Good morning... a bit of Dookie History

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Hello everyone, how you going? ( I am going to recap here what happened now after the fact). This morning Tracy and I went to Grand Bazaar a shopping mall that was the largest in the whole Caribbean to recent times. We went into the Carib beer paraphenalia shop to take some photos for my friend Ryan who lives in Texas. We also went into the grocery store and got to see all the local food on the shelves. I think there is a lot to be learned from the shelves-about what ingredients are important, what things are not used and to see how much has been influenced by other nations. We bought a bunch of snacks, vegetables like dashene, yams etc.

In the afternoon Tracy and I went for a walk down to Dookie Lane to visit her cousins and Aunt and Uncle. Her uncle owns a convenience store up the road and around the corner. We walked into their small home adorned with hindi art, again, lots of knicks and an altar to the hindi religious symbols with lit candles etc. I don't know much about the hindu culture, so I apologize for not filling in more of an explanation here. What I do know is that every hindu house in D'Abadie has prayer flags that hang outside of their homes, and if possible the bamboo that holds them up is higher than the home. We went by to visit Tracy's uncle too, an old man who lives alone in a house that sadly is tattered, and unkept. We spoke to him briefly and I really got an appreciation for how this man lives alone, and because of his health condition, he is unable to care for himself. It was quite sad to see. Part of the realities of life for some people.

Later in the afternoon I went into Tracy's backyard and took some photos of the beautiful flowers and banana trees in her mom's garden. For some strange reason my camera then showed an error message and was out of commission for the rest of the trip, but thankfully my sister Tracy lent me her camera for the rest of the trip. We went up to Mount St. Benedict's -a lookout near the monastery and convent. We got a beautiful overview of the cities of Arouca and Tunapuna below and could see the large Red, Black and White Trini flag too.

I have been blessed during my time in Trinidad to eat a lot of amazing homecooked food including banana soup, curried chicken, curried duck, doubles, potato pie and drink my favourite ginger beer-Shandy and local juices like Malby. I know Gladys enjoys hearing about the food, so I thought I would add that in. Pepper sauce goes on everything and although my pepper tolerance is not that high I did add some to my food too.

Hope you're well. I will add the next part of the recap later on today.
love Katy

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Comments

[marianna]

having a fabulous time
dear Katy, my mom and i are so happy that you are having such a great time, and it was grate to see the kids with my b raclets. talk to you when youget back. marianna

[Gladys]

Yes, me loves the food bits, but I can't help but notice that you're wearing a t-shirt. Lucky girl - we got another dumping of snow last night that thankfully has melted but I'm not going out in a t-shirt. Live it up!