Random Trini Observations

Random Photos




So here are some more things I’ve noticed about Trinidad:

The fruit juices they sell in stores are sooooooo tasty and fresh and amazingly flavourful! You really 'experience' what the fruit tastes like, it is just that an experience everytime you drink it!

Every building, park, and home is surrounded by either razor wire, barbed wire, tall spikey fences, or tall cement fences with giant shards of broken glass embedded vertically along the top of the fence (or any combination of those things together). Don't ask me why, I have no idea who they might be trying to keep out. Our university residence is surrounded by two barbed wire fences...kinda different from home...

There are packs of wild dogs that roam the streets at night. During the day they sleep under shady trees, and at night they rummage through the garbage bins for scraps. They dogs are so interbred that they are all the same size. About knee height, but they come in various colours.

In any empty lot along the streets you will encounter a sea of plastic and glass bottles mounded as high as the fence holding them in. There is no recycling program in Trinidad at all! Everything goes in one garbage...pretty weird. There is just a fortune lying around the streets.

There are more beggers and street people in Vancouver than in Trinidad.

Due to Trinidad's very long Colonial history, the university we are going to was established in the 1800s, and was an agricultural and natural sciences college in the 1700s. The students at the schools wrote exams that were written and proctored by Cambridge university in England, and they still maintain a very high academic standard to this day. It is very difficult for students to even get into university in the first place because at the end of 6th form (grade 7), they write exams that determine what type of high school they will go to. They may go to a trade school high school, or an academic school. There are 5 different types of high schools, but only students who go to the top two types of school qualify to write the Cambridge entrance exams to get into university, and of the people who write the exams, only about 45% of students score high enough to get into university. The upside of this rigorous system is that university is free. The downside is that the people who can get into university in the first place are usually from affluent backgrounds anyways.

People walk much slower here than in Vancouver. In fact they make fun of us for walking so fast. They wonder where we could be going that is so important that you cant get there when you get there.

Parties spontaneously occur at any time or place. It is not uncommon for a raucious get togther to spring up at 1:30 in the morning and go till 4. We seem to need more sleep than they do.

There are Hindu prayer flags throughout the mountainous countryside, since many of the Indian indentured laborers were forced to work in the mountains, and when they were liberated, they chose to stay there. The prayer flags are there as offerings to the gods for plentiful crops. They are pink, red, blue, white, and yellow.

Sour cream and onion ripple chips do not have as pungent a flavour as they do at home. Still greasy, but the taste doesn't hit you in quite the same way.

There are KFCs on every street corner. KFC makes more money in Trinidad than in any other country in the world. They love their fried chicken here.