RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

Al­most a cen­tu­ry ago, trains chugged through the rur­al vil­lage of Debe in south Trinidad, nes­tled in the Oropouche Riv­er basin, where peo­ple lived in mud and wood­en hous­es and worked in rice fields and cane plan­ta­tions, of­ten from dawn to dusk.

Back then, telling some­one you were from Debe could car­ry a stig­ma.

The com­mu­ni­ty was viewed by some as back­ward—a place of farm­ers, labour­ers and mod­est homes, far re­moved from the more de­vel­oped com­mu­ni­ties else­where in the coun­try.

But decades lat­er, Debe has trans­formed.

The once-qui­et agri­cul­tur­al set­tle­ment is now one of south Trinidad’s busiest com­mer­cial cen­tres, where cul­ture and tra­di­tion re­main wo­ven in­to every­day life, en­tre­pre­neur­ship thrives, and lu­cra­tive busi­ness­es line the SS Erin Road.

The Namde­v­co mar­ket at­tracts hun­dreds of peo­ple every week­end, and the sprawl­ing Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies Debe cam­pus is Debe’s crown jew­el. Near­by Par­vati Girls Hin­du Col­lege, Debe Hin­du School and Debe Sec­ondary School churn out well-round­ed cit­i­zens, with res­i­dents boast­ing that Debe Sec­ondary is the best gov­ern­ment sec­ondary school in the coun­try.

Not on­ly is Debe an ed­u­ca­tion­al cen­tre, but the name is now syn­ony­mous with dou­bles, aloo pies, sa­heena, barfi and oth­er In­do-Trinida­di­an del­i­ca­cies, draw­ing vis­i­tors from across Trinidad and tourists from abroad.

A qui­et agri­cul­tur­al

com­mu­ni­ty

For Dr Allen Sam­my, for­mer chair­man of the Pe­nal-Debe Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion, the trans­for­ma­tion was one he wit­nessed first­hand and helped to shape.

Dr Sam­my re­mem­bers a Debe that was small and scat­tered, with the rail­way cut­ting through the com­mu­ni­ty and a vol­ley­ball court near the Chi­nese shop.

“It was a very qui­et place,” he re­called, adding that the Debe of the 1950s and ear­ly 1960s bore lit­tle re­sem­blance to the bustling town it is to­day.

“You would nev­er be­lieve then that it would have ex­pand­ed and grown in the way it has grown,” Dr Sam­my said.

He said much of what is now de­vel­oped land was once la­goon.

Along sec­tions of the SS Erin Road, rice was cul­ti­vat­ed, while sug­ar cane dom­i­nat­ed the land­scape clos­er to the for­mer es­tates.

“There were mud hous­es and wood­en hous­es; as peo­ple’s cir­cum­stances im­proved, those struc­tures grad­u­al­ly gave way to con­crete homes,” he added.

He not­ed that the trans­for­ma­tion of the land and the growth of the pop­u­la­tion ac­cel­er­at­ed over the decades, with hous­ing de­vel­op­ments, im­proved roads and com­mer­cial ac­tiv­i­ty chang­ing the face of the com­mu­ni­ty.

Growth be­yond

the rice fields

Dr Sam­my said the ex­ten­sion of the Sir Solomon Ho­choy High­way to Debe and the es­tab­lish­ment of the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies South Cam­pus were among the de­vel­op­ments that con­tributed to the area’s growth.

But he said the com­mu­ni­ty’s trans­for­ma­tion was not sim­ply about in­fra­struc­ture.

Un­der for­mer MP Trevor Su­dama, the po­ten­tial of Debe’s food ven­dors grew as Su­dama worked with Dr Sam­my and for­mer Prime Min­is­ter Bas­deo Pan­day to help change the way the com­mu­ni­ty and its sig­na­ture prod­ucts were viewed.

The road in front of the dou­bles stalls was widened, and park­ing spaces were pro­vid­ed for ven­dors. Debe dou­bles be­came so pop­u­lar that tourists would fly to Trinidad to get a taste of Debe dou­bles.

Food, cul­ture and

com­mu­ni­ty

To­day, res­i­dent Ly­dia Mo­hammed said the food cul­ture re­mains at the cen­tre of Debe’s iden­ti­ty.

At Debe Sweet Shop, she said gen­er­a­tions of cus­tomers con­tin­ue to seek out tra­di­tion­al In­di­an sweets, while new­er flavours have ex­pand­ed the range.

Mo­hammed de­scribed Debe as a des­ti­na­tion for peo­ple look­ing for food and en­ter­tain­ment, par­tic­u­lar­ly on week­ends.

“It’s a fun place that peo­ple come on week­ends, for even a stroll, a Sun­day evening, come in the dou­bles, they buy the sweets, they have plen­ty of ice cream shops, and there’s plen­ty things to see,” she added.

She not­ed that the sweet shop has al­so be­come known for its va­ri­ety of flavoured barfis, in­clud­ing Oreo, cher­ry co­conut, choco­late chip, peanut, choco­late brown­ie and co­conut.

Mo­hammed said the busi­ness has de­vel­oped prod­ucts be­yond the tra­di­tion­al milk barfi.

How­ev­er, for long-time res­i­dents, Debe’s sto­ry is about more than food.

Mani­ram Latch­man, who was born in Gand­hi Vil­lage, re­mem­bers a com­mu­ni­ty where neigh­bours looked out for one an­oth­er.

“Debe is a qui­et area. It’s a place where peo­ple care for each oth­er. One of the best ar­eas to live,” he said.

He re­called a time when res­i­dents did not need an in­vi­ta­tion to at­tend a wake or wed­ding be­cause com­mu­ni­ty ties were strong.

“Peo­ple look af­ter one an­oth­er. If some­one has some­thing to do, you have to find your­self and go and help them.”

But Latch­man be­lieves some of that close­ness has been lost, with crime, drugs and chang­ing so­cial habits af­fect­ing the com­mu­ni­ty.

Seep­er­sad Mulchan, 60, who has lived in the area all his life, al­so re­mem­bers a qui­eter Debe.

“Com­pared to back in the day it was nicer,” he said.

Mulchan said neigh­bours once rou­tine­ly shared food and vis­it­ed one an­oth­er with­out in­vi­ta­tion.

“You could have walked the area and go any­where any hour of the night,” he re­called. “We would come home two o’clock in the morn­ing, and we were safe.”

To­day, he said, busi­ness­es have to close ear­li­er, and res­i­dents are more cau­tious.

“For me, life in Debe from be­fore was plen­ty nicer, fam­i­ly-ori­ent­ed,” Mulchan said.

Ed­u­ca­tion and a

grow­ing lega­cy

Yet along­side those changes, ed­u­ca­tion has be­come an­oth­er defin­ing fea­ture of the com­mu­ni­ty.

Res­i­dent Bisun­daye Sookraj said the hunger for ed­u­ca­tion ex­ist­ed even when Debe was pre­dom­i­nant­ly agri­cul­tur­al.

The Pres­by­ter­ian and Hin­du schools es­tab­lished in the 1950s in the Pe­nal/Debe re­gion opened op­por­tu­ni­ties, while stu­dents trav­elled to San Fer­nan­do to at­tend sec­ondary schools.

She said doc­tors, lawyers, teach­ers, en­gi­neers and oth­er pro­fes­sion­als now live and work through­out Trinidad and be­yond while proud­ly iden­ti­fy­ing them­selves with Debe.

Sookraj said their suc­cess­es have con­tin­ued, as in 2026, Shaz­ana Mo­hammed, a stu­dent of Debe Hin­du, topped the coun­try in the Sec­ondary En­trance As­sess­ment ex­am­i­na­tions.

“In 2018, Cas­san­dra Melody Khan from Ra­goo Vil­lage, Welling­ton Road, Debe, won the pres­ti­gious Pres­i­dent’s Medal Gold, so we have many res­i­dents who have ex­celled,” she added.

Sookraj at­trib­uted much of the com­mu­ni­ty’s re­silience to its cul­tur­al land­scape and the de­ter­mi­na­tion of peo­ple to im­prove their lives.

Say­ing she grew up near the Hum­ming­bird Cin­e­ma, Sookraj re­mem­bers when the cin­e­ma was a ma­jor at­trac­tion, par­tic­u­lar­ly for In­di­an films.

Dur­ing Di­vali, she re­called, the streets came alive with deyas.

To­day, the cin­e­ma is gone, but Sookraj said the tra­di­tions that shaped Debe re­main, even as the com­mu­ni­ty con­tin­ues to evolve.

For a com­mu­ni­ty once dis­missed as a “shan­ty town”, she said, Debe’s trans­for­ma­tion is strik­ing.

She said al­though the mud hous­es and rice fields have large­ly giv­en way to con­crete homes, busi­ness­es, schools, re­li­gious in­sti­tu­tions and busy roads, the growth has not erased the com­mu­ni­ty’s sense of iden­ti­ty or pride.