Dear Friends,
The following is a true story. It happened only today. This morning, I arrived at a little apartment in a quiet Christ Church neighbourhood to meet with a lady who had called my office a few days earlier. She had requested that someone come and perform a security survey of her home with a view to installing a security system.
This very nice elderly lady was waiting for me by the door. I introduced myself, showed her my identification and she invited me to come in and sit down. She the proceeded to explain why she had come to the conclusion that she needs an alarm system in her home. This is her story.
" Mr. Phillips, I used to live in my parents home in B*********. After they died my husband and I lived there for a while. After my husband died, I was forced to leave there. We had a large lime tree in the back yard and the paros kept coming into the yard to steal them. I installed razor wire on the fences but almost every day I would see fresh blood on it where the paros were still trying to get in. I decided that anybody that determined to get limes could be dangerous so I made the decision to move.
I moved to F*** G***** H****** into a little house deep in the development. It was very quiet at first until one morning I went outside to find a blood trail on my driveway leading into my plants. I called the Police who later informed me that there had been an attempted burglary at a house up the road and the occupant had shot the intruder. It was he who had ran up my driveway and hid in my plants. After hearing gunshots in the neighbourhood almost every night I decided to move again. Every morning I would look outside expecting to see more blood or worst, a dead body.
I found a nice apartment in a quiet neighbourhood in Christ Church. After a couple of months someone broke my car glass and stole the change I had in the ashtray. $700.00 in damage for less that $10.00 in change. I then started leaving the car unlocked. Every few days I would find the car ransacked. I asked the landlord if he could install a light that I could turn on if I heard anything outside. He did it and for the next few nights I sat and waited. Sure enough I heard someone outside by the car and I switched on the light, opened my the window and shouted. The young man looked at me and made a gesture as if he was going the throw something at me. I didn't wait to see if he had anything in his hand. I quickly closed the window and called the Police. The came the next morning. When this apartment became available I decided to move here.
Last Saturday night, I went to bed around 10pm. and all was quiet. My neighbour woke me the next morning to ask me if I had witnessed the commotion that occurred before midnight just outside my apartment. I told her that I had heard nothing. She told me that 2 police officers had been shot, bullets holes in my guard wall, and that the place was in an uproar with Police vehicles up and down for most of the night. I knew nothing. I slept through it all. That is when it hit me. If someone was trying to get in here, I would not have heard them. I need an alarm system. Four of my friends have your system so I called you."
During her story I listened in amazement. Thinking... Is this my Barbados? Is this what our senior citizens have to endure?
I think it was the matter-of-fact way that she related her story that stuck with me. She had accepted that this was her reality!
After I had finished my survey and was leaving she stopped me and asked. "Mr. Phillips, if I decided that I have to move, can I take the system with me?
I told her, "Of course, I will personally take it out and install in wherever you want it...And I wouldn't even charge you for doing it."
Quote of the Day
"Don't panic." Commissioner of Police Darwin Dottin.
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