"Lord, put a hand!"

Yesterday morning I went for reflexology. While waiting for my session, I was talking with a friend who told me of an incident that took place with a woman we know who runs a hotel in Tobago. She had gone into her home (on the hotel premises) only to find three men who, upon learning that she had no gold, started beating her, stifling her and threatening her in horrific ways, etc. It sounded like a terrifying ordeal. During the reflexology session as the reflexologist and I were chatting and she was telling me that the incident with the hotel, where she gives reflexology sometimes, had really shaken her because around now is exactly a year since bandits entered her home and severely beat her, robbed her, stole her car. It took the police three weeks to take her report ... and the only reason they eventually took it was because a superintendent, who was a personal friend of hers, who had heard about the incident that much later, got them reprimanded into doing it (getting a report). Then this morning I got an e-mail from a friend saying that he was sorry he did not make it to I DO ... he and his girlfriend had been robbed at gunpoint earlier in the week. As stories like this become increasingly common, all we can say is: "At least you are alive." But what of the trauma that remains to be lived with until it can be released ... somehow?

Yesterday on our way into town, a friend and I were speaking about 'living elsewhere' and she asked me if I thought things in Trinidad could ever get better. The optimist in me said yes, not wanting to imagine the 'no'. The pessimist in my friend released an unconvinced "Hmph!"

May everyone reading this and, by extension, those close to us, be protected from and guided through it all.

*

Elspeth