Trinidad & Tobago - Culture Smart!: The Essential Guide to Customs & Culture

By Tim Ewbank and Culture Smart

The twin Caribbean islands of Trinidad and Tobago could hardly be more different. Trinidad is vibrant, cosmopolitan, culturally diverse, and multiethnic, with a population descended from East Indian, African, Spanish, French, Dutch, American, Chinese, Syrian, and English forebears. This potent mix finds full expression in unbridled revelry each February with the celebration of Carnival—a dazzling, open-to-all-comers, mass participation street extravaganza of steel bands, calypso, dance, and the magnificent costumed bands "playing mas" (short for masquerade). Tobago, by contrast, is much quieter, predominantly rural, and a tranquil tropical idyll. Both islands have a history of slavery and indentured labor that, even today, engenders a determination in the people to live life as they choose rather than to order. "Trinis" are by nature friendly, outgoing, and hospitable. They are slow to anger and quick to walk away from confrontation. They have an infectious joie de vivre and a laid-back attitude to time—which foreigners can sometimes find frustrating. Culture Smart! Trinidad and Tobago explores the codes and paradoxes of Trinbagonian life, describing the many and varied traditions, customs, and cultures of its diverse society. It outlines the contrasting histories of the two islands, and opens a window into people's private lives, showing how they interact socially, and their attitudes to people who are "from foreign." It offers practical advice from business tips to how to play mas at Carnival. It aims to make that first trip to the two islands as rewarding as possible by taking you beyond the stereotypes to the real people

• Language: English
• Publisher: Kuperard
• Release date: Apr 1, 2011
• ISBN: 9781857335477

Book preview

chapter one

LAND & PEOPLE

GEOGRAPHY

The Republic of Trinidad and Tobago consists of two main islands, and several islets, totaling 1,980 square miles (5,128 sq. km). They form the southernmost islands of the Lesser Antilles chain and lie in the Caribbean Sea, with Trinidad, once part of the South American mainland, situated 6.8 miles (11 km) off the northeast coast of Venezuela.

Roughly rectangular in shape with three projecting peninsular corners, Trinidad is by far the larger of the two main islands at 1,864 sq. miles (4,828 sq. km) and is within sight of the Venezuelan coast, separated by the Gulf of Paria.

Tobago lies 20 miles (32 km) northeast of Trinidad and totals 116 square miles (300 sq. km). It has several small satellite islands.

Trinidad and Tobago are surrounded by the tranquil Caribbean Sea on their north coasts and by the less calm Atlantic Ocean on their southern and eastern sides. Geologically and biologically they are part of continental South America but they are very different due to centuries of separation.

Three mountain ranges cross Trinidad. The rain-forested Northern Range traverses and dominates the northern part of the island, reaching a height of 3,100 feet (945 m) at Mount Aripo. To the north of the range are Trinidad’s most popular beaches—Maracas Bay, Las Cuevas, and Blanchisseuse, with miles of unspoiled coastline. The Central Range crosses the island diagonally, rising to a height of 1,066 feet (325 m), below which are agricultural flatlands and the central plains. The Southern Range rises to a maximum of 1,001 feet (305 m); aside from Trinidad’s second city, San Fernando, the south of the island is the least populated.

Tropical forests cover half of the island and swamps are found along parts of the east and west coasts. There are numerous rivers and streams but they are short. The longest river is the Ortoire in Trinidad, between Nariva and Mayaro, stretching 31 miles (50 km) eastward to the Atlantic Ocean in the south.

No less than 60 percent of Tobago is covered with forest; the island is hilly and dominated by the Main Ridge Forest Reserve, which is 18 miles (29 km) long with its summit Pigeon Peak at 1,860 feet (549 m) above sea level. There are valleys to both the north and south of the Main Ridge. Scarborough is the only major port in Tobago but several small harbors and dozens of unspoiled bays, inlets, and sheltered sandy beaches indent Tobago’s coastline.

CLIMATE

Closer to the Equator than any other islands in the Caribbean, Trinidad and Tobago have the benefit of a tropical climate all year-round, with the temperature varying only very slightly. Moderated by the constant northeast trade winds, the maximum temperature averages 89°F (32°C) during the day and 72°F (22°C) at night. The mean temperature is 85°F (29°C) with 60 percent humidity. Foreigners can find the 75 percent humidity oppressive from June to December, but Tobago tends to be slightly cooler and less humid because it catches more of the breeze from the trade winds.

The sister islands have two distinct seasons—the wet season from June to November, and the dry season from January to May, but it is hottest between June and October. The dry season does not mean drought because in most areas rain falls every few days. Nighttime temperatures can drop to around 70°F (21°C) in the cooler months. Although Tobago can be wet at various times during May, June, and July, the difference between the two seasons is much less marked than on Trinidad. The two islands experience around 40 inches (200 cm) of rainfall annually. Although showers can be heavy, they usually last no longer than two hours before brilliant sunshine and blue skies return.

Both islands are situated below the hurricane belt and Trinidad always seems to be missed by hurricanes. Tobago has been less fortunate and was badly struck by Hurricane Flora in 1963, which destroyed 2,750 of Tobago’s 7,500 houses as well as forcibly changing the face of Tobago’s economy. Banana, coconut, and cocoa plantations, which largely sustained the economy, were devastated and the damage led to the avoidance of cash crop agriculture and more attention on tourism. Hurricane Flora also devastated Tobago’s rain forest. Clumps of old-growth trees survived but the mighty winds and the driving rainfall ravaged 75 percent of the forest. Since then, regeneration has occurred in a natural way.

Tobago felt some of the force of Hurricane Ivan in 2004. It downed trees, caused power outages to 30 percent of the island, and forty-five homes lost their roofs. Waves were estimated to reach 65 feet (20 m). Ivan left twenty people homeless, and a pregnant woman was killed by a falling tree. In all Ivan impacted more than 1,000 people in Tobago, but the damage was slight compared with the devastation it went on to cause to neighboring Grenada. In general, however, T&T experiences less storm activity than some of the other islands in the Caribbean.

THE PEOPLE

Trinidad and Tobago has one of the most ethnically diverse populations in the Caribbean. According to the most recent government census, 40.3 percent of the people are of East Indian descent. The East Indians are descended from indentured laborers brought to Trinidad in the second half of the nineteenth century to work on the sugar plantations. Some 39.5 percent define themselves as of African descent, while 18.4 percent are classified as mixed. There are significant communities of Chinese, Middle Eastern, Portuguese, and people of other European descent. The East Indian population tends to be more evenly distributed throughout rural areas, while the African-descended population is more urban in character. In Trinidad, about one-half of the population lives in an urbanized east–west corridor stretching from Diego Martin in the west to Arima in the east. In Tobago, the population is approximately 54,000 and 90 percent are of African origin, with a minority East Indian presence and resident expatriates.

A BRIEF HISTORY OF TRINIDAD

First Encounters

Christopher Columbus discovered Trinidad on his third voyage of exploration, on Tuesday July 31, 1498. He wrote enthusiastically to the King and Queen of Spain: There we saw houses and people and very fair lands, lands as beautiful and green as the gardens of Valencia in the month of March.

Columbus first set foot on the island’s south coast at Moruga, where the earliest Trinidadians, indigenous communities of Arawaks, lived in primitive thatched huts. The initial hostility he and his men encountered from the natives soon evaporated and prompted his sailors to form the eventual opinion that these were the friendliest people in the Caribbean. Fittingly, more than five hundred years on, visitors today still enthuse about Trinidad’s green and beautiful lands and rate its inhabitants as extremely friendly.

It’s believed that Columbus named the island La Trinidad after the three peaks of the Trinity Hills he had seen from his ship off the southern coast of the island. But there is a school of thought that he named the island after the Holy Trinity in grateful thanks for Providence, because at the point he reached it all his food had rotted and he was down to his last container of water.

While Columbus is given credit for literally putting Trinidad on the map, ancient artifacts in south Trinidad point to Amerindians inhabiting the island some five thousand years before his arrival. Although of indeterminate origin, it’s safe to assume these early settlers came from South America and were fishermen and farmers.

Despite Trinidad’s discovery by Columbus, it would take nearly a century before Spain established the first European community there. After Columbus, Spain largely forgot about the island for more than thirty years and only started taking an interest in it again because of renewed European fascination with the legend of El Dorado—the idea that there was a gilded king living in a South American city whose streets were made of gold. For Europeans, Trinidad was an island en route to this mythical land of golden riches. Spain therefore deemed it worth preserving as a Spanish domain and, although it took a long time, colonization ultimately followed.

Colonization by Spain

Several settlements were attempted over the next sixty years, starting in 1532, but they were unsuccessful—each time the would-be colonists were driven out by the now disenchanted Amerindians. The year 1592 saw the arrival of the first permanent settlers from Spain, led by an El Dorado fortune hunter, Antonio de Berrio. He instigated the building of a small town called San Jose de Oruna, which included a jail, a church, a town hall, and a governor’s residence, with the community under the authority of a Cabildo, a governing body with wide executive powers elected from among De Berrio’s people. San Jose, in the north of Trinidad, is now called St. Joseph.

The Cabildo lasted until 1840, but the intervening years were riven with attempts by the British, the French, and the Dutch to seize control of the burgeoning colony. Trinidad’s inhabitants also had to contend with constant raiding by pirates. Neither did Spain give much backing to San Jose in terms of money and resources. It showed no great commitment to develop the area and paid scant regard to the need to protect the town and its people. The annual arrival of a single ship from Seville to check on San Jose’s progress was the only real token of interest.

Left vulnerable and militarily exposed, in 1595 San Jose was sacked and burned by the English courtier and explorer Sir Walter Raleigh. The entire region was easy prey for Raleigh when he joined the search for