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Houses and malls in the Trinidadian capital Port of Spain are festively decorated and the steelpan drums and maracas of local parang carols drift from radios and television sets.

Growing up in Trinidad to a musical family, Etienne Charles was exposed to three song traditions around Christmastime: the singing of church hymns, calypsos and parang, Venezuelan folk songs about the nativity sung in Spanish.

We hired a guide who led us up and down a sodden trail, a foot-long blade called a parang hanging from a scabbard at his hip.

“It would take strong men with parangs, and I am only a weak girl with a kris.”

The friendly Shom Peṅ are energetic collectors of rattan, which they trade with the Nicobarese, and so obtain garments, beads, knives, parangs, axes, and tobacco, which is smoked in the form of cigarettes.