A Trinidadian Friendship: Derek Walcott and Peter Doig

The village of Paramin, in Trinidad’s high northern mountains, is a scattering of humble homes. Known for the peppers and thyme its farmers grow on hillside plots, the village is reachable only by vertiginous roads plied by old Land Rovers that serve locals as communal taxis. Trinidad is an island known for its intertwined histories—it changed hands between the British, French, and Spanish, and has more than a million residents who boast roots in India or Africa or both—and Paramin is especially so. Many of the area’s people descend from slaves who fled cocoa plantations at the mountains’ feet, and older residents still speak a French Creole. Each year, during Trinidad’s famous carnival, the sons of these elders cover themselves in blue paint and fasten demons’ horns to their heads. The “blue devils” then gather at the town’s crossroads, spitting fake blood, to terrify the children of their neighbors, or of visitors from the island’s nearby capital of Port of Spain.