Paradise Lost



courtesy of Jean-Luc Virot

 I do finally understand people's utter fascination with life on the islands, whether it be because they actually live here and enjoy the slow paced, laissez-faire, year round sun and sea that big company salaries and /or expendable income (read riches) can provide, or because they do not live here and their dreams of paradise are far better than actually living on an island every day.  I fought and I fought hard against Barbados.  My slightly schizophrenic, obsessive-compulsive, reading-frenzied, brain-racing, artistic, chaotic brain just couldn't slow to the pace.  I was bored.  I didn't have my own group of friends and I didn't have my husband who worked all the time.  Every honeymoon story, cruise story, island hopping tale from years ago...I loved it.  Mount Gay Tour, Banks Brewery visit from the cruise ship, I feel you.  But living here after a life in a city that welcomed me as no other had, hurt both physically and emotionally.  It is beautiful here, someone's paradise.  But not mine.


I love the sea.  I love picking mangoes and limes and coconuts in my garden.  I love the strange fig bananas that look like regular bananas but have to be cooked to reveal their yumminess.  I even love the sun, just not all year 'round.  I have adjusted to the heat.  Foregone my best friends for new.  Traded cute clothes and haircuts for sun dresses, flip flops and ponytails or buns.  I wore no make up.  At all.  To the grocery store.  To a restaurant!  But this could only have been a temporary stop on our life path.  (I mean, I love clothes and make up too much.  I kid.)  Barbados, any island really, is for me, a place to settle down when all you were meant to do in the world has been done, or can be done from your home.  I don't think that is the case for me. I hope, no I expect that we will look back and smile about our time here.  After nearly two years, we are going "off island" for good.

Suddenly, I am looking at things nostalgically, recalling our first drive in from the airport in the middle of the night on August 7, 2009, waking up in a queen-sized bed sweating my face off with all four members of our family, one of them a 3 1/2 month old Virginie, cramped together being eaten alive by mosquitoes.  My friend Eva, in a gift that could only be given by God, just happened to be visiting Barbados and she witnessed with me, firsthand, the insanity.  Eva is a world traveller.  She has been everywhere and I could see on her stunned face that this was going to be a challenge. 

Our house had no screens, AC in the bedrooms only, no fans, save two poorly placed ceiling fans probably put in some time during the disco era, hard tiled floors, bars on every window and door wide enough to keep out people (did we need that?) but not wide enough to keep out curious monkeys, lizards, geckos, bats, moths, and blood-lusting mosquitoes.  They tried to kill us.  No really.  Drain our blood and make us look pock-marked so no one would love us, or at least recognize us.  We slept under sauna hot mosquito-netting, getting tangled in the middle of the night for diaper changes and bathroom breaks.  Didier worked for hours at a time and I was alone in the jungle with two little girls, one a baby, the other a terrified toddler who wanted clues from me and I had nothing to offer it seems other than hugs and a completely bugged out expression on my face.  I had no friends and no one wanted to call me from home because it was crazy expensive and I just cried and wailed all the time.  Who wants to talk to that post-partum inflicted, mosquito-bite covered, incredibly tan and shiny wench complaining about life in the tropics?  I got it.  I get it.  I have just always needed to sound it out.  I need to talk about it, process, figure out stuff and I need to run my mouth to do it. 

And so it happened that I started to meet people...running my mouth, as they say down South for "talking too much."  Didier put screens on the windows after much debating about whether or not this was even possible.  (Let me remind you that anything is possible.  Anything.)  We kept doors sealed at night after 6:30 pm to keep out the humidity and the house cooled down.  Lily went to a wonderful pre-school and then reception class where she met lots of great kids and I amazing parents.  We found a hot little spot for good music, dancing and sushi on the beach run by a sexy young couple, she is Guyanese and he, Iranian--HOT-- with whom we became friends.  (Shout out Cassareep!) 

On breaks and days off, we explored the island, though there is still much we would like to try before going--the submarine tour, swimming with the turtles, Aerial Barbados Zip Tours, a dinner at Cariba, maybe cool pics at some of the rum shops.  But honestly, it still felt like an extended vacation, a break from reality, a little bit like a black hole.  Professionally it did nothing for Didier or me, but it gave us better focus as to who we really are and who we really want to be when we return to the surface.  Yes, there was turquoise blue water, calm seas (usually), and a very laid back lifestyle, but it did not seem real. 

And now we are leaving.  Heading back to "home," wherever that mythical place is, to start again.  Start.  Not much is planned and we are excited, nervous, anxious, thrilled.  We are certainly preparing better than we did when we came here.  We know what to look for now, what works for us and what doesn't.  But what we have this time that we didn't have last is a sense of steering our own course.  I think a lot of people who come to Barbados do so to do just that.  Get off the grid.  Control their destinies.  Make their own paradise.  We came here for work in a pretty tough set up, and that as much as anything else shaped our minds about the place.  For us, Barbados can never be paradise, but somewhere else can.  I think it hovers in the space between us, all four of us, where we feel safe and loved and connected and free.  Let's see where that takes us.

courtesy of Jean-Luc Virot

(c)Copyright 2011. City Mom in the Jungle.