July 17, 2008 - Thursday

July 17, 2008 - Thursday
trinidad & tobago: a jabbering travel advisory

I've seen a lot of incompetence in airports in the past little while. Ironically, the winner of the Golden Blumpkin Award for General Airport Stupidity has to go to the Ottawa International, aptly known as "YOW". Not only were they caught totally by surprise by my Delta DA466 flight coming in from Atlanta at 22.30 in the evening, they only had one person in the whole place that could "operate" the gate (they operated it like someone with palsy working a back-hoe), and they insisted that I had to apply for immigration to get into Canada. Which is odd, because I'm a Canadian citizen.

Again I was faced with the question I faced in the Czech republic many years ago; is it worse to be trapped in a country and not able to get out, or vice versa?

Yeah, I'm going with the latter.

Other Airports?

Negotiating JFK wasn't too bad considering my arrival and departure gates were in the same terminal. However, if you're amused by fat people running JFK is a barrel of laughs. It's roughly the size of Guinea, and about as organized. Which means that as a hub you often have to traverse huge distances to get to your departure gate. If (Christ forgive) you're arriving from an entirely different country than the United States –different countries that lacks US Customs of their own, which is everywhere except Canada– you are forced to go through the long process of incoherent people in uniform yelling at you to do things you're not sure you want to do. Namely, take off your shoes and belt and explain what you're doing in the States.

Interesting question, that last, considering all the people in the massive cue were trying to get the hell out again. On the Visa paper which you must complete in it's entirety under "Place of residence in the US" I wrote the address of the airport. The Customs official literally went cross-eyed reading it over the third time.

"Dis address heah, is the address of dis airport heah."
"Yes, it's where I'm staying the seven hours I'm in the U.S."
"Buh' dis address heah, is the address of dis airport heah."
"What else am I supposed to write there?"
"You funnah wit'me… bah?"
"What?"
"I say: you funnah wit'me bah?"

It is my suspicion that all airport officials in the U.S. must attend the James Brown School of Linguistics before they can qualify.

Oddly enough the least painful experience I had in all the airports I've been through was the one in Trinidad.

For point of reference Trinidad is the functioning half of Trinidad and Tobago. Not to be confused with Turks and Caicos, Curacao and Bonaire, or Gecko and Spleen. Trinidad and Tobago is a "Developing Nation". This means that sky scrapers are popping up like zits on a teenager with rent prices that no normal Trini can afford. It also means that they import far more cars than the infrastructure can handle. A friend pointed to a huge harbour in Trinidad's capital city of Port of Spain; in it were thousands of rows of white Mitsubishis parked and ready to be bought and driven on local roads –roads suffering from a 24 hour traffic jam. My thinking was that if people simply bought the cars and went and sat in them in the harbour they'd get more mileage out of them.

Anyway.

The only screw-ups in the Trinidad airport were myself and my friend Alex. We were both probably discombobulated from travel as he had an eight hour layover in JFK, and I inexplicably flew from Ottawa to Atlanta to New York to Port of Spain; literally travelling more of the US than Keruac ever did. I thought it best to wear a black "US Athletics" T-shirt in order ingratiate myself during my two pointless U.S. layovers. I need to do these things, you see, because I'm prime fodder for the U.S. Customs Banana-Republic-Checkpoint mechanism. Customs officials love to hassle me.

Somewhere along the way Alex and I had switched bags; my bag was on the trolley which he was pushing, and his was being pulled on it's wheels by me. I have no idea how this happened, like I say, we were travel stupid. At the final baggage check before we enter the country the security guard says, looking at my Dutch passport and then at me, "You not from the U.S., you not athletic, go stand ovah deah." pointing to an x-ray machine manned by a little Indian guy with the biggest mullet I've seen since Lethal Weapon II.

I dragged Alex's bag over to the x-ray and watched it go through the machine with trepidation. The guy looked at his screen and said, "You got some strange tubes in the bag. What's it?"
I hesitated, "I'm not sure."

"You don't know what's in your bag?"

"Well, ah…heh-heh…It's not my bag." Knowing that this is a cardinal sin in the airport community. Never taking his eyes off of me, he unzipped the bag and started rummaging around. He produced a poker set. The tube he saw were the chips for the game. He then proceeded to lecture me about appropriate travel etiquette, emphasizing that you do not carry someone else's luggage. All I could do was nod sheepishly until he let me go.

All things being said, had this happened in the U.S., I'd be in a black hood with electrodes attached to my testicles. Getting lectured by a tiny mulleted Indian was a cinch.

My travelling companion –an admitted Chilean, currently in remission– and I, didn't stay long in Trinidad. Within an hour we were catching the puddle jumper to Tobago. I immediately fell in love with the flight attendant on the 45 minute flight. Her dark swarthy complexion, the Trinny accent as she boredly told us the rules for flying, and the way she dully pantomimed blowing into the life jacket if the rip-chords don't work had my pulse racing.

Indeed most Trinny's hate their jobs. This is plain when one deals with service personnel. They resent the fact that you have the nerve to enter their store and start actually shopping for things. They are slow and languid, and they'll stare at you dumbly for a long time after you make a request. I actually walked into a store and was grimaced at by a guy who I'd awoken out of a deep slumber behind his counter.

My guide, and most coherently knowledgeable person, was my friend Trevor who was there to get married. He told me that there is zero percent unemployment in the Tobago. He added, "The jobs are there if people want them."

Me, I couldn't understand what half the people were doing. Every intersection had people just standing there. They watched cars drive by with blank expression on their faces. Sometimes there would be four people occupying all major headings on the compass doing absolutely nothing.

There were people wandering around with sticks. Others were sitting on curbs. People were staring at windows. People were staring out of windows. People were examining their fingernails. People were staring at each other. People were watching chickens from a distance. People were yelling at other people. People were sitting in bars. People were driving around in circles, their cars vibrating from loud music. Eventually, in Trinidad, we discovered one guy who literally was having a nap in the middle of the road. I thought he was dead.

"What are these people doing?" I asked Trevor.
"Nothing. They're Lymin'."
Lymin'
Looking up the word in the Urban Dictionary, here's what you get:
Lymin: Hanging Out, Chilling.
Basically, doing nothing. On the T&T Government Website you can find their motto: "Together we Aspire, Together we Achieve". Aspire to what? Achieve what? Total immobility? Able to outmaneuver a sloth in a combat situation? Here's a thought for a new national motto: "Trinidad & Tobago: Together we Aspirate, Together we Uh…" or more simply, "T & T: We Lymin'"
The only thing that Tobagans (Tobagians? Toboggans? Tomatoes?) do fast is drive.Picture angrily wrenching the tape out of a busted tape deck. The ribbons strewn across the floor? Those are the roads in Tobago –and about as wide. It's hairpin turns on mountainous cliff-sides, it's deep pot holes, it's one traffic light on the entire island, It's switchbacks, bottlenecks, and sphincter-clench stops, it's deep ditches on either side of the road, it's people screaming along at a 120km/hr on the straight-aways, and not much slower on the turns (of which there are more of than a bowl of spaghetti). And all this is done on the wrong side of the road.

It's easy to spot people new to the Tobago roads. Not only do they approach the cliff-side screw-neck turns like a blind man feeling for a precipice with his cane, but they don't honk when they're supposed to –which is whenever you make a turn, and whenever you pass anyone on the street. As a matter of fact, honking the horn while driving is a little like breathing while walking; it's done consistently and helps with forward momentum. That being said, the only time when someone mustn't honk is when someone else does something treacherous that endangers your life. Not that the foreign driver need worry about that. They have plenty of opportunities to end their own lives; usually by accidentally hitting the windshield wiper when going for the signal while turning the wrong direction near the edge of a cliff. These people can be dangerous, not only to themselves, but to others. Thankfully they can easily identified and avoided by the 'R' on their license plates. Presumably signifying "Rental" or, according to the locals, "Retard".
They love their cars. They pretty them up with black lights, ridiculous hydrofoils, and tinted windows the same way certain jack-asses do here. Many cars bear wistful and incoherent slogans splashed directly across the windshield. Things like: HEAD OF STATE, CHRIST FINGERED ME, THE LORD GUIDES US which is probably true considering how they drive, THE KING OF THING, DEPARTMENT OF CHILL, and my absolute favourite: TOTAL NICENESS.

They know the exact width of their cars down to the last layer of paint enabling them to thread the needle and defy basic rules of physics to squeeze though unlikely spaces with nary a scratch. Their heightened spatial sense shaves of the last millimeter when you pass them on a road one-lane-and-a-half wide beside a shear cliff wall clocking 95km/hr. They'll stop suddenly and park in the middle of major roads (by "major" I mean, "De chickens be wanderin' heah."). As a matter of fact, you can park pretty much wherever you want. Not that you could have a driving violation in Tobago seeing as there is no discernable police presence.

Which is probably why drinking and driving is so prevalent there.

When Trevor picked Alex and I up at the airport in Tobago he had an open bottle of Carib (the local beer) sitting in the drink-tray of his SUV. Being witlessly occidental after being so long in the oppressive confines of Canada I had forgotten that many countries are more relaxed about this taboo. From then on –despite the fact that I had never driven on the wrong side of the road before, nor piloted a car on such loop-de-loop street configurations– I always, always, had a beer in one hand while driving. As a matter of fact, I would have two or three for good measure before I even got in the car.

There are stories of people falling from great heights while drunk and barely getting a scratch because their bodies were so loose from being trashed. For the islanders something similar is at play; either being loose allowed one to easily circumnavigate the crazy cliff-edge hairpin turns, or if you did get into an accident you'd squirt through the windshield to drape over a tree like silly-string. If people asked you if you were okay you'd say, "I jes be lymin' in de twee mon."
There are a number of ways of getting wasted before you get behind the wheel of your car; my drink was beer.

Carib and Stag are the two most prevalent brews you can get on the Islands. They are fine beers with few additives so you can pound back many and not wake up feeling like you've been passed though a cow's digestive tract. Carib is the lighter beer of the two, and tastes better. Originally it was the beer to drink as it represented a certain refinement (which is a bit of stretch in a place where people fall asleep in the middle of roads) and couth. Stag, on the other hand, was drank by the lower order. A beer for apes and hooligans, much like Labbat 50 here, Branik in the Czech Republic, and American beer in America.

However, recently, Stag launched a marketing campaign with the positioning statement "Stag: A Man's Beer". So, Carib was relegated to a "woman's drink", and Stag, a man's.

Which says something about the power of advertising… Or the soft-mindedness of the Trinnis. I'm not sure which.

But Creeping Jesus the food was good. And not just the absolutely fresh tropical coconuts, mangoes, and papaya.

Although I grew up in a household where West-Indian cooking is the norm, there is nothing like eating the food at it's place of conception –like drinking beer in the Czech Republic, or having laser eye-surgery in Switzerland. The local food is fantastic starting and ending with Roti. The amazing thing is that all Roti is is curried chicken wrapped in a kind of pita bread. Other options for wrapping are curried pork, curried lamb, curried shrimp, and for the vegetarians; curried curry.

Although the Trinis –either due to laziness, or drunkenness– don't bother deboning the chicken before wrapping it up, it's a mouth-watering ensemble that's spicy, filling, and messy as hell. Because much of your time is spent unwrapping the thing to dig out the bones amidst the stew-like curry you end up covered in the stuff. Also, the bread has the holding power of one-ply toilet paper so it inevitably explodes. A nod to the locals for having the foresight to provide washing-up places in the Roti Houses.

Another popular food is so-called "shark and bake". It's essentially deep-fried shark jammed into deep-fried bread. Because shark is fairly tasteless a raft of condiments is provided to make it taste like something. There are so many toppings to choose from that, like snow-flakes, no two shark and bakes taste alike. Shark and bake is usually accompanied by very loud horrible music and the shaking of much booty by the beach.

I'm not sure when the "bake" part figures into it, except, perhaps, when you eat the stuff in the middle of a clear day

There is sharp racial divide on the Islands between the Blacks and the West Indians. Essentially the West Indians were imported from India as indentured labour to work on the sugar plantations. By way of encouragement the British guaranteed land to the Indians should they decide to make the commute to the Caribbean. The blacks in Africa got no such incentives. They were simply clubbed, chained, and sent to work as slaves.

With the abolishment of slavery the Indians ended up with land, the Blacks ended up with their loincloths.

The resentment ran deep.

To this day the chasm between the two is apparent. Trinidad is actually a pretty dangerous place with gangs and shootings and places you don't go after dark. The Blacks resent the Indians, and the Indians think the Blacks are fucking up the country. The two generally keep to their own and only mix tentatively.

Oddly enough this can be exemplified by the club Zen in the heart of Port of Spain; the capital and cranium of Trinidad and Tobago.

A friend working in the oil industry in Trinidad – by way of showing me that there were many beautiful girls on the Island– took me to Zen two nights in a row; Friday and Saturday.
Now, no matter where you go in the world dance clubs are pretty much the same; the ambience is designed to create maximum confusion, disorientation, and outright atavistic fear. The lighting in Zen was out of the "bridge scene" in Apocalypse Now with flashing staccato bulbs, and roaming strobes. Like many clubs Zen is multi-leveled, with the steps and sudden drops cleverly hidden by an overall black paint-job. This, in addition to the epilepsy inducing lighting effects, facilitates you falling flat on your face, or at least jamming you knee-cap into your hip-joint, which in turn facilitates you having to buy another drink to replace the one you just dumped on a beautiful woman. Of course, like most clubs, getting to the actual bar is like trying to skin a live wolverine with your teeth.

John explained to me that because the majority of the Indians live in the South of the Island (Port of Spain is in the North-East). He informed me that Friday night was a "Blackout" at Zen. Work finishes on Friday, and for most Indians, it's a bit of a long trek to the Club, preferring to do the commute on the Saturday thus leaving the place for the more local Blacks on the Friday. The racial divide is glaring if you compare the two nights.

On Friday the music is reggae on crack. The dance floor vibrates with the hop-skip-jump beat of tunes so insulting it would make Bob Marley violent. Thankfully, what the music lacks in quality it more than makes up in volume, causing you to walk funny days after you left the place. Wobbling tight black flesh abounds everywhere as the women try to outdo each other with outfits that would stop circulation in a toddler. The mode of dance is to shiver your ass like you're having a fit while keeping the rest of your body totally rigid. The whole thing looks the like the end of the Charlie Brown Christmas Special played at 120rpm.

The cartoonish music and dancing creates an arcade-like effect which is further enforced by the fact that women will take up stations throughout the club where they'll dance and wildly shake their booty. Men will find suitable booty with which they'll emulate the kind of doggy-style you can expect from small dogs on crystal meth. They'll carry on like this for a while and then move on to the next suitable booty –eventually making their way back to the exit, and then leaving. It looked like hard and draining work for both parties.

Nobody looked like they were having a good time.

Perhaps it's my West Indian lineage, or the fact that I was a different kind of drunk this time around (leaning towards whiskey rather than the rum of the night before), or perhaps it was just better; Saturday was a big improvement. The music was much more from Planet Earth in terms of what you'd expect in a club; deep house, progressive trance, and less of the DJ repeatedly asking if everyone is having a good time. On Friday one got the impression that the man was trying to reassure himself that fun was being had, rather than his audience. Although there was not a whole lot of rhythm amongst the patrons (illustrating another racial difference) the dancing was more relaxed and less of a "Look! Look at my ass freak-out!" kind of shuddering. It was more tame, more social, but still fairly cliqueish in terms of people not drifting away from their own cohorts. The outfits were still tiny.

And my eyes were saturated with woman of a particularly sexy kind of beauty: dark, sultry, and stacked like a teddy-bear with an elastic band around it's midriff. The shapes and forms of these women were almost exaggerated caricatures of what I was used to, and it was brilliant. Black, Indian, and everything in between, were hot.

One tall tanned Indian sauntered past me eliciting an, "Oh my God…" that my companions overheard, even with the loud music. After much cajoling they convinced me to go and talk to her. What ensued was a comedy of translation; she spoke English, I spoke English, but neither of us understood a word the other was saying. We both admitted linguistic defeat simultaneously, turned around, and went back to our friends. It was like being in the Czech Republic all over again, which is odd, because Czech is an entirely different language.

Which brings me neatly to this: I, and a few friends, had a profound experience with a huge turtle. Although with every telling of this tale the turtle grew to the size of a cube van, the one we saw was merely the size of a VW Beetle. She was a leatherback who had dragged herself out of the ocean at about midnight to lay her eggs in the sand as she does around the end of May every year.

Apparently these prehistoric beasts are very timid, so no flash photography, no yelling, no sudden movements, only lights with a red bulb, and, much to my chagrin, no riding the turtle. This being said, the local "experts" were giving me mixed messages on the thing. I watched one of these massive beasts emerge ponderously from the surf, walk directly into a beach chair, turn around, and head back to the water over the course of half an hour. When I asked what that was all about I was told they were blind when they came out of the water. I suppose the profundity of the scene precluded me asking what was the point in all the stillness and red lighting then? And if the situation was so fragile why did the "experts" have no problem tapping her shell, shining light into her face, measuring her length, width, and girth, and finally, lifting her tail and staring at the pile of golf-ball size eggs while jabbering excitedly?

Anyway. It was profound being near something so huge that was not in a zoo.
I didn't see much other wildlife except for many hummingbirds (whose feeder I accidently used as an ash tray), many lizards, and many stray dogs. For a while I was convinced it was one stray dog that was very fast, but I was assured otherwise.

Many bats, too.

I did, however, hear a lot of wildlife, usually at about 4.30 in the morning when the jungle kicked off in a frenzy of sounds directly outside my window. I am convinced to this day that the noises I heard were the locals throwing a rave in the jungle every morning to create a more "authentic" experience for the visiting whiteys. When you're woken up after three hours sleep by that kind of cacophony you listen closely to the sounds and try to figure it's source. Not that I'd be able to make the association if I could actually identify the thing in order to, say, whack the bastard with a cricket bat. Anyway, I'm convinced they weren't actual animals. It sounded more like midday at the market in Abu Dhabi.

Yes. And I finally got to see where my mom grew up in the South of the Trinidad. She hated me going there, telling me there were huge spiders everywhere and thus tapping into my primordial fear. I did see one big fucker, but you know what? It was sleek and beautiful.

Just like Trinidad and Tobago.