Spice Island (Grenada) Impressions: Installment 8--Reunion

By: aromaproductions on 10:09 PM

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Spice Island (Grenada) Impressions: Installment 8--Reunion

Friday, day thirteen, 26 July, 2013

Excited! My sister, Arlene and cousin, Grace, are arriving in Grenada early Saturday morning. There will be a swirl of activities not related to the renovation of the main apartment. It will become our temporary home from today. Good bye to air-conditioned nights in studio 2. 

The bedroom in the apartment is prepared but the rest of the house is still being refurbished. There are cement-dusted footprints everywhere.

I Hope the fan will do us justice and keep the mosquitoes at bay. However, I have found, from sleeping under a net at Lena's place, that the air does not circulate well, and that one can feel suffocated.

During the upcoming week, we plan to tour the island and visit the rum factory, nutmeg factory,  cacao factory, one of the many water falls, Leapers’Hill and the crater lake, Grand Etange. 

Grenadian water fall, Annandale

 

 

Lake Grand Etange, Grenada

 We plan to take a boat trip to Carriacou Island, the sister island to Grenada, known for its fishing and duty free advantages rather than agriculture. That will be another one day affair. 

 

http://www.grenadagrenadines.com/discover-the-islands/carriacou-and-petite-martinique/

Grand Anse

We hope to make a few trips to the famous Grand Anse beach, a two mile long, white-sanded beach. Other beaches in Grenada include Bathway beach, Blackbay beach, Dusquene Bay, L' Anse  aux Epines Beach, L' Esterre Bay Beach, La Sagesse Beach, Levera Beach, Magazine Beach, Morne Rouge Beach, Parc a Boeuf (Grooms Beach), Petit Bacaye Beach and Tyrrel Beach. 




According to www.grenadines.com, due to its mountainous interior, Grenada possesses an irregular coastline, marked by many small bays and inlets. As a result, it offers several secluded and private beaches, many of which seem to have been untouched since the island rose from the sea. The white sand beaches are formed from pulversied coral "rock" and tiny fragments of mollusk shells. There are a number of black sand beaches as well, where the sand is of a finer, softer quality.

We have been invited to dinner on Sunday by Dr. Thomas, my husband’s cousin and we are going to visit Lena, my husband’s sister, once again. My daughter, Malaika, said we must have a seafood dish and get a good drink of rum as part of our Grenada experience.

“Bubboled! Joked and jerked around!, shade pulled over our eyes?” Despite a down payment by my husband, and tenants, on a device that will allow us to access the internet, the person, who is responsible to link the apartments up to the internet, is making himself scarce and difficult to contact.

Well miracles do happen. Just as we had finished taking up temporary residence in our large apartment, the missing internet links mystery is sorted.  We now have an address in St Paul’s. We are catching up with family and friends on Facebook and I am able to send an attachment.

Saturday, day fourteen, 27 July 2013

  

I get up at 5:15 a.m. having spent a restless night with the buzzing of mosquitoes and without air-conditioning. I am thrilled about  my sister, Arlene, and Grace, my cousin’s, arrival. We leave for the airport at 6:20 a.m. It is wonderful to see them after a year when they visited me in Basel, Switzerland.

Arlene and Grace had spent two weeks in July (2012) with me. First we took a boat ride down the Rhine River and then had a quick view of Rheinfelden Town. We had also planned to visit the Alps after we returned from our weekend visit to Paris. In Paris we stayed together in a rented apartment.

  My daughter Cassandra and her baby, Edith, came along. We enjoyed our short stay in Paris and visited the Eiffel Tower at night, The Louvre, the Bastille, the Seine and different restaurants during the day.

So here we are together again but in a completely different culture, the Caribbean Island of Grenada, that teems of Africa from which it takes it roots. After a three hour rest, I initiate them into the Grenadian way of life. I have been here two weeks already and I am now the expert in the “One-eyed man leading the blind,” sort of way. We take the packed bus into St. Georges. That is an experience in itself.
 

A street which leads to the city, St. Georges.

 In the town, people spill out everywhere. They spill out of buses, the market and shops. Fruit and provision sellers and buyers spill over the sidewalk. We join the crowds on the sidewalks as I show Grace and Arlene the way: where to catch the bus, where to shop, eat, buy souvenirs, where to get internet services and where to locate malls that cater to tourists. 

 We find a shop that sells Caribbean food. We buy pastries (guava, pineapple and coconut), pies (meat and salt-fish) and mauby drinks. We didn’t mind that the portions were small but the food nor the drink measure up to what we are accustomed to on the island of St. Thomas where we grew up. These things are always measured against what we grew up with. We are very disappointed. The pastries are dry, portions finger-food size and the mauby, bitter. 



We later find a better shop and take some photos with two Grenadian policemen. They were kind enough to indulge our request.

We go to the market, buy coconuts and drink its delicious water, take photos of this and turmeric roots which none of us had seen before.

Turmeric and cacao beans in the background

Every seller near the mall wants to sell us spices. It is the hustle and bustle of their lives in a competitive market. The heat begins to swelter and I can see Grace and Arlene are crumbling in the heat. 

We take the bus back home to cool off and I welcome them with rotis and Angastora drinks. 
As they eat, drink and cool down, they check their e-mails, inform family of their safe arrival and post a few pictures. The roti dinners are enormous and cannot be finished.

I think jetlag will catch up with them and they will go to bed and rise early the next day as California is three hours behind us. But they are up a few hours later, bright eyed and bushy-tailed, and we chat until 10:00 p.m. on the veranda, the latest I have been up on this island.

 

Sunday, day fifteen, 28, July, 2013

We have two invitations: an early one at 9:00 a.m. and another at 1:00 p.m. We are looking forward to both. The first invitation is from a friend and childhood neighbor of my husband. They grew up in Hermitage village. He now lives in the city. I am looking forward to seeing another colorful Grenadian house.

We wait like Cinderella at midnight but the prince fails to turn up. Maybe the wicked fairy got him. In the meantime we take lots of photos.

Photo by Grace Daniel

 
 We arrive at the home of Dr. James and Gloria Thomas. 

Our second invitation turned out to be beyond expectation, as our host, Dr. James Thomas and his wife, Gloria Bruce-Thomas, a Liberian nurse, prepares us a Liberian meal of palm butter. 



 

Dr. James Thomas and his wife, Gloria.

This was no ordinary palm butter. The palm trees, from which the nuts were picked and prepared, were grown from a palm nut seed brought from Liberia, a country in which we and the Thomas’ lived for many years, a country close to our hearts.

 
There were other dishes as well that spread the table: baked chicken, potatoes, macaroni pie and rice, of course, with which the palm butter is eaten. 
We drink wine and juices with our dinner.

 

 

 

 Dr. Thomas also shares with us kola nuts now grown in Grenada, but whose seed, too, was brought from Liberia. 

Our connection to this country is a permanent one and whose history goes back to the 1920’s. 


I have since learned that kola nuts have been on the island for some time.

Below is a link of Rennie, Morris, Thomas, Alexander, Mark history in Liberia (From Grenada to Liberia).

See link (http://aromaproductions.blogspot.ch/2011/08/interwoven-histories-dr-emmanuel-mark.html)

We have many years to catch up on as I haven’t seen them since I visited them in London in the late 90’s. 


We had left Liberia because of civil war. It is a war which broke the family thread and scattered the Thomas', the Rennie’s, the Alexander’s, the Morris' and the Mark’s—all extended family members of the Rennie clan now live in Europe and America. There are family members who remained in Liberia and survived the war. Blessings to Ashley Rennie.

The family history in Liberia goes back to an adventurous uncle who, influenced by Marcus Garvey and the “Back to Africa Movement,” arrived in Liberia in 1926.

Members of the Rennie clan at our engagement party.

There is so much to catch up with at this dinner shared not only with the Thomas’ but with my sister, Arlene and my cousin, Grace.

We have since watched our children mature, carry the blessings and burdens that is their life. Our children have become parents and we grandmothers and grandfathers.

We know we are in the Caribbean when we sit through a cricket match and cheer although not all of us could really follow the intricacies of the game. It is the happy spirit in us. We watch the West Indian audience in the stadium jump with joy when a “run” is made. Some women’s breasts bounce in the air, take on a life of their own. I could not help but think of coconuts and pictures we had taken on Saturday—Grace and Arlene holding coconuts against their breast as they drank coconut water. This is a beautiful moment. What else can one ask?

 

James’ nephew, Devon Thomas, brings his three children to visit. They are the new generation of the Thomas family. It is wonderful to meet them and share this fantastic day with them. 

On our way home, Dr. Thomas, gives us a quick tour of St. Georges University located on a marine area with a beautiful view of the sea. It is a university which started as a medical school and has expanded.  Grenadians are very proud of it.

http://www.sgu.edu/

 

The Grenadian decorative palm tree.