Tobago is changing, according to Orville London, Keith Rowley and local police officials. But it seems some things stay the same.
The initial lack of urgency for catching the killers of other elderly white couples on the island was worrying but unsurprising.
One hopes that the arrest of two suspects, construction workers from Tobago and St Vincent, is not merely a smokescreen to appease the British foreign office who have arrived on the island amid gruesome media reports in the UK.
As an outsider, I love the beauty of Tobago but always miss the bustle and noise of Trinidad. I’m not such a fan of Tobago’s silence—after two days there it can become oppressive.
Trinidad is feared by travellers (and Tobagonians) for its high murder rate but for me, personally, I’ve always felt safer in Port-of-Spain than in Tobago. The ex-pat communities in T&T must surely be beginning to feel the same.
Perhaps the presence of iron bars and padlocks on windows in Trinidad contributes to the perception of security. Sadly, Tobago might be heading towards those extremes fast. Without it, there is always the eerie sense in Tobago that anything could happen. Particularly at night.
If I was white I would feel nervous about visiting Tobago. I haven’t communicated this to the white British couple I know who are just about to move there for six months to live the good life. I don’t want to put them off their paradise. Besides, they are young. The Tobago killer seems to have a cowardly vendetta against the elderly.
Hate is a strong word but the killing of the Wheelers in Tobago was indeed a hate crime. What makes it disturbing as a hate crime is the context: the general attitude of Tobagonians to outsiders. “Clannish” is how some describe it. I tend to view it as a mixture of cold indifference and a resentment bubbling barely beneath the surface.
As an outsider I have found that Tobagonians rarely exude friendliness to you unless you go out of your way first to dispel any suspicions they may have of you.
I do not recall an outpouring of grief on the island after any of the nine killings of foreign couples over the past six years.
If British charter flight operators decide to close down the air route, Tobago will experience its own kind of death.
The only reason the Virgin route exists is because of THA subsidies.
And given Colm Imbert’s signals that spending will be scaled back, who knows how long that luxurious subsidy will remain in place.
Speaking of deaths: Closer to home, here in the heart of Paris’ red light district, I died a little inside watching the Moulin Rouge show last week. The performers onstage must die every night.
I hadn’t been expecting much; having been warned by my aunt that the show had been unchanged in 15 years. But I still had visions of the show I saw as a child, which my aunt danced in in the late 1980s. Razzmatazz was the order of the day. Carnival style costumes, leggy dancers descending from staircases with sparkling lights and toothy smiles gleaming.
What we got was something else entirely. Like going to a 1982 Blackpool pier seaside cabaret. Appalling costumes, bad dancing, drawn-on smiles, miming to bad songs.
It was difficult to say which was the nadir of the late-night show: the woman wrestling live sea snakes in a aquatic tank or the troupe of miniature ponies led on stage by topless girls in thongs. Both were inappropriately bestial.
The female dancers were wooden and bored, the male dancers were simply torrid: like they’d dragged in some desperate strippers from a gay bar and forced them onstage. One of them had his appendectomy scar boldly on display. Another appeared to have had pectoral implants.
Our tickets were free and the venue only five minutes from our house so it wasn’t such a letdown, but for the tourists paying exorbitant prices it must have been an outrage. A man next to us ordered a standard bottle of house red wine and managed to disguise his appalled shudder when the waiter came back, uncorked it, then informed him of the price: €200.
We had our own bit of glamour as the lights went down and a waiter came to our table, took our glasses and said “follow me please” before leading us down to a large table with a reserved sign right in front of the stage. For a brief moment we felt like Beyonce and Jay-Z.
It didn’t last.
From the moment the curtain went up it was like being transported back in time. Toulouse-Lautrec would be turning in his grave. The Moulin Rouge, much like Paris, is stuck somewhere in the 80s.