Spice Island (Grenada) Impressions: Installment three

By: aromaproductions on 7:06 PM

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Grand Anse Beach, Grenada

Day 3, Tuesday,16 July, 2013.

I wake up at 7:00 a.m. to rain and wonder how this day will turn out. It is going to rain all day? I have been told it is the raining season. I am hoping it isn’t one of those days when I will be inside all day. I will have to lose myself in Americanah.

The sun has come out and I don’t know for how long. I decide I would clean up the studio, give it the woman’s touch it is lacking.  My sister-in-law, Lena Andall, calls from Madeys to say she will be coming to St. Georges between 11:00 and 12:00 noon. It is an hour’s drive from Madeys to St. Georges. I have my breakfast, bread and avocado. 

Around noon I have a slice of sour-sap, some papaya and two mangoes for lunch. There are uncountable types of mangoes here, each distinguished by smell, shape, color and texture.  

Sour-sap on tree

I wish could take a photo of each type but think it is pointless to the untrained eye. I will name a few: mango starch, mango Ceylon, mango Julie, grafted mangoes, mango Calivine (mango long), mango tiger, mango turpentine, mango belly-full, mango tin, mango bef.

Lena has finally arrived and brought a variety of the banana family-- green bananas, blugger and Peter banana. I had never heard of Peter banana. It looks like blugger to me. My husband runs off to do another errand for the carpenter who is going to build a table.

Blugger (short, fat, green), Peter banana (yellow)

 Lena and I have a good chat. I show her photos on my I-phone of my children, granddaughter, my family and places I have recently been.  

                                                                                                                                                                                                  Before traveling to Grenada I had accompanied my daughter, Cassandra, to Lisbon, Portugal where she was attending a conference on African social history. Seeing the Atlantic was almost a spiritual experience. It was seeing an ocean which also embraces the Caribbean. We strengthened our legs walking the steep hills of Lisbon's old quarters. This was a preparation for the steep hills we would walk on the island of Grenada.

Cassandra pushing Edith in a pram up a steep hill in Lisbon, Portugal.

Proud grandmother was looking after her granddaughter, Edith.

  

  The following week we visited Strasbourg, France where we spent the day walking around, admiring architecture, visiting flea markets, browsing shops and enjoying French food.   

Cassandra, Alex and Edith in Strasbourg, France which is one and a half hours-two hours drive from our home, Basel, Switzerland.

                                                                                  

Me standing in front of the Strasbourg Cathedral

     

In these pictures below, my son (Michael), daughters (Malaika and Cassandra), their husbands (Alex and Carl) and my granddaughter, Edith are at a Swiss farm having a traditional farmer's breakfast.

On the left, Malaika and Michael, on the right althea and Carlin

My granddaughter, Edith Thiesen in red and white, is one and a half years.

Alex (from Hamburg, Germany) and Carlin (Florida/Atlanta,USA)

Grandaughter, Edith, below and my sons-in-law, Alex and Carlin.

Daughter, Cassandra and granddaughter, Edith.

 
I learn that Lena makes her own oil from coconut and I ask her to tell me how it is done. We already have a bottle my husband tells me later. I will prepare our dinner with it. I am impressed that people still make oil from scratch when you can go to a supermarket and buy it. 

Arlene Ware (My sister), Lena (my sister-in-law) and Grace (my cousin) at Lena's home in Madeys, Grenada.

 

Lena tells me she has to grate the coconut, wash it, let it settle overnight so that the fat remains on top. Then you strain off the water. After that you boil the fat which turns into oil. The fat is then strained and poured into a bottle and is ready for use. Coconut oil is very expensive on the island.

Lena offers to make us dinner and I thank her for her kind offer.  She has brought fried fish and I will make a source with her coconut oil, make a salad and maybe cook some rice and peas to go with it. She leaves at 4:00 p.m.to catch a bus in St. Georges to Madeys. We will see each other at the weekend and again in two weeks when my cousin, Grace and sister, Arlene, arrive from California.

I tell my husband about the coconut oil. He had cut down a coconut tree at the end of May when he arrived from Switzerland and has a bunch of coconuts in our yard. He is now thinking about making coconut oil before we leave.  I know that his plate is full and might not get around to it.

It has turned out to be a stay at home day. The early evening is interrupted by Jehovah Witnesses knocking at our gate and wanting to pray. If I had known they were coming, I would have turned my broomstick up. A mad man soon wraps on our door, and is driven away by our silence. He shouts he is not a thief as he saunters down the road.

The rain has returned to close the day, bid us good night, just as it had greeted us with a wet good morning. A pipe outside my window, gushing water, reflects the intensity of the rain. A mosquito truck (smoke truck), making a loud buzzing noise, and spitting smoke, passes by in its attempt to control the spread of mosquitos. 

This activity is part of my memory of growing up in St. Thomas, Virgin Islands. Us turning up glass louvers in our windows to try and keep the smoke out, the coughing and fanning at the light, white air, heavy with the smell of insecticide. We breathe freely after it passes our house. Some things in the Caribbean islands are the same, never change.

I will do some editing, read some more, enjoy the slow pace of island life, wait for tomorrow and see what it brings. The bed calls at 9:30 p-m.

Day four, Wednesday, July 17, 2013

Today I am up at six. It is overcast. I have a coffee and write a poem inspired by what sounded like a cricket trapped in the studio. My husband tells me that it could have been a frog rubbing its hind legs together. Says it could be a sign that the frog is in heat. 

Crevice

The shriveled man

across the street

speaking in bird-tweet

cannot compete

with the cricket

pleading in my room.

I cannot help man or cricket

escape the place in which

they are trapped.

If I were

a shrinking Alice,

I could crawl

into minds and walls,

do my best Sherlock Holmes

and Watson.

But, I am not Alice,

nor a psychiatrist.

When my mind

hides between walls,

I barely escape

the narrowness

of their crevices,

barely escape

their suffocation.

 If I lose my footing
in this world

there are those

who catch me

in their net,

there are those

who ferret me out

if I am trapped

between walls.

©  17.07.2013. 06.10.2013 Althea Romeo-Mark

 

The sun soon comes out and I am looking forward to my second visit to St. Georges. Leaving our Lother’s Lane home at 12;00, our errands take us to St. Georges, the Grand Anse vicinity, back to St. Georges and finally home by 4;00 p.m.  

 

In St, Georges, in the chaotic area around the bus station and market, we tramp along uneven sidewalks, some with gapes, and broken chunks, we leap over open gutters and watch traffic ply roads that are in dire need of repairing and paving. There are people sitting outside shops that line the hills. It is too hot to remain inside the small enclosures. Some streets offer crumbling sidewalks; most offer no sidewalks at all. We pass by the busy market consisting of stalls and sheds. Everyone is selling in season fruit and vegetables. French cashews and ginneps (skinup) seem to be the most popular as many vendors are hawking them.We walk pass a school where the sound of steel bands fly out its windows. 

Inside, the building is filled with young girls learning to play pan. It looks hot and crowded but the young women appear to be enjoying their task of keeping a cultural heritage alive. We find a business, away from the busy center, that provides internet service, pay five E.C. (Eastern Caribbean) dollars for half an hour’s use. The time is not enough. I am only able to send pictures of our studio to our children.

 

Shops in the more touristic areas, not far from the city center, where the internet shop can be found.

 We dash to Andall supermarket and restaurant near the bus station to buy tea and milk and a nutritious take-a-way meal consisting of rice and peas, stewed chicken and salad. 

 

Picture taken while sitting in a bus at the bus station in St. George's, Grenada

We get back home just in time for my husband to inspect the work that is being done on the upper apartment and the workers are free to go home. We have dinner, I read some more and soon sleep calls. It is 8:30 p.m.

Before I go to bed, a young, brown centipede dashes across the bathroom floor to bid me good night. Its greeting is not welcomed. I grab a can of insect spray and almost empty it while attempting to destroy my enemy. I am not an insect-lover.  It flees under a dresser drawer to escape. I am certain it would not survive my insecticide bath.

 I feel little guilty, think of Syrians dousing each other with poisonous gas, but feel a lot safer and can sleep more soundly. My husband gives words of wisdom. He says in Grenada you must always shake your shoes out before putting them on. One never knows what is hidden inside--a snake, a scorpion, a millipede or a centipede.

Tomorrow I will go to the city alone for the first time and I hope to finally talk to my children at the internet exchange center.  I am looking forward to my test of independence on this small island whose rough uniqueness brings back memories of Liberia.

Ms souvenier Tap-tap