Good to see you again. Glad you enjoy the Limes.“Seriously?” That word, that exclamation, that question-almost-rhetorical, defines my reaction to the Trinidad I have witnessed over the past two weeks. Women wearing knee-high leather boots on a sweltering hot day? Seriously? A Maserati roaring past on the highway? Seriously? Seven dollars for a loaf of [...]
In ten days I will be moving back to Trinidad for at least three months, and probably quite a lot longer. I am totally unprepared. First, the basics. I won’t have an apartment of my own (and will be living with one parent or another, which is a regression on all sorts of levels). I [...]
I’ve been grappling with the reality of moving back to Trinidad, and of giving up everything I’ve built up over the past six years. My employers are unimpressed, and are making me offers no sane career minded individuals ought to refuse. And at the other end, the Trinidadian end, the powers that be seem to [...]
The World Social Forum is coming, and already I’ve had to politely decline Facebook invitations to participate and/or care in some way. There. I’ve said it. I don’t care about the World Social Forum, which purports to be: an open meeting place for reflective thinking, democratic debate of ideas, formulation of proposals, free exchange of [...]
When I first left home, six years ago, I was resolved not to come back. Why should I? Trinidad, I declared, held nothing but bacchanal and botheration. I felt stifled there, and bored. I didn’t fit in. I needed to leave. So I left, and like so many other West Indians abroad, discovered that I [...]