Living in Trinidad's shadow...

A Tobago moment: a tranquil beach, a gentle breeze, and the warmth of the Caribbean sun.

Tobago lives in the shadow of its big sister, Trinidad, and the two make an unlikely pair - the latter populous, dynamic, multifarious, the former (with all due respect) a Caribbean backwater. (The partnership was, in fact, forced on Tobago by the British at the end of the last century, to rescue the island from bankruptcy.)

Trinidad has more than a million inhabitants, and their origins lie in all corners of the world; 93 percent of the 50,000 Tobagonians are of African ancestry. Trinidad has oil; Tobago a trickle of the oil's proceeds. Trinidad is 16 times larger than Tobago. Trinidad rather looks down on tourism; Tobago thrives on tourists. Trinidad's attitude is that Tobago is a good place for a holiday; Tobago's attitude is that Trinidad is a good place to get yourself mugged (though Port of Spain is where Tobagonians have to go to get anything done). The words of the great calypsonian Shadow, who grew up on Tobago before moving to Trinidad, sum up the difference.

Tobago is the right kind of place to plant peas - something like the Windward Islands 30 years ago, a place of lush green hills populated by devout descendants of slaves, whose lives are delineated by such events as big catches, a cherry tree coming into fruit in the forest, and boisterous Saturday or Sunday services (depending on sect).

Yet in some intangible way, Trinidad's sophistication has rubbed off on Tobago. The knowledge that a cosmopolitan city is part of their national possession makes a difference. The fact that they stand on an equal footing with a big and sometimes prosperous island bestows a confidence that a solitary outpost simply can't have.