Merry Christmas!

Christmas time is real big thing in Trinidad & Tobago. Much like the USA they love to shop and decorate and have parties with LOTS of food. For me, it's kind of hard to get in the Christmas spirit with temperatures 85-90. But, they still like to decorate. I've attached a couple of pictures from my apartment complex. It's kind of fun to see them decorate the coconut trees. But, I guess the manger scene is more appropriate in this setting than sitting in a yard of snow. The second one is my neighbors apartment. He really likes to decorate.



I'll be going home for Christmas and bringing Tauna and Isaac back with me.

Merry Christmas and a blessed New Year.

Dan

Trini Food

One of the unique experiences here in Trinidad & Tobago is the food. I have experienced a lot of new foods since I've been here. I thought I should "share" a few of them with you. All of these are dinners that friends or neighbors have made for me.

The first one is pretty basic, grilled chicken with macaroni pie. The green stuff is callaloo. It's a green vegetable, kind of like spinach. They mix it with pigeon peas and seasonings into this mushy sauce. The red stuff is like a potato salad, except it's made with bread fruit, this large starchy fruit that grows on trees, but they cut it up and use it like a potato. The red color is because they put beets in it.




They eat a ton of chicken down here. In fact, KFC (Kentucky Fried Chicken) is located at nearly every major intersection. In fact, the KFC that sells the most chicken in the world happens to be right here in Port of Spain.

The next one here is pelau. It could be considered the traditional meal of Trinidad. It's more common than chicken noodle soup in the USA. Pelau is a mixture of chicken (although it is sometimes made with beef or goat, which is real common here), rice, pigeon peas (a small bean) all of which is browned in a caramelized sugar. It's typically served with a side salad.


Because of the large Indian population, curry is real popular. They like to wrap curried meats with potatoes, pumpkin and other stuff in roti, which is an Indian flat bread. There are roti shops in every neighborhood, their version of fast food.



This next one is the favorite at the beaches, Shark and Bake (or sometimes called Bake and Shark). The serve it at stands set up right at the beach. It's shark meat dipped in spicy seasonings, deep fried and put into a bun, which is also deep fried. There is a condiments bar with a ton of toppings to put on it. They are really good...


This one I have yet to try. It was delivered tonight, but I already had dinner, so I am going to save it for tomorrow. This is the ever popular cow heel soup. It's made with cow feet and a variety of vegetables, depending on the cook. This one includes corn on the cob, potatoes, pumpkin, some local things which I don't recall, and for extra flavor, they throw in little green boiled bananas! I'll have to let you know later how this one tastes...

Diwali

One of the big national holidays here is Diwali, or Festival of Lights, which occurred yesterday. It's a Hindu holiday, but because of the large East Indian population in Trinidad, it has been adopted as a holiday here as well, not as big as Christmas, but still significant. The traditions revolve around feasting on Indian food (curried fruits, meats and sweets) and lighting countless clay lamps filled with oil or wax. It's really quite stunning when whole neighborhoods are lit up lining porches, driveways and sidewalks. There are also lots of fireworks. Unfortunately, a drowning rainstorm came up and put out most of the candles in the area that I was in before I was able to get any good pictures. However, I did take a couple of pictures at the Ramdahnie house, friends from Church. They invited me over for their Diwali dinner. I also brought the missionaries, pictured below.



Their little daughter, Rebecca, is quite a handful. She is almost 3 years old, 12 years younger than her next sibling, and 2o years younger than the oldest. Consequently, she is VERY spoiled. I am guilty of it as well, she fills a little of the void of missing my granddaughters. You can see from this picture why she gets whatever she wants, what a doll...




Finally, I wanted to send a couple pictures of the sky. I am always amazed by the beautiful cloud formations down here in the Caribbean. Sometimes when I go out for a run I have to stop and just look. The first picture was taken at sunrise out my bedroom window. The next one was taken from my porch at sunset. These aren't the most spectacular I've seen, but at least I had my camera handy.

Elections

This week marked the National elections for Trinidad&Tobago. The last few weeks leading up to the election were rather "interesting." The campaigning process here is quite different than in the USA. It consists largely of cars driving around with huge speaker/megaphones strapped to the hoods shouting slogans and playing calypso-style music with lyrics for their candidates. Sometimes they get sound systems loaded into the back of flat-bed trucks and people ride around playing the music and shouting into the speakers for their candidates.



Basically, it is very loud and annoying. They crank up the volume so you can hear them from miles away. You can hear the constant beat and shouting of competing candidates. There are up until this year there have been two political parties, the People's National Movement (PNM, and the current party in power) and the United National Congress (UNC). However, this year, a third party threw its hat into the ring, the Congress of the People (COP) who have been disenchanted with both parties.

Last weekend was the big final push before the elections on Monday. Each political party sponsors a huge rally/festival to garner votes. I guess the idea is that who ever can throw the biggest, best party wins! The UNC had their rally in the savanna next to my apartment complex (you can see a picture of the savanna in one of my first posts). The estimate over 75,000 people attended the rally here. It was a mess. The roads were gridlocked in all directions all day. I was pretty much stuck in the apartment complex. I walked out and took a few pictures of the rally, but they are early in the day before all of the bands and entertainment when it got too dark to really take good pictures and too crowded to move around. People were dancing and drinking in the streets for blocks around because it was too crowded to get into the rally. It was unbelievable the amount of alcohol consumed at the rally. In the picture you can see that everyone is dressed in orange. It's the official color of the UNC party.




The elections were on Monday, and the incumbent party, PNM won convincingly. Which was fortunate for me because they are the party sponsoring the police transformation project I am working on, and if one of the other parties had one, we were told it was likely that our contracts would be canceled. It's interesting, whichever party wins the election takes over the next day. There is no transition period like there is in the USA. The Prime Minister and his cabinet would have to move out of their homes and offices the day after the elections. It's quite a bureaucratic mess when political power changes (even more so than exists day to day here, which is saying a lot).

Polls close at 6pm and ballots are counted so that the winners are known by that night. This develops into another rally where the winning political party celebrates. However, this party is not for just the principle party supporters, it is for everyone. My neighbor, who is a good friend and police officer came knocking at my door to wake me up about 11:00pm. He said, "You can't be sleepin' my brudda, we winnin', we need to go to da party!" So I got dressed and went with him and his family to the PNM headquarters in downtown Port of Spain for the big celebratory rally.

Here is a picture of Ransome and his family just before we left. He got his kids out of bed as well. Notice the red index fingers on Ransome and his wife. These are ink markings that they voted. It's one of the controls used to ensure that people on vote once. They are all dressed in red because that is the party color for PNM.


I was amazed at the number of people that came out to celebrate the election's outcome. There were a lot of kids there, but again there was a lot of alcohol being sold by street vendors. There was a lot of food being sold as well. We stayed until about 2am. When we left there were still huge groups of people arriving. It must have gone all night...

Ok, I am trying to post these videos again. The first one is a video of the band that was supposed to play at the Striker's game that I talked about in my previous post. They were pretty entertaining.

This second video is of the young girls that got up to dance once they heard the drummers playing. They learn how to dance young here!

Striker's Event

I should probably be posting more work related pictures, but I don't have my camera with me as often as I should... However, I was asked to take some pictures of the Striker's "Kickoff" event. It was kind of a inaugural game, that my friend Richard set up. However, he doesn't plan well and it subsequently didn't go off very well. However, there were a couple of things that I thought would be fun to share.

First, they needed a team logo for their jerseys, but the screen company wanted a lot of money to design one. So, I offered to design one for them. It turned out pretty good (if I say so myself...) I designed it from scratch. They loved it. I've included a copy of it below. We are still trying to get some money together to get the jerseys printed.

For those of you who are "soccer ignorant" there name "Strikers" comes from the name of the forward position in soccer which is called a striker. The "FA" at the top stands for Football Academy (they call soccer football everywhere in the world except for the USA). The SYS stands for San Juan Youth Strikers. They have an official uniform for the advisors, and since I was "appointed" an advisor, I had to get one (picture below).

Although the team colors are supposed to be royal blue and white, they couldn't afford the new uniforms, so right now they are playing in some borrowed uniforms in black and yellow. I took a pre-game picture below where the intermingled with the opposing team and then they all bowed their heads in prayer together to start the game. I have really been impressed down here with the way they are not intimidated to include religion in government, sports, etc.

We were supposed to have a cultural show as part of the event, but like I indicated, Richard didn't plan well and we got started too late and he didn't arrange a tent or facility for the performers to get into costumes. I was disappointed because I wanted to see the show even more than the ball game, so just as the game was getting ready to start I asked them if they would mind playing something for me. The band is mostly a family (cousins, etc) who play traditional Trini drums. As soon as I asked, they just grabbed their drums and started playing. I've got a short video clip of them playing but I have had trouble trying to post it. So, I am just attaching a picture for now. If I get it to work I'll post the video later, they were really entertaining.

The whole crowd got into the music. All it takes is a little music to get Trinis going. There was this group of young girls that got up and started dancing. They were so cute! I got a little video of them and will try to post it later as well. In the meantime I'll post a couple of pictures of them.




When they were done I asked if I could get a picture with them. They were very enthusiastic about getting their picture taken!



Unfortunately, the Strikers lost, but I got a great picture of the opposing team being awarded the trophy. The guy in green is their goalie. He was pretty funny...

That's all for now. Like I said, I'll try to add some videos later.

Message for Ella

I have to make sure that my granddaughter Ella doesn't forget about her Papa, so the video provided below is specifically for her!

The Strikers

Since I've been going for morning runs around the Savannah, I've met a lot of people. I usually say hi and wave to everyone I meet. Sometimes they stop me to ask where I'm from and why I am in Trinidad(white people really stand out around here, particularly when we are wearing shorts...). The other day in the market a lady asked me, "Aren't you the white man who runs around the Savannah in the mornings?" One guy I met is Richard Harrison. He coaches a soccer club (although they call it football here) on the Savannah, the "San Juan Strikers." We have become friends and he even goes to Church with me on occasion. I have been adopted as the team "spiritual advisor." Richard asks me to open their practices with prayer and a spiritual thought. I have been surprised at the positive reaction I have been getting from the team. These young men are mostly inner-city youth from gang infested neighborhoods. Richard likes to target these young men to give them a positive alternative. Most have no money. In fact, a lot of them showed up for the first practice bare-footed. I have been trying to assist with time and a little money, but Richard also finds other sponsors to ensure that all the boys get new shoes and uniforms.

I had a picture taken with the team. I'm pretty easy to pick out on the left. Richard, the head coach, is on the right. By the way, for those of you that don't know, if you click on any of the pictures you can see them full size.

Working

I thought I should throw in a couple of pictures that show that I work down here also.

The following are a couple of pictures of police stations I have worked with. Some are a little better, but most of them are pretty "humble."

One of my primary responsibilities is training police personnel how to do crime analysis. This picture was taken at one of the seminars I was teaching.

Our project has a pretty high profile in the country. There is a lot of news and media coverage. Most educated adults have heard of our project. Consequently, we have the opportunity to meet a lot of government leaders. The first picture is taken with the Commissioner of Police, Trevor Paul. The second is with the Minister of National Security, Martin Joseph. The last picture was when I met the President of Trinidad, His Excellency Professor George Maxwell Richards.

Regards to all, Dan

Liming...

In Trinidad, getting together with friends for food and drinks is a significant part of the culture. The call it "liming". Or, "goin' for a lime wit me bruddas." Two of the most popular spots are the beach and the river. Beaches in Trinidad are not as extravagant or "touristy" as most of the Caribbean. Trinidad depends on the petroleum industry as opposed to the tourist industry. It's sister island, Tobago, is more typical of the Caribbean tourist spots. I haven't been to Tobago yet, although it only costs about US$16 for a 2 hour boat ride to go over there. If I can just get some time set aside I plan on going over and checking it out. I'll post some pictures when I do.

However, Trinidad does have a couple of beaches that I enjoy. The most popular on the island is Maracas Bay. I've got a picture of it below.


The other place they like to go is the river. A family that has befriended me at Church, the Rojas, took me to the river for a lime. It's called the Coura river and is real popular.



Food is always a big part of Trini activities. They bring these big iron pots and either cook them over an iron gas grill that they drag along, or the build a campfire out of dried bamboo and cook their meals over that. Almost everything they cook is in the big iron pots. A couple of favorites are "pelau" and "fish broth", pictured below.


By the way, here is a picture of the Rojas family. The kids kind of adopted me and call me Uncle Dan. I think it's because I invite them over to swim in the pool here at my apartment.

Trinidad Apartment

This is my apartment in Trinidad. It's a relatively nice complex with a pool and a tennis court. I have a small 2 bedroom apartment. It's all provided for me by the Ministry of National Security as part of my contract here in Trinidad.



The apartment complex sits next to a large field that they call a savannah. It's used for cricket and soccer games. There is a running track around it. One lap is a mile. I've been running around it in the mornings to try and stay in shape a little bit.

Staying in Touch

Ok... I'm going to try and start a "blog" so that I can share my experiences with friends and family. I have had some pretty interesting experiences working with police agencies across the United States and in various parts of the world, but have not shared those experiences as effectively I probably should. I hope you find some interest and enjoyment out my postings.

Dan