At the end of the orientation in Port of Spain, the CUSO volunteers dispersed. I was the only one going to Arima.
A CUSO volunteer from the previous year had arranged for me to have room-and-board at Mrs Barnes place on Green Street so I hopped on the bus to Arima, got off at the bus stop on Green Street and walked past the Hop Wo Steam Laundry to Mrs Barnes house.
I don’t know how I was dressed but my idea of shopping was to wait until my clothes were threadbare and then go buy three of the same shirt and three of the same pants. About 6 years later when I was teaching at Algonquin College, a student came up to me at the end of the year and asked “Sir, it’s about the shirt with horses on it – some of us were wondering if you had another shirt”. As it turns out, the students at Arima Secondary wore a uniform and the teachers were expected to come to school in white shirt and tie. I did that – for the first couple of months. But then I had an accident while taking a shower. A glass bottle fell and I stepped on a shard of glass. I couldn’t wear shoes with the bandage on my foot so switched to sandals. No one commented so when my foot got better I kept wearing the sandals and pretty soon ditched the tie as well.
That first day in Arima was interesting. There was a dirt road/driveway that ran beside Mrs Barnes place to a small house in the back. It was owned by the Gomes family. Mrs Barnes introduced me to the Gomes. Mrs Gomes was a school principal. I don’t know what Mr Gomes did other than he had written a book on Cricket which he lent to me. I later learned that there was a famous family of Cricketers by the name of Gomes who had lived on Green Street around that time and maybe it was the same family. I don’t know but the Gomes son I met that day worked at a TV station. I mentioned that I was interested in learning how to play tennis so he said he would introduce me to Raymond Choo Kong (of the Hop Wo Steam Laundry that I had walked past earlier on). Raymond was the best tennis player mid-island. I eventually ended up marrying Raymond’s sister Marilyn.
Meanwhile Gomes (don’t remember his first name) introduced me to a couple of other people about my age. One of them invited me over to his place later for a drink. I didn’t know what I was getting myself into but I agreed anyway. When I showed up at his place, there were a couple of friends of his around the kitchen table. He gave each of us a glass and he pulled out a small bottle of rum with about two ounces of rum in it. He carefully portioned out a tiny bit of rum in each glass and we had a drink.
Interesting.
I later realized that as a Canadian in Arima at that particular time I was a novelty so everyone treated me like I was special. When I returned to Arima about a decade later, the novelty had worn off and I was pretty much ignored.
WR Foster 