By Johnny Coomansingh
Sangre Grande, my hometown in Trinidad, is always full of humor. Growing up in ‘Grande,’ I used to see and also hear the voices of the homeless people who traversed the Eastern Main Road in Cunapo. Cunapo is the central business district (CBD) of Sangre Grande. For the words some of them said, and the things they said, regular laughter came easily. Everybody referred to them as vagrants. Sometimes I ‘stood in my shoes’ and wondered why these people ended up on the streets. On August 31, 1962, I was eight years old when Trinidad and Tobago became an independent country.
At my primary school, I received a little commemorative brass medallion and a bar of chocolate to celebrate our first Independence Day. That chocolate quickly liquified in the hot sun, and the medallion embossed with the Trinidad and Tobago Coat of Arms is buried somewhere. I was too little to understand what independence meant; so much hoopla! Confused? Yes!
On August 31, 2026, Trinidad and Tobago will be celebrating 64 years of independence. Sixty-four years and it’s apparent that we haven’t gone past our dependence on external support. That’s the economic aspect. Socially, we are still trying to fix our communities. We long for social stability. However, there is always a new batch of homeless vagrants who occupy certain areas in Grande. It is clear that despite all the billions of dollars that accrued from the exploration and exploitation of hydrocarbons, Trinidad and Tobago is saddled with a perennial social problem. Sidewalk and pavement dwellers who rummage through garbage bins for what they visualise as food are still ubiquitous. In context, please note the two highlighted lines in the calypso that Dr Leroy Calliste (Black Stalin) sang:
“1983, mih fans beg for a favour,
Ah decide to please them so ah write the soca,
Last year they come back with a different story,
They say they want something smutty about Jean or Dorothy,
Now on your fans you know your future depends,
So as sit down to write this smut only to please them,
But as ah take up meh pen and meh piece of paper,
And a write out the first verse listen what ah remember.
That oil money come, oil money go
Poor people remain on the pavement and ghetto
When ‘Mr. Divider’ start to divide the bread equally,
Yes, ah going and finish the whole damn calypso but Dorothy,
How ah jam she – in the party,
And she jam mih – in the party,
How we back back – in the party,
And we roll back – in the party,
But once my people keep fighting for an equal share of the cake,
Wait Dorothy wait Dorothy wait!”
As my memory serves me, there were quite a few drifters and pavement dwellers who were around during my childhood and early youth. My poem titled Up from the Mud relates to an extent, how Sangre Grande functioned as a town in the east of Trinidad.
The lines of poetry included the monikers of some of the homeless residents that came along. Here are the lines:
“Grande dat time was always the best,
A home for the crazies I would surely guess,
For street denizens and the homeless,
Darlin’ Boi, Speed Coil, Suckee-Tongue Sahadeo, and Bipta,
Leano Rivers, Pick-it-Up, Soe-foot Wallace, and Quamina,
Bendong, Clip-yuh-Wing, Book Belly, and Wahzay,
These folks gave you laughs at any time of night or day.”
As a former student of Northeastern College in Sangre Grande, there was always a modicum of ol’ talk at school about all these individuals and how they came to be what they were. Concerning these individuals, our imagination was rife! Discussion will surround a few of these characters.
The story was told that Darlin’ Boi, a tall strapping fellow, became seriously depressed until he lost his mind. In a tattered mess, he wandered up and down the road talking to himself. His special place for a rest was in front of the Pioneer Pharmacy. There were people who said that they could hear him grinding his teeth several meters away while he kept repeating the words: “Ah tell mih wife tuh cook rice and peas, and she cook peas and rice. I rel vex!”
Speed Coil was a lanky and lean fellow with a gaunt face. His nickname was ‘Lagoon Bird’ pronounced as ‘Lagoon Bud;’ a name that he severely disliked. Around the town, his occupation was washing vehicles. He had a five-gallon pitch-oil pan in which he carried water for washing the vehicles. After a car was completed, he would dance around the vehicle, beating his pitch-oil pan, singing repeatedly: “Lobo, lobo, lobo, lobolay” until he was satisfied. Four of my friends and I were riding a bus to Valencia when we saw Speed Coil. In chorus we shouted, “Lagoon Bud!” The bus slowed down to pick up someone, and there was Speed Coil in front of us. In our frightened state, we quickly told him that we did not call him Lagoon Bud but said instead “Lagoon Dog.” He said “okay fellas” and left us alone.
At all hours of the night, Suckee-tongue Sahadeo, ambled along the Eastern Main Road. Although the name ‘Sahadeo’ means “accompanied by God,’ some say that he was the ‘Go for’ of the Boodoo family, hence the name ‘Sahadeo.’ Suckee-tongue Sahadeo was probably the best maco (nosy person) in town. It was Suckee-tongue Sahadeo who heard noises in the Uncle Sam Bar one Saturday night and reported to the police what he heard. The police arrived and shot the alleged thief on Andre Street at point-blank range. I don’t know how true but I heard that the thief was running away with a bag of drinks (liquor) for his wedding that day. On my way to the market, I saw the bullet hole on the forehead of the man on that Sunday morning. It wasn’t a good sight for me.
Leano-Rivers was a very respectable man to everyone when he was sober. Nevertheless, ladies must pass far from him if he’s seen lying on the sidewalk in a drunken state. He was a pretty sly fellow. He would ‘sleep’ with one eye open to peep under the dresses of women when they passed by. In the middle of Grande, my big sister gave him a sound beating with a full tin of KLIM powdered milk. She arrived home with the tin full of dents. My mother asked her why the tin was so badly dented. She replied, “Leano nah.”
Pick-it-up, for whatever the reason was seriously bent over like a ‘U’ as if picking up something while he trudged along. While sitting on the sidewalk railing, on Oropouche Road, some young men in the village would lie in wait for him. Before he got too close, he would cross the road just to avoid them, but avoid them he could not. In chorus the limers would shout, “Pick-it-up! Pick it up!” And then they waited for his reply: “Ah go pick up yuh mudda so-and-so!” After Pick-it-up launched a few expletives, the laughter of the limers would be incessant for quite a few minutes.
I knew him as ‘ Wallace.’ Some knew him as ‘Soe-foot-Wallace’ because it was evident that he had a possibly incurable sore on his leg. It was what we described as a ‘wretch.’ But he had a most annoying moniker: ‘Wallace-who-dug-the hog.’ The talk was that Wallace dug up a dead hog and sold it to customers in the market. Some say that the hog meat was already turning blue. Heaven knows who bought that pork! I don’t know if it’s a made-up story, but in his drunken state, Leano Rivers accosted Wallace in the Uncle Sam Bar and asked him this question: “ Wallace, I would like to enquire of you who dug the hog?” Wallace, after vehemently slapping Leano Rivers, replied: “I dug the hog!”
The talk was that the guy we knew as Quamina was an intelligent fellow whom I heard had some monetary misfortune. This calamity drove him to be somewhat depressed and probably ‘silent mad.’ He would walk up and down the road with one sentence: “Gih mih ten cents nah.” I can’t say I know what he wanted with ten cents, but I guess that was how he managed to keep in touch with people in the community. At one time he did little odd jobs for the owner of the Red Store in Grande.
Book-belly was, as the name describes, a belly full of books. Bare-footed in clothes that needed serious laundering, he carried all his books tucked inside his upper garment. The thin, short, dark-skinned man, with curly hair, quietly walked up and down the street, never seeking to trouble anyone. He was one of the few street-dwellers who never gave any trouble. It was bandied about that his name was ‘Christopher’ and I heard that he was a scholar; quite erudite. Sometimes events and activities take a serious toll on the mind and things fall apart.
I don’t know much about Bipta. All I remember was that he was a merry old man who never saw anything as a problem. He was full of respect for everyone. Nothing bothered him. There was this night when I witnessed him making a ‘bubble’ (a pot of food) next to the Seven Oaks Bar external urinal. He lit a fire and put on the pot. In the semi-darkness, I couldn’t see exactly what he was cooking. However, I saw him squeeze two or three ripe tomatoes with his bare hands, popping them open and dropped them into the pot. Someone asked him why he did not use a knife to cut up the tomatoes. He replied quite firmly: “…is the same thing dat go happen tuh dem in the pot so why ah have tuh use ah knife.”
As I affirmed, there are newbies constantly arriving in Grande. Today, you would see strong-looking youth begging passersby for money, and yet there are odd jobs available for them to earn some much-needed cash. It could be that many are suffering from the effects of substance abuse. If they claim that they are hungry, I would prefer to buy something for them to eat rather than give them cash. It’s sad.
There is so much of this kuchoor in Grande. Sometimes the humour is too much. As an independent democratic republic, Trinidad and Tobago has to be proactive in providing treatment and safe places for such people. If you appreciated and possibly enjoyed my narratives, there will always be a next time for more stories from this raconteur.