My First Fete

In Trinidad there are two words that are near and dear to most Trini's hearts-Fete and Lime. A fete is a party and to lime is to hang out, relax, and often have a drink. Yesterday I was privileged enough to do both! When I was invited out to this event, I was old it was house-warming party...so I am picturing 30ish people in a home with some finger sandwiches and a relish tray, politely makings small talk. That is not what I found...

5pm - I am ready to go, my ride should be here any minute
5:45pm - My ride arrives...my first real experience with "Trini" time
7pm - We pull up to the party after picking up a couple more people. Ah, I should tell you who I'm with - a friend from Davenport has family in Trinidad. Susan and Christian are probably in their mid 30s and we picked up Christian's sister, aunt and parents. Susan's parents met us there.
7:05pm - I realize that this is no house-warming party! The music is blaring and there are security guards at the front gate. Christian promptly showed our tickets and we received food coupons. We found ourselves a little bit of space outside right next to a speaker, and set up a mini table that we brought and stole some chairs from inside the house. There were a couple of tents and porta-poties in the back.
7:10pm - I had my very first Trini beer, Stag. (I later tried the other local beer, Carib). Both were good, they had more flavor than our Busch/Bud/Coors.
7:20pm - I begin to actually look around and I realize that I have never seen so much skin on middle aged people in my life! The party was an older crowd, I was easily one of the youngest people there, with most people being 40-60. Most of the women had on tank tops that you would see only the hottest college girls wearing to a college bar at home. Let's just say cleavage and love handles were everywhere!
8pm - By now I have tried the best of the food - Doubles and Bake. I have a very hard time describing Doubles, which is a very popular street food and perfect drunk food. It is kinda like a really thick chick pea soup in a homemade corn tortilla, then they put different sauces on it. My description does not do them justice, they are very good. The bake was fish and vegetables inside a homemade roll, and was also very tasty.
8:30 pm - Let the dancing commence! I was beckoned onto the dance floor by a lady at least in her 70s who owned the dance floor! Dancing is kinda a salsa walking movement, very hip swinging intensive, and the music is salsa-y with a steel pan mixed in. What I loved about dancing was that everyone was dancing, and I mean everyone. I mentioned that Christian's parents were there and his dad walks with a cane. Once the music was going, the cane was left behind and he was boogieing like everyone else!
9:45pm - I had a white person spotting! Actually a few of them, there were 4-5 white couples at the fete, but they were white Trini's so I still stood out as the strange ghostly American!
11:15 pm - We danced and talked and ate until after 11, when we took some food to go and cleaned up our table.

When it was all said in done, it was a perfect first fete! The dancing was fun and the food was delicious and the company was entertaining. Hopefully it won't be my last!