Trinidad and Tobago

We've moved to Colombia!

2010-10-18T12:29:00.000-04:00

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Caribbean life

2010-06-25T19:39:00.006-04:00

We’ve spent the past few mornings soaking in the Caribbean lifestyle…long breakfasts on our front porch, going down de islands, and visiting Trini sights.

Our home for the last two years...we'll miss it.

Doubles

2010-06-20T19:33:00.000-04:00

Doubles are like the bagels and cream cheese, the muffins, or the doughnuts of Trinidad. Sprinkled throughout the country, you’ll see the umbrellas, coolers, and lines of people holding their hands close to their mouths eating doubles. For 4$TT, you get two circles (thus the doubles) of barra (fried, flat dough) with a curry channa (garbanzo beans) on top. Toppings vary: the sweetest come with mango and tamarind, the freshest come with chunks of cucumber and shado-beni, and the spiciest come doused with pepper sauce. The most experienced vendors flip the ingredients from multiple containers onto the dough with Olympic efficiency and accuracy. Doubles only ever come plural; don’t make the mistake of ordering a double…people will stare. The idea is to find the vendor whose doubles matches your doubles dream and then visit them religiously. Tom, not a religious man before moving to Trinidad, has vowed to eat doubles every day of his last week here.

Beyond sustenance and spice, doubles supply conversation and competition. People compare and contrast vendors for hours, and the more detailed and opinionated you are in these conversations, the more respect you earn. Aaron does all right since he and Tom travel vast distances on the pot-holed Trini roads to sample doubles around the island. He can wax well about the 7 PM Valsyn guy, the 3 PM lady by the big tree in Diego Martin, George’s on Ariapita, George’s Ex, D&A, the DDI family, the UWI stand, and then the multitude of vendors in Tunapuna, but the airport stand gets his top vote. Bringing coworkers, family and friends, or students doubles in the morning earns you days of appreciation.

Roti Roti Roti

2010-06-20T16:15:00.017-04:00

Roti. I know I’ve described it before, but let me do it better. First, let me say that it’s delicious and eating one usually means you can skip dinner.
My favorite kind is dhal puri, when the dough is filled with dried lentils. This way, it can be served folded alongside multiple toppings or like a burrito with the toppings inside. The other kind is buss-up-shut (originally “bust-up shirt” because that’s what it looks like, but slang and time changed it), which is buttery and in pieces. Either way, you are to tear off a bit and pick up the goods with it—no silverware needed—but with the best skins (dough) you do burn your fingers a bit. The entrée plates come mounded with a variety of meat and veggies, all curried and spicy, with additional pepper (spicy sauce in the Caribbean, not the green or red vegetable) and chutneys on the side to increase spice even more. There’ll be goat, chicken, or beef, all served bone-on, from which to choose. My favorite is goat, but it’s quite rich so I alternate with veggie.
There’s a variety of vegetables: bodi (long, green beans that appear in the grocery store wrapped into twisted bundles, but are cooked down in dishes until they are soft), pumpkin (mounds of soft, sweet orange), potato (bite-size chunks in a yellow, cloudy liquid, with lentils mixed in), greens (spicy, bitter, and almost black), mango (often with thick slices of the pit and/or skin included), and sometimes tomato (salty and shiny with oil).
Eating roti doesn’t fit into the American definition of convenience; you couldn’t eat it while driving because sometimes you have to pull the chicken bones or mango pit out of your mouth. (This takes practice, and usually seems like something you should be doing alone, like flossing, but here it’s no big deal.) Instead, this meal takes time and care so you can slow down and enjoy the company around you. There’s a fast food version, sold at The Hot Shoppe, which will do for a fix, but the best roti is made from experts. Sometimes they’re found in St. James with a cart that holds the necessary five to six silver, tightly lidded secretive pots, sometimes they’re found inside small, warm restaurants with two tables, and sometimes found in friend’s auntie’s homes, where the smells come out and greets you on the porch.

On the street, when you pay, you lay your money down and take your change, but the vendors aren’t far.

Call me mango

2010-06-20T15:57:00.006-04:00

When I asked, I was told that there were at least 50 different versions of mangos in the Caribbean, brought here by the Indian indentured servants. Aaron watches for birds; I watch for mangos. I’m on constant surveillance for sidewalk mango vendors, since they pop up all over the city at different times selling different varieties. This makes for a lot of u-turns.

Everybody has a favorite mango. My favorite was the Julie, because its pit is small compared to the amount of fruit. Also, it doesn’t require flossing like some do. But, just now I found this new kind. Everything the Julie does, this one does better. It’s about twice the size, perfectly balances tartness and sweetness and it also boasts beautiful swirls of pink, orange, and green skin. I asked the vendor what it was called and he said, Apple Mango, but when I asked my friends about it, they’d never heard of it. Due to the diversity of Trinis, it’s not uncommon to have multiple names (and multiple spellings) for the same things here.

People eat mangos like apples here, just taking a bite and spitting out the skin. I assumed Julies were everyone’s favorite, but the more people I ask, the more specific the mango preferences are. Sham, our Oropuche tour guide, favors Spice mango, but says they don’t grow in northern Trinidad.
One of my favorite tastes is mango chow. Think pre-ripe (green) mango sliced into strips, so a little sweet and a little snap when you bite it. Add some acid with vinegar and some spice with pepper. Mix in some cilantro-tasting shado-beni and some salt…a rollercoaster of triumphant flavor.

1st Annual Ultimate Frisbee Tournament in Trinidad and Tobago

2010-06-12T19:12:00.000-04:00

We’ve played Ultimate Frisbee every Thursday and Sunday for the two years we’ve been here, on The Savannah, across from the US embassy. The Queen’s Park Savannah is a huge green park in the middle of the city—the Central Park or Green Lake of Port of Spain. People run around it and play soccer, rugby, and cricket on it at all hours of every day. According to my students, it’s the world’s largest roundabout.
Last year, we were lucky to get a game with three on each side, but this year, the crowd has blossomed to 2 games of eight on each side. This enthusiasm for the sport encouraged my competitive husband to plan Trinidad’s First Annual Ultimate Frisbee Tournament. He had jerseys made and named each team after his favorite T&T birds. He taught everyone the rules, plays, and throws necessary in the game. He created an organization, TUFF (Trinidad Ultimate Frisbee Federation), and hired a Public Relations Manager, a DJ, and a catering service. He advertised and made fliers. He encouraged international players to come for the event, upping the level of the game. He organized the players according to skill so that each team had a fair chance of winning.

Then on June 12^th, 40 people arrived to attend Trinidad and Tobago’s first annual Ultimate Frisbee Tournament, just outside the national stadium. In the first round, each team played each other. Because of the heat and the sun, each person drank Gatorade and water constantly during small breaks in the games.

Red Bull, a sponsor, showing up midway through the second game, helped.

At lunch, we relaxed in the shade for the Trini style lunch (potato salad, BBQ chicken, green salad, and fruit).

And then the competition escalated as the two top teams met in the finals (my team and Aaron’s team).

We were tied at the first half, but, in the second half, Aaron’s team started to pull ahead. As the score reached 7-3, and six different players had collapsed, screaming and grabbing one of the major muscle groups in their leg, it became clear that it was not humanly possible for players to hydrate enough to ward off cramps.

After that, the game was called and the Scarlet Ibis, prior to this, known just as T&T’s national bird, became the national ultimate Frisbee champs as well.

Fusion 2010

2010-06-06T20:23:00.004-04:00

Fusion this year was more challenging than last year. Aaron and I teamed up with Tom and Steve to form Team ISPS Sit Down, Shut Up, and Learn This Lesson. Sleepy and anxious for the event, as we’ve found ourselves many a time in the wee hours in Trinidad, we pulled up to Maracas Beach at 3:30 AM.

The organizer drew a line in the sand and told us the first directions: run to the other side of the beach to get a bottle and a cup, run back to the group to drop off the bottle, send a new runner to fill the cup with red liquid (so no one could cheat and use the ocean), then repeat until the bottle was full. Running in sand is tricky, but even trickier with a cup of liquid that you want to keep as full as possible. The other trick was to find your team on the line amidst the other 59 teams’ head lamps that looked just like our team members’. We filled our bottle after three runs and showed it to the judge, who pointed toward an uphill trail in the bush. And for the rest of the day, we never touched flat ground; there were spots where we used ropes to pull ourselves up the steep inclines and other spots where we sat down and slid down the vertical slopes.

Throughout the rest of the day, we had to stop and answer trivia questions about Trinidad (When did T&T get its independence? 1962), decode long phrases, and RUN.

The major challenge this year was the mighty Mount Hololo, a two mile paved road so steep it would violate American road laws (which nearly broke the spirit of our team), followed by a seven mile jungle sprint.

This was our last day touring the bush of Trinidad, and we fought hard, throwing ourselves one last time into its unpredictable, steaming hot abyss. Next year, I’m coming back with a group of women—who’s in??

80 pounds of Tarpon

2010-06-06T20:22:00.011-04:00

Trinidad boasts more holidays than any other country in the world. Thursday was Corpus Christi and one of our student’s parents invited us to go fishing with him off the coast. We woke up at 6 to grab some doubles for breakfast and met him at the docks to go find some tarpon. After a few hours of chatting and classic rock, we started playing soca on The Striker’s new stereo. Immediately, the fish began rolling on the surface as if they were revelers on Carnival Monday. Aaron took advantage of the distraction and hooked an 80 pounder, reenacting The Old Man and the Sea, as he fought him for about half an hour. He kept asking me to wipe his brow, call him Ernest, and hand him another beer. The one I pulled in a little bit later was about half that size and came in fairly quickly. After releasing them, they’d lay in the water for a little, completely exhausted after the brawl. But Steve, the real fisherman among us, patted them gently and they’d wake up and flee.

Pigeon Point

2010-06-06T20:22:00.005-04:00

After the tri, we spent an afternoon at Pigeon Point—the most famous beach on Tobago—for the last time. We’ve visited Tobago many times and each time, the island’s calming presence has made us slow down a little, sleep a little better, and enjoy life a little more. We spoke of “last times” many times this weekend; the end of an era is always difficult. We are excited about moving to our next post in Colombia, but we are eager to learn if we like teaching and living internationally or if we just like Trinidad.

Tobago Triathlon

2010-06-06T19:54:00.007-04:00

We’ve decided to throw ourselves into demanding physical activities to dull our sadness about leaving Trinidad. We flew to the other rock, Tobago, this weekend, to compete in a triathlon: 1500 m swim, 40 k bike, 10 k run.

Friday night, it started to pour rain. Saturday morning was more of the same. They postponed the race because the rain had flooded the bike course; then they changed the bike course to another, hillier route. We set out our equipment and got drenched. We listened to the briefing and got drenched. We had to dry off to get numbers written on our arms and legs (Aaron was 31 and I was 32, which forced me to say, “Not for a few more weeks!” all day). As we gathered at the starting line, ready to jump in the water, the rain stopped. The race director asked if we preferred the old course, we all shouted YES, and he said he’d change it while we swam. With a quick warning to avoid the branches and dead dogs pushed into the water by the overflowing river, the race started.

We both finished strongly. Aaron got 2:42, knocking off 20 minutes from his training time from the previous week, and I got 2:53, knocking off 25 min. from my previous best time. And neither of us encountered any dead dogs (although I did pass a back hoe at one point, to the surprise of the driver, and, had to swerve to avoid a herd of goats at another).

Grand Riviere and its turtles

2010-06-06T18:23:00.011-04:00

At night, on the beach at Grand Riviere, if you’re lucky, while you’re staring out at the waves crashing, suddenly, out of the white fluff, a giant, dark beast will appear and start climbing toward you. With some imagination, it feels like a scary movie, maybe even a nightmare, as the beast, painfully slowly, ascends up the beach. You have time to move, but the beast is mesmerizing—the closest thing to a dinosaur you’ll see. But then, the beast ambles past you and you realize you were merely standing in the way of her prehistoric instincts.

Leatherback turtles are endangered—their numbers have declined rapidly in recent years. This is despite the fact that the moms lay about 40 ping-pong ball eggs at a time.

Every few years, they dig giant holes with giant flippers and then spend hours camouflaging to protect their young from trespassers before returning to the sea.

These turtles can swim about a mile straight down. Their shells are flexible enough to withstand the change in pressure, when many of their predators cannot survive it. They also return to the same place where they were born to lay their own eggs, about thirty years later. (Last August we went to Matura to see the babies!) The biggest ones have about a ten foot diameter while average ones are about six.

The drive there is long, but beautiful.

We stayed at a cute little hotel right on the water that provided knowledgeable guides to tell us about the turtles while not disturbing them. (These pictures are our friend Tom’s, since this was mere hours after we’d finished the 20 mile hike and standing, not photographing, was my priority.)

Green Guernica

2010-05-20T21:00:00.011-04:00

We’ve started having to think in terms of: what do we need to do before we leave Trinidad? It’s heartbreaking.

One thing on our list (well, my list, as Aaron abhors procrastination to such an extent that he sees list-making as part of the problem) was to see the North Coast again. We’ve done this hike a few times, but the landscape is so unique that it’s worth multiple visits. The route we were taking this time (again with the uber-competitive hiking group) started in Guanapo, home of the Prime Minister’s controversial church, toured the small village of Brasso Secco, dropped down to the secluded beaches of Paria, and ended in Blanchisuessue and its welcoming orange bridge.

We’d been talking about this being a training hike for the adventure races we are doing in about a month. However, we soon realized that “training hike” to me meant hiking the 20 miles and to Aaron it meant running the 20 miles. After some huffing and puffing and compromising, I found some folks going my pace and Aaron took off and finished first! Although debate’s still up if coming in first truly champions getting to enjoy the assorted mango sampler along the way (eating a dozen back to back, warm from the sun, makes it easy to distinguish the nuances of varieties—I'd never believed in the spicy mango before, but it's true!).

While walking for eight hours, I became aware of my love of the jungle—the wild of it, the thickness of it, the vastness of it. The artistry of smooth here and prickly there and the way my neck has to tilt as far as it can for me to see an end in any direction.

The flashes of the pink haleconia are spectacular, and I have many a photograph to prove my devotion, but when we're gone, what my heart will miss most is being overwhelmed by green. That’s about when I realized I have a nasty habit of documenting solely the unique, and as a result, I have little to no documentation, in words or pictures, of the daily pieces of our lives here. And that’s when I started photographing heart-first instead of eyes-first.

These last few weeks, I’m going to focus on photographing and writing more about our present normalcy. The once in a lifetime experiences, the pink haleconias, we’ve had have been outstanding. But the daily elements, the green Guernica, are what we’ve built our lives upon here.

Madamas River

2010-05-03T17:27:00.001-04:00

We’d heard about this river trip from a guy we met named Sly-go. He told us that his brother had followed the Madamas River until it met the Caribbean Sea. He’d eaten crabs and mangoes along the way and had met a group of people who lived in the bush and wore no clothes. When we saw that the local hiking group was going, we decided that it was something we needed to do.
We met up with them at 5AM to start the hike in Brasso Seco. We loaded our tent, sheet, and water onto the boat that would meet us at the mouth of the river. The group provided dinner. I wanted to bring my camera, but one of the hikers warned me against bringing anything that couldn’t get wet. We even put our food in plastic bags. We started the hike to the river—in the thick green jungle that we’ve grown accustomed to seeing throughout the Caribbean. The pace of this group is not slow. I think I’ve mentioned before how in the US, hiking is a social sport; here in Trinidad, it’s competitive. So the pace is somewhere between “I’m breathing too hard to talk” and “I’m going to need to take a break in 20 more steps.” I felt like I was in the beginning of Indiana and the Raiders of the Lost Ark—definitely on the verge of an adventure in the wild. Nobody’s pace slowed once we found the river and treaded through ankle deep water, trying to step on stones that wouldn’t slip.
After about another hour, the landscape of the river started to change. There were sections when each step meant another foot deeper into the river, and we’d lean in against the current, fighting for that foot. There were sections where the river narrowed and we’d be thrust through tight canyons, gazing up at rock ledges on either side of us. There were parts where there’d be room for a few steps on rocky land. There were parts where the river would widen and we’d float down on our backs, lazily paddling as the bright green canopy blocked the sun. The paces of the people varied along with the landscape, which meant that Aaron and I found ourselves alone pretty quickly after we found the river; nobody was there to tell us how to not break our legs. Excited, and a little anxious, like Goonies, we’d stand at the top of waterfalls and consider our options. It must have been about halfway through our day when we realized that the gorp and sandwiches that we’d packed had been completely submerged along with the rest of us. Aaron continued to pound the peanuts, now a soothing soggy-soft mass, but I just couldn’t.
Hours later, while the landscape cycled through its variety show, our moods and energy levels crashed. On hikes, calves or feet normally get sore, but thigh muscles are strong and rarely complain. But here, with the constant rush of the current providing some serious resistance, my muscles ached from the simple movement of lifting, placing, and steadying, repeat. A few times, I scratched my stomach on the river bottom from trying to avoid walking until the last possible moment. We had no idea how long we’d been hiking or what time it was, we hadn’t seen anybody in hours, we had no food (except the PB &J sandwiches floating in brown water-filled plastic bags), and we didn’t really know where we were, other than not yet there. I felt like I was on Everest with Krakauer.
Finally, sand replaced rocks and palm trees replaced mangroves. Aaron shouted for joy; I meeped. Almost immediately, we got caught in the long clinging fingers of algae and I felt like I was in Apocalypse Now. The river was so wide at this point and we were right in the middle of it, that all we could do was paddle with our hands and try to keep our legs above the tangled green goo below us. We escaped, licking the salt water from our lips, and ran up on shore, ready for cheers. Nobody was there. Not a soul. Not a sign of a soul. We had been transported to Cormac McCarthy’s The Road. Aaron explored a little (I stared blankly out to sea, no help at all) and came running to say that he’d found three sets of foot prints headed down the beach. Maybe they were in the next bay? We’d done this part of the hike before, so we knew the path to the next bay included about an hour of steep climbing. And we knew that the next bay after that was about six hours of the same. That hour wasn’t pretty. But, we made it just in time for a Swiss Family Robinson style-hot dinner of salt fish and ground provisions, which, while not quite what I’d been dreaming about all day for my next meal, was edible. We set up our tent, right on the beach, and fell asleep to the waves breaking.

Fire, oil, and jazz

2010-03-14T14:38:00.015-04:00

We came home Friday to find the hill behind our house burning with twelve fires. Smoke packed the air. The wet season hadn’t allowed for as many monsoons this year as last year, and as a result, fires popped up all over the country. Aaron hiked up to watch them rage while I stayed in the protective pool.

We left early the next morning to join up with a local hiking group (after taking 6 months to forgive them for getting us lost on our last hike) to go on an 8-mile hike and see some of Trinidad's oil birds. Along the way, there were only a few signs of people.

Apparently the Amerindians used to stick the birds on branches and light them to use as torches. Because of the high concentration of oil within them, they’d burn for a considerable amount of time. The Cumaca cave was dark and full of water up to our waists. As our group entered, the birds started squawking and screeching. Since we clearly were not invited guests, Aaron and I turned back. And that’s when I started gripping his hand because all I could think of was the scene in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade when they’re stuck in the cave with the rats crawling over their faces. It was tough to make it out quickly enough.

On our way home, we rinsed off in a river, pulled on some acceptable clothes, and stopped at the University of West Indies (UWI, or, U-wee) to attend the First Annual Jazz Festival of Trinidad and Tobago.

Neither of us are jazz followers, connoisseurs, or, really, even listeners, but it seemed like it might be fun. The crowd was older and all of the Trinidad party food was served—corn soup, doubles, pholourie, and rum. Most of the musicians were professors, but there were some of the country’s most popular performers, who had “Jazzed Up” (the festival’s theme) their hits. The result was eclectic. Ravi B’s song, “Gyal, I always knew I was a drinka” was a quintessential Trini combo: the Chutney Monarch Champion (Indian) singing a soca-style (Afro-Caribbean) song with jazz back-up (African-American) to a mostly Afro-Trinidadian audience, except for the Hawaiian and Wisconsonian in the front row. Ravi B was very polite when I asked for his photo and didn’t mention the smell of the jungle, river, or oil birds on me. When we got home that night, our downstairs floor was covered with ash and our neighbors told us that the fires had gotten within feet of our house. No fires in sight right now, though.

Carnival 2K10

2010-03-14T11:15:00.035-04:00

Carnival again and its electric embrace of Roy G. Biv.

..its swing of bare hips from walls and bridges...

...its fantastical encounters with people you meet who are dressed with such creativity, humor, and style...

...its permanent river of sweat from dancing so close the concept of personal space is redefined…

…its steps and twists, distinctive yet synchronized, born from each truck-blasted beat felt first in the chest and then in the ears…

…its rare but refreshing breezes that tunnel through this mass of flesh, to find you and cool you off...

...its devotion felt toward the songs played so often (at every party, in every bank and grocery store, and on every radio station), each one as familiar and fantastic as your mother's cookies...

I had no intention of experiencing a second carnival that equaled our first. Yet, it proved worthy of 365 day wait. Our costumes were better; the giant headpiece and Mohawk were the best decisions of the year.

The road march soca winner came with its own one-legged dance, best performed in unison. A friend decided to come down at the last minute, so we got to show him the bacchanal ropes and watch him relish the insanity. After only visiting six houses at lunchtime, I found someone with krazy glue so I could re-attach wandering feathers, and, at each of those houses, I was kindly offered a cold drink and/or a clean bathroom. We discovered the elevated view, found by climbing walls, that provides the powerful perspective of thousands of bedazzled revelers. But, best of all, we know more people now, so we were constantly waving, talking, hugging, kissing, and/or wining with friends.