out about him while talk­ing to the home­less chil­dren dur­ing my out­reach projects," Wil­son said. She said she found out Tony was us­ing the things he sold to trap the young chil­dren. At night he would take them to an aban­doned lot of land at Green Cor­ner and would have sex with them there. "When I found out it be­came some­thing of a war be­tween Tony and me as I tried to get the chil­dren away. They were vul­ner­a­ble and he of­fered them a form of pro­tec­tion that they weren't get­ting. "When I did man­age to get them away from Tony, though, I had nowhere to put them, so I took them home and they stayed at my house in Mar­aval." Wil­son re­calls that those were some of the most dif­fi­cult boys she has had to deal with. "I re­mem­ber stand­ing be­tween two boys with knives in a bath­room."

The plot

To­day, the chil­dren who go to Rain­bow Res­cue are usu­al­ly de­liv­ered there by so­cial ser­vices or the po­lice, and in­stead of fight­ing and steal­ing, Wil­son and her staff have to help defuse anger and hurt and feel­ings of aban­don­ment. The home caters to the chil­dren's ba­sic needs, arranges for them to see psy­chol­o­gists and en­gages them in sport­ing ac­tiv­i­ties as of­ten as pos­si­ble. The first set of boys have now be­come men, most with their own homes, and vis­it Rain­bow Res­cue oc­ca­sion­al­ly. "One of them came just the oth­er day to bring me a wed­ding in­vi­ta­tion," Wil­son said.

The hap­py end­ing??

It is not yet a hap­py-ever-af­ter sto­ry. The home is in the process of re­lo­cat­ing to a build­ing in Mar­aval–a build­ing that is al­most a shell and is very much in need of ex­ten­sive re­pairs. The re­lo­ca­tion is nec­es­sary be­cause they were told the NWRHA build­ing they called home was need­ed to form part of the Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal. Wil­son faces an es­ti­mat­ed cost of $1 mil­lion in or­der to bring it up to scratch. The home has man­aged to raise al­most half of the funds but is still at­tempt­ing to get the rest. "Sev­er­al peo­ple made promis­es to us. They com­mit­ted to do­nat­ing funds to ren­o­vate the Mar­aval build­ing. But we haven't re­ceived any­thing from them yet. We just hope they haven't for­got­ten about us," she said. Even with the promised funds, Rain­bow Res­cue will not have enough to com­plete­ly fix the de­plorable con­di­tions at the Mar­aval build­ing, ren­o­va­tions that were set back even fur­ther last year when flood­ing dev­as­tat­ed the area. "So far we have on­ly com­plet­ed the roof." The home will be hav­ing a brunch soon to raise more funds. In ad­di­tion, it costs an av­er­age $60,000 a month to run the home, in­clud­ing salaries, util­i­ty, gro­cery and oth­er ex­pens­es.

In a pre­vi­ous in­ter­view Wil­son said 80 per cent of the month­ly ex­pen­di­ture was raised through pri­vate do­na­tions. The hero has not yet been res­cued but Wil­son be­lieves with the nec­es­sary help, that will hap­pen in the next chap­ter.