JOSHUA SEEMU­N­GAL

Glen­roy “Bon­go Grease” Halls has ded­i­cat­ed most of his life to the up­lift­ment of the Rasta­far­i­an com­mu­ni­ty in Trinidad and To­ba­go but now, the Nyabinghi high priest is in need of up­lift­ment him­self.

On Thurs­day night, the num­ber 10 Marigold Dri­ve, Siparia, home of the act­ing Chair­man of the All Man­sions of Rasta­fari was gut­ted by fire, leav­ing it un­in­hab­it­able.

Ac­cord­ing to Halls—a pop­u­lar nuts man in south Trinidad, af­fec­tion­ate­ly known as “Three-Time Gram­my Award Win­ner”—he left his home last night to pre­pare nuts at a near­by bak­ery for Fri­day’s crick­et match be­tween West In­dies and In­dia.

How­ev­er, while there, he re­ceived a fran­tic call at around 9 pm from his niece.

She told him his neigh­bour called her, say­ing that Halls’ house was on fire.

“I al­so lost a home in 2004, but this one… this has hit me the hard­est. When I got the news, I put my head in my hands and bawl. I’ve lost every­thing,” Bon­go Grease said in a soft, bro­ken voice.

“I’m hop­ing I can get some as­sis­tance to break down the top floor of the house be­cause I won’t be able to oc­cu­py the bot­tom floor un­less that hap­pens.”

The fire, which is the sub­ject of an in­ves­ti­ga­tion by the Trinidad and To­ba­go Fire Ser­vice, de­stroyed the en­tire sec­ond floor and all items on it.

Fire of­fi­cers man­aged to put out the fire even­tu­al­ly, sav­ing a cou­ple of things from the bot­tom floor.

How­ev­er, with­out im­me­di­ate re­ha­bil­i­ta­tive work, Halls has been told it will be too un­safe to live in the home.

Halls sus­pects it may have been an ar­son at­tack.

He asked that any peo­ple in­ter­est­ed in as­sist­ing him, call him at 372-9074.

Bon­go Grease is a well-known Rasta­far­i­an com­mu­ni­ty leader.

He is al­so one of the most pop­u­lar ad­vo­cates of cannabis de­crim­i­nal­iza­tion and le­gal­iza­tion lo­cal­ly and re­gion­al­ly.