Shereen Ali

Sun­ny skies and calm blue sea formed a beau­ti­ful back­drop for the re­cent Rox­bor­ough Seafood Fes­ti­val which took place on Sun­day Ju­ly 19 be­side the Rox­bor­ough Fish Mar­ket in Rox­bor­ough, To­ba­go.

With ster­ling con­tri­bu­tions from the Rox­bor­ough Po­lice Youth club which co­or­di­nat­ed the event, the fes­ti­val was a re­laxed af­fair last­ing the whole day, start­ing from sales of break­fast at 7.30 am and con­tin­u­ing in­to the evening with a vil­lage con­cert at 5 pm and a Bay Queen show, won by Destynee Cor­bie of New Street.

There were fun con­tests sprin­kled through­out the day, in­clud­ing a spearfish­ing con­test won by Den­nis George, and a bay-mouth fish­ing con­test won by Joseph Bas­combe. The seafood fes­ti­val was part of on­go­ing To­ba­go Her­itage Fes­ti­val ac­tiv­i­ties which con­tin­ue un­til Au­gust 1.

At the fes­ti­val site, white laugh­ing gulls with black heads reeled over­head, joined by high fly­ing frigate birds in a blue, blue sky, while lit­tle boys played and swam in the bay, com­plete­ly at home in the wa­ter.Fif­teen fish­ing boats were moored qui­et­ly in the bay, their own­ers tak­ing some time off to en­joy the day. With­out the fish­er­men, of course, there would be no seafood to have a fes­ti­val about.

One fish­er­man, Niron Al­leyne, 33 years old, spoke a lit­tle about his job to the T&T Guardian while help­ing his friends at the Old Fish De­pot pre­pare a huge mound of ground pro­vi­sions and fresh fish for their own seafood fish broth feast lat­er on. A mas­sive queen-sized pot was be­side him, on stand­by for the cook­ing.

"I am from Rox­bor­ough, and start­ed fish­ing as a boy. So all these years, I've been around here, do­ing this. About 30 to 40 peo­ple are fish­er­men in Rox­bor­ough. This here is the main fish­ing de­pot, so if you caught fish five miles away from here–East or North–you still have to come here to sell your fish.

"We leave here 4 o'clock some­times, to go fish­ing; the fish­eries (build­ing) clos­es 7 in the night, but we could come in lat­er than that and save our fish if we have our own deep freeze in our boats. Fish­er­men can choose to fish when­ev­er they want to."Al­leyne com­ment­ed on a de­cline in fish stocks:

"The fish­ing here has eased up...It has got­ten worse in the last five years or less...Since they drilling the oil (or gas), we nev­er catch no king­fish here. And king­fish was the most fa­mous fish around here. But we on­ly catch­ing scav­enger fish now...dol­phin, cav­al­li, shark and these things...We not ketch­ing the choice fish like snap­per and grouper and these things any more.

"I is a man with three boat in the wa­ter and it slow­ing down my process. I buy boat and give brethrens to fish in, I don't have to go out there. But when thems ketch noth­ing, that comes out of my pock­et and I have to pay the work­ers, pay my in­stall­ments and buy back my fu­el, for them to go an­oth­er day, but I nev­er know when the fish­ery will pull, so I have to be buy­ing gas and keep­ing them go­ing every day."

Like most en­ter­pris­ing To­bag­o­ni­ans, Al­leyne does sev­er­al jobs, in­clud­ing "fish­ing, gar­den­ing, mind­ing an­i­mals–pig, sheep and goat."Al­leyne says the Rox­bor­ough Seafood Fes­ti­val is a good thing: "It is show­ing us what our fore­par­ents used to do be­fore."

Two Rox­bor­ough cit­i­zens were ho­n­oured at the fes­ti­val for their con­tri­bu­tions: Carl­ton Lin­dow (posthu­mous­ly) for his con­tri­bu­tions to lo­cal boat con­struc­tion and the Rox­bor­ough Re­gat­ta, and Noah Her­cules for his ded­i­ca­tion to fish­ing, boat­build­ing and the com­mu­ni­ty.

At the fes­ti­val grounds, be­tween the small Old Fish De­pot and the big­ger, more mod­ern Rox­bor­ough Fish Mar­ket, mu­sic in­clud­ing old time ca­lyp­so, tra­di­tion­al lo­cal folk songs, African chants and par­ty so­ca filled the air.Two large white tents pro­vid­ed shade for seat­ing ar­eas open to the sea breeze. One tent faced a small stage for the con­cert lat­er on, while the oth­er tent was the cen­tre of the food.

Many kinds of lo­cal seafood were on sale: fish souse, pro­vi­sion (yam, dasheen, cas­sa­va, green ba­nana, plan­tain) with your choice of conch, shrimps or cur­ry crab.

Pa­trons could al­so opt for bread­fruit oil­down with fish, dasheen-bush cookup with rice and salt­fish, or stewed fish in co­conut sauce. The smell of fresh­ly-baked whole­wheat sweet­bread filled the air, as on a lit­tle side ta­ble there was bread as well as pone, payme, co­conut tarts, and a whole range of man­go and pom­me­cythere chows on of­fer.

Just out­side, pop­u­lar home-made ice cream mak­er in To­ba­go, Miss P's, of­fered ice cream in sev­er­al flavours: Guin­ness, choco­late, cook­ies & cream, co­conut ba­nana, and even a flavour of unique bha­gi ice cream!

Rep­re­sen­ta­tives from the To­ba­go Hos­pi­tal­i­ty Tourism In­sti­tute (THTI) were on site to judge the best seafood on sale, with top place go­ing to the de­li­cious conch cooked by Jeanette Jack. An­nette Lewis placed sec­ond with her seafood souse, while Sharon Bap­tiste placed third for her tasty bread­fruit oil­down.

One of the three culi­nary judges was Mar­cus Joseph, who said: "This is my first year at the Seafood Fes­ti­val. I re­cent­ly start­ed as a lead lec­tur­er at the To­ba­go Hos­pi­tal­i­ty and Tourism In­sti­tute (THTI). I re­lo­cat­ed from At­lanta, Geor­gia af­ter 32 years, and ar­rived in To­ba­go this April. I am orig­i­nal­ly from Trinidad, with To­ba­go her­itage–my moth­er is from To­ba­go."

As lead lec­tur­er, Joseph said he is in charge of all the culi­nary pro­grammes at the school. The THTI is the on­ly in­dige­nous culi­nary school in To­ba­go.What did Joseph think of the Rox­bor­ough Seafood Fes­ti­val?

"I'm al­ways im­pressed with in­dige­nous fes­ti­vals. I know most of the vil­lagers are here. It's a fun-filled day. And it re­al­ly has to do about her­itage–some of the songs I heard, I hadn't heard them be­fore, like the heel and toe mu­sic. I'm im­pressed with the fes­ti­val."What does Joseph think about To­ba­go's in­dige­nous cook­ing tra­di­tions, as a chef and a lec­tur­er?

"I vis­it­ed Africa, and you get the same type of foods in To­ba­go as in north­ern and west Africa. The foods are sim­i­lar, just dif­fer­ent names. The T&T cul­ture is spiced with East In­di­an, French, and a lit­tle bit of every­thing, a re­al callaloo."To­day I had the best conch I ever tast­ed, it was so very tasty; al­so the bread­fruit was like some­thing out of this world."

"The food brought back mem­o­ries. Now you find a lot of just-come chefs who think that they know every­thing; but the old peo­ple put them to task with their food. So the food here brought back a lot of good, old time mem­o­ries."