Travel Blog

One of the joys of living in the United States is that sometimes you don’t have to leave town to travel.

Saturday evening we drove to the Broward County Convention Center for the celebration of Diwali. We ate dosas and sweets while admiring the county’s most colorfully dressed residents. Then, at the other end of the hall, we took seats in front of the stage, where groups of dancers added movement to the riot of colors. They looked like high school students (who else has that much energy?) and they mixed the traditional with the contemporary, sometimes in the same routine. A few groups added a social message, and I admired the way they applied ethnic customs to modern-day problems. I wondered how many future valedictorians we were watching.

Sunday evening we drove to the neighborhood on the other side of the river where, every weekend, a Brazilian couple cooks a dinner for 60 in their backyard. Normally you have to reserve a year in advance, but this dinner was a fundraiser – for the new Dr. Sistrunk Scholarship at Broward College – and we had made our reservations a few months ago. Over a dozen picnic tables were scattered about the yard. Children swayed in swings; occasionally a strong adult would climb the high rope and ring the bell at the top. Chickens strutted between the tables, a bit like at Blue Heaven in Key West. Brazilian music played softly in the background. Occasionally a little train would come buy, carrying more children and driven by the owner, while his wife added the final foods to the open-air kitchen. There were pots of several kinds of meat, including sausage, a salad with manioc flour dusting the top, a potato salad sprinkled with potato sticks, stewed okra, boiled corn on the cob, collard greens, beans and rice, sautéed fish, and cheese bread – all in huge quantities. When darkness fell, a crescent moon appeared between the fronds of a palm.