Django and Sharma knew the storm was coming. The warnings were on the radio, on the telly and all over social media. First it was a tropical storm, then a hurricane and then the categories escalated from 1 to 4 and it was tracking right on target to their little windward island. No escaping it at that point. Everybody who had the means and the foresight had already left for Trinidad or Barbados.
‘What should we do, where do we go? The church or your uncle’s house? He has a concrete basement and it will be safe,’ Django said.
‘The church will be safe because it’s the house of God,’ Sharma insisted. Suddenly her faltering belief in the almighty was restored in the face of the fury and anger of the oncoming storm.
‘It has only a tin roof but your uncle Polo’s house is concrete and has a utility basement. Let’s go there. It will be safe. There will also be fewer people there and he did invite us,’ Django insisted. He was the older one and being the man, he pulled rank and made the practical choice for them. They gathered up some personal stuff like their phones and some clothes, a machete and whatever dry foods they had. Some rice and pasta, cans of tomatoes, sardines and a couple of papayas. A last look around their small wooden house, with the hammock out front between two palm trees. The ocean was stirred up with whitecaps and had taken on a greyish hue. The air was hot and still, humid and quiet. The palm leaves waved leisurely in the slight wind that seemed to come from all directions. An ominous and eerie feeling hung in the air with high, fast-moving cirrus clouds the colour of wheat.
Dolores and Jami were already sheltering at Polo’s house. Both of them were from the main island but had been living here for a few years now. They were a musical duo, him on guitar and her on saxophone. Dolores also had a sweet, clean voice. They made a meagre living playing some local gigs in the winter when the tourists and yachties crowded the beach bars and the rest of the time they took whatever local jobs they could snag. Jami even tried his hand at fishing but had to give it up because he was prone to sea sickness. ‘I can’t fish when I’m constantly throwing up,’ he said to Dolores who had taken on some cleaning work for a couple of the rich white folks on Resurrection Hill.
They lived in a wooden house near the small airport which was basically a big one room shack with a kitchen in one corner and a table with four chairs in the adjacent one. A couple of old assorted chairs with an antique steamer trunk for a coffee table functioned as the living room. A folding partition separated their bed from the rest of the house. There was an outhouse at the back and a shipping container full of instruments they had collected over the years. Acoustic guitars and hand drums, typical of the island; a couple of old electric pianos, a Roland and a Yamaha, some percussion instruments and even a simple drum kit a rock band had left behind. They were hoping to turn their small house into a music school for the kids on the island. Something they had planned to do for a long time. The stashed whatever valuables they had into the container, their PA and amps, their laptop and tablet, a couple of carved African masks, Dolores’ party dress and some pots and dishes they had bought over the years, hoping they would be safe.
Joshua is an island boy, bread and brought up by his mom, his aunt and his grandma.Who knows where the dad was? Joshua didn’t and he never questioned it since most of his friends were in similar situations. Growing up with the women was all he knew and they were kind and caring, full of laughter and discipline. School was mostly Jesus religion and memorizing, not much free thinking or improvisation. It’s the way it still is around here.
The rest of the world was a long way across the turquoise waters and Joshua had only been to the mainland once. The mainland being the big island, not a different country or a long way away from home. It was just a two-hour ferry trip and Joshua loved it even though his aunt spent most of the journey barfing into a paper bag.
Joshua spent a lot of time by himself. Naturally shy and small in stature he didn’t much care for sports or fishing but he liked music. Reggae was his favorite and he knew every Bob Marley song. There was an old dusty guitar without strings in his aunt Lizzy’s house. ‘Been here for ever,’ she said. ‘Belonged to old man Tanto who moved away a long time ago. Lives in Brooklyn now. It’s yours.’ Since there were no strings on it and nobody pointed that out for a long time, Joshua used the guitar as a drum. It sounded pretty good and when Gina, a Canadian-Italian woman, heard him beating out a reggae rhythm on the old guitar body she introduced Joshua to Zola, an accomplished drummer on the big traditional island drum.
Zola has his own island story which is quite amazing. He was an obsessed diver and harpoon fisherman until one day he stayed down too long and came up too fast. He got the bends badly and he almost died and it left his legs paralysed. ‘He’ll never walk again,’ was the dire prognosis but the doctors didn’t know the determination of Zola who slowly over time got out of his wheel chair and first on crutches and then on a single walking stick forced himself to walk again. He also didn’t give up diving since in the water he was floated free of gravity’s restrictions. The story goes that he went down and his partner in the small boat waited and waited but when Zola who was long overdue to surface didn’t come up, his partner took off and returned home convinced that Zola had finally gone to Davie Jones’s locker. Zola meanwhile had drifted far from the boat and when he eventually surfaced after running out of oxygen the boat and his partner were gone. It took Zola two days to make it back home, swimming to a nearby island, then the next day all the way back to shore. That was his last dive and instead he took up drumming and became just as obsessed with drumming as he was with diving and underwater fishing. He had an exceptional teacher in Winston Fleary. There was no money in drumming but Zola was so good that he was invited to all the island music events and to this day can always be heard and seen playing with everybody.
So, Zola took on Joshua as his understudy and Joshua took to drumming like a fish to water. Gina helped with a Go-fund campaign which raised enough dollars amongst her Toronto friends to have built two more island big drums, one of which became Joshua’s. There was enough money left over to give both of them a small stipend because drumming was not really an income producing occupation.
Another perennial tourist, Markus, a German sound technician, took a shine to the two drummers and especially the young Joshua. He saw his stringless guitar which Joshua sometimes used as a percussion instrument and offered to have it strung. Markus thought it was a salvageable old Spanish guitar. When he showed Joshua the refurbished instrument and played a few licks for him, Joshua had an epiphany and couldn’t wait for Markus to teach him the fundamentals of guitar playing. Again, the young island lad displayed a natural talent for the instrument and he soon spent all his time strumming instead of drumming. Zola was not too happy about it but he had to support his protégé’s passion and before too long the two of them became a duo who played gigs all over the small island, making a bit of money and many free drinks in return. Of course, the two always played a mesmerizing drum solo halfway through their set of reggae and calypso music. There was only one more thing missing in this constellation.
Shandelle’s mother was a soprano in the church choir and taught her daughter early on how to sing along with her. Shandelle knew all the gospel songs and hymns by the time she was a teenager. When she heard Zola and Joshua play at the local church picnic on a spring Sunday afternoon, she was smitten not just with the young man but by the rhythmic music of the duo. ‘I know many songs,’ she said shyly to Joshua during a break when she saw him getting some food at one of the stands. ‘
‘Oh yeah, and you can sing too?’ Joshua said with a grin.
‘I can sing with you if you like. I know reggae music.’
‘Ok, you’re on. You know Redemption song?’
‘Everybody know that song, mon.’
‘Let’s do it.’
When Shandelle sang a slow burning version of the iconic song, with Zola and Joshua accompanying her, the crowd gathered around and stopped what they were doing, caught up in the magic of the moment. That afternoon the three musicians formed the trio and called themselves. ‘Dreamcatchers’. Gina and Markus decided that this was the time to present the trio to the outside world. Markus recorded two songs with a mic and his computer and went to the mainland, i.e. the big island and played the two songs along with some photos of the trio to several resorts and clubs. In no time he had a few gigs in his back pocket and that’s how the ‘Dreamcatchers’ started their meteoric rise to the top, making the jump from the small Caribbean Island to Brooklyn, where they played in front of the vast diaspora of islanders.
We had a chance to see ‘Dreamcatcher’ last week, for a Valentine’s dance at the Mermaid, the island’s best hotel right on the beach. It was a surprise appearance, not scheduled or advertised but because all three were home for Carnival and some of the island’s other musicians played backup for the open mic. The guests arrived late, most of them jcb’s (just come back’s referring to locals who live and work off island, mostly in the US, Canada and England) They were all dressed in their fineries: sequins, jewelry and sculpted hair and glitzy long nails for the women and the men wore long pants, flowing shirts and shiny shoes. It felt like New Year’s Eve and the party went on until 3AM.
Gina and Markus were there as well, proud as peacocks of their progeny. When Zola, Joshua and Shandelle dedicated their ‘Island song’ to them, everybody rose and clapped and hollered, celebrating not just the two of them or the band but the fact that this symbiosis of locals and visitors, this fusion of local talent and foreign entrepreneurship brought about this very special achievement and success. We left shortly after we saw Gina dance with Joshua while Shandelle twirled a terrified Markus across the dance floor.
Carnaval wasfirst introduced to the Caribbean in the 1700’s by the French bourgeoisie. It was then a festival witha series of masquerade balls with elaborate, expensive costumes, house and street parades signifying the start of lent. In Carriacou carnival is officially celebrated in the week preceding Ash Wednesday. The former slaves parodied these festivities by covering themselves in ashes and oil and their orchestras consisted of conch shells for brass and biscuit tins for drums.
We were ready and primed for the much anticipated and promoted Carriacou Carnival, famous all over the Windward Islands for its authenticity and fervour. This is not Rio, New Orleans or Cologne, it’s only a small island at the bottom of the Caribbean. The week-long super-party officially starts on the Thursday of the preceding week with the Queen Show but in reality it begins weeks earlier with several village road shows all over the island; meaning all night street parties with massive boom-boxes, hectolitres of beer and rum fuelled revellers. On the days leading up to the epic weekend, hundreds of partiers invade this small island. Many come from the mainland – Grenada – or other nearby Islands including Trinidad and St. Vincent and they are referred to with a disparaging sneer as foreigners, as opposed to us tourists and snowbirds who are more or less welcome here since we bring money and stay a while. Also, a lot of ex-pats from England, the US and Canada, make the long trek to this tranquil Island for the festivities, turning it into a party mayhem haven. The daily ferry from Grenada was mobbed and overloaded with standing room only, with many of the beer swilling passengers hanging over the railings in the rough seas.
The first official event is the crowning of the Carnival Queen on Thursday night. We arrived early at 9PM and got prime seats for the well run and entertaining program. Six young women showed off their sequined, feathered and glittery costumes, then each contestant performed a short drama or a musical number and then they displayed their ball gowns and answered a short quiz. Five local judges picked the winner at about 3AM in front of a jubilant and festive crowd consisting mostly of local women done up like New Year’s Eve, in stiletto heels and showing off their bling and super fun hair, braided, coloured, woven or piled high. The six girls representing their parishes, displayed a surprising amount of moxy and confidence with their ribald social commentary one-act-plays and songs, ranging from incest to their African heritage to the environment. There were only a handful of us white people in attendance but we didn’t at all feel out of place or uncomfortable. In fact, we were welcome to witness the local young women showing off their traditions and talents with pride.
I saw her the first time at Cuddy’s rum shop on the corner of Mainstreet. She wore a red and yellow plaid dress, a Redsox ball cap and large, golden hoop earrings. Her shoulder length hair was frizzy and stiff and twisted into dreadlocks. On her feet she wore plastic sandals that had seen better days. Her hands were like roots and her face was like Sonny Liston after his fight against Cassius Clay, with amber teeth and a flat nose. Her charcoal eyes looked into the distance and her head nodded to the incessant beat of the jab-jab trucks rolling slowly up and down Mainstreet, followed by gyrating partiers dressed in colourful carnival costumes.
She sat by herself but talked to everyone in a low cackling voice like rocks rolling up and down the beach in the surf. Obviously the locals all knew her. She held a beer in her gnarled hand and sat there like a schoolgirl with her legs dangling.
“Who is she?” I asked Cuddy.
“That’s Stella,” he said. “She used to be the Carnival Queen for many years, leading the parade of bands in elaborate costumes, different every year. She is in her nineties now, a legend really but her mind has gone.”
“She looks like she is still enjoying the carnival.”
` “Yep, you’ll see her around for the whole three days and then she disappears again from sight. Not sure how she knows what day it is but she sure knows when Carnival starts. Everybody knows Stella, the Carnival Queen.”
When the big steel-band truck rolled in front of Cuddy’s, she hopped from one foot to the other, in time with the music just like she was half a century younger.
* * *
From the back she looked like a twenty year old. Slim, with lovely muscular legs, tight buttocks, a long back, and skin like polished Mahogany. She was dressed only in a sequined thong and glittery bra. Her black hair was braided and augmented with red extensions and loosely tied into a ponytail at the nape of her shapely neck. She stood with one hand on her hip in stiletto heeled red pumps, swaying to the beat of the jab-jab music that pounded out the incessant rhythm and bass line louder then a 747 taking off. Then she turned around and looked straight at me as if she sensed my appreciation of her lovely body but inwardly I recoiled because the face was that of an old woman, at least sixty but maybe even older. It was not a wrinkled countenance but one of infinite sorrow, her bright red mouth drawn, her bottomless black eyes recessed, high cheekbones and an aquiline curved nose. Her all knowing eyes lingered on me until I averted mine, taking a sip from my beer, but I felt like a schoolboy who had been caught out peeking under a skirt but then she nodded and smiled at me, forgiving me for my trespass. She slightly bent her knee and barely inclined her head towards me as if in a curtsey. I could not but do the same in return and then she turned and blended with the crowd.
“That is Marybel,” Cuddy informed me. “She is a grandmother many times over and used to work the streets in her working years. She’s probably known every man on this island and they all still respect her, as do the ladies. She is a good Christian and goes to church regularly. She was also one of our former Carnival Queens.”
* * *
On the sidewalk, a few rows back from the front, my eyes were drawn to a very large woman with a billowing blue polka dot dress, a white blouse, covering her water melon breasts, and a head crowned by sculpted black curls like an early Oprah Winfrey. Holding on to her skirt were a half dozen children of various ages. This woman and her slew of kids reminded me of mother Ginger and the Polichinelles from the Nutcracker ballet, the larger than life fertility figure whose crinoline dress hides all of her children.
I could not tear my eyes off her but nobody else saw anything unusual about this imposing woman. She just belonged like all the other characters on display. Carnival is after all the one time of the year when everybody can be what they want to be and let it all hang out.
I met Kelly when in the Windward Island where she ran a small beach side restaurant called the Wayward Café. When I say ran, I mean she shopped, cooked, served, managed and handled complaints and compliments with the same sunny grin and shrug of her small narrow shoulders. Kelly was a tough old bird, probably quite the looker in her day when her hair was blond instead of grey and her large owl eyes were not looking through thick lenses and when she still had all her teeth. Her skin was leathery and weathered like the skin of a lizard, wrinkled, sunburned and transparent at the same time and held in place by her girl size skeleton which was protruding in all the pointy places, her knees, elbows and shoulders. Her hands were calloused, her fingers long and slender, with yellow nails that bent like claws. She never complained about her arthritis or her aches and pains of which she had many, I could just tell. ‘No point in complaining, it wouldn’t change anything,’ she said when I pointed out the burn on her arm.
‘Getting burned is part of cooking,’ she proclaimed in her Kiwi accent, laughing her throaty laugh which shook her whole slender body.
She had trained her local girls well and they made the best fruit smoothies and cocktails and they knew what white people from across the water liked: strong coffee, crusty bread, unsalted butter, crispy potatoes, creamy or sautéed mushroom sauces over their meats and white sauce on their fish except for the tuna which she served seared with a wasabi sauce. Even though the Wayward Café was just that and not a fancy eatery, Kelly’s food was the best on the island. Every Tuesday she baked her famous sourdough bread, which tasted more like a French or Swiss loaf than the usual island variety of white and soft wonderbread. I would line up for a loaf of her bread to take home and the dozen loaves she baked for sale were all reserved and coveted like slips in the marina. If somebody wasn’t going to be around for their weekly ration, they would pass the privilege to a friend or relative.
I met Leroy for the first time in Switzerland at the open-air market in Oerlikon, under the viaduct. His colourful, exotic fruit and smoothie stand at the market’s entrance was an eye catching and radiant burst of colour in a grey zone and stood out like a Christmas tree in a graveyard. Under the granite stones of the arched viaduct, and the overcast grey skies, with people dressed in shades of grey and black, Leroy’s stand offered a burst of sunny colours. Mangos, papayas, pineapples, coconuts, bananas, starfruit and other tropical fruit were displayed in an open stand decorated with palm fronds and strings of chili peppers. The steady rhythms of Reggae music issued from this tropical island in the middle of Zürich and Leroy himself was as exotic as his produce. His sunny wide smile displayed a set of alabaster teeth in a face carved from ebony with Rasta hair tied in a colourful kerchief. His eyes were dark brown and friendly and I had the feeling that he was able to look right into me, like I was an open box with all my bits and follies spilling out. Tall and regal he represented Caribbean beauty and diversity in the midst of monochromatic Switzerland.
I saw her the first time at Cuddy’s rum shop on the corner of Mainstreet. She wore a red and yellow plaid dress, a Redsox ball cap and large, golden hoop earrings. Her shoulder length hair was frizzy and stiff and twisted into dreadlocks. On her feet she wore plastic sandals that had seen better days. Her hands were like roots and her face was like Sonny Liston after his fight against Cassius Clay, with amber teeth and a flat nose. Her charcoal eyes looked into the distance and her head nodded to the incessant beat of the jab-jab trucks rolling slowly up and down Mainstreet, followed by gyrating partiers dressed in colourful carnival costumes.
We often can be found liming – that’s lounging in Caribbean speak – at Mama Joy’s beachside restaurant and bar on Paradise beach. Her establishment is a simple, open-air, planked platform with brightly coloured railings, covered by a corrugated tin roof. It features a wooden bar at one end, shuttered for the night, and a simple kitchen off to the side. It seats about 20 people on an odd collection of chairs and tables. The turquoise water laps the white beach just steps away where a couple of brightly coloured local boats are always bobbing on the gentle swell. It’s called Paradise Beach because that is what it is. We meet there to play cards, drink beer or rum punches and just hang out.
Bruno's point of view 