Tanti at de Oval

Paul Keens- Douglas is a Trinidadian writer and performer focused on Eastern Caribbean vernacular poetry, story-telling, dramatic presentations and advertising. He is a self -published author, founder/producer of the Tim Tim Story telling Show and Carnival Talk Text, a former Creative Director with McCann Erickson and an active Rotarian of the Association of Black Storytellers of America. His works have been feathered internationally on BBC, Canadian and American radio and television.

The piece Tanti at de Oval was first published in 1992 and written with the intent to give readers a taste of Caribbean life and culture at that time. It describes the local parlance and dialect of the people to express them, most times verbally. The narrative is in first person with the author giving an overview of his embarrassment and public shaming with his time spent with his aunt Tanti Merle to his wife. He narrates his aunt’s antics at her first visit to the Queen’s Park Oval to watch a cricket match between Combined Islands versus Trinidad.

The introduction starts off with him narrating about going to collect his aunt to go the match but how she is adamant to go in any car except for a red car to which the narrator retorts he feels she did obeah (black magic) implying she wants Trinidad to lose. After the trouble of going to get a car and Tanti Merle boldly stepping off in the pavement to stop the car and the narrator’s embarrassment as well as having to carry her basket of food which she bring along with her. What is more embarrassing for him is having people asking him what he is selling because they think he is a food vendor, which is reminiscent of vendors selling food on the street or walking around selling food and is part of the culture and lifestyle. His aunt’s antics really begin in the car when she tells the taxi driver to change the radio to Pickett as she seemed displeased with the reggae music the taxi was playing. The author had no problem until she starts...