I've known Javed for 20 years. It was my honor to have the honorary title of "uncle" by him. He always had a penchant for the wild. His loving parents never discouraged his interest in nature. His father was a very active naturalist, and member of the T&T Field Naturalist's, and became head of the Bird Group. Javed was fascinated with all things natural. I remember visiting the Omardeen home many years ago, and Javed showed me his terrarium at the house, with a female scorpion, and her entire back was covered with dozens of baby scorpions! Did his parents know about this? I never told.
On time, on the road to Toco, Javed wanted to stop at a river and try sweeping his fine net through the water.
On the first swipe, Javed caught a Pipefish. A Pipefish! I'd never seen a live one before. I tried to persuade him to release it. It would never live very long out of the water, I said. But no. Javed wanted to keep it. When I visited the Omardeen home again, in Westmoorings, maybe a year later, Javed still had the Pipefish, alive, in an aquarium. I was amazed. He had been studying the thing all this time.
When the Omardeen kids were approaching the age when secondary school was nearing an end, the girls talked about college, with much parental approval. Javed wasn't interested in college. To his parent's deep concern,
he wanted to go and live in the bush. And that, he did. And he couldn't have landed in a better place than
Brasso Seco, where he met his mentor there, bushman, birdman, botanist, ethnobotanist, Carl Fitzjames.
It turned out that Javed could not have received a better college education than all that he learned by doing,
trial and error, experience, and reading. He learned to farm the land organically and sustainably. The cocoa product he made with his mother were the tops in T&T. Amazing!
Javed was a mild-mannered, quiet, and peaceful man, at home in the outdoors. He was one of the nicest people I ever met. Trinidad is now missing an incredible person, who had so much to offer. I am deeply saddened by his untimely demise. I don't think I will ever get over it. I will never forget him. Javed has always reminded me Henry David Thoreau, who preferred nature over the society of people. I leave with a quote from Thoreau ...
“But alone in distant woods or fields, I come to myself, I once more feel myself
grandly related, and that cold and solitude are friends of mine. I suppose that
this value, in my case, is equivalent to what others get by churchgoing and prayer.”
-- Henry David Thoreau 1817-1862