Carriacou

Monday 9th November 2009, day 388, 7,298 miles. 12° 29’.04 N, 061° 27’.66 W. Hillsborough, Carriacou.


Carriacou and Petite Martinique. Two tiny islands, with a combined surface area of 6 square miles, meriting just a few column inches in the Lonely Planet guide,. How long can it take us to visit them? We feel short changed and rushed leaving eight days after we arrived.

Carriacou is by far the larger of the two. We anchor in the pleasant Tyrrel Bay, and tie up our dinghy watched patiently by a bus driver. No danger of his driving off while potential passengers are around!

The capital, Hillsborough, is a friendly little place, where the Bullen family seem to hold the reins of commerce, owning the pharmacy, the largest supermarket, and the Industrious Stores. The two streets have the usual shops, all selling the same mix of clothes, shoes, kitchen goods, plastic flowers and chairs, ornaments, and whatever else has taken the owner’s eye. The banks, in a civilised way, have a special fast track queue for senior citizens. A tiny museum shows some Amerindian and Carib relics, and traces some history of the tribal areas from where the original slaves were brought.

We travel out by bus to the village of Windward, the centre of local boatbuilding. Three boats are under construction – or rather, have been and will be, but are “resting” just now. The boats are wooden, built without obvious plans into a solid traditional workboat design, with the look of being able to sail into a whale and not notice. Grenada was pretty laid back, but we notice the change of pace coming to Carriacou, and then down another gear in Petite Martinique. In Grenada, the bus stops for you wherever you want. On Carriacou, it takes you on a free sight-seeing tour, or detours to a passenger’s (I almost said guest’s) office to pick up papers. On Petite Martinique, there is no bus at all…

On an island like Carriacou, where people are so very friendly and apparently content and at ease with their lives, the contrast with the poverty of many is thought-provoking. At first, dazzled by the sunshine, the fruits and flowers, the bright colours, the natural beauty, and lulled by the warmth and directness of every one we meet, the tumbledown houses by the roadside seem just part of the overall picturesqueness and general difference. But then it starts to come into focus: that beautiful slim girl, with the brightly coloured top and intricately braided hair, has just walked out of a two room house, whose windows are rotting, whose corrugated iron roof is patched and rusting, which probably houses a family of six or eight people, all of whom share that unthinkable lopsided privy down by the mango tree.

By any of the material standards of the West: housing, education, health care, sanitation, pensions, possessions, these people are deprived. They are not living in some Rousseauesque natural idyll, they are living in poverty. And yet, there is no sense, or at least none that we ever pick up, of complaint, or bitterness or resentment, or even unhappiness. My American friend, Bart, says that all we see is the friendly smiles for the tourists, and that a simmering cauldron of anger lies beneath this. I am not so sure. There is a tourist smile, of course, and we see it when somebody is trying to hassle us onto a bus we don’t want to board, or circling the boat with a load of T shirts. But it is hard to fake the open warmth of the greetings all round the islands, hard to fake the ease with which people talk about their homes and families, hard to fake the welcome you get as soon as you show an interest in everyday life and talk about your own.

Which is not to say that you can’t offend people. Starting to talk to someone without first wishing them good day and asking how they are is rude. Losing your temper is a sign of poor manners. Not living up to the local standards of community and sharing is an offence - one which we are guilty of every day, as we glide over the surface in our cocooned luxury.

Then we get a counter-picture to our overall impression of harmony when reading the autobiography of the only person in recent history to have received a VC that was not posthumous: Johnson Beharry, a Grenadian. If you see the book, Barefoot Soldier, it’s strongly recommended. He writes of the difficulties of growing up with an alcoholic father and no income, in the Grenadian countryside. He describes how many young men take the pleasure principle to such an extent that they spend their days sitting on a wall drinking rum. He tells how hard it is for someone with drive and ambition to succeed with the blessings of their community, and how many people there are who want to extend the concept of sharing to simply letting somebody else work, and then pass the proceeds around.

The longer we stay here, the less I realise we know about islanders’ lives and what they think about them. And the more I realise that applying my own language to their experience and expectations will not necessarily lead to understanding.

So back to what we do know about: Our second pair of lobsters this trip is sold to us in Petite Martinique. The advice this time is to eat them fresh fresh fresh, which means keeping them in a bucket of seawater for the afternoon. They are an active and curious couple – or simply find the bucket a little constraining – so we put the bucket in the cockpit when we go ashore. Surely, even standing on each others’ backs, they won’t be able to scale 18” of sheer fibreglass.

Petite Martinique is tiny, perhaps a mile long. We walk the road in one direction, admiring the view north over the Grenadines, picking out Tobago Cays, Canouan, Mustique, and hazy in the distance the outlines of Bequia. Then turn around and walk to the other end of the road, ending up having described a letter C which leaves out the eastern side of the island.

The dogs on this island are different to the standard multi-breed Dogg that populates everywhere else: sandy brown, lightly built, pointy head, ears folded over in neat or lopsided triangles, curly tail held at a jaunty angle. The dogs of Petite Martinique are shorter, whiter, hairier, yappier … we imagine, not so long ago, a visiting West Highland Terrier having a testosterone-fuelled field day in the island’s canine gene pool.

From the island we take the dinghy out to a reef with two tiny islets of pure white sand, one called Punaise (drawing pin) which suits it well. We swim, snorkel, sit on the sand and look at the sea, plan our trip to the Tobago Cays … a Friday evening in November … sitting in the office, darkness has fallen already, streetlights shining on damp pavements, thinking about packing up, but dreading the crowded Central Line, the hordes at Liverpool Street, is it worth staying half an hour longer to have a chance of getting a seat on the train …

On Sunday, in our cleanest [only presentable pair of ] navy blue shorts, we went to the church in Hillsborough back on Carriacou. The church itself is in fine shape, but the attendant buildings next door are still ruined, a legacy of Hurricane Ivan. Although all the windows are open, there is no wind and the heat is stifling. The congregation is celebrating the 90th birthday of Tanty (Aunt) Rose, whose children, grand-children and great-grand-children fill the pews. The tiniest ones presented in a bunch of brightly coloured frills, like sugared almonds, the six year olds best-frocked and simmering with barely repressed mischief. Tanty Rose is wheeled in, frail, bent and cloudy-eyed, and parked, after two or three false starts, at the front, from where a low muttering is heard during pauses in the service. Poor old thing, we think. Not a bit of it. After the sermon, the priest says: “Well, I know you always like to have the last word, Tan Rose” and hands her the microphone. And off she goes. Parents! You should be bringing your children up better, teaching them respect. Children! You should listen to your parents and do your homework. Everybody should be cleaner, on time, more polite, sitting up straight, respecting their elders and betters, working harder, not fidgeting in the Lord’s house. And that, in case we hadn’t realised, means us. It is with some difficulty that the priest regains control of the service.

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