The White House, Charlotteville, Tobago

Each morning at around 11 am you can buy a delicious “Double” from Suku down near the fish market. A double is made from curried chick peas wrapped in a naan bread.

Most days at Jabba’s shop there are excellent rotis for lunch. On Fridays Lyda makes delicious “Buss up shut”. That’s an open roti with delicious fillings and sweet mango. The bread of the roti is torn like a bust up shirt – “buss up shut”.

There are lovely ice creams here and there, and many other snacks around – fish and chips, pizza, coconut cakes, banana bread from Claudia, various sweets from Patsy, bread from Kosa.

There’s no Macdonalds, no Kentucky, no Costa.

After initial optimism that things would perhaps be better with the new Peoples Partnership coalition government, disillusion seems to now be setting in. Many were glad to have a change of government after many years of the PNM and the coalition commanded much popular goodwill initially. Now many government workers say they haven’t received their pay on time and police are considering industrial action in support of a pay claim.

Although this is normally the dry season we are having a lot of rain at present. Of course it’s still warm and we get plenty of sunny spells.

Sunday night the Bachanaal Calypso tent visited Charlotteville. Squezy, one of our local calypsonians and many others from around Tobago strutted their stuff and sang their new songs. The band was good with a horn section of sax, trumpet and trombone and the 3 backing singers were excellent. There was a brilliant warm and friendly vibe as usual for this place.

The storm hit Charlotteville in the early hours of Sunday 31st October. I have never known such heavy rain anywhere in the world but there was little wind. The rain continued for about 5 or 6 hours. The small stream by the White House became a frightening surging torrent. The road by the house was a river flowing over the bridge. Afterwards groups of people quietly walked the village to see the damage and who needed help. We could see landslides all around. Thankfully no one in Charlotteville was seriously injured but some houses were severely damaged with mud flowing through them. The village roads were covered in inches of mud and some were impassable by cars. We went down to the village centre and there was a party going on, a celebration that we had survived and life goes on. What spirit. Next day the big cleanup began. Meanwhile Tomas proceeded north, became a full blown hurricane and caused severe destruction in some of the islands. For instance St Lucia lost most of its banana crop.

Following the recent general election, the new Prime Minister of Trinidad and Tobago is Kamla Persad-Bissessar, sworn in on May 26, 2010. The leader of the United National Congress (UNC), she is the country’s first female prime minister. She leads the People’s Partnership which is a coalition of five parties.

The previous government led by Patrick Manning of the People’s National Movement (PNM) had been in power for 13 of the last 17 years.

Horace, one of our neighbours often brings fresh fruit and vegetables for sale from his garden.

Delicious.