As told to BC Pires

My name is Calvin Ari­etas and I'm a sea­son­ing sales­man.

My broth­er had this cow­boy hat sit down in­side, just re­lax­ing, and I find it take me nicer than it take him! So I take it!

I born and bred Paramin. Sing parang, play blue dev­il mas. I live right on top the moun­tain. Where the snow falls! Christ­mas time is very cold.

God does give you suf­fer­a­tion to make you stronger. If you don't fall, you wouldn't be able to get up. I wake up a Sun­day morn­ing and the house just catch afire and my child died. These are things that could make you pre­vail or regress.

I come from a VERY BIG fam­i­ly but I's the pig­tail in the callaloo. Half my fam­i­ly in Amer­i­ca. I have one broth­er in Trinidad and five in To­ba­go. Plus my grand­moth­er had 12 chil­dren, so I have a lot of cousins! At Christ­mas, you have to work hard, be­cause is plen­ty peo­ple to give presents!

I ent mar­ried but I had a child but I have an adopt­ed son and I have a wife–or she's say she's my wife when she ready. That's Camille Mo­hammed.

Af­ter pri­ma­ry school, I was sup­posed to go in Town school. But it didn't re­al­ly work out that way. I left school at 11 or 12, some­where around there, and went straight in­to the gar­den­ing busi­ness.

So­ca is num­ber one. We doesn't mind the jam-and-wine but, oh God, give we more than one or two words! When I come to jam, I jam, when I come to wine, I wine–that is the whole song!

I like free­dom: I'm a child of the for­est. Free­dom is the cool­ing of the mind, the mind and body at one, just re­laxed: that is true free­dom. And a lot of us don't have that.

Paramin ent have much things to do. Is ei­ther you gar­den­ing, you lim­ing by the bar, or you go­ing and hunt or fish. Cer­tain rocks, you have to have re­al bel­ly to reach, be­cause is straight down cliff. Re­al moun­tain-climber busi­ness. I go­ing there from small.

If you tak­ing care of crops, you tak­ing care of them every day of the year. Even if you do a lit­tle on a Sun­day, is that lit­tle less you will have to do on the Mon­day.

Crops don't come as good, don't taste as nice, on the flat. It spe­cial from the hill.

Vi­o­lence is every­where in Trinidad so vi­o­lence is in Paramin, too. But we don't have bur­glar-proof­ing. Most of the time, is out­side in­flu­ence that cause a car bat­tery to get thief. Paramin peo­ple does work for they mon­ey: it does feel more sat­is­fac­to­ry in your hand.

You clean out your brush, cut drain. We don't cut trees. As my grand­fa­ther say: I could work here, you could work here, your chil­dren' chil­dren could work here: once you do the right thing.

We take up the leaves from the trees, straw we call it, and scat­ter it back on to fer­tilise the land back over and keep the top­soil feed­ing. Most peo­ple nowa­days grow every­thing with chem­i­cals. It eas­i­er than to go in the for­est and make 50 bag of straw to cov­er your gar­den.

Trinida­di­ans will kill any snake. They ent busi­ness: once you name snake, you dead. Them ent study­ing if you is coral or map­pipre. Non-poi­so­nous snake get­ting same death. A worm? Kill it!

The ear­li­er you work, the eas­i­er you work. The bush does move eas­i­er. And you have more hours. Stop half-ten, when sun start to beat you, go and eat, look to come back out by half-three.

Every­body want gar­lic pork. But no­body want to mind the pig or peel the gar­lic.

It kin­da one-sided in Trinidad. If any­body could say dif­fer­ent, they ly­ing. The mon­ey stay­ing on one area. It trick­ling down, but is one drop by one drop.

The best thing about the job is sell­ing the sea­son­ing. This is where all your hard work pays off. The worst part is the prices for chem­i­cals. Half the mon­ey you make goes right back in­to the gar­den.

A Tri­ni is some­one who would work hard for what they want. But, if they could get it easy, they would take it so!

Trinidad is the sweet­est place in the world.

�2Read a longer ver­sion of this fea­ture at www.BCRaw.com