DEBE – DOUBLES WITH HEAVY CRIME

TO many urban residents and visitors, Debe symbolises tasty doubles, aloo pie, and saheena.

During my years in newsrooms, I sometimes had to demark, for the sake of city colleagues, Debe from Dibe, one a bustling food basket in the Naparima sub-region, the other a diverse working-class enclave northwest of Port of Spain.

Debe is at the edge of the wetland Oropouche Swamp, which is just 15 metres above sea level, and has vast arable lands and several river tributaries.

Wellington and Woodland were flourishing sugar estates of colonial times, and there were also rice paddies and bountiful vegetable fields.

There have never been any sizable industries, and most residents make a living from the land, or retail commerce, including the array of double stands not far from colourful tomato and bhaji stalls.

Gandhi Village is at the nexus with Penal, and talk was that it was originally named Cooliewood because of the heavy concentration of indentured labourers.

Dr. Eric Williams mandated a name change, the historians tell us.

Debe has always been defined by a community spirit, hard work, and briskness among its residents.

These days, Debe – like several other rural communities – is making the media headlines for the spree of violent crime, such as the brutal robbery of a 77-year-old resident.

There have been unchecked murders, home invasions, random shootings, and burglaries of business places.

The streets, usually filled with community life, become desolate by 8 p.m.

Two months ago, a 69-year-old woman was shot to death.

Small businesses, which are sitting ducks for armed criminals, are shutting down, sending home workers, with some proprietors joining the queue to hightail it out of T&T.

Business people tell you they can’t go on this way, and anxious residents rush to close their doors at nightfall.

To be sure, Debe is not the only crime-ridden rural district.

As a random example, St. Helena, Kelly Village, and adjoining communities are witnesses to vicious gang warfare, drug dealings, and arbitrary shootings.

Weeks after the government shelled out $3.4 million of taxpayers’ money for a futile crime talk shop, the curse is further inflamed across this shell-shocked land.

Some people feel T&T is on a shortcut to Haiti’s tormented capital Port-au-Prince, now overrun by open gang conflicts.

The authorities are peddling their periodic claptrap, even as high-powered military weapons go missing, and the police are blaring sirens in what now sounds like a pretentious show.

T&T gets top billing in every international report on crime, with dire warnings in a brand-new study of violent Caribbean countries.

“Extremely dangerous” is the depiction.

In all of this, the rustic Debe has lost its innocence, with its sumptuous doubles no longer its prevailing talking point.

These days, there is a heavy serving of deadly crime.