I am ashamed of myself, other women

A woman who noted that she is a grandmother has come forward to beg for peace after she and about five other females were involved in a nasty fight late last week in the Crabbe Lot area of Tortola, which is also known as the Ghetto.

The grandmother, who asked not to be named, telephoned BVI News Online last evening to make the appeal after our news team published photos of her and other fighters in action.

She noted that she was the eldest of the fighting women, adding that the photos and videos being circulated don’t show the reason she was involved.

Pressed by BVI News Online, the grandmother explained that her adult daughter has been having a long-running dispute with a group of women who reside mainly in the Ghetto area.

She added that, on the day in question, she went to the Ghetto where she often hangs out.

A quarrel started between the two groups of women.

One of the groups comprised the grandmother, her daughter, and a female friend – all of whom eventually were involved in the fist-fight.

The grandmother explained how the fight started.

“I came out of the bathroom [at the Ghetto], came out of the bar, walked down the step to go where I am going, and she (the fight starter) bump into me,” she explained while claiming that the physical contact was deliberate. “I pushed her [in retaliation]; she throw the drink in my face,” added the grandmother.

More and more women then joined the physical altercation. The grandmother, along with her daughter and friend, traded punches with the other females. A video of the fight also shows the women pulling each other by the hair, and wrestling on the ground.

The grandmother acknowledged that a group of men managed to quell the dispute. “I felt the men were moving too unfair; they could part the fight from long before. They just decided to hold one team and leave the other team. You should hold both parties; that’s how you intervene. If they were smart, they would have hold both [fighting] parties,” she said.

I tried to avoid the fight

The grandmother further told BVI News Online that she tried to avoid the fight on the day in question. “I, as the big woman, I tried to avoid that fight from the time I reached there [in the Ghetto] by moving from place to place – and it still happened.”

She further explained how she feels that her daughter and the other women have been at loggerheads for some time now. “It is a long dispute – not with me; I was the peacemaker in the whole thing most of the times. Or sometimes, when they are arguing, I will go down there [to the Ghetto] and talk to the other girls for them to know to leave my daughter alone.”

Asked if she went to the Ghetto to fight for her daughter, the grandmother insisted that she didn’t.

“Everybody think I just jumped into the fight because of my daughter, or I got into the fight defending my daughter. This is how the video show to everybody. But they don’t know that the fight started with me and my daughter intervened,” the grandmother said.

I am not proud

Meanwhile, the grandmother, who noted that the video and story regarding the incident have been widely circulated, told BVI News Online that she is not proud.

“I am not proud of it; I am not happy with it,” she said. “I have seen her (the aggressor) since the fight, and I just look at her and shake my head. I just decide to leave it to God.”

The grandmother said she does not want to feel threatened during this festive season.

She appealed for peace. “Carnival coming up. You know how stupid I feel to be walking on the road and have to be looking over your back?”

“There is a lot of aggravation; there is a lot of tension; it needs to calm down. If it does not calm down, somebody will get hurt; that’s how I feel. It needs to stop,” the grandmother told BVI News Online.

She continued: “Why we as black people cannot socialize and have a good time together? Why we can’t do it? That’s why we losing lives and we will never see it because we don’t hold one head.”

The grandmother admitted that, to the best of her knowledge, the fight was not reported formally to the Royal Virgin Islands Police Force.

Good people in the Ghetto

She also expressed regret that the Ghetto may get an even worse name as a result of the fight.

But the grandmother emphasized that such fights don’t happen daily in the Ghetto. “They don’t fight in the Ghetto everyday. Now and again they fight, but it is not something that happens everyday.”

“Sometimes I might go there to cool out. People might think it is the worse place in the world to be, but it’s not. The drinks there are actually cheaper than any place else,” she further told BVI News Online.

The grandmother also made it clear that good people live in the Ghetto, and so the stereotype should end. “If you name the place Ghetto because of how we behave or how some people carry themselves or what, it isn’t everybody who does it. The place is more modernized, so all kind of people are there – the good, the bad, and the ugly. But people just judge the place as ‘the Ghetto’ as if it is a low grade place.”