Panic attacks and anxiety when visiting - 1st gen British-Trinidadian
I am going to preface this post by saying that this is purely my own opinion and experience based on a perspective of a person who travels to the twin islands 1-2x per year , and I love Trinidad with my whole heart. This post is not coming from a place of hate.
Hi all, I’m a 1st generation British Trinidadian with dual citizenship just returning from my recent stay on the twin island. I’m in my early 20s and I could understand that my perception is limited to someone who is there full time. During the most recent years, every time I visit I experience extreme anxiety/panic attacks. This isn’t something I deal with in the UK or anywhere else I travel too. This surrounds mainly the driving and violence. Let me break it down.
Trinidad’s driving laws seem pretty much non existent, especially for the amount of car accidents that happen on the island. I’m not saying that speed cameras are 100% necessities (although it would help) but it’s the seatbelts. I’ve never gone anywhere globally where there are missing parts of the seatbelts in 99% of vehicles. This would prevent so many deaths if this was just properly enforced. Honestly I don’t know why cars are sold without the basic safety requirement of an adequate seatbelt for all passengers. Along with this people drive so recklessly. The anxiety I feel driving from south to north is insane, I don’t feel assured that I will reach the end of the motorway alive or without seeing a fatal accident which happens way too often. I also do believe that a root cause of this is the drinking culture. Not all Trinidadians drink whilst driving, I definitely don’t and half of my family don’t, but saying that half do is way too high of a number and the outcome of this is accidents. It’s so casual here. A rude boy in the drivers cup holder, stopping multiple times to drink rum or getting drunk at an event/beach and driving home. It’s too much!
Another point I have in the violence. It feels like GTA. Thank god I haven’t directly dealt with loosing someone to crime but every family I meet, at least one person has died extremely prematurely to gun crime or reckless driving. Even innocent souls. I feel like I can’t go a day there without hearing a completely insane crime, and it hurts so much more when it’s innocent children. (RIP Mercedes) As I said, I don’t live in Trinidad so I can’t fully understand the ins and outs but I do know that drugs/cartels and gangs have polluted such a beautiful country. But even so, I still don’t understand why it’s so bad. It’s like a plague, a war that the good people of Trinidad are loosing. For an island so small I can’t understand why there is so much violence. I’m from London which isn’t deemed to be safe, but there is no reason for individuals to be 40x more likely to die from being murdered in Trinidad vs London.
When I was on store bay beach last week. My friend that was a local to Tobago politely told the worker that he was scamming us and he was wrong for that. The guy that was selling beach chairs was violently threatening my friend whilst being a perv to us I guess to emasculate him further. It was really scary especially knowing that people on the twin islands be killing each other over nothing.
My family recently bought a house out there which I would eventually inherit but honestly, sometimes I just feel like never returning or when I’m there, counting down the days that I go home. Not because I don’t love the island. All of my extended family is there which I’m extremely close too, I thrive in the weather I love having land with fruits eating roti every day going to the beaches etc. I love the island so much, but since getting older and being more aware of the reality of what’s going on, I can’t be ignorant to the truth anymore.
This is a piece of my mind. Feel free to share your thoughts.