The Soucouyant (Sukuya), also called Old Hag, is a supernatural being who has made a pact with the devil to be able to change herself into all kinds of different forms. At night she sheds her human skin and changes into a ball of fire or any kind of animal and casts spells on people to turn them into animals also, but she has to slip back into that skin before dawn breaks and the cock crows, otherwise she will not be able to get back into it. So it may happen, that, when people suspect that an old woman neighbour of theirs is, in fact, a soucouyant, they may trick her by going to her house at night and destroying the skin she left behind by putting salt on it so that it will shrink and she will not be able to get back into it and thus die. In Trinidad, if somebody walks around with a "hicky" (soukie) on his neck, he may get remarks from his friends like: " Eh, Eh, Soucoyant suck yuh or wha ? "

The universe speaks in many languages, but only one voice.
The language is not Narn, or Human, or Centauri, or Gaim or Minbari
It speaks in the language of hope
It speaks in the language of trust
It speaks in the language of strength and the language of compassion
It is the language of the heart and the language of the soul.
But always it is the same voice
It is the voice of our ancestors, speaking through us,
And the voice of our inheritors, waiting to be born
It is the small, still voice that says
We are one
No matter the blood
No matter the skin
No matter the world
No matter the star:
We are one
No matter the pain
No matter the darkness
No matter the loss
No matter the fear
We are one
Here, gathered together in common cause, we agree to recognize this
singular truth and this singular rule:
That we must be kind to one another
Because each voice enriches us and ennobles us and each voice lost
diminishes us.
We are the voice of the Universe, the soul of creation, the fire
that will light the way to a better future.
We are one.

Those who eat the cascadura will, the native legend says,
Wheresoever they may wander, end in Trinidad their days.
And this lovely fragrant island, with its forest hills sublime,
Well might be the smiling Eden pictured in the Book divine.
Cocoa woods with scarlet glory of the stately Immortelles,
Waterfalls and fertile valleys, precipices, fairy dells,
Rills and rivers, green savannahs, fruits and flowers and odours rich,
Waving sugar cane plantations and the wondrous lake of pitch.
Oh! the Bocas at the daybreak – how can one describe that scene!
Or the little emerald islands with the sapphire sea between!
Matchless country of Iere, fairer none could ever wish.
Can you wonder at the legend of the cascadura fish?

No dictator, no invader can hold an imprisoned population by force of arms forever.
There is no greater power in the universe than the need for freedom.
Against that power tyrants and dictators cannot stand. 
Though it take a thousand years, we will be free.

1,000 years from now there will be no guys and no girls, just wankers. Sounds great to me.

 You see if you ask me we're heterosexual by default, not by decision. It's just a question of who you fancy. It's all about aesthetics and it's fuck all to do with morality.

LESSONS IN LIMING ON THE COCONUT ROAD, TRINIDAD

It’s been called the art of doing nothing, socially.  In the New Oxford American Dictionary, a  Trinidadian “lime” is defined as doing anything, anywhere in company in a relaxing way.  Others would call it “hanging out”. 

Whatever you call it, liming is way of life on the islands of Trinidad and Tobago.
It’s just the sort of thing that an A-type in search of travel bliss ought to experience.   After all, this love of leisure must be one of the reasons the country ranks as the happiest in the Caribbean, according to the 2015 World Happiness Report.
When you visit Trinidad and Tobago, as I did recently, you are bound to receive a lesson in liming.

Step 1:  Get Together

This is the number one prerequisite for a lime.  You can’t sit on the sidelines with a case of lime envy.  It’s an inherently social and participatory activity.
So I joined up with some local friends in Arima for a drive to the unspoiled beaches of Mayaro on Trinidad’s east coast.
We had company, a car, an endless music play list, and no particular plan.

Step 2:  Stop at the Rum Shop

 

 

It will come as no surprise that cold beverages are a common component of a good lime (non-alcoholic for our driver).   A “rum shop” is basically a bar, except perhaps, a little more grassroots in style.  There are endless rum shops almost anywhere, but it’s hard to imagine one that is more classic than the Original First and Last Bar in Manzanilla.

Step 3:  Enjoy the View

 

After our first stop, our road trip took us along the coast on the Manzanilla Mayaro Road.  It’s also known as the “Coconut Road” because it’s lined for miles with windswept coconut palms.  This used to be coconut plantation country.  Now, it’s a soothing, gorgeous drive through the trees.
Then there was this view.  On one side of the road, the spot where the Nariva River meets the Atlantic Ocean, the water swirling as currents and tides mingle.  On the other, a mangrove, integral as a spawning ground for fish and for the protection of the coastline.
Well, naturally, we had to stop, take it in and appreciate its beauty for awhile.

Step 4: Hit the Beach

 

You know how in movies and travel brochures, you’ll see an endless stretch of beach, flanked by swaying palm trees and rolling waves, with virtually no one there?  That’s what you’ll see at Mayaro Beach, the longest beach in Trinidad at 15 kilometres (9 miles). It’s a perfect place for long, aimless walks, or just lounging.

Mayaro retains the character of a quiet fishing village, even though it is also home to off-shore oil workers.  Entirely lacking in touristy pretensions, there are a number of small hotels, guest houses and rental properties available. 
While there are life-guarded areas designated for swimming, it’s important to be careful of the riptides.   Also, in the early months of the year, Portuguese Man O’War are propelled toward the beach with the currents.  They’re fascinating creatures, as alluring as they are dangerous.

Step 5:  Share Some Food

 

The local food in Trinidad draws upon the culinary traditions of the island’s many ethic groups, with influences from Africa, India, Spain, France, China and Britain..  For a late lunch, we gathered around a small table at a local roti shop in Mayaro.  Roti is a hefty flour wrap, often coated with ground split peas, and filled with curried vegetables or meat.  It’s the kind of food that’s both tasty and fills you up with contentment.

Step 6:  Take It Easy

To a certain extent, a lime goes where the whim takes you.  We ended up making another stop at the beach, certainly a blissful place in my books.  We talked, we wandered, we took photos.  We made footprints in the sand where no one else had walked that day.

Liming Lessons:

Here’s what I learned about the art of the lime in my short visit.  Unlike a Seinfeld episode, it isn’t really about nothing.  It’s about enjoying each others’ company. It’s about taking time for good conversation, laughter, food and music.  At its core, it’s about friendship.
I’m sure my Trinidadian friends would say that liming isn’t something you study or analyze.  It just happens.  Happily

13 PROBLEMS WITH PORK
1) A pig is a real garbage gut. It will eat anything including urine, excrement, dirt, decaying animal flesh, maggots, or decaying vegetables. They will even eat the cancerous growths off other pigs or animals.

2) The meat and fat of a pig absorbs toxins like a sponge. Their meat can be 30 times more toxic than beef or venison.
3) When eating beef or venison, it takes 8 to 9 hours to digest the meat so what little toxins are in the meat are slowly put into our system and can be filtered by the liver. But when pork is eaten, it takes only 4 hours to digest the meat. We thus get a much higher level of toxins within a shorter time.
4) Unlike other mammals, a pig does not sweat or perspire. Perspiration is a means by which toxins are removed from the body. Since a pig does not sweat, the toxins remain within its body and in the meat.
5) Pigs and swine are so poisonous that you can hardly kill them with strychnine or other poisons.
6) Farmers will often pen up pigs within a rattlesnake nest because the pigs will eat the snakes, and if bitten they will not be harmed by the venom.
7) When a pig is butchered, worms and insects take to its flesh sooner and faster than to other animal's flesh. In a few days the swine flesh is full of worms.
Swine and pigs have over a dozen parasites within them, such as tapeworms, flukes, worms, and trichinae. There is no safe temperature at which pork can be cooked to ensure that all these parasites, their cysts, and eggs will be killed.
9) Pig meat has twice as much fat as beef. A 3 oz T bone steak contains 8.5 grams of fat; a 3 oz pork chop contains 18 grams of fat. A 3 oz beef rib has 11.1 grams of fat; a 3 oz pork spare rib has 23.2 grams of fat.
10) Cows have a complex digestive system, having four stomachs. It thus takes over 24 hours to digest their vegetarian diet causing its food to be purified of toxins. In contrast, the swine's one stomach takes only about 4 hours to digest its foul diet, turning its toxic food into flesh.
11) The swine carries about 30 diseases which can be easily passed to humans. This is why God commanded that we are not even to touch their carcase (Leviticus 11:8).
12) The trichinae worm of the swine is microscopically small, and once ingested can lodge itself in our intestines, muscles, spinal cord or the brain. This results in the disease trichinosis. The symptoms are sometimes lacking, but when present they are mistaken for other diseases, such as typhoid, arthritis, rheumatism, gastritis, MS, meningitis, gall bladder trouble, or acute alcoholism.
13) The pig is so poisonous and filthy, that nature had to prepare him a sewer line or canal running down each leg with an outlet in the bottom of the foot. Out of this hole oozes pus and filth his body cannot pass into its system fast enough. Some of this pus gets into the meat of the