Saturday was a better day. I slept in, made sure I got all the sleep I needed and then went out to the mall to do some surveying. I met a female shopkeeper who was closing down early. When I asked her why? She was almost robbed when closing up shop the last time. She was held up but somehow managed to escape. Be very, very careful while in Trinidad. It’s a good place but it can be very dangerous. Point taken.
A similar message was portrayed to me that evening when I went to eat dinner at a sports bar. I met an expat who said he loved Trinidad, in fact he ideally didn’t want to leave. But he had also been held up in the past. Rather, he was robbed while sleeping; his bedroom door was locked and no one tried to break into it but they took all the computers in the apartment; there were quite a few. He mentioned he thought it was an inside job by people who worked for him. He said that a co-worker who went to Tobago for the weekend with some friends or family ended up being held up; this time at their house that was broken into at gunpoint. They had to hand over all their valuables. Lesson from this, as he told me? If someone asks for your things, give them anything, anything they want. They have no problem using their weapons and it can very easily be deadly.
Another interesting story he had; he was with a friend and they wanted to go out for drinks. So they went to this little neighborhood bar (in Columbia). As soon as they walk in, they are separated by a few naked women….. OK, strange… his friend went with the women and this guy went to the bar where he sat next to a man. A waitress then came up to him and whispered, “do you know who you’re sitting next to?” “Ya, I think I do.” “Are you scared?” “No, I’m not scared. I’ll just have a beer and talk to him.” So he did, in the little broken English that this guy knew. Who was this man? None other than Pablo Escobar, the biggest mobster in Columbia and probably the most wanted in South America. Killed thousands of people. So this guy that I met (sorry, no name… never got it) said to me, you know what? Take him away from the killings, the drugs, the business.. he’s a normal person just like you and me. Sometimes, we forget that when it comes down to it, those people who seem surreal really aren’t. They are people, human beings like us. I’m sure that Whitey Bulger probably wasn’t much different.
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