EXPLORING TRINIDAD

excerpt from TRINIDAD REMEMBRANCES (see Aug 31, 2010)

Most days were spent in exploring the area, making friends, and riding the bus into the nearby town.  Everything was so green and lush.  There were exotic flowers hanging from vines and trees.  Orchids grew naturally in some of the inner parts of the island.  Monkeys hung from trees and chattered wildly as you went by.  I had a banana tree in my back yard.  When I saw Zorida (see her story ZORIDA'S DREAM) work so hard every day cooking each meal, I showed her how to make a banana sandwich and then a pimento cheese sandwich.  She served them to her husband Beepat and he loved them.  He wanted them all the time until he discovered that it only took her five minutes to make them.  He made her quit serving them, saying that her work was in the kitchen and it was not right that she had so much free time.

Going into town was very interesting.  The streets bustled with people walking here and yon.  They wore bright colors and were cheerful and friendly.  The stores were mostly specialty stores, one serving meats, another fruits, another vegetables.  My favorite food became fried shrimp wonton.  It would be served in  a heaping platter that would fill up both my son and I.  Sometimes we would go to a place that served "devil dogs".  In America, the equivalent was corn dogs.  That became my son's favorite food.  When we ate at a friend's house we were served rice, vegetables and occassionally chicken mixed with the rice.  The head and legs of the chicken were really a test for me.  I couldn't make myself eat them but I stirred them around so as not to look like I was avoiding them.  I probably didn't fool anyone but I didn't want to be impolite.

I felt as though I had been given a gift in my search for oneness.  One day I walked past a mirror and was jolted to see this white face.  I had become so accustomed to the beautiful faces around me that my own white face seemed strangely pale.  I learned down to the core of my being that we are one race.  The mothers loved their children just as much as I loved Eddie,  the fathers worked and struggled to make a home for the family against odds that would have broken many of those I knew back in the states.  The music was very haunting and lovely or dramatic and surging with rhythm, the children were bright and cheerful and their laughter sounds the same all over the world.  The yearning for God and a meaning for life is just as powerful  no matter the color of the skin.

My money ran out and I had to come back to the states.  I must admit I had very mixed feeling though.  It took quite some time to adjust to seeing so many white faces.  I was very uncomfortable in a community which was predominately white.  Where was the rest of my family?