Temple In the Sea

A monument to the piety of sugarcane laborer Soodas Sadhu, the temple in the sea was originally a stone and mud structure built in the mudflats off the shoreline of the village of Waterloo in central Trinidad. Finished in 1947, the temple was torn down just five years later because it had been built on land owned by the Caroni Sugar Company. Undaunted, Sadhu hauled rocks into the sea itself because, he claimed, only god owned the ocean. Built of cement on a stone base, the temple was never completed though he spent the remaining twenty-five years of his life on the task. In 1994, twenty years after Sadhu’s death, the government of Trinidad & Tobago finished the temple as a permanent structure that has become a beloved site for all Trinidadians.