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Mykel's Caribbean Blog Chapter THREE: Trinidad to Guyana
by Mykel Board
ENTRY
THREE
- October
3, 2013- October 10, 2013
-
- Recap: From the start, it didn't look good for this trip.
Everything went right... a bad sign. Nothing portends disaster more
than everything going right.
-
- Easy subletter in New York, smooth flight to Miami, promises of
“meet you at the airport/seaport” for the whole trip. $10 a
night accommodations in Guyana, the rest free.
- Uh oh! Too good. The better the news, the bigger the fall later.
And things get worse. (Better) The plan is to stay at the Hollywood
(FLA not LA) home of my long-term friend and sometimes partner in
crime Sharon I. (Now Sharon G, as she's been ringed!)
- After I leaving the plane in Miami, I rent a car for a day and
drive to her gated place. The trip there is smooth as Charmin. A bit
of rain, but life-threatening, hair-loss causing, money-eating
tragedies – not one.
- Then on to Trinidad, where annoyingly enough, things go so
smoothly I could break an ankle. Randy meets me at the airport,
within an hour I'm limin' on the street with a Stag
(beer).
- For the next few days I stay with
Randy... at his parents' house... in the guest room. You heard
right... A whole room to myself, my own bed, shower, toilet, and AIR
CONDITIONING. A private room... enough space for me, my computer,
and private viewings of xvideos.com.
- I wake up, S-S-S, have coffee upstairs,
Randy's mom makes a little something for breakfast, Randy drives me
into town... I explore my old haunts from years before.
- Somehow the country seems more serious
than 5 years ago, or whenever it was I was there. The shop-keepers,
the cops, strangers on the street don't seem as ready to get drunk
with you as they were in the middle of last decade. Maybe even
Trinidad can get caught up in the world economic malaise.
- It's a minor complaint. My friends here
are still MY FRIENDS. Every night is DRINK NIGHT. Rum and beer...
and limin'
a-plenty. On Saturday, we visit a couple of amazing Hindu sites.
Doin' tourist stuff I missed last visit.
-
- According to Wikipedia,
the religious breakdown of Trinidad is: 29.6% Roman Catholic,
34.3% Protestant, 25.6% Hindu, and 6.6% Muslim. A small number of
individuals subscribe to traditional Caribbean religions with
African roots, such as the Spiritual Baptists (sometimes called
Shouter Baptists); and the Orisha, 0.1 percent. The smaller groups
are Jehovah's Witnesses (1.8 percent) and unaffiliated (2.2
percent). There is also a small, but active, Jewish community on the
island.
-
- I never saw another Jew... I don't
think. But you never know. There are certainly no synagogues.
Officially
there are several dozen of us.
-
-
- For me, it's the Hindus who are the
most interesting. Most of my friends here came from an Indian
background. Many are still practicing Hinduism. You'd think they'd
have it down by now.
- One of the many things I like about the
Hindus is that they have a shitload of Gods... one main one, Om, but
thousands of sub Gods. You choose the one you like best. Or take
two, they're free.
-
- One
cool one is Hanuman. His name sounds like a Hanukah superhero. He's
part human, part monkey, all god. Trinidad has the largest statue of
him in the West... maybe in the world. It was an adventure to see
it, in the middle of nowhere... someplace near Waterloo... that's
the town name. I shit you not. (It's actually in Carapichaima and
the Temple in the Sea is in Waterloo. I found out late.)
-
- The statue is huge. You can see that I
don't even come up to the lotus pedestal.
- More colorful than Ms Liberty, I'd love
to see this guy in the middle of Times Square. It'd be a ton more
interesting that the stupid former Times building. (On new year,
they could drop the ball from Hanuman's head.
- Besides the statue, we go to THE TEMPLE
IN THE SEA. (No, the sea does not part. It's not THAT kind of
temple.) This one is really in Waterloo.
- The story I heard from Cutter's
father-- more on him later-- is that the temple was build entirely
by one man. Every day, he'd ride his bicycle with a bag of cement
and some wood. He'd go to the sea, do as much work as he could with
the materials, then ride back and do it again the next day.
-
- Here it is:
-
- In the ocean shallows, around the sea,
are colored flags. One of the things I learned on this trip is that
you can tell a Hindu house... or Hindu temple... by the bunch of
colored (red, black, blue, a spectrum... one color to a flag) flags
stuck in the ground around it. Each flag is a symbol for one of the
gods.
- After the temple, it's time for THE
GLORY HOLE. Yeah I know, but that's the name of the new hangout in
town... actually at someone's house/apartment. Free food and drinks.
Alan is making pizza for everyone... including a cheese-free pizza
for the only vegan I met in Trinidad. (His wife's Canadian, he tells
me.)
-
- The booze, food, and conversation flow
like the water at the Temple in the Sea. When we get there, a
rasta-looking guy is playing with his young son. People drink and
listen to VERY LOW-VOLUME music (mostly punk, or alternative... or
heavy metal... all ROCK) on the computer.
-
- I ask the rastaman to pose with a
just-poured beer. After all, this is THE GLORY HOLE, people should
be able to see good head.
-
- Here he is with the beer.
-
- A problem: I'm having trouble following
the conversations. The combination of island patois and the aural
effects of 30 years of punk rock make it difficult to understand
speech. (This is a constant problem. So listen kids, EAR CONDOMS
PREVENT HEARING AIDS! I know they look dorky on stage, but wear 'em
in the clubs.)
-
- Alan and this cool guy with a little
goatee (I forget his name) trade stories. Something about being
chased by a dog, climbing a fence, falling, body injuries, alcohol,
and the spices that do not belong in pizza.
-
- Cut! Scene change!
- As you can imagine, I'm a bit too much
for some people. And worse, for some people's parents. In Guyana, I
wanted to stay with my e-friend Gavin from Keep
Your Day Job, the only punkband in the country. His parents
weren't too keen on the idea.
-
- “Hah,” I tell Randy, “they
probably think that I'm some kid Gavin's age (22). So they don't
want me to stay there and cause trouble. Little do they know I'm
older than they are.”
-
- “Mykel,” says Randy, “they don't
want you to stay there BECAUSE they know you're older than they are.
What you gonna do with their 22 year old son?”
-
- Ya think so?
- The next day I'm off to San Fernando in
THE SOUTH, staying with Cutter. His real name is Yadav, but
everybody calls him Cutter because of some superhero he liked when
he was a kid. His nickname came from a comic book.
My accommodations in San Fernando are a
bit more primitive than at Randy's. I'm on a mattress on Cutter's
floor. Cutter has a double bed and his
brother (who looks like Adam Sandler) is in the attached room.
No AC, but a pretty decent fan.
- On my first night there, Cutter's
“former girlfriend” falls asleep in his bed and spends the
night. They didn't do anything to wake me up.
-
- Cutter also lives with his parents and
grandmother. They're all Hindus, and there's a picture of their guru
Sai Baba
(He's called something else-- not a guru-- though. I forget what.)
on the wall. The guy wears orange robes and has an Afro.
- Cutter's mom is a school teacher. She's
very friendly, but rather shy socially. She says hello, talks a bit,
but stays proper. I have a great conversation with Grandma (yes,
she's older than I am) about her stay in India (lots of Trinidadian
Hindus have made the pilgrimage to their ancestral homeland.)
- In a typical dose of ugly Americanism I
hear (from Mom or Grandma, I forget which) about how American hippy
tourists use the Ashram like a free hotel. There wasn't enough room
for the actual devotees. Fortunately, the guru put a stop to that
and limited the Americans to a 3 day stay. I think THAT was too
generous.
- (Of course, I expect the action was
called racist-- like countries that charge white people more than
natives. Yeah for them, I say. I'm not rich, but I make in a week
what they make in a month. I SHOULD pay more.)
-
- Cutter's dad is a character. Funny,
full of stories. He actually saw the man who built the Temple in The
Sea bicycling to and from. We talk religion over a great curry
dinner... cooked by Dad.
-
- (This will be the first of several
home-cooked dinners in San Fernando. Another will be by Cassie's
mom. Cassie is the girlfriend of Bryan, singer of ANTI-EVERYTHING.
She's also a friend of mine.
- “Mykel,” says Cutter, “you need
to be on your best behavior with Cassie's mom. She's Christian and
conservative. Nice, but, you know. Please don't act like Mykel Board
around her.”
-
- We get along famously.)
-
- Back at Cutter's:
-
- “So,” says Cutter's father, “you're
Christian, I guess.”
-
- “No,” I tell him, “I'm a Jew.”
-
- “Really,” he says, “Indians are a
lot like Jews, you know. Value education, good with money, you
know.”
-
- I nod.
-
- “We've both got a lot of us outside
the homeland,” he continues, “if you know what I mean.”
- That night, Cutter, his former
girlfriend and I struggle to find an open bar. We do. The next day
is a trip to the Wildfowl reservation. It's there that I meet the
amazing Kai Leigh. A photographress, student, interested in Iceland,
smart, funny. My Trini friends tell me she's not a goddess... She's
an Empress. You can see our day with the fowl here. Just click on the picture to see 'em all:
Here are me, Cutter and Kai Leigh
enjoying a late beer after the birds. Looks like a Benetton ad,
doesn't it?
- I return to Randy's for my last day
before Guyana. Randy's home, check. Randy's brother Reeaz can drive
me to the airport, check. Royal Castle at the airport, check. Plane
leaves on time, check.
-
- One thing after another, clicking into
place. It's sort of like a Bingo game in reverse. Only when you do
NOT get the blocks in a row can you call BINGO. If things
click in a row, one after the other, vertically, horizontally,
diagonally, that's normal. That's losing. When things DON'T click,
when they don't work out. That's BINGO.
-
- I leave for Guyana the next day. My
facebook friends from KEEP YOUR DAY JOB will meet me at the airport.
From there, we go to Kareem's place (not his real name, but I've
changed it for legal reasons... you'll see why later.) This is the
only time I'll be paying for a place to sleep this trip. 15 days for
$150US. Not bad. I'll have my own room and cool company.
-
- The plane leaves on time. Customs to
leave Trinidad is a breeze. We take off and land at the small
airport in Georgetown. I'm one of the first to get off the plane,
but I'm having a bit of difficulty organizing my few bags. A few
people pass me as I make my way to the immigration line. There are
three lines: GUYANESE CITIZENS, CARIBBEAN NATIONALS, OTHER VISITORS.
I get on the line for OTHER VISITORS... BINGO!
-
- [You can read previous
travel blog entries below.
- You can subscribe to this
blog by clicking the RSS link at the bottom.
- You
might also want to check the blog of Mykel's columns here.
- WARNING: The column
blog is not PG. It might make you mad, or disgusted. The
thin-skinned, politically correct, and easily sickened should
probably stay away. You have been warned.]
-
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