Done!

You see this place, I've had it! Several years ago I was fortunate enough to write a feature on the re-introduction of Blue and Gold Macaws into the wild. This project, funded from international sources was the baby of a Trinidadian living in the US. I spent a couple of afternoons hanging out with her and saw the birds. It had been a painstaking process over three years in the making. A year later, I saw her again when she came for the follow up. The birds seem to have taken root and several more breeding pairs were introduced into Nariva Swamp. Finally, a wildlife success story.

Until this morning's paper. Wildlife Rangers report that they're being relentlessly poached, nests are being raided and destroyed. After years of supporting a host of environmental and social causes I'm ready to call it quits. After all, I have neither chick nor child to leave anything too and my siblings all live outside of Trinidad. Makes me sick but I'm really just fed up of giving my all for nothing.

You know, I gave up watching the news because I couldn't take all the negative stories about who killed who and other such, it made me too depressed. I am obligated to read the newspapers for my job so it's hard to totally escape. Every day we face some or other horrible thing, so much that we have become hardened, we talk about it but we don't really DO anything, we are content in our complacency that it is someone else's problem to solve.

Gandhi said, "the greatness of nation can be judged by the way they treat their animals".
It is no secret that I love my dog, he is my constant companion and if someone hurt him I would be devastated. When I look at the treatment of animals here I am always appalled, it is no wonder that we are in such a bad way. We lack compassion, sensibility and even good sense. We Trinis are callous in the treatment of our country, we think not of tomorrow, only now, only ourselves. We slaughter our wildlife for wild meat limes, we cut and burn our hillsides even though it will flood when the rains come, we kill dolphins though they hurt no one. But then, we kill our children too, collateral damage right. Every so often you see some concerned people trying to do something, but these are the few, not the many.

We seem only to be concerned when it hits our wallets. It's like the alleged food crisis, regardless of what is said, we here aren't really experiencing a true food crisis, if we were, we wouldn't see hordes of people every day in restaurants and fast food joints. You can go into supermarkets, roadside stands, shops and parlours and buy pretty much whatever you want, true it may cost you more but what do we really need. We have forgotten the lessons of our past, remember "eat little, live long" that used to be inculcated within us a few generations ago. Cast adrift on a sea of relentless consumerism, upsized meals and greed, we adopt foreign desires to our detriment. Globalism be dammed, this is where I live, by choice, not some pumped up so-called first world nation. Trini, it is time to put up or shut up.

So go ahead with your need to be seen in the hot bars in the latest threads every night. Go ahead with your reckless, inconsiderate driving, your lack of manners in businesses and offices. Go ahead and spend every penny you earn on consumer goods. Go ahead and kill every last wild animal, clear every bit of green space and pour concrete. Go ahead and ruin everything that is beautiful about this land and when you wake up and find yourselves in a wasteland that resembles an apocalyptic nightmare ask yourselves who is was that dunnit.

I Done.