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Around the World in Books / Trinidad
The Adventurous Life Of An Ambassador’s Wife
An expat spills the beans about her happy but often scary years as the trailing spouse of a globe-hopping diplomat
This is the 25th post in the “Around the World in Books” series that is reviewing 30 books about 30 countries in 30 days in March. Tomorrow: United States
On her second night in Trinidad, Brigid Keenan went to a dinner party at which the guests discussed an acquaintance who had been viciously attacked by an intruder with a cutlass. Keenan’s alarm grew as other facts emerged during the conversation, she writes in her sparkling memoir Diplomatic Baggage: Adventures of a Trailing Spouse (Hodder, 2005):
1. In Trinidad, “everyone has a cutlass; it’s like owning a penknife.”
2. Bars on windows didn’t deter criminals: “Oh, with modern American bolt cutters anyone can get through them in a trice,” she learned.
3. Alarm systems didn’t help, either: “The police won’t come because they don’t have enough vehicles; you have to go and collect them if you want them.”
That was in the early 1980s, and Keenan and her diplomat husband, Alan Waddams, an ambassador for the European Union…
