Queen’s Park Savannah January 6
On weekdays, egrets outnumber people on the Queen’s Park Savannah, the city’s largest open space, so I circle the great park as part of the human minority. A century ago, this was the Commons, where any resident could pasture a milk cow, but now the grass must be cut with machines. Headlines were made recently when a couple of American tourists were mugged here at knifepoint in the middle of the day. Since then, the Princess Caribbean Crucero has temporarily limited passenger visits ashore.
With a circumference of 3.5 km, the Savannah is heralded as the largest round-about in the world, as if this is somehow a coveted title. The Long Circular Road, a name in search of respect, would steal the Savannah’s limelight simply by making itself a one-way loop; but, minus that single direction, Queen’s Park Savannah is reigning champion. I want to share in the glory, so I park in front of the zoo and start walking, clockwise, along the famous rotary.
I dress like a homeless tourist so as not to attract attention, but also because it suits my sartorial taste. It seems to be working—the egrets are ignoring me. Sturdy benches line the wide sidewalk, shaded by giant Silk Cotton. There is a handful of joggers on the vast plain. Later in the afternoon, footballers will drill, but not now—it would be foolish to train during lunchtime. Coconut venders line the Maraval Road like a train of royal coaches. The carriages are made to resemble a Cinderella fantasy, but the pink and powder blue paints cover wrought-iron mesh, protecting the venders’ scrawny nuts.
Near the Savannah’s grandstands is Coney Island, which opens only on weekends, I think. Coney Island POS does have the greasy haggard feel of old New York amusement parks, and it highlights Trinidad’s love affair with NYC, home to the island’s largest expat community in America. In the States, they are commonly mistaken for Jamaicans and most conveniently lumped into the generic Islander category, along with Hamilton, Walcott, and Poitier.
Across the street is a row of vintage Victorian homes, with panel gables and gingerbread rooftops, dating from 1900-1917, at the sunset of the Gilded Age. Although the imperialists are long gone, most of these historic buildings from the heyday of opulence are closed to the public and rest in various stages of decline. Whitehall, housing the prime minister’s office, is surrounded by scaffolds and tarps, leaving the country’s leader to conduct state business next to the botanical garden.
Before the government took over Whitehall in 1950’s, the US commandeered the mansion as its central command headquarters. To find the American presence today on the Savannah, look for the ugly fortified embassy, guarded by an unarmed Trini security detail. But you will not find the Americans present today, not until President Rumpty Dump pays the bills to reopen government.
The biggest mansions are referred to as the Magnificent Seven, but there is more like a Dirty Dozen of them, including: Haye’s Court (home to the Anglican Archbishop Reginald Rogerstocking—I really do not know the man’s name), the Boissiere “Gingerbread“ House, George Brown’s House, the Knowsley “Doll’s“ House, and, most whimsical of all, the Killarney House, sitting on the only corner of the Long Circular Road. Made to resemble Balmoral Castle in miniature, as commissioned by the the coco baron Heinz Stollmeyer (I don’t know his true first name), Killarney captures the essence of ethnic absurdities: “A German built a bit of an untypical Scottish castle in Trinidad and called it by an Irish name. He must have been by that time a Trinidadian, because only Trinidadians do these things.“
The most well-kept and well-used structure on the Savannah is the stately brick campus of Queen’s Royal College, Trinidad’s Oxford. Some alumni have argued for a name-change, Federal instead of Royal, but then a sticky situation emerges, should Elizabeth die, as Queen becomes King, and QRC becomes KFC. This would indeed be the first chicken joint of the Germanic Renaissance style, certainly in the West Indies, and perhaps the whole world. Ja! Take that, Mr. Round-About Man!