An Open Letter to Mayor Louis Lee Sing:

Dear Mr. Lee Sing,
I am writing you this letter to commend you on your efforts to, as you put it, "rid Port of Spain of the problem of vagrancy". Finally, someone has a solution to the vagrant problem.

I see that you intend to forcibly remove vagrants from the streets of the city, and send them to the New Horizons Centre in Piparo, and the St Ann's Hospital, our most renowned mental care institution. This is a brilliant idea Mr. Lee Sing; you can tell that there is a lot of mental illness amongst vagrants. Just look at the way they think they can urinate anywhere they please, cuss each other in public, walk up to people and make crazy outlandish claims like, "you is a drug dealer ent... ent you is a drug dealer?" or  "you tap my phone ent, why you tap my phone for man", and basically exhibit a complete disregard for their fellow man and the law.
The worst ones though are those who sit on the benches at Woodford Square and claim to be talking to God. Please Mr. Lee Sing, when these poor people go to St Ann's, make them watch one of Pastor Cuffie's Sunday morning shows, so that they can see how normal people act when they speak with God.
I am also pleased that you have identified the criminal threat that vagrants also pose. Only last month, my neighbor Roxanne* was held up at gun point outside her home by two men and was carjacked. The police have not been able to track down any of the men, and have no clues as to who they were. It's as if these men were nameless, faceless phantoms, who can disappear into a crowded place like Chaguanas. Clearly, they were vagrants. I have also been a victim of vagrant crime; only last week I realized that my credit card details were stolen and were being used without my knowledge. I suspect that the perpetrator must be that old man who begs in front of Scotiabank on Independence Square. I will be taking this matter up with the Police next week.
Another aspect of your final solution I must commend you on is your plan to demolish derelict homes used by "drug dealers and vagrants". This is sheer genius Mr. Lee Sing; what better way to deal with drug dealers than by making them homeless, thereby stripping them of any rights of legal recourse and then forcibly removing them to Piparo or St Ann's. You sir are a master chess player! It really annoys me that vagrants feel these derelict buildings are places to freely practise all kinds of unsavory  behaviour - like getting high, having sex, or just getting drunk. It's like they make their own little nightclub sir!
I must admit though Sir, that I was complexly taken aback by your comment that "vagrants could contract cholera and spread it to all of us".  I mean, it just didn't seem scientifically possible. Though when I thought about it, I realized that I had longed suspected the man I buy oysters from, Lalchan, to be a vagrant. There is just something about him. Please inform the police that you can find him, every Friday, selling oysters outside Bood's Bar in Chaguanas.
In closing Sir, keep up the good work, and may God guide the triumph of your will. My girlfriend says that I should tell you about some Russian man called Dostoyevsky, and that he once wrote: "The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons". I told her I don't trust anything written by a Russian. I don't know what she doing even reading Russian for, but she is a COP supporter and you know how them COP supporters are Sir - "knife and fork and books and reading and thing". I love her though, so I have to bear it.

Yours Faithfully,
Darryn Boodan

first published in Outlish Magazine 2010