thepancollective

you're invited to the wedding

Saturday the 5th of August 2006 was the first time She asked for a commitment.  

Saturday 2nd of September 2006 will be the second time ... and not the last. 

rubbish

Whenever I have a job to write something for tourism (as I do now), I find it a challenge to fully comply with the client's request to 'make T & T look good'. All glossy colour, nothing ugly. Of course, it's not impossible to make T & T sound pretty - we still have a lot to offer in many areas. But ... it's very unlikely that a client would say: "Make sure to include the parts about carelessly strewn garbage floating in water, cluttering forest floors and choking our mangrove areas. Oh! And emphasise that the proposed smelters will slowly kill our flora, fauna and general population!"

Reading tourism-type descriptions of T & T, I realise that no matter how many forests are ravaged, wild animals slaughtered and green spaces invaded by concrete monstrosities, our ecological statistics remain frozen in a tourism time warp, simply to make T & T look like the premiere exotic eco-destination: 'X amount of birds, butterflies, reptiles' ... 'Y amount of rare species of this or that' ... 'Z amount of exotic flora'. How can these figures remain constant in light of 'development'?

What steps are being taken and what is being put in place to clean up our image? Can our 'tourism truth' continue to lie in pretty cliches, unchanging statistics and glossy, tropical images Photoshopped to seduce foreigners?

Bring on the Heat

A common lament of those that live in the Global South (and quite frankly of those that don’t) is the instability of common lifestyle amenities, what I term the Holy Trinity i.e. power, water, and the God Almighty cable.

This being my first summer “living” in Jamaica, I have come to understand that this season is quite different from the others. I begin everyday with my own personal guessing game about which amenity won’t work. Will it be a no cable day, or a no water day? On good days it is only one, but I have experienced the dreaded NO power/ water/ cable combination. And you best believe that if it rains, be it a drizzle or a monsoon, you better cancel an expectation of having power and/or cable for the rest of day. As I write this blog entry, the heralding red light of my battery update is screaming to be recharged. But this is a no power day, so I will work till the computer forces me off.

Two weekends ago, the entire island was without power for almost an entire day and night. It was surprisingly enjoyable if not eerie to drive through pitchblack streets and see streams of people form little enclaves on the corners to ward off boredom. And you could almost trick yourself into believing that all the candles were actually romantic.

When I was in the US two months ago, some people had asked me sympathetically whether I was “enjoying” my time in America. The underlining tone was that of sympathy for my harrowing experiences living in (gasp) a “ Third World Country”. To which I replied sympathetically back, that I loved living in Jamaica even given the (smirk) “substandard living conditions”; if substandard means perpetually surrounded by the silhouette of mountains, ocean, and prolific vegetation. Yes, go ahead and pity me.

Then I have been reading that people in Queens and Staten Island have been having the same power issues we have here. And the heat in California, Washington D.C., and New York has us rivaled, and I smiled. Not a malicious smile, but a smile of recognition that the line between “Developing” and “Developed” is not that thick.

By the way, the reason my blog doesn’t have pictures is because Typepad never gives me the option in a toolbar. I guess nothing and nowhere is perfect…Stay cool.

birth of a day

Two days at Balandra for a friend's birthday turned out to be just what I needed to relax and reconnect. And this morning, perhaps as a 'birth of day' gift to all of us, we were treated to a spectacular sunrise over the ocean, viewed from the window of the beach house (see short sunrise video here). Being there, we felt as though we were somewhere else other than Trinidad, especially as the beach lower down from the house was one we had never come across. Because it was fairly tucked away from public thoroughfare, it was clean and quiet. We enjoyed the tranquil green river, perfect for floating in the inner tubes of large tyres (the ones I drive around with in my car trunk for exactly that purpose) ... and the sea: blue and clear with enjoyably rough and playful waves. I think the Salybia/Balandra/Toco coastline in Trinidad has the best beaches. The drive: scenic, rural, still charmingly untouched by the concrete and condos of modernity. The sea: beautiful, often deep blue or green with stark white wave crests, quite rocky in areas, a bit rough, often with strong currents, but enjoyable nevertheless. You just have to be careful.

If you are one who loves to collect beach rocks and driftwood (as I do), that coastline is where you will most likely find your greatest treasures. I got quite a few this weekend: those black rocks with the striking white markings and also many heart-shaped finds.

the turtles of grand riviere

This past weekend, my husband, daughter and I went to the north coast of Trinidad to witness the nesting of the giant leatherback turtles.  There's something about going out onto the beach at nightfall with one of the local guides, and watching the dark, lumbering shadows make their way out of the water, find the perfect spot, and each laying 80 - 100 eggs, before making their way back to the deep. 

It makes you feel small.  Tiny.  But important.  And part of something so huge as to defy comprehension.

At dawn the following morning, we awoke and made our way back to the beach to see the last of the evening's turtles returning to the sea.  And lest my husband and I think that we were the only ones who understood the significance of what we'd witnessed, as we watched one of the turtles make her way into the waves, our little daughter, Alex, suddenly waved her two-year-old arms and cried out:

"BYE-BYE, MUMMY TURTLE!"

(This post is also cross-published at BlogHer.)

calm ... before the storm?

Yesterday afternoon (prior to attending a public consultation in La Brea hosted by the EMA), two friends and I went to Union Village to have another look at the criminally cleared 1,000 acres of land (once peaceful virgin forest and dams). We chatted with one or two villagers, bought some plants from a young woman whose home overlooks the ravaged expanse and learnt that there was a beach a little further up the road that ran by her house. As we had some time before the meeting, we drove to the end of the road, which took us to a kind of cliff overlooking the peaceful waters featured in the photograph. To our right was a simple, well kept wooden house with curtains blowing in the wind, bareback children running around in their shorts or diapers, playing with a motley band of protective pothounds and little white puppies. I looked at the large window of the house which overlooked the bay and said to my friends: "Imagine waking up to that every morning." One of them made the comment that the people probably take it for granted as they are used to it, but I don't think so ... They must know what they have. The children certainly looked very free and were shining happy. Maybe what they, in their innocence, don't know is what they stand to lose if the smelter is indeed 'a done deal' and their houses (along with all others on that quaint little street to the beach) are cleared away ... perhaps overnight, as the forest was.

small reminder

Yesterday evening, my husband, daughter and I decided to take an early evening walk around and through the golf course near our home.  As we walked among the poui trees, while the sun began to set behind the hills, and the tree frogs began singing their nocturnal songs, I was reminded...

...this is why it's so wonderful to live in Trinidad.

my mother's garden

My mother has a little house, but a big garden. It is filled with flowers of all sorts of colors, some in pots, others planted in the earth. We do not identify our house with the number anymore, but with “the house that has all the kelki geels (butter cups) hanging outside”. There are that many of them. Of course, such a garden requires a lot of trimming and pruning and shearing. I am convinced that the local garden supply stores would be lost without us.

My mother hates change. Because of this characteristic it was a tough decision for her to divorce my father and create a new life for her. The first appartment she went to didn’t have a garden at all. The second appartment that she  rented did have a garden, but she wasn’t allowed to make drastic changes to the garden.

She also struggled a lot with the decision of selling the property land that had been in her family for generations in order to finance the purchase of a new home. After assuring her that I did not expect her to stay in an appartment in order for me to inherit these properties, she decided that she was going to sell her land and buy a house.

She did buy a house, one that she could afford, but the garden was growing close to be a jungle. Faced with this, my mother took charge. She didn’t hesitate, didn’t debate with herself, she inmediately knew what she wanted and how she wanted it. She organized the clean up of the garden, chose the flowers, decided on their placement and colors.

It was the first time that I had seen my mother so decided, and it gave me another reason to be extraordinarily proud to be her daughter.

This garden gave my mother the knowledge that she could make it on her own.

whirling rainbow

Today there was a massive rainbow around the sun. I discovered this morning that such a phenomenon is known as a 'sunbow' or a 'whirling rainbow'. I have seen one or two before in my lifetime, but none as big, bright and dramatic as this one. Its span was so large that not everything could fit in the photo, so just imagine the portion you see in the photo existing in a complete ring. It felt as significant as an eclipse, yet I wonder how many people saw it. I myself was inside trying to do some work and would not have seen it had it not been for a friend who called excitedly from the road and told me to "run outside and look at that rainbow around the sun!!"

This site explains the symbolism of the whirling rainbow/sunbow as follows: While meteorologists have a physical understanding of the circular rainbow around the sun, wisdom keepers of the Americas and Tibet have complementary spiritual understandings about this dramatic omen around the Sun which is known as the Whirling Rainbow or the Sunbow.

For some traditional native people, the Sunbow or Whirling Rainbow is considered to be a sign from Creator, marking a time of great change, or transition on the Earth. This full-circle rainbow around the Sun, some elders say, can be understood as a sign to people of the necessity to live a life in respect and harmony with all the creations that make life possible: plants, animals, waters, minerals, fires, winds, and other human beings.

lost

In the shadow of the lighthouse, far away from any type of civilization, there is a small dirt road that drives along the coast. The view changes from shallow, green blue water that is the stuff of dreams for the tourism marketing board to a sort of deep blue sea, with dark rocks ringed with white foam of the waves that splash against them.

When you drive on that road, you will eventually see this view, of a dead tree with right next to it a green-ish tree. The dead tree is called the fututu, it is a sort of mangrove, according to the experts.

The fututu used to be green, with leaves and everything. The banner of this site illustrates how it was. It was the only picture I could find online, I suppose the other tourist sites have already taken it down, becuase the tree is well, dead.

Now, how did that happen? Nobody knows who or why, but about a year ago somebody took a machine saw and tried to saw the tree in half. I can't even imagine the motive for doing such a thing.

This is the stuff that makes me bang my head against the wall. Why, why, why. Why try to destroy such a beautiful thing? I know that there is plenty more to be frustrated about, such as politicians, economy, and education. I'm aware of that. But by some luck of the draw we get to live on this beautiful island, that has beautiful things such as this tree.

Why somebody would want to destroy this gift to us is beyond me.