Interesting Stuff

Today I've been trawling through some videos and found what I think is some very interesting/funny stuff.


Have you ever seen somebody on the tube thoroughly into their music and wondered exactly what it is they're listening to, well apparently you're not the only one.



The Danes may have banned Marmite but they certainly know how to do a flash mob, this has got to be the without doubt the best one I have ever seen.



A different kind of music, these guys are French I think.....all I can say is unbelievable!



The good old U.S. of A, the leaders of the free world? Well only as free as they allow...



Now remembering what you just watched.........see if you agree with the sentiments of this next video.



......and finally something a little more light hearted......Ciao e Arrivaderci !!!!

Cooking Callaloo for Dinner

Ingredients


1 Large or 2 Small Tins of Callaloo
1 Can of Coconut Milk
1 Large or 2 Small Onions (Chopped)
5 or 6 Cloves of Garlic
Handful of Thyme Leaves
1/2 Pint of Chicken/Vegetable Stock
1 Large Scotch Bonnet Pepper

Method





Fry the chopped onions in a little olive oil until softened.

Add the cubed butternut squash and thyme leaves and fry for a few minutes.

Next add the crushed garlic cloves and dasheen/callaloo leaves and stir through, then add the stock.

Then add the coconut milk and whole scotch bonnet pepper to the pot and bring to the boil before reducing to a simmer. The pot should be simmered uncovered for about 30 - 35 minutes, until the pepper deflates and the sauce thickens. Add salt and black pepper to taste.

Finally the soup is blended with a hand blender or swizzle stick. If you want it hot leave the pepper in and blend it into the soup. If you want it milder remove the whole pepper, blend the soup and replace the pepper afterwards. 
Serve and enjoy.

Indo-Caribbean Identitiy

I would like to pose a question to you, but this question requires a little background information. So before I do firstly let me give you a little travelogue of one particular day I spent with my fiancée Melissa in Trinidad last month. 
On the advice of some friends, Melissa and I decided to do a tour of the Indian Caribbean sites in Trinidad. Having visited the Temple in the Sea in Waterloo on my very first visit to Trinidad in 2008. We bypassed this and instead started with the Indian Caribbean Museum, also located in Waterloo. This museum was founded in 2006, three years after Melissa left for London so was a new experience for both of us. The museum did feel a little like a work in progress still, even though it is 5 years old, the main focus being a collection of photographs acquired exclusively for the museum. They are very protective of their collection and rightly don't allow photography inside the museum, however unfortunately they haven't exploited being the sole copyright holder of this amazing collection by publishing them in a book. Which I would have loved to have purchased had it been available. Outside, at the edge of the car park they have built a replica Tapia house, which is effectively a mud hut. To understand the history of this type of structure I need to explain a little bit of background as to the history of East Indians in the West Indies.

Many people don't realise that although slavery was abolished in the British colonies with the Slavery Abolition Act 1833 effectively, in all but name, it continued in Trinidad right up until 1917 with East Indian Indentured labour. When slavery was abolished, former black African slaves justifiably very rarely decided to stay on and work on the sugar plantations where they had been captive. This left the British land owners with a real problem, they needed to find alternative sources of cheap labour, after a futile attempt to lure Europeans to the sweltering heat of the cane fields of Trinidad all eyes eventually turned towards another British colony, India. The journey from India took three months, with the first ship landing in 1845 the majority of these workers generally came from extreme poverty in the far north of India in Uttar Pradesh (although there were a smaller amount who came from the south). They came to work on the sugar cane and cocoa plantations and eventually returned a flagging industry back to prosperity. They were brought over on an Indentureship programme, which meant that they agreed that they had to do the job, any job, that they were allocated on arrival, for a minimum of 5 years. After that time they could sign up for another 5 years or return to India, living in barracks and working hard in the blistering heat for their board and food rations. It was a hard life and many initially decided to return to India. This posed a problem for the land owners as it was expensive to keep shipping people over from India and so in an effort to make staying in Trinidad more appealing they were eventually offered land grants as an incentive to stay. Many took up this offer and settled in their new home land and raised families, managing to maintain their unique cultural identity and bringing the spices of India to the culture and cuisine of Trinidad. Today according to the C.I.A. World Fact Book website Indian (South Asian) people make up the majority of the population at 40% with African coming in second at 37.5%. In Guyana this figure rises to 43.5% Indian. Many people of Indian origin in Trinidad embraced Christianity, as the generations with no direct links to India were born. However a great number maintained their spiritual identity and Hinduism is currently the second largest religion at 22.5% of the population of Trinidad after the Roman Catholics at 26%.

So to get back to the Tapia house this was effectively a mud hut, built in exactly the same way as had been done for generations in India. The indentured labourers built these on their newly acquired land after leaving the cramped barracks provided by the plantation owners.

The Tapia House

Inside The Tapia House

Hanuman Murthi (in background)

After our visit to the museum we continued our tour, stopping next at the Hanuman Murthi (statue) at the Hindu temple in Carapichaima. The statue stands at 85ft tall and is the largest Murthi of the Monkey God Hanuman outside of India. The Karya Siddhi Hanuman Murthi was installed by Avadhoota Dattapeetham Pontiff Sri Ganapathi Sachchidananda and is only bettered in terms of height by the 135ft tall statue at Paritala 240km from Hyderabad in Andhra Pradesh.

Hanuman Temple

The Lion House

The next stop of the day was  Chaguanas, to spend quite a bit of time hunting for The Lion House. The significance of the Lion House to the Indian Caribbean community is a literary one. A House for Mr Biswas is a book by V.S. Naipaul. Somewhat of an epic family saga, which features the ups and downs in the life of Mohun Biswas. His marriage and his constant struggles to escape from the suffocating Hanuman House and his in-laws, to finally build a house of his own and provide a place for his family to live. The descriptions in the book of Hanuman House are vivid and almost exactly describe The Lion House in Chaguanas. Apart from, that is, the Lions on the first floor balcony are replaced with monkeys. The Lion House is the ancestral home of the Capildeo family and was built between 1924 and 1926 by Pundit Capildeo who himself had been an indentured labourer who came to Trinidad from a small village via Benares in Uttar Pradesh. He worked at the Woodford Lodge Sugar Plantation in Chaguanas. Sir Vidiadhar Surajprasad Naipaul (V.S. Naipaul) is the grandson of Pundit Capildeo and stayed at the Lion House as a child which was thought to have been the inspiration for Hanuman House in the book.

The Lion House Inspiration for V.S. Naipaul's Hanuman House

So this is my question, with a majority population in 2 West Indian countries, internationally renowned religious sites, a world famous author and an ever present force in the West Indian cricket team. Why on every diversity and ethnicity form that I have ever come across in the UK, is there no option for Indo-Caribbean? It seems if you're of Indian descent in the Caribbean, and you come to Britain, that you will unfortunately forever be known as "Asian Other, please specify................................................"