rain

Clouds and their Silver Linings

Robyn, , , , 2 Comments

The recent deluge haranguing Montego Bay has put a damper on so many things. Parties are in danger of being rained out, employees have yet another excuse for being late, and most frustratingly I can’t get the sunshine time my laundry needs to dry.

While I’m stuck in this limbo land of weather, I am realizing with greater certainty how important it is to be patient, with the world and myself. All good things take time; seeds and stories and life plans must germinate before they can flourish. Though Montego Bay is utterly miserable in a downpour, the rain brings much needed refreshment to a parched and grimy landscape.

In an effort to remind myself about this need to be patient I started a ‘Future journal’. In it I have been writing down all the things I think I need to have a good life. It seems materialistic, but by writing down these worldly wants I find that I can filter out most of my day-to-day whims (which are never necessities but still somehow make me feel like I’m missing something vital) and focus on the true essentials.

In the middle of this cold front I also managed to get sick again, which has reminded me to pace myself and listen more keenly to what my body is saying. Right now it’s saying that I need a health dose of Vitamin C and more blankets. But I hope the lessons in patience and listening will stick around even after my sneezing fits are over.

 

Girl on Bim Day 2 | The rain in Barbados falls mainly on. . . Barbados

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pneumonia medicine probably tastes like mauby.

After sleeping the sleep of the jetlagged the day before, I’m up before seven this morning ready and rearing to go. And go I do. Today, I venture into the city: Bridgetown.

Bridgetown is the capital of Barbados, in more ways than just geographically. It’s the shopping and cultural centre as well; everything happens here. And almost every things that happens in Bridgetown seems to happen along Broad Street. I go window shopping in the vast, rambling departments of Cave Shepherd and I learn one very important fact: things are not cheap here.

It rains.

We run into the nearest Chefette and kill two birds with one stone. Chefette is a uniquely Bajan restaurant, sort of a cross between KFC, Burger King and Pizza Hut but somehow not quite achieving the same excellence of flavour it would have if it had devoted its energies to just one fare. But the food still tastes good, with the exception of one drink option they can only offer in Barbados: mauby.

image not mine.
deceptively yummy-looking.

Mauby is a flavour of soda (also sold as a syrup, and – I would like to think – a paint stripper) derived from the bark of the Mauby tree. It is black and fizzy much like Coca-Cola, but there the resemblance ends. Mauby is as bitter as a jilted bride, with a burn at the back of your throat reminiscent of really bad tequila. It is no Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster.

We go back home.

Later in the evening is a small Christmas party, held at the nearby Home for the Physically Challenged. It’s my first time singing carols with a group of people who aren’t in a church, let alone with a group of people who are so enthusiastic (if somewhat dysarthric) in their renditions.

The exposure to Bajan culture and customs is much less overt here where we are just a group of people, some more challenged than others but still people, congregating to celebrate the season. The lines between J’can and Bajan blur enough for me to slip under them and fit right in, serving plates of fresh-from-Chefette Christmas fare and smiling with everyone I see.

We aren’t so different, you know.

open letter to people with umbrellas (you know who you are)

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Dear people with umbrellas,

Why is it that when it is raining, is always the people with umbrellas that feel they must walk under every awning on the street? The whole point of the umbrella is that you don’t need to cotch under the chiney man shop door like everybody else who don’t have umbrella. All you doing is getting everybody under there wet with the water dripping off your shelter on a stick, and endangering the eyes of everybody you pass.

All I ask is that you walk as close to the street as possible without making the drivers honk at you for scratching up their cars with your umbrellas. And leave the shelter to the cold and wet among us who couldn’t fork out the $250 to buy an umbrella from the umbrella man who selling them down the road.

Sincerely,
Cold and wet pedestrian

See, he knows what I’m talking about.