Spice Island (Grenada) Impressions: Installment 10

By: aromaproductions on 2:41 PM

Share it Please

Tweet

Spice Island (Grenada) Impressions: Installment 10, Day Twenty, Thursday, August 1, 2013

Waterfall at the Rivers Antoine Rum Factory

My three week stay in Grenada was very enjoyable and educative. I had traveled to Grenada several times before during the 1980’s with my husband and three children but always stayed in the village of Hermitage. We had no transport and depended on the kindness of my husband’s family to take us around. Visits usually entailed seeing a relative in a nearby village and a visit or two to St. Georges. 

Living in St. Georges this time around and being able to travel alone has given me a different perspective and a deeper appreciation of the island.

St. Georges, Grenada

The day of departure begins at 5:00 a.m. Our American Airline flight is schedule to depart at 6:30 a.m. for Miami.

At the airport security checkpoint, a female customs’ officer takes every item out of my carry-on. I don’t remember anyone taking every single item out of my carry-on before. I have seen them turn items over but not take everything out. I have to pack them all back, of course.

They confiscate my husband’s Angostura bitters, an ingredient for tropical punches no Caribbean person can do without.

 I am thinking that the job of customs’ officer must be a prized one. They probably take home lots of bottled rum and things like vanilla essence, hot pepper sauces and assorted syrups. It is Christmas every day.

  
While waiting for the American Airline flight, which is delayed by one hour, my husband is called again to have his carry-on searched. This is another first.

We soon learn that the delay is due to a mandatory lay-over obligation. The American Airline crew must have a mandatory layover (of ten hours) after working a certain amount of time. I am not going to complain. I would much rather have the captain and crew remain alert while flying. “Better late than never.” We get a long, last look at our surroundings, and recall our wonderful holiday.

We finally arrive in Miami after 1:00 p.m. and the immigration line for American citizens is so long that we look like cattle being herded through cubicles. I imagine it is much worse for non-Americans. The luggage must be picked up and rechecked.  

After that is done, we have lunch at a Chinese restaurant at the food court. 

We are going to be here for six hours and haven’t had anything to eat up to now. Our American Airline flight only offered us water during the three hour journey. We are good and hungry. The meal and drink cost around ten dollars. 

My husband chats with a young Guyanese student traveling to a northern state to visit his family. He is an unusual young man. He says he is not a fan of the internet.  

I browse the book shops and looks for items I won’t find in drugstores Switzerland. I do some writing and time flies.  It is time to board when I look up.

 

Grenadian bamboo

Arriving in London, August 2nd, we must take a bus to Terminal 5 before we go through the long immigration process. My husband, Emmanuel, forgets to take his belt off, so when he goes through the metal detector, it goes off.  It turns out, it is not only the belt that’s triggering the detector but other small things he has in his pocket.  He is taken to another room to be searched.

 

My situation is no better. My handbag with souvenirs is taken away and searched.  I have forgotten that I had packed two tiny bottles of water given to me by the flight attendant. I am obliged to drink them because I don’t want to throw them away. The customs officers are taking no chances, even a stuffed doll I bought for my granddaughter is taken away to be searched. They can’t be too careful with the drug smuggling that takes place today. Headlines about the arrest of drug mules come to mind. Drug smugglers are clever.

 

Grenadian avocado

 At the London Heathrow Airport our six hour delay turns to eight due to bad weather somewhere in central Europe. We hang around the waiting area, kill time by window shopping, snacking, reading British newspapers, charging our phones and writing on my laptop. 

We finally depart for Switzerland in the afternoon around five.

Grenadian River

I had a wonderful time and learned a lot about Grenada and its resources. I am a little jealous.  I come from a tiny island without rivers, lakes, rainforest and waterfalls.

The variety of flowers and fruit are enormous. 

I saw some flowers and fruit I had never before seen and was fascinated by them.

Noni fruit is used to make juice.

I found things like palm nuts, cola nuts, and sea-side grapes that also grow in Liberia, West Africa. Our old ancestral environment lives on. We enjoyed a bit of Liberia as guests of Gloria and James Thomas, now residents of Grenada.

Dr. Thomas and my husband, Emmanuel ran a clinic (West Clinic) together on Lynch Street in Monrovia, Liberia. The palm butter they cooked for us were made from the palm nuts he is holding in his hand.

These kola nuts, grown in Grenada, are

 noted for keeping people awake. They are very popular in Liberia as well. It is in Liberia that I saw kola nuts for the first time.  Vendors sell them along with chewing gum, cigarettes, matches, fruit and assorted items.

 I enjoyed the fresh fruit and vegetables that we ate every day: a wide assortment of mangoes, papaya, star apples, silk figs (baby bananas), sour-sap, sugar apples, breadfruit and avocado. I miss them dearly. 

Green bananas,plantain bluggoe (yellow) and breadfruit

Grenadian staples. A meal is not complete without one of these ingredients.

I can’t forget the houses that speak of rainbows and joyous spirits.

 I wish I could take them back with me. But we can’t have everything.

I have a few souvenirs of my Spice Island holiday—some to use when seasoning our foods, such as cakes and curries, some to drink at social events, others to eat (sugar cakes, rum balls and guava cheese). 

I can tell you that the Grenadian rum punch lasted two days. 

Because Rivers rum is like gold, we are still holding on to it.

Then, there as those memories that are made of metal, like that of the tap-tap which I rode every day. They cannot be eaten. 

I now hang my keys on this replica of tiny Grenadian houses.













And there are memories that only fade, like clothes, with time.

 I enjoyed the company of family and friends which helped to make this visit very special.

As they say,” the grass is always greener on the other side or it seems that way. When I visited Vancouver in 2011, I fell in love with city and dreamed of buying a house there. There is beauty in every country, beauty that sets it apart from other places, beauty that works its magic on visitors.

The Atlantic Ocean and the Caribbean Sea tug at my heart. They speak to me and I listen.

An Eternal Flirtation

The Atlantic

whips up

towering waves,

has a pompous purpose.

Daring surfers ride

his wide watery wings

before they are

tossed onto shore.

He gloats in his prowess,

lays claim to

anything he touches,

covets sand.

The Caribbean Sea lulls

round the corner where

she and the Atlantic meet.

She watches as fishermen

ride on her shoulders,

and pull in her offerings in a net.

The Atlantic

catapults children

into its thick water wall,

laughs at fear

in their red eyes

as they try to find their feet.

The Caribbean Sea

turns her back on

his ostentatious display,

cuddles seaweed and fish

playing hide and seek

in her ripples.

An

eternal

flirtation.

© 11.09.2013  Althea Romeo-Mark,