I'm here visiting our Caribbean office. It's one-room office and they cover 12 countries! Our Trini colleagues have an enthusiasm for food that is admirable. The "what-should-we-get-for-lunch" discussions start early and are rather animated. It makes my two Haitian colleagues and me very happy.
Last night we went to a fancy pants restaurant (entrees start at $50 US) and had a fantastic experience. For lunch today we went to a Trini food-by-weight place that gave fancy-pants restaurant a run for its money: fried plaintain, BBQ pork, jerk chicken, macaroni pie, pumpkin, cassava...
As part of our week's "firsts", we took Emmanuella and Sherley to a sushi bar. I taught them to use chopsticks (the charming sous chef took it upon himself to later give them additional lessons). We discovered that margaritas are a lot like Haitian lime juice + salt cold remedy. I teased the girls about their aversion to raw sushi (charming sous chef decided to make them a special roll which they gamely tried and curled their noses at). We later went to a bar (sous chef was hoping to see them there later) where the girls saw a dart board for the first time. Even in the middle of nowhere in PNG, people played darts. Actually, dart boards where one of the biggest attractions at the market where people bet big on it. It never occurred to me that someone may never have seen a dart board before.
Today, our trip to see a mobile clinic for sex workers was cancelled because the sex workers were kept busy from 3 to 9 am by a bunch of police officers. They expect free services. So instead, we drove around looking for outlets that commit to selling condoms to young people. In some cases, this turned out to be in name only as the effort it took to get a condom at the pharmacy/bar/shop we visited would have dissuaded even the most determined shopper.
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