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Pirates of the Caribbean
It was more detention than détente, our arrival on the Caribbean Island of Barbados. It may seem careless but many times on our arrival into foreign lands, particularly when staying with Fleur and Jade, we have had no idea of the actual address of where they live, instead, we have relied on them picking us up and this usually works. But not this time, the big bloke on counter number one in the arrivals hall at Barbados’s Grantley Adams Airport was having none of it and insisted on having a physical address before we could enter the country. Until then we would just have to wait with all of the drug dealers, gun runners and those detained caught attempting to enter the country illegally. We did not think this would be remedied easily, Fleur wasn’t due to pick us up until late because she was teaching her class how to surf (yes, part of the curriculum) and we had no idea of how to contact her in the interim. In Germany, fortunately, the workday was over and a desperate call to Fleur’s friend Thomas provided the relief we needed, our salvation in the form of a text message: Coral Drive number eight. Atlantic Shores. Christ church. We were freed.
Within five hours this was forgotten as we returned to Fleur’s apartment in one of the beaten-up mini-vans that continuously transport passengers backwards and forwards along the main roads throughout the island, in this case from St Lawrence Gap to Oistins. Eighteen passengers plus the driver and his offsider crushed into one small mini-van, tearing along country road with music pulsating so loud that we thought the van was being propelled by the throbbing bass alone. What an introduction, for $B1.50 (around $NZ1.20) passengers can travel the length of any route in the island, though at this stage we are not sure quite where they start and end, but we will learn.
We decided to dine out on our first night despite Fleur warning that the price of food in restaurants is almost prohibitive at up to $NZ50 for a main. That almost everything has to be imported makes commodities, including food, pretty expensive so we may be confined to a diet of fish and marijuana. Next day we discovered that even the price of supermarket items made us blanch, but there was little option but to grin and bear it. Notwithstanding that we came away from our first night relatively financially unscathed, future dining out may be confined to Friday fish fry-ups adjacent to the local fish market.
Barbados is an old British colony whose independence was only gained in 1966. The local inhabitants are called Bajan (rhymes with Asian) and only 4 percent of the population is white, but utterly British it is. English is the official language, they drive on the left hand side of the road and ten of its districts are named after saints with one of the other two being Christ church. The street names seem to be predominantly English in origin and the judicial and governance systems are all British and conservative by comparison to most of its Caribbean neighbours, particularly those with a French or Dutch colonial history. We got told off for not sitting at a park bench correctly.
The local newspaper, the Daily Nation, provided an interesting insight into an industrial show down between the Barbados Workers Union and LIME, the island’s telecommunication equivalent of Telecom. It appears that threatened strike action by workers over compulsory redundancies may be averted by negotiations under the chairmanship of prime minister, David Thompson. Rather a quaint but pleasing notion that a prime minister would become personally involved in trying to resolve an industrial dispute. It may be more than twenty years since anything similar has happened in New Zealand.
But if amusement was to be derived from the newspaper, the family assisted. A completely incomprehensible letter to the editor thanked God for the agricultural produce of St Andrew and son of the soil, Ryan Braithwaite. This apparently humble and self-inspired gentleman had appealed against the death sentence imposed by the international court of fallacy and delivered justice from Berlin on the behalf of his county - whatever any of that means. But we did learn that Ryan won the gold medal, the first ever for a Bajan, in the 110 metre hurdles at the recent world athletics championship and in whose honour a wall at the end of Church Gap has been decorated with a mural.
Not appearing quite so distinguished however was Krystal Braithwaite who has been ordered by a local magistrate to live in peace with her neighbour, Zelma Moore. In a case of neighbour-rage, Ms Moore waved a knife in Braithwaite’s face after earlier coming at her with a cleaver following finding “stuff” on her clothes drying on the line and on some of her food. Call us snobs, but we are only calling on cousin Ryan this visit.
While it may be that this is an island which resembles a small British nation, there is no escaping that the region is the home of reggae and Rastafarianism. Perched high up in a tree between Oistins town and home we heard and then spied a young Rasta man singing at the top of his voice. Normally you would describe him as being out of his tree, but no, he was wedged firmly between the branches.