Finally Feeling at Home

I know I've been slightly deficient in what I imagined to be weekly updates on life in Trinidad. My apologies; my apartment does not (yet) have internet, and so my time online is limited to what I do when I am at Mr. Beepath's office (which is not all the time) and any time spent with my laptop in an internet cafe. For instance, I am writing now in between phone calls to businesses on our upcoming HIV in the Workplace Policy Seminar.

I think when I last wrote, I had just moved, and I will say I absolutely love my apartment. It is comfortable and really feels like home--and the air conditioning helps me sleep and slightly reduces the amount of bugbites I find in the morning (still, I've used half my tube of hydrocortisone already). I feel like it is absolutely the right place for me, especially because my landlady also takes really good care of me, as far as rides and things I need go. She's a wonderful lady. On Friday, I went with her to visit a children's home in Couva (she works with local homes), which was interesting. It was small, and the children were at school, so I didn't get a good sense of the atmosphere, though hopefully if she visits the ones in Port-of-Spain or Chaguanas, I will be able to tag along as well. We also dashed about Chaguanas. She took me to her land that was flooded once and so not terribly productive, but absolutely beautiful as a terrific expanse of wide open space and big sky, looking at clouds that probably are touching the ocean. She and her friend Krishna also had me try oysters, which here are eaten (or the proper term is drunk) raw and in a concoction of some spicy liquids. I was thinking about my friend Malika, who said she would try anything else above the oysters, and apparently I made some really interesting faces, but in the end, I concluded that I liked the oysters, and I would try them again.

A week ago last Saturday was the Hindu festival of Divali. Not knowing many here, and particularly not many Hindus, I didn't have high hopes for doing much, but my landlady (her name is Vidya) came to the rescue again. She sent her kids over with food a couple times (one thing was a fried leafy green vegetable, which was wonderful), and invited me over for the night. With her, her son, her daughter, and her daughter's friend, I lit dias and placed them outside, watching her henna-painted hands rolling cotton for wicks because she couldn't find her actual wicks. It was magical. Divali, she explained, is the Hindu festival of lights, celebrating the triumph of light over darkness and knowledge over ignorance. Later, her son Rishi drove me around to see the dias all over the neighborhood. Whether they were precisely aligned or haphazardly put, they were beautiful. I swear, if the city lights had gone out that night, still it would glow.

I also went to a fish market a week and a half ago, and fell in love with it. There, fishermen come in with the sun to sell the night's catch (how magical must that be, to be out alone in the middle of the ocean at night with the rising moon and to watch the sunrise from the sea?) before going home to bed. The place smelled of fish, but after a minute I stopped noticing. There was an incredible energy to the place even though, as Mr. Beepath said, most of the men were older. Outside, pelicans and a few tiny gulls fought over the scraps of fish being cleaned en masse for restaurants, and crabs were being scrubbed into a bucket of brown water. Inside, a shimp vendor with a paintbrush textured white beard promised me he'd give me a discount of $2TT/lb if I wanted shrimp, because I was a pretty foreigner. Another showed me his shark carcass with fins cut off and encouraged me to take a picture of the jaw hanging from a wire. I watched the fish be cleaned and cut into chunks so their innards would come out, fish so fresh they still bled. An over-70-year-old man asked if I was British, and when I proceeded tell him no, American (no one thinks I am American...in Cambodia, I was French (which isn't too far from the truth), and here, I'm British), he told me of his son who lived in Denmark, and then danced along his platform as he cut the fish, using wood for extra oomph to cut bone, scales dotting his arms like paint splatter. As we left, he bowed and waved to us, and promised to sing me the "April Song" (because I was born in April) next time I came. I laughed and loved every minute of it. It felt authentic and full of stories, and you can bet I'll be back, buying at least shrimp from the vendor who promised a discount and who hawked his shrimp like a pro.

I hope you all are well! Please do let me know when you can! Much love and prayers, and thanks for listening :)