Rhon­dor Dowlat

Churchill Azad Akaloo, 74, the busi­ness­man who pro­vid­ed a roof over the heads of 78 Cuban refugees and their fam­i­lies, strong­ly be­lieves that his life will not be in vain “if I could help some­body”.

Akaloo, of Cunu­pia, said that he has been help­ing peo­ple in need over the past decades and em­pha­sised that he does it “not for fame or recog­ni­tion” but sim­ply be­cause he gen­uine­ly has a com­pas­sion for those “de­serv­ing” of help, most im­por­tant­ly, be­cause of what his Is­lam­ic teach­ings have in­stilled in him.

“All the good books tell you, even the Q'uran, if peo­ple are in a strange coun­try and they are strand­ed you have to help them and that is how I look at it…I don’t fol­low what peo­ple say. My liv­ing must not be in vain,” Akaloo said.

With tears in his eyes, Akaloo re­called the “dirt poor” back­ground which he came from and the hard labour he re­mem­bered his moth­er per­form­ing just to pro­vide for her sev­en chil­dren, he be­ing the on­ly son. “I came from a very poor and hum­ble fam­i­ly. When we were young all my moth­er had was a lit­tle rice and some­times she would fry it up with a lit­tle onion and that is what we had to eat.

“My fa­ther used to ride bi­cy­cle and sell when we start­ed to make cur­ry pow­der for a pen­ny a pack. While my fa­ther sell­ing, my moth­er do­ing hard labour by cut­ting rice. They both worked hard and I too, be­cause I used to ride bi­cy­cle with my fa­ther and sell for us to be here and what we are to­day…I al­so used to work taxi,” an emo­tion­al Akaloo said.

Akaloo said when his fa­ther fell ill in 1960, he was the one to take over the sales side of the busi­ness. “By that time my fa­ther had bor­rowed mon­ey from his sis­ter and a neigh­bour to buy an old van for $300, so when he got sick, I moved around with the van and worked the busi­ness. I was a young man with am­bi­tion then and still to­day. Now, I still like to put my hand in some­thing that is be­ing done. I am not the of­fice type to sit be­hind a desk.”

Akaloo has com­mit­ted him­self to help­ing peo­ple over the years with­out ex­pect­ing any­thing in re­turn. “Every month I do­nate ham­pers to 50 fam­i­lies, most of whom do not know where the ham­pers are com­ing from and that’s just it. The on­ly rea­son that I am in all this news to­day it’s be­cause of what I did for the Cuban refugees and it reached the me­dia.

“A lot of peo­ple come for help but they don’t need help, they just want. I like to help peo­ple who in need just like the Cubans…they were out on the streets, no food, no wa­ter, they can­not work so one of them called for help and this is why I went and help,” Akaloo said.

'I want noth­ing in re­turn'

To his de­trac­tors who be­lieve that he may have a per­son­al agen­da by hous­ing the Cuban refugees, maybe for cheap labour, Akaloo said, “There is no per­son­al agen­da in hous­ing the refugees, those peo­ple who are say­ing maybe know more than I do. I have to put mon­ey out and house them and give them every­thing and I want and ex­pect noth­ing in re­turn. I don’t have any per­son­al agen­da, not even labour from them for free…noth­ing.”

Akaloo is al­so re­spon­si­ble for erect­ing the War­renville Masjid and Learn­ing Cen­tre that’s cur­rent­ly utilised by Mus­lim fam­i­lies in the area.

Asked if all his char­i­ta­ble work is seen as bless­ings from Al­lah, Akaloo humbly replied, “I think so, bless­ings, if I’m al­lowed.”

Akaloo is the fa­ther of four chil­dren—three boys and a girl. He is a man of am­bi­tion with a strong spir­i­tu­al back­ground. “I want­ed to live a good life and a life where my chil­dren will fol­low suit and their chil­dren and the gen­er­a­tions to fol­low.”

De­spite the pover­ty he ex­pe­ri­enced as a lit­tle boy, Akaloo kept fo­cused on his ed­u­ca­tion at the pri­ma­ry lev­el and was able to cop two schol­ar­ships and move on to sec­ondary school at Pre­sen­ta­tion Col­lege in Ch­agua­nas.

Akaloo plead­ed with young peo­ple in so­ci­ety to keep out of trou­ble. “Keep out of trou­ble. Don’t drink and gam­ble. Try to get a reg­u­lar and hon­est job, doh mat­ter how small the mon­ey is, you can go fur­ther with that, es­pe­cial­ly when you save. For in­stance, I nev­er bought food out­side be­cause I looked at it like this, in­stead of buy­ing a box of food, why not buy a whole chick­en that could feed my en­tire fam­i­ly. In that way, I saved lots of mon­ey.”

Akaloo’s daugh­ter, Al­isha, has de­scribed her fa­ther as a “gen­uine per­son, kind, hum­ble, and a self­less in­di­vid­ual”. She said, “The val­ues my fa­ther taught me grow­ing up I have ex­tend­ed to my chil­dren. I am just like that to­day, I help peo­ple and don’t even think about my­self some­times. My fa­ther is just so gen­uine and he is not well now but he just keeps go­ing and go­ing.”

Fix­ing up the ware­house

Busi­ness­man Churchill Azad Akaloo gave up one of his ware­hous­es in Cunu­pia on No­vem­ber 23 as a tem­po­rary safe haven for the Cuban refugees un­til arrange­ments are made to move them out of T&T by the Unit­ed Na­tions (UN).

Akaloo said he was moved to tears when he first re­alised that the Cuban na­tion­als who were seek­ing asy­lum and hold­ing refugee sta­tus made the des­per­ate de­ci­sion to brave the el­e­ments to hold a silent protest out­side of the UN House at Chancery Lane, Port-of-Spain.

He made a per­son­al de­ci­sion to at least pro­vide hot meals and wa­ter for them on a dai­ly ba­sis as they kept up with their stance of a 24/7 protest over a three-week pe­ri­od.

This same group was ar­rest­ed by po­lice on No­vem­ber 16 and charged for ob­struc­tion. They all plead­ed not guilty ini­tial­ly but then changed it to guilty when they re-ap­peared be­fore Mag­is­trate Sa­nara Toon-Mc Quilkin in the Port-of-Spain Mag­is­trates’ Court on No­vem­ber 20. They were sen­tenced to two days in jail.

How­ev­er, when they were re­leased on­to the streets, the Cuban refugees had no place of refuge and de­cid­ed to look to Akaloo for help.

It was at this point, Akaloo re­lat­ed, that he quick­ly be­gan to think of a way and means for them. “The on­ly thing I could have come up with was this ware­house that we kept items in for stor­age and for re­cy­cling. I asked them if they would be will­ing to clean it and fix it up and do what­ev­er that needs to be done to make them­selves com­fort­able and to trans­form it to a ‘live­able’ con­di­tion and they agreed.”

The refugees, all of whom have their refugee cer­tifi­cates and oth­er rel­e­vant doc­u­ments, moved in and worked tire­less­ly in the cleanup op­er­a­tions. Af­ter days of sleep­ing on card­boards, sev­er­al oth­er good samar­i­tans chipped in and bought mat­tress­es for them.

Last Wednes­day, dur­ing a vis­it, some of the skilled Cubans were en­gaged in putting up con­crete blocks to build an an­nex to the ware­house which will ac­com­mo­date a main kitchen and laun­dry room for them. Some of them were al­so seen do­ing elec­tri­cal work in two sep­a­rate rooms of the ware­house.