A Place For Every Creed, Race and Party Animal

Today is Halloween, a pagan tradition celebrated mainly by the West, most notably the United States and Europe. With roots in the Celtic culture, Halloween is most certainly not a tradition associated with the English-speaking Caribbean. Yet on Friday night, there I was, surrounded by a bunch of happy Trinis bedecked in costumes in a hall decorated with fake pumpkins, cobwebs and all the other Halloween paraphernalia designed to raise the spookiness metre.

The party was called Freaky Friday but the costumes were anything but. In fact, they ranged from puzzling to downright wrong. And clearly Trinis have a preference for story book and television characters over local ones they happily portray every J'Ouvert.

The whole cast of the Wizard of Oz was there; as well as little Red Riding Hood complete with basket; a vampire in a coffin led around by a slutty nurse and a wannabe Flava Flav, aong others. I was particularly disturbed by the guy who dressed in bondage wear but looked adrift without his dominatrix.

You gotta love Trinis. They so love any excuse to party that they freely jump on any bandwagon, regardless of its relevance to their existence. Just ply them with alcohol and good music and it's on!

But I think it just goes to show that thisis the type of country anyone can feel at home in. Divali night, while driving through Central looking at the lights, I saw a plain example of that line in the anthem that says"Every creed and race find an equal place." Just opposite a house, the front yard of which was well decorated with bent bamboo and lighted deyas, was a bar blasting loud parang music, the music of Christmas in these here parts.

Where else in the world can culture meld like that? Ahh.. you gots to love this place.