Enjoying a good old-fashioned Trini lime

To be there I had to duck out on an office International Bring a Dish dinner. The idea behind it was to bring about some sort of bonding in a workplace consisting sixteen employees; twelve different nationalities and eight different languages, not including my own sweet Trini dialect that I personally think should be considered a language in itself, especially since nobody understands when I call them poohar or choof choof. Unfortunately for them I was only going to prepare one meal last weekend and I’d rather cook for six hungry Trinis than sixteen lickrish co-workers who I see too much in the week anyway, furthermore for making small talk with them during my preciously limited weekend hours. Besides, there was the promise of soca being played and corn meal dumplings being thrown in the mix. Who could resist?

It sort of turned out to be our own little international dinner anyway.

Well, it was supposed to be lunch but no food went on the table before six anyway. The curry came from Trinidad, the spring onions (closer to our own chives than what they call chives up here) from Spain, the garlic from Italy, the coconut milk (King Rajah, in a tin no less) from Thailand and the white wine with which we washed everything down in copious amounts from Germany and France.

But the ole talk and scandalous laughter could only be Trinidadian, forcing the Czechoslovakian housemate of the girls whose house we were cooking in to retreat hastily to her room, emerging only to slink down the corridor to use the bathroom quickly and slink back.

Of course, there was no such thing as an iron pot to be had. But after digging around in an abandoned cupboard we managed to find a small, battered, had seen better days pot that we suspect belonged to the people who had lived in the house before, the same people who had put up the Pepsi-Cola clock and the Barbados shot glass on the kitchen wall.

The pot was too small but when people are hungry nothing is impossible and that crab and seasoning and coconut milk (King Rajahs, in a tin no less) had no choice but to make themselves small and fit or else.

The crab, bought solely because it was the only crab that was remotely blue and all any of us knew about curry crab was that it’s made with blue crab, eventually turned a bright orange in the pot.

Which, together with the claws on the gundi, was slightly disturbing. But what doh kill does fatten and what doh fatten does purge and in between wining to "Ting fuh de Road" (which is my choice for road march, hands down) and elaborating on the greatness of Machel Montano, we managed to pull together a meal not just fit to be consumed but fit for a king too.

Another girl in the group, tired of the weekly struggle to balance school and slave labour for dog wages, ducked work to make the lime. In the middle of sucking on a gundi they called again to find out if she was coming but by then the lime was too sweet and it was raining too hard outside to get anybody to move, far less for going to work. A quick run into the kitchen to turn off the CD player and an ethereal silence in the room as six Trini women paused a conversation about the advantages of extra tall men long enough for her to cough and moan into the phone and promise to be in work tomorrow but she’s so sick today, you wouldnt believe cough! Cough!

A hang up and a steups and the conversation, the raucous laughter and the confessions continued. It wasnt about the meal although the meal was great, six piles of desiccated crab shell bear testimony. It was about the chance to stop speaking standard English all the time, carefully concentrating on modifying ones accent to be understood.

It was about being with a group of people who knew Trinidad wasn’t a town in Jamaica and understood that it was possible to know how to light a deya and observe Ramadan and not be a Hindu or a Muslim.

It was simply six women offering and taking comfort from the fact that sometimes, in the midst of the hustling and struggling and sacrificing, the dealing with men and their problems, and sorting out ones own needs and concerns, you just need to put everything aside for one rainy, dark afternoon/evening and be yourself in front of your girls.

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