Ishmael Roger Mohammed often finds his way down to the Matura River and sits in the shade of the arching bamboo trees watching the crystal clear water gushing by. The wind whispering in the overhead trees and birds’ song fill him with peace.
In Matura many residents are involved in the protection of the leatherback turtle which swims millions of miles to nest on the shores of this quiet rural east coast village. Mohammed, 48, is also involved in conservation but of another fast becoming endangered species—the area’s youth. He heads the village’s Community Kids Foundation and also stands ready to help anyone in need.
A security officer, he spends most of his spare hours harnessing and guiding young people in every aspect of their lives. His passion to save them from a negative lifestyle was inspired by his own dark and troubled past. Mohammed grew up with an alcoholic and abusive father who eventually hanged himself.
He was a victim of constant physical and verbal abuse and while yet in his teens ended up becoming involved in the drugs trade in El Socorro where he lived. He became a cocaine addict, eating out of garbage bins and sleeping in abandoned buildings with newspapers as his cover.
“I know what it is like to have rats nibbling your ears and roaches running over your face,” he says.
He said his father was involved in the occult and made an evil pact which he (Mohammed) was asked to continue but refused. He believes this had something to do with the terrible road he travelled.
Today, Mohammed lives contentedly in his own modest home in serene Matura where he settled after he spent six months at the Readi Centre Rehabilitation in the area and was cured of his drug addiction.
Recalling his terrible childhood, he said: “Many times as a little boy I had to run out into the streets to put clothes on my naked mother. My father would beat her for no reason and she would run out the house in terror.”
Mohammed said while he suffered verbal abuse from his father, his mother would vent her frustration on him and his little sister and beat them every day. It was soon after he passed the Common Entrance examination for St George’s College, his first choice, he found his father hanging in his bedroom.
“The night before, he came home drunk and threw a glass plate at my mother cutting her face. I grabbed a cutlass and told him if he touched my mother again I will kill him.
“The next morning we found him hanging from a rope in my bedroom. That was the defining moment for me. After that, I went totally haywire.”
To help out the family, Mohammed said he was sent to work at a notorious fruit stall in El Socorro owned by former drug dealer, Naim Naya.
“At 13, I was travelling to and from Venezuela in a pirogue bringing in goods.”
Mohammed said he began to smoke cocaine and got arrested numerous times, doing several stints on Remand Yard and three years as a convict at the Golden Grove Prison. He was arrested for various crimes, including robbery with violence, car stealing, wounding with intent and possession of cocaine for the purpose of trafficking.
“At 13, 14, I could enter any nightclub in Trinidad because money talks. But I would come home my head full of rage.
“No amount of liming, drugs, girls could satisfy me. I always knew I belonged in a different world.”
By the time he was a young man, Mohammed was a hopeless cocaine addict. “I was sleeping in an abandoned gas station in El Socorro one night and prayed.
“The next day I met Pedro de Silva of the Readi Centre who I had met in prison. He told me he was reformed and had been looking for me all over.
“In a couple months I moved from worst client to counsellor at the centre and was asked to be supervisor of the Raffa House for abused and abandoned boys.”
Mohammed says he gives motivational lectures in schools and on radio and television and works closely with the Matura Police Youth Club.
“Many of the young people come back and tell me thank you,” he said.