AncilChapter 4: We Ready For D’ Road
“Knock knock,” Ray Carter started.
“Who’s there?” Melanie giggled.
“Me,” Ray Carter continued.
“Me who?” Melanie asked Ray Carter’s metal ball that lay on her lap.
“Me-OOOOOOOW!!” Ray Carter shouted.
Melanie burst out with uncontrollable laughter. She was already getting a kick out of Ray Carter’s accent, and now he was telling jokes. They went on like that in the back seat for the entire drive. It was beginning to get annoying but none of us wanted to say it. Well none of us except for Megan
“Calm down! All that noise in the backseat isn’t necessary!” Megan shouted.
They both remained quiet but there were just small intervals of talking from Ray Carter and giggles from Melanie but it was definitely less annoying.
As we were driving on the way to San Fernando, the evening sun dominated the sky and there was a sudden increase in population along the Churchill-Roosevelt Highway. The Churchill-Roosevelt Highway is a major highway in the Twin Republic that connects the Uriah Butler Bridge to Wallerfield in the south of Arima. The highway was once used to connect Barataria to Wallerfield but Barataria was no longer accessible by road since it was one of the towns around Port of Spain that was overtaken by the Gulf of Paria. The highway was constructed during World War II between 1939 and 1945 to connect the US Army base with Port of Spain. It was named after the two wartime leaders, Winston Churchill and Franklin D. Roosevelt.
There were people on the roads and on the streets going about their daily lives as if nothing happened. There were lots of cars with us on the roads and I was guilty of giving a few of them some bad drives, but I was learning. Even though I didn’t know how to drive I still managed to reach far enough without any accidents. The road was relatively simple to navigate but as we got closer to the Uriah Butler Bridge the road got higher and higher until we were a few hundred feet in the air on the Uriah Butler Bridge which connected the Churchill-Roosevelt Highway to the San Fernando Entrance in Princes Town. It was above the overtaken Uriah Butler and Sir Solomon Hochoy Highways but it didn’t follow the exact same path. On both sides of the bridge, all that I saw were old and rusty buildings poking out from the sea. The buildings were covered in green moss that made the cityscape look like a jungle. A real concrete jungle. Some of the buildings were bent and some were straight but it didn’t make a difference because no one was using them anyway. They could have fallen and no one would have cared. There were actually a couple of collapsed buildings in dilapidated states on the water bed.
The water wasn’t very deep along the drowned Uriah Butler and Solomon Hochoy Highways, as a matter of fact, it was quite low. Not low enough for human life but it wasn’t high enough to be considered sunken like Port of Spain.
There was a heavy taste of salt in the air which complemented the salty smell. I could have clearly heard the sound of crashing waves and seagulls as I steered the vehicle along the bridge. The sea ended a few miles to the east of the Uriah Butler Bridge covering areas such as Carapichaima, California, and parts of Chaguanas. The cities fell victim to the rise in sea level caused by global warming. My teacher had said during a class that there was a time when the sea was further inland covering towns such as Tunapuna but it eventually receded to the point that it is at now. A whole lot of the country’s population had allegedly drowned and the few hundreds of thousands that survived tried to mend the damage. They recovered well but some of the damage just couldn’t be undone.
We were on the road for a while but we finally arrived at the San Fernando Entrance which was formerly known as Princes Town. It wasn’t really an entrance but just a pile up of vehicles with a huge sign hovering over with the statement, “The San Fernando Entrance.” There were hundreds of vehicles piled up for miles along the bridge. I couldn’t drive the van anymore because there wasn’t anywhere to drive.
“Time to walk,” Rajiv said while getting out of the van.
“We have to walk to San Fernando from here?” I asked in surprise.
“Nah nah nah. You mad or what? We have to walk the rest of the Sando Entrance to get a ferry,” Rajiv explained.
“Ohhhh,” I said in relief
“It is still quite a walk,” Ray Carter said. “The road from here to the dock is approximately four miles according to my GPS.”
“Wow. Four miles is….is a lot,” I said.
“Aren’t you the one who wanted to come to Sando?” Rajiv mocked.
“I didn’t know we had to walk four miles,” I said.
“Well now you know, stop whining and let’s start walking!” Megan shouted.
I felt a little insulted but they were both right, I couldn’t deny it.
“Alright let’s go,” I said.
We all strapped on our backpacks and set off.
The late evening came upon us while we walked along the Uriah Butler Bridge in between the array of vehicles haphazardly parked along the bridge. The dark clouds that loomed earlier in the day apparently dissipated because there was no rain. We saw a few people at the side of the bridge lounging on the floor like vagrants. As we got closer to the docks the number of people increased.
“Try not to make any eye contact with anybody,” Rajiv whispered to us. “Just act normal, don’t show any fear.”
