You don't make friends with salads.

The advantage of being a vegetarian in Trinidad is that no one visits you for lunch. Or dinner. Or for any festival which involves food. In essence, no one visits at all. The disadvantage is everyone is convinced you have a secret affair with The Colonel and incessantly try to tempt you with the cloying odour of flesh that has been deep fried in recycled oil. Yummy!

On revealing your diet choice to the average Trinidadian, more often than not you will be greeted with the following: - “Wait nah, you doh eat meat?! Well da’s haf yuh life gone dey aready! I cyar eat by you!” As if you ever invited them in the first place.

I honestly believe that most Trinis are incapable of understanding the concept of a meatless diet. Our seeming national obsession with wild meat is legendary, if sometimes disturbing. If I had $10.00 for every person who dismissed my eating habits with “allyuh young people and allyuh fashions” and “Doh worry, yuh go grow outta dat jes now.” I’d be able to quit my job and bitch full time. It doesn’t bother me though – sticks and stones may break my bones, but whips and chains excite me!

So we’re in the season of Lent and every Christian worth his unleavened bread is on the hunt for Nemo and friends, as if meat is the only thing worth sacrificing. How many people do you know who give up sex with the horner (wo)man? I swear the collective I.Q. of the office plummeted when I was asked the ultimate question: “So since you’re vegetarian you don’t really have anything to give up for Lent, do you?” Ironically, at that point I was trying to resurrect my New Year’s Resolution of renouncing cursing. It would seem that I stand a better chance of winning the Lotto; and I don’t even play…

Personally, I have nothing against meat eaters. I wouldn’t do it, but then again I wouldn’t do a lot of things. Listen: live and let live, eat or be eaten, it’s all good to me. Besides, if it’s a matter of my survival, I can’t say I would remain on my high horse and scornfully decline any drumsticks, flanks, ribs or - God forbid – fingers that may come my way.

See, I don’t eat meat because I think it’s wrong to kill animals for food; heck, my love of dairy products would incite the ire of even the most pacifist vegans. As to the health benefits…the water retention caused by my saturating just about anything that goes into my mouth with salt has me resembling Keiko’s younger cousin. Essentially I’m vegetarian because I can be. It’s all a matter of choice – the same way I can choose to pursue tertiary level education, choose who to marry and when (if at all), choose to work, and choose which god to worship among other things. I am grateful to belong to a society that in spite of its shortcomings, doesn’t deny me basic rights because I’m female or black or unmarried or whatever, and I have every intention of protecting my rights of choice regardless of those who would try to convince me that my selections are wrong. This is the same reason why I don’t go around condemning people’s decisions to adhere to a meat based diet. Hey if I can choose, so can they. Once they don't choose to barbeque my dogs...