Where is our Tobago heritage?

THE EDITOR: Somebody needs to let the youths of Tobago know who owns the private properties that belonged to us twenty years ago. I realised a while back that Tobago’s youth will by and large revert to slavery, but I didn’t think that it would be so soon. We own nothing here.

I was born in a little old house on the main road in Roxborough. I came screaming out “plop” into the midwife’s hands. I lived close to the sea in those days too. So I know sea and river and waterfall. For the Carnival season just gone, I went with some friends to Argyle Waterfall, took the Roxborough entrance and was promptly stopped by two neatly uniformed “staff” and was told that there was a fee to walk up the trail to the waterfall. Now I understand wanting to make maximum use of the tourist dollar, charging them for everything. I even understand the strange concept that Trinis are tourists, after all, they like the label. But who could ask me to pay to go to the waterfall where I picked cray fish as a child. Who? Well the fellas make me to understand that is private property and that they will call the police for me. Well, bojibo, I can’t argue with that. I put me tail between my legs and pass ‘round.

Yes, I say I born dey. I must know where else to pass. They bawl out behind me, if police meet me on the track I could face charges. So before anybody who born in the cold has to come here and charge me I want a list of all the beaches like Canoe Bay and the waterfalls like Argyle Waterfall and the lagoons and the forests that the government has sold out. I want a list before somebody shoot me like they shoot up the young boy in Pigeon Point — the one everybody forget. I want to know which road to pass to go midnight fishing, or if I have to build a pond in the landlord backyard — because you know they come from wherever they come out and I can’t buy land here. Yes, I must rent till I dead. If I may be so bold, I want to ask for some legislature to protect whatever ain’t sell yet so that my sons twenty years from now could bathe in the sea free, could catch snapper and red fish with line that they make themselves, could splash around in a waterfall, could put two stick together for their little families. The Tobago House of Assembly must stop this sale of land on this island because landowners have the right to defend their property and we who born here may soon find that we have no rights here; that our children could end up in jail for trespassing; that again we own nothing and have to beg for ten days and servant work; that if we don’t vote for so and so we can’t work with CEPEP; that we own nothing.  Watch yourself Tobagonians — they might buy out THA too, then what we go do?

A SECOND
Tobago Youth Council