Interesting Trinidad Tidbits

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While in Trinidad visiting Ryan’s family, many relatives told us stories from the past and more recent present. Here are some interesting notes I made while Ryan and I met with his family and friends:

• One uncle is an artist, and one day he was setting up his studio to paint. He wanted to sit down on his studio chair and almost sat on an iguana!
• Almost everyone we visited appeared to be renovating their houses, putting in new bathrooms, kitchens, wiring, and gardens – and it seems like everyone is doing it all themselves! We didn’t visit any houses that had air conditioning, but they had lots of open windows and fans, and holey bricks laid into the walls to help with airflow. As long as you didn’t move too much, this was perfectly comfortable!
• Another uncle told us that when he was a kid, he and his friends used coconut palm fronds, stripped of their pokey leaves, as cricket bats.
• Ryan’s dad said that growing up in Trinidad, the family had a big mango tree in their yard. They had so many mangoes that they used to play football with them!
• During World War II, Grandma said that she was rationed just 1 lb of rice for her family. Because she was friendly with the shopkeepers, she was able to get 10 lbs of rice for her kids. She eventually had 10 kids, and I met most of them while staying with her.

And the beginnings of a Trini dictionary:

• fig = banana
• paw paw = papaya
• okro/ochroes = okra
• channa = chickpeas
• babash = moonshine
• shandy = a deliciously sweet beer and juice drink; about 1.5% alcohol
• bake = bread
• fry bake = fried bread
• tea = any hot drink, including hot chocolate
• jumbies = ghosts
• bacchanal = a wild party or commotion
• lime = a party or hangout