Immortalized in my poem, "Kikiriki" on All Saints' day:

   Nameless characters from our own unique histories can sometimes touch our lives in many ways. I am grateful for the memory of this gentleman, affectionately described by a local calypsonian as 'Mile-a-Minute' whom I remembered as a child growing up in Trinidad. I recall this hawker selling peanuts (kikiriki in Croatian) as he shuffled over and over his route until it got dark and he returned home. Here is a poem I created this summer in Krk, Croatia. Enjoy it today on the Feast of all saints (November 1st):

hunchbacked Creole
selling peanuts around the Savannah
in my island home
"Ki ki ri ki"
unknown word for English speakers
simply associated with a Trini hawker

Fifty years later on a visit to Krk,
island on the north of the Adriatic
i see him again
transformed into a Croat
"Ki ki ri ki!"  "Ki ki ri ki!" he shouts

how strange to think of that ole' Creole
selling peanuts by another name
"Ki ki" I called out, "Ki ki ri ki"
Some "kikiriki" for me in remembrance.     (c) RYM, 2017.

After reading my poem created this summer in Croatia, my friend Jean wrote me this note:

"I can remember the character you described in Trinidad as an oldish man, of Chinese origin, in an outfit of cotton cloth: trousers with little shape and a shirt with long, shapeless sleeves which doubtless kept him cool as he covered the distance (3 miles circumference) several times, perhaps finding new buyers when he stopped and/or heading off would-be thieves of his hard-won earnings or his as-yet-unsold wares! Hence his sobriquet "Mile-a-Minute". He may have by now joined his ancestors. May his soul rest in peace! As John Donne would say, "Rest of his bones and soul's delivery!"