Friday, September 17, 2010

Things we lost in the fire

Greetings, people. Like many Barbadians, I'm still recovering from the grief, anger and pain wrought on the entire island by the desperate, criminal act of two young products of our society.

By now I'm sure you all know about the robery and fire-bombing of clothing store Campus Trendz fire on September 3 that took the lives of six young women: Nikita Belgrave, Shana Griffitth, Kelly-Ann Lynch, Pearl Cornelius, Kellishaw Oliverre and Tiffany Harding.

Although the loss of six lives in such a cruel and senseless way is more than enough, there are many other things I feel that we Bajans have lost.

For starters, we've lost our sense of security. It will be a long time before I can feel comfortable browsing the racks of a store, especially if it's one of the tiny, one-door establishments that abound in Bridgetown.

We Bajans have a lot of precepts about a whole lot of things, and most of them erroneous. "It can't happen here"; "we don't do those kinds of things" are some of the preconceived notions that have gone out the window since September 3.

Our innocence is gone, and while one can argue that that's not necessarily a bad thing, I think that's one of the things we had going for us as a nation.

To the families of the six young women, you have my deepest sympathy.

1 comment:

Khaidji said...

Things I Lost In The Fire

Tragedy, what a ruthless, heartless crime
Heinous killers must be the scum of the earth, evil’s slime
I am most disgusted as are all of you
No right thinking Bajan wouldn’t feel this way too
Going to etch a scar in our hearts
Slice away our core and strip our emotional parts

It leaves many questions of where blame resides

Larcenists, arsonists, building codes, rescuers, where danger hides
Or society sometimes wait too late to react
Showing far too much tolerance at their first brutal act
This fire took lives but with those took much more

I feel the lost of opportunity, the knocks at the door
No chance to give to society their positive plan

There’ll be no smiles, hugs, dances, nothing follows what they began
How hard to never see their children, hear their stories and views
Every chance taken away at the September 3 news

Fire took away my chance to ever meet them or for they
In some odd chance to meet my family or friends one day
Regrets I have to have never felt their love
Even more regretful, I lost the chance to speak to them of our Father above