Paramin Parang - Day 172

Imagine a warm dark evening where the air is still, humid and heavy and the skies are wall-papered with stars. A drive in a car with the windows down so the wind whistles around bringing the sounds of frogs and cicadas, the murmur of palm trees, the scent of ylang ylang, mangoes and the sea. The night bristles with thousands of lights as every house is bedecked with millions of flashing and twinkling fairy lights, glowing santas, nodding reindeer and the odd inflatable, illuminated snowmen. We whisk down the highway into town with cars speeding on every side, flashing brake lights, neon under lighting and spinning wheel hubs add to the colourful, garish display.

Down town - Tragarete Road, Ariapita Avenue and Cipriani Boulevard sizzle with life, limers on street corners, doubles and roti vendors, bars belting out music and reeking of Carib and everywhere the glow of fairy lights. We stop for food at Sweet Lime, a pavement restaurant. Sweet cocktails and succulent shrimp and fish, the babble of conversation, sound of laughter, the chink of crockery and the background soca calypso are a suitable start the evening. A short drive to Maraval where dozens of parking touts wave rags and gesticulate wildly entreating us to park in their spot. We walk up a road that rises steadily into the Paramin hills. We stop at the taxi rank - a designated straggly stretch of road that is lined with people - our chances of getting a ride look slim. we wait as a few taxis come and go disgorging people and refilling with scrum-like speed. The taxis are in fact jeeps, old land cruisers in fact, four wheel drives are needed for where we are going. We spot a stray jeep further up the road and run, Martin wards off big men and I slip through and pull him in. The back of the jeep is packed, the two sides lined with passengers, I sit in the middle perched on a huge speaker box which thankfully is only playing quietly. My head is squashed to the ceiling, neck bent giving me a fine view of the floor, my legs are on the lap of the lady next to me. We are all hot and sweaty, faces covered in a fine sheen, everyone carries rags and mops themselves endlessly towipe away the moisture. everyone is talking and laughing. The taxi driver takes a drink of rum - obviously not his first of the day...

We set off and within moments we are driving up an almost vertical narrow road at great speed, the engine strains and whines as it pulls us up and up. From time to time we swerve sharply and stop to let another vee-hee-cle go past, the view from the cloudy plastic windows is a breath-taking sheer drop down the hill. We know jeeps regularly capsize on these hills, we hold our breath and hope for the best. "We reach" says the driver and as the door opens we all fall out to stretch out kinks in spines and necks.

We are in Paramin, home of seasoning - thyme, chive and shaddo-bene and more importantly for us home of parang music. Parang is only played at Christmas and has a distinct spanish flavour. We walk down another vertical incline to the church grounds where hundreds of people have gathered for the biggest parang festival of the year. On the centre stage a band are playing, 16 or so musicians dressed in their finest play quattros, mandolins and chak chaks while singing and dancing. The music dominates everything, the bass makes your ribs vibrate and your ears ring with noise for hours after you have leave. The crowd moves to the beat, singing along to favourites, swigging beer and liming. Around the grounds tents sell enticing foodstuffs, pastelles (fish or chicken wrapped in banana leaves - also a christmas speciality), corn soup and the ubiquitous doubles. Vendors walk in the crowd selling santa hats with flashing lights around the rim - they are doing a roaring trade. The backdrop to these festivites is an enormous, newly built stone church with beautiful stained glass windows (Paramin now has a church but no school which was closed recently after being deemed structurally unsound), a 20 metre high inflatable Carib beer bottle and a view up and down the hills where all the houses scattered clinging to the hillsides are lit yet again with the sparkling lights.


It is Christmas in Trinidad...