Caribbean Christmas!

Merry Christmas from the Caribbean!!  Christmas in the Caribbean is a big deal.  Huge.  The festive drive of North American consumerism has nothing on the tradition of Caribbean holiday enthusiasm.  Christmas carols began playing on the radio in the middle of October.  And it wasn’t just that were played on radio stations, people actually intentionally tune in to listen.  And by people, I mean everyone.  I am talking about young guys and burly men blaring ‘Silent Night’ from their car stereos and singing along to Mariah Carey’s ‘All I Want For Christmas’.     

While shopping is the focus of North American Christmas preparations, here the holiday season is synonymous with intensive cleaning.  Drapes are washed, floors are polished, nooks are dusted and crannies are swept.  On the weekends, everyone is out putting a fresh coat of paint on their fences and trim.  It is their version of ‘spring cleaning’.   The house must be spic and span inside and out, ready for the unannounced guests.  Christmas, you see, is the only time of the year where dropping in on someone completely unannounced is acceptable, and moreover, is expected.  Fruit cake, coconut water and malt must readily be on hand to serve visiting friends, family and neighbours.  They are, unfortunately, very big on fruit cake here.   I have had to repeatedly pretend to like the stuff.  I had one piece which was relatively tolerable, but I think that was only because it made me half drunk – the baker had a heavy hand when it came to spicing it with rum or wine or whatever it is you put in fruit cake. 

 My fellow interns in Barbados tell me it is much the same there – which I will soon be able to verify for myself.  I had originally intended to spend Christmas here in St. Kitts by myself.  I didn’t have the funds to fly home to Canada, or anywhere really, and I had braced myself for being alone.  I was mentally and emotionally prepared.  Until, that is, I was struck with the horrible news.  News that at any other time would be heavenly, that would make all my friends jealous, and might incite me to do the Dance of Joy:  my work would, for all intents and purposes, be closed for three weeks over the holidays.  I was seriously doubting the possibility of retaining my sanity during three weeks alone during the holiday season, but, to my great fortune, I had little Christmas elves working on my behalf.  There was a regional meeting scheduled at the headquarters in Bridgetown for the week before Christmas, so my fellow interns in Barbados, along with one of their kindly supervisors, suggested to the big boss that I should attend, and then I could stay on and spend Christmas with them.  So here I am, in the St. Kitts airport, suitably early, as I have been warned that the airline has an unpredictable sense of time.    

The major airline that services the Caribbean islands is called LIAT – which locals claim stands for “Leave Island Any Time.”  It is notorious for leaving late or early, but rarely as scheduled.  The airport is small, as would be expected for a small island, with only 5 check-in desks; one for LIAT and the other four for American Airlines, Delta, US Airways and British Airways.  The Caribbean provider stands out from a mile away (or, in the  case of this airport, 20 metres away) - its desk and dividers are draped in festive red and gold Christmas decorations.    The Caribbean holiday spirit putting the Rest to shame yet again. 

The exact plans for my tropical intern Christmas are not set as yet, but I am crossing my fingers for sunshine, because what could say ‘Yuletide’ more than a beach bbq?  Hell, it says tide right there in it.   So to all of you, I send my warm wishes from the Caribbean (literally and figuratively) for a holiday full of joy and love! Enjoy the snow while I enjoy the sand!       

P.S   I just went to the bathroom in the airport and I had to share this as yet another example of the religiosity of this island:

Taped to the inside of the bathroom door was a hand-written sign that said, “Delight thyself in the lord and he shall give thee the desires of thine heart. “
Thing is, when I first opened the door to the bathroom, I couldn’t located the light switch.  After a moment of searching I noticed the sign on the door, except the curvature of the person’s writing led me to read it as, “Delight thyself in the cord and he shall give thee the desires of thine heart.”  So what did I do?  I started looking around for a cord that would turn on the bulb and give me the light I desired.   I thought it was just really poetic instructions.   

P.P.S   I wrote this blog almost 6 hours ago when I was sitting in the St. Kitts airport, I thought I’d post it when I got to an internet connection.  I am currently still sitting in the St. Kitts airport.  I think I jinxed myself.

Remember how I said LIAT Airlines stands for Leave Island Any Time – well, this time, “Any Time” seems to be the next day.  After 6 hours waiting, they cancelled our flight to Barbados.  But, in two hours (10pm) they will fly us 20 minutes to Antigua where we then can get a flight to Barbados….at 5am.  Not to worry - they will put us up in a hotel for the night.  However, said night in said hotel will be undoubtedly be truncated (that’s my new favourite word, by the way) after clearing immigration, collecting bags and heading to the hotel.  I estimate about 3 hours’ sleep then back to the airport to check in.  But the worst part is that these small island airports don’t have any food.  They have a tiny little canteen here with the obligatory airport array of sugary drinks, canned beer and dried-our bagels, but that closed hours ago.  The vending machine sits unaccountably empty – taunting me with the possibilities of what ‘A5’ could have given me for a measly $1.25. 
 

I have been to Antigua’s airport and am certain their canteen will also be closed, and I seriously doubt that the hotel we will be put up in will have food available at midnight on a Sunday.  Oh, the joys of travel.  However, given that I was stuck in Amsterdam for 8 days this past spring, due to the infamous, unpronounceable Icelandic volcano, I guess this is comparatively nothing.  But in Amsterdam their vending machines were stocked.  They even sold waffles and ice cream in the vending machines!  (Not together, it wasn’t like a waffle topped with ice cream and strawberries, I mean separately).  The upside is that it will be a sunrise flight.  And the flight is gorgeous.   On my way from Barbados to St. Kitts in September I couldn’t even count the number of rainbows we flew through.  It was magical.    So here is to rainbows –and the hopes of a large coffee and a bagel (preferably fresh) on the other side!         

P.P.P.S - I was right.  We checked in after midnight.  I fell asleep close to 2am.  No food.  It is now 3:30am - I just got my wake up call.  Cross your fingers my 5:30am flight goes as scheduled!

P.P.P.P.S - My 5:30 flight did not go as scheduled.  Well, actually it did, but without any of us on it.  Our 4am taxis sent by the airline were 45 minutes late.  So they put us on the 6am flight to Barbados.  It is currently 9am - we are still in Antigua.  It was repeatedly delayed and then when we finally got on the plane there were engine troubles so we had disembarked.   The plus side was that in the meantime the airport canteen opened and we all got to eat after 15 hours without any food. 
Here's hoping I depart sometime today! 

Totally Unrelated but had to share!!

This post has nothing to do with St. Kitts, but I needed to share this with all of you. 

For those of you who are unaware of "TED Talks" -I urge you to become aware.  They are 15-20 minute videos by some of world's most amazing thinkers and doers.  The themes and subjects are diverse, but all are progressive.  I have been jaw-droppingly astonished and/or enlightened by a number of them.  Most recently, I stumbled across this one and had to share it.   

http://www.ted.com/talks/susan_savage_rumbaugh_on_apes_that_write.html

The talk is on a species called bonobos.  Never heard of them?  Neither had I.  They are found only in the Congo and are simply an astonishing species.  They pretty much make chimps look like single-celled organisms.

I dare you to deny evolution after watching this.  Oh wait - now I can link this to St.Kitts! religion! 

A co-worker asked me the other day if I believed in god.   I wasn't about to lie, but didn't want to offend so I casually replied, "No."  
"Oh, so are you an atheist?" he enquired with a light-hearted smile.  He must have thought this was impossible and was somewhat of a joke, because when I replied yes, he almost fell off his chair: "What?! You mean you don't believe in the father, son and the holy ghost??!"
"uh..nope."
"So, what do you believe in?"
I was very tempted to say "dinosaurs".  But I bit my tongue.
"What do you think happens then when you die?" he continued.
"Nothing.  I live, I die, I turn into worm food."
Silence.
"I'm not saying I am right, " I added, "and that you are wrong - for all I know there is some higher power." 
I couldn't say God with a capital G, but I think 'higher power' was suggestive enough to placate him while maintaining my truthfulness. 
 He was shocked by this.  I wonder if he had actually ever met an atheist before.

It is important, we are told time and again, to be culturally sensitive when working in another country.  I completely agree with this, but I think it is also important to be truthful.  As much as I must learn to respect others viewpoints, they must also learn to respect mine.  It is a mutual relationship.  I think sometimes people in this field forget that.  Now, I would not have brought up or offered my opinion on religion had I not been asked, but I am not going to lie if I am.  I will however tread carefully and respectfully.
I will not, for example, show him this video.

Patois and parlance

A little historical fact:  St. Kitts was the first island in the Caribbean to be colonized.  The English were the first in and immediately set to exploiting the land for its capacity to produce large quantities of sugar cane.  Well, their slaves did it, they just sat their with whips.  The French, Dutch and Spanish all took a number of goes at usurping control, but ultimately all failed.  As a result, St.Kitts-Nevis is now an English-speaking country.  Or so they told me.  For the first few weeks I was here, I would be sitting on buses or walking in town and not be able to understand a word people were saying and thought it was their thick accents, only to later learn that it was because they weren’t speaking English – they were speaking patois.

Patois essentially means a local dialect; it is not officially a language and many countries have their own patois, Jamaica’s being the most famous version.  Some people don’t even consider patois to be a dialect and see it just as a bastardization of English, but trust me, it’s NOT.  I challenge any of you to understand what the hell they are saying; you could probably understand Farsi better. 

This island language has, however, taken on a life of its own.  Over the years, different versions have evolved in communities to the point that people from different areas must now converse with each other in English to be understood - which is a plus for me!  St.Kitts English is however, still influenced by patois commonalities.    First and foremost, is the subject/verb placement and verb conjugation; the verb “to be” is NEVER conjugated.  It is always just “be.”  When wondering on a person’s whereabouts, for example, “Where is he?” or “Where are you?” would never be heard, it is always: “Where he be?” or “Where you be?”  Or you can just leave the verb out altogether.  The response to “Where he be?”  would be, “he gone.” 

The pluralization of nouns is also widely ignored, as is the past tense.  Also, there is no such word as “my” or “your.”  “My” is always replaced with “me” and “your” with “you”, pronounced like “yuh” - in fact, even spelled like “yuh.”  Carib, the top-selling regional beer, is brewed here and their slogan is: “Like Yuhself.”  The other thing is the re-placement of letters in English words.  Everyone here pronounces “ask” as “aks.”  

I would sound like an idiot if I employed this manner of speaking, but I have tried to conform a bit by using the word “stay” rather than “stop” and saying that someone is “off island” rather than saying they are away or out of the country.   But, the turn of phrase I find the funniest is their replacement word for announcing their presence.  If you are coming up someone’s front walk or if knocking seems to be doing no good, you don’t call out “Hello?” you call “Outside”   It makes me laugh every time.       

But to be Kittian what you really need to do is “struck your teeth”.   Women especially.  You make fish lips and suck air in till it makes the sound of a balloon slowly losing its air.  You do it to show your displeasure.  And you do it often.    And then you follow it up with an indignant, “I tell you!!!” or “I’m telling you!!!”  Being indignant seems to be a favourite pastime for women here.  It is not that they are an unhappy or a sour bunch by any means, they just enjoy expressing themselves and putting in their two cents.  

 Though here it is more like two dollars.     

Kittian Observations Part II:

Annoying Kittian thing #2 – radio.  They never let a song play – the DJs yell over the music, blast what sounds like air-raid sirens during the middles of songs, or pause the song to yell during it – this contintues for the whole duration of the song.  .

Unexplained Kittian thing #4 – the vast majority of streets do not have a name.  And I don’t just mean they are missing the street signs, they simply don’t have a name.  And the houses don’t have numbers.  If you are getting a delivery, or a friend is coming by you simply have to provide landmark directions: “when you reach the top of the hill turn right, at the third house after the big mango tree on your left you take another right, then at the turquoise house you take a left up the hill and mine is the seventh bright yellow house on your right.    

Cute Kittian thing #3 – you can still use cheques here! Remember cheques?

Cute Kittian thing #4  -  kids always respond politely and say good morning or afternoon 

- if they don't they would probably get smacked. 

Religion Religion Everywhere

I have, in previous postings, made reference to the prevalence of religion on this island.  I don’t know however, if I have conveyed the true depth that “the Good Lord” plays in daily life, so I thought I’d take a moment to paint you a little picture.   

(As a forewarning:  I do not mean this to be disrespectful; coming from religious-sterilized Canada, I am simply in gobsmacked amazement at the role religion plays in people’s lives here.)

The island is predominantly Protestant, with Anglican, Presbyterian, Moravian and Seventh Day Adventist being the most popular denominations.  Regardless of what church they attend (and trust me, they attend!)  religion is a central part of life here. 

First of all – most everyone seems to pray.  And not just a quick cursory ‘Thanks for the food, God - Amen’ before meals, I mean rolling out of bed each and every morning to reverently do their  “daily devotions”.  And if kids don’t do it at home – or even if they do – they will do it at school.  Extensively.  Even in social situations, I have never heard anyone swear on this island, the most common phrases seem to be “Praise be to Jesus”,  “God is good!” or “Lord give me strength!”  When someone sneezes and they say “Bless you,” they mean it quite literally. 

The most common radio station on the island is Dominion Radio, the Christian station, and at my work it plays constantly. 
From 8:30-9:00 it’s local gospel music – women praising Jesus through off-key harmonies.  From 9:00-10:00 it is “The Old Time Gospel Hour” which consists of some passionate man preaching and sermonizing.  

(I did learn the other day that it’s not “As I walk through the valley of the shadow of doubt” but “as I walk through the valley of the shadow of death.”  I like mine better. )
From 10:00-11:00 it is country gospel hour.  (Just when I thought country music couldn’t get any worse....).  From 12:00-1:00 its religious-based news.  From 1pm-2pm is more sermonizing.  (My favourite quote of the week:   “God is a gentleman; he wouldn’t force himself on you”....ummm...is it just me, or did they just compared God to a rapist....?!)

At about 2pm, the woman at the desk next to mine declares it is “sleepy time” and turns on her own collection of gospel music to sign along to and perk herself up.  This is not to say the radio gets turned off, or down, oh no – I simply get radio gospel on my left and my co-workers gospel serenades on my right.

All around the office are inspirational Christian verses: on calendars, posters, coffee mugs, in frames, tapped to desks, posted on bulletin boards....Email are signed off with “Have a Blessed Day” and bibles are stationed at every desk.  It was a full week at work before I realized that the repeated reference around the office to KJB was not an acronym for a work project but to the King James Bible.

Last week, we had a retirement luncheon for our boss.  Every person’s farewell speech included quotes from scripture – recited off by heart.  Although, there was a dispute on the wording of one passage, but no worries, they could consult the Bible - they had it downloaded on their Blackberrys.     

The open religiosity of St. Kitts may be at odds with my Canadian mind-set, but I did discover one common religious link recently:
Last week, I accompanied 3 of my co-workers on unannounced visits to home-based nurseries.  As we approached a house, one of my co-workers remarked, “the home owners will all probably run and hide when they see McKinley coming up the walk with us!” The other two laughed at this apparent joke.  My co-workers are all black, so I guessed that it was in reference to my skin colour, but I didn’t get the joke.  When I asked why someone would hide, my co-worker responded: “Cause when a white person you don’t know comes to the house it generally means only one thing: Jehovah Witnesses”

Another week

It has been another average week in St. Kitts.  It started with a relaxing day on the beach that proved to be perhaps too relaxing, as I proceeded to fall asleep for over an hour.  Of course 30spf sunscreen only goes so far on skin as pasty as mine and I woke up red and sore and imprinted with a perfectly shaped white bow on my back where my bikini was tied.  Consequently, the remainder of the weekend was spent dowsing myself in skin cream in attempts to calm the burn.  Then on Sunday I ran out of cream. This being a highly religious country, all shops were closed so I did what any resourceful person would do: I used vegetable oil.  Surprisingly, it seemed to work quite well; the burn is now gone, although the bow still remains.    

In between vegetable oil treatments, I fought with my roommate: Mr.Lizard.  Mr.Lizard is in general a pretty good roomie: he is quiet, clean and contributes to the housekeeping by keeping the bug population down, but lately he has shown a lack respect for my personal space.  The shower was his territory each night, we agreed on that, but Sunday evening I found him coyly crawling across the wall in the hallway.  That was it.  It was time to kick the disrespectful reptile out and block him and change the locks (i.e plug the hole he climbs through).  I tried to shoo him out the high window in the shower, but he would never scamper higher than halfway up the wall before ungracefully retreating.  After about the 15^th attempt, I clued in.  A couple days earlier I had CLR’d the tiled shower.  You know, the powerful cleaning agent that removes calcium, lime and rust stains along with half your brain cells?  I think the chemicals hurt the poor guy’s little sticky feet!  Feeling horrible and worrying that I have now caused the poor lizard irreparable damage, I retrieved an empty jar from the kitchen to catch him and release him into the (relatively) chemically-free wild.  Of course, when I brought the jar down, I accidentally chopped off the last fifth of his tail.  Are all lizards capable of growing back their tails, or is it only a certain species?  I am going to go with all. 

So that was my weekend.  The work week was even less eventful, but did culminate in a fancy office lunch in honour of our boss who sadly had been recently laid-off due to budget cuts.  Last year, St. Kitts was forced to beg millions of dollars from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to deal with the massive debts they incurred from a series of devastating hurricanes.  St.Kitts is currently the third most indebted country in the world and is forecasted to be among the economically slowest growing countries, if not THE slowest growing country, in the world for the next five or so years. 

The thing with IMF is that they have stringent stipulations to their low-interest loans that are intended to help the country in question to get back on track financially.  For this reason, these loans are known as Structural Adjustment Loans (SALs) and although well-intended, every International Studies scholar worth their salt will seriously contest their effectiveness.  In regards to St. Kitts, the IMF “encouraged” the government to instate a new 17% tax (applicable to pretty much everything) that will come into effect this Monday, November 1^st.  This of course means that the cost of living skyrockets in a nation that already has a poverty rate of over 30%.  Moreover, small business will be forced to close and larger business forced to downsize.  The government itself had to cut its civil servant force by one fifth.  My boss, a woman who dedicated 20 years to her position, was among the individuals laid off.  Her husband’s job is also in peril.  The timing could not be worse as she is struggling to pay medical bills for 3 months’ worth of cancer treatment in an American hospital.  It was a sad day in the office and I felt oddly intrusive and out of place as I had only known this woman for a short period of time – and was the only one who did not quote scripture in her farewell speech.