Whether there is enough national honesty or self-awareness to admit it or not, Sea Lots rarely comes to the forefront of the country’s collective consciousness –and when it does, it is more often than not through tragedy, controversy, criminality or political convenience.
The February 2013 deaths of 28-year-old Haydee Paul and her two daughters Shakira and Akasha, who were run into by a vehicle driven by an off-duty police officer, comes to mind, as does the July 2019 clashes between some residents and police in the aftermath of the police killing of former gang leader Akini ‘Dole’ Adams, and the June 2020 Port-of-Spain protests following the police killing of three men in Morvant.
Last week, the discovery of a graveyard of human remains on Dog Island returned the community to the headlines.
In the backdrop of Sea Lots’ tightly-choked network of single-storey concrete homes and wooden shacks, the hub of the country’s economy, the Eric Williams Financial Complex, towers over Port-of-Spain.
The community in the Twin Towers’ shadows outdates it by more than 150 years.
According to late historians Dr Gerard Besson and Angelo Bessessarsingh, following the British conquest of 1797, Port-of-Spain’s population boomed, resulting in a desperate need for more land. In 1803, British Governor Sir Thomas Picton implemented a land reclamation scheme after the diversion of the St Ann’s River. The turn of the river’s course left tidal mudflats that were then filled over two decades with limestone carried by mules from the Laventille Hills, creating Sea Lots.
The community was an initiative to offer cheap waterfront properties to encourage commerce.
“There has been a lot of development over the years, but of course, there is still poverty. We are living paycheque by paycheque, but not everybody has that opportunity or having money coming in,” 62-year-old lifelong resident Helen told Guardian Media.
As one goes deeper through the narrow, snaking lanes of Pioneer Drive in Sea Lots West, piercing eyes from young men on the block examine vehicles and their occupants. Using walkie-talkies, the scouts alert others of any suspicious activity. While this may seem strange in many communities, in Sea Lots it is a norm established to check out potential threats.
The significant number of men sitting on chairs or walls in the alleys at 10.30 am is noticeable, and so too is the number of women in lime green CEPEP uniforms. Almost all of the women in the uniforms, we were told, are single mothers. Almost all of the young men, we were also told, are unemployed.
Any journalist asked to interview people from ‘hotspots’ knows the difficulty of the task. It is not only onerous to get people to trust the media to speak, it is also exceedingly challenging to please everyone with a story. Having a team member known by some in the community offers considerable help with the former. Thankfully, we had that help.
After a short conversation, our photographer secures the first interview with who was presumed to be a community leader. Dressed in short black pants and a white cotton vest, the interviewee–who we will call Sean–had tight, newly done cornrows, chiselled cheekbones and long dark eyelashes. Near his left eye were three teardrop tattoos and along his arms were noticeable scars that looked like healed gunshot or stab wounds. Sitting under a tent on a chair, the four men around him seemed to respect him as an authority. Welcoming, he was more than willing to discuss life in Sea Lots.
“We have a committee which we call Positive Vibes, trying to save the youths from crime and the streets, but there’s only so much we can do. We would really like that strength, that support because I believe that every youth in every ghetto in Trinidad and Tobago has something good.
“A woman does have it so hard when she has three youths to feed and educate and show a better way. When you don’t have a father figure in a youth life and it is the mother alone, it is extra hard. These people coming in here, they talk about sports and all kinds of things for the youth, but they not fulfilling what they talk about. It’s only when elections come or some kind of election campaign that they come and hear the problems or solutions. They get solutions also. When you go to a community and hear solutions, you need to take them seriously,” Sean said articulately in a deep voice.
‘They only need us for certain purposes–voting’
He believes political parties are out of touch with the realities of T&T, especially in ‘hotspot’ communities. As a result of the disconnect, he said, more and more youth are being lost to the gangs. He said critical interventions at the community level are needed, as successive governments failed to act over the years, resulting in a social crisis.
He was also critical of the approach police officers take in the community. Sean claimed that in the aftermath of the discovery of human remains on Dog Island, everyone was being treated like criminals. The community is accustomed to that sort of treatment, he said, creating anger, in a sense, towards those in authority.
“We can’t save everybody, we are not God. But when you grow up in poverty ... Poverty is the outbreak of crime in Trinidad and Tobago. It is the number one problem that causes crime in Trinidad and Tobago. And the Government now, with all the millions in expenditure in Parliament, you does see them, what is the Government doing for youths and them in remote areas like these?
“We are creating a problem we cannot control in the end. The Government is the main factor because they are not involving themselves. They want to come now, when they allow it, and realise when it is out of control to come now, and it is the innocent paying for it, you understand what I showing yah?
“Because when you come into a community, everybody is not criminals. We come like we are the outcasts of society, you understand? Nobody turns an eye. They only need us for certain purposes–voting etc, because we are the people, the poor people are the majority of votes in the country,” he said over the voices from his walkie-talkie.
‘Hate breeding’
In the presence of increasing poverty and an accompanying prejudice against those in the community, he said there was hate breeding–one that is boiling over on the streets. And he sees the hate taking hold of people overwhelmed by their circumstances.
“Sometimes them youth and them might want to go to school. I might see four or five of them stay home. Why yuh ain’t go to school? They don’t have any money to go to school. And I might assist in whatever way I could, but I too catching my arse.
“The Government not seeing that. They not seeing the bigger picture. They want to curb crime and they feel the force is the only alternative to curb crime and it is not. The Government has the role of educating the people in these communities because some of them, plenty of them, are uneducated. So they allow the youths to grow and as they reach 14 or 15, they are picking up a gun. Allyuh not bringing no sports. We want basketball. We want football. It have youths with real talent and all this talent just going to waste. It have some youths, I will tell you, when you see them play football and basketball, you will be amazed,” Sean said.
The distrust of authority is evident.
Over in Sea Lots East, on the other side of the river, the young men on the block were less willing to speak. A community leader was seated alongside six or seven barebacked young men at the end of an alley on Production Drive. The leader dons a large gold chain and two of the men around him look no older than 16 years. To their left, in a house that appears considerably more opulent than any other house in the community, a group of other young men drinking, smoking and listening to loud music look on curiously from a patio. After the “boss” declines to speak, we left. As we walk away, the boss tells one of the other men, “We have nothing to talk to them about.”
The distrust of the media was evident.
No school, hungry bellies for children
Walking further along Pioneer Drive in Sea Lots West, through the narrow interconnecting alleys, towards the Community Impact and Homework Centre, there are at least 15 children home from school. We were told that while some children dropped out of school during the COVID pandemic, many of the students had no classes then because of varying issues.
The children roam the alleys, just outside of their family homes, playing with other children. The cries and shouts of other children are also heard from behind the galvanised fences of other homes along the walkways.
A 14-year-old, who we will call Ryan, is at home. He said his classes at Russel Latapy Secondary School were cancelled. He lives in a one-bedroom board house with his mother and siblings near the river separating Sea Lots West and Dog Island. When we asked him how many siblings he has, he said, “I can’t check.”
There was a disturbing sense of melancholy to Ryan. His eyes appeared hollow, while he was devoid of energy. His facial muscles drooped, as if they had forgotten how to be used to smile. When asked, he confessed that there are mornings, many mornings, he wakes up and has nothing to eat.
“My mother does struggle for we to get money for we to go to school. She working CEPEP right around here and that’s the salary she does get at the end of the fortnight.
“We need help with getting groceries. Money for school. Things for my sister to eat. Things for she to go to school. Real things we have to get help with. We house had burn down over there the last time,” he said, adding that he dreams of being a policeman.
Asked if his circumstances make him angry, he nodded to say yes.
The ten-year-old son of another CEPEP worker from Sea Lots East was also home for the day. His mother–who we will call Alicia–claimed he had been home several times during the last few months. She claimed his school, Excel Beetham Estate Government, had been affected by water and electricity issues.
“They letting children come to school for half a day and as I said, we are single mothers, we don’t have money to send them to school for half a day because you have to find money the next day, for the next half day.
“Help out the youths, give them a little stipend and a little job training, you give them that to do. Try and help out some of the single mothers. It have single mothers who are struggling right now to make ends meet and that’s the next problem,” the mother of five and grandmother of 16 lamented.
School attendance worrying
According to an Education Ministry assessment of teacher and student attendance at primary and secondary schools between January 22 and January 26, 2024, there was a 99 per cent daily turnout of teachers at Excel Beetham Estate Government Primary School. The school is in closest proximity to Sea Lots and children from the community can attend classes there.
There was a 34 per cent average daily attendance by pupils–the lowest of all primary schools in the country.
Another resident, Chris, in his late 20s, before heading off to work, stopped to speak with us. He lamented that so many children had dropped out of school over the last few years. He believes that too many young people seem to have nothing to do in the community.
“I am a young person myself and when I see my fellow young people and them going astray because it have nothing really implemented for them, you get worried.
“I find a lot of things the Government implements, some of the things not really working for the community because we have a lot of people in the community here and it doesn’t have any opportunities for them. I think the Government has to do something serious.
“Some things were being done by the Government and it was working, but then it came and stopped. Like when it had the classes, it was working but then the programme came and stopped because the funding stopped, so when that stopped, that was it. I believe that we, as a community too, could do something about it. If we look to straighten up ourselves and better ourselves too,” he said.
2015 National Crime & Victimisation Survey
In the National Crime & Victimisation Survey 2015, conducted by Qure Limited under the commission of the Ministry of National Security, 74.5 per cent of people interviewed from Sea Lots said they knew someone who was threatened by a gun or gang violence or was shot/shot at. That was the largest percentage of all communities. 12.1 per cent of respondents in Sea Lots reported that they were shot at or threatened by a gun or gang. That was the highest percentage alongside Laventille. All of the people interviewed in Sea Lots believed it was sometimes necessary for people to carry a gun, join a gang, cooperate with a gang or keep quiet about a gang.
What’s the Government’s plans
In January, Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley revealed that $100 million will be allocated to develop certain communities affected by high levels of crime. He said the funding will be used by the T&T Defence Force to retrain and hire officers to go into the at-risk communities.
“Where security has to be on the street, it is there and when people can rely on them (TTDF) and not the local don who believes that they are somehow bigger than the Government and the people of T&T,” he said at a political meeting.
Before that, in July 2020, Prime Minister Rowley announced the formation of a Community Recovery Committee in the aftermath of community unrest in East Port-of-Spain, following the shooting deaths of three men in Morvant by police officers. The committee, led by Dr Anthony Watkins, was given a mandate to examine issues of at-risk youth and factors negatively impacting communities.