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The monkeys hadn't been giving us too much attention for the last few weeks. I could see them swinging in the trees behind the guesthouse from time to time, but not too much up close and uncomfortable time that gets my hair on edge and has me cringing on the patio that they will come too close looking for raw peanuts or the fallen mangoes and bananas we have inside. I hadn't seen them on the wall between our house and the neighbors' place at 5:30 am but that was because, with God's blessing, Lily and Virginie had not been waking up quite so early.
And then this week, the return. First I saw the two mothers and their little ones clinging to their bellies searching in a flower bed for something to eat and then they were right there. In front of my face. Right at the pool behind the patio in a tiny little tree with a strange fruit that, silly me, I thought were pine cones or something. I had never seen anything like them before. Turns out they are sugar apples or soursop and these monkermoos will do just about anything to sink their little teeth into them. At once there were six or so monkeys in one Charlie Brown Christmas tree going bonkers eating, tugging, fighting over this fruit! Even when I approached, and yes, I approached, a little bolder now, they made no move until I was about two feet away, too excited to chomp away on the sugary clumps.
Please forgive my salty language. But there really is no other way to express my utter disgust. Nearly every morning when we finally venture out of the cool bedrooms and head to the living room, I open the outside doors to test the humidity. If it is cooler outside than inside, which it often is not, I open the doors around the house to bring in a cross breeze. I will let the girls wander around the patio, riding their bikes and other sitting and riding toys while I open shutters and assess the state of the garden.
The garden always looks gorgeous. There might be hummingbirds or monkeys or new blooming flowers, Fallen limes or a chain of butterflies chasing each other. A beautiful sight for tired morning eyes. And then, on the patio, there is this.
The wretched toads that offer no promise of turning into princes have left hideous, putrid smelling gifts all over the patio. Gifts which, as I am the only person capable of cleaning in the house it appears, I am meant to clean before Virginie walks right into it or tries to pick it up. Paradise? Yeah...and it's full of shit.
I know these freaks are not only found in Barbados. My father told me that he'd once accused his neighbor of letting his dog freely relieve himself on my parents' driveway, only to discover that the toads in Florida too defecate all over walkways and other spaces. Yeah, I know, nature and all that. It's beautiful. It is. Next time you are marveling at the gorgeous views and photos of the sea in Barbados, think of me, yellow-gloved, armed with paper towels and disinfectant spray, scooping the never-to-be-princes' turds.
(c) Copyright 2010. City Mom in the Jungle
From kindergarten all the way through high school, there are all kinds of things we're told we will need to know in later life. Any savvy teenager will tell you that they are sure they will never use algebra or calculus once they graduate, I know I'd said as much, and as far as I know, I was right. (Although I wasn't paying enough attention and could be using algebra or calculus somewhere in my life and just don't know it.) But these Fahrenheit to Celsius or Centigrade temperature conversions? If you're going to spend any amount of time out of the US, you'd definitely want to try to retain these. And the metric system while you are at it, but that is another entry.
It's funny to hear people talking about the scorcher at 36 degrees or checking the temperature gauge in the car and seeing it read 38. Ha! I can handle that! All that time spent in Boston and New York. I got this! But check this, 36 degrees, a temperature I have come to know and fear as it posts in our daily weather report online, is 96.8 degrees Fahrenheit. And I see that reading every morning when we are still just preparing for the heat of the day. Throw in some direct sun and humidity, with air conditioning only in the bedrooms at home, spotty even in restaurants and some grocery stores, electricity expensive and also temperamental, and there is no safe place from the heat. Maybe the car.
And don't you know it, today I went for a walk on the boardwalk on the South Coast near Accra Beach because I had been looking for the thing for so long that when I saw it, I said, heat index be damned. My friend Karl and I pushed the girls in their respective strollers, covered with sunshades, for as long as we could stand and then took the girls for ice cream at Chilly Moos Ice Cream Treatery. Their second time in two days.
I still can't keep the conversion equation in my head, one more thing to jangle around in there, but I do know this, 36 degrees equals hot. 37 degrees equals hot. 38 degrees, well that's hot. And Barbados in August, Fahrenheit or Celsius, is melting that thermometer.
(c) Copyright 2010. City Mom in the Jungle
Crop Over is the height of Barbados holiday celebrations, even more so than Independence Day. Two days, two working days, are given over to the fete much like Carnival in Trinidad with music, nearly butt naked dancing and copious amounts of alcohol to whet the appetite for excitement and celebration. I watched it all on TV. Yeah, I know, lame. But I couldn't really think of any way to participate this year. Most of the jumping--walking, marching, and dancing in the parade--would take place far from home and Didier, sure of mysterious illnesses that would suddenly befall scheduled workers, was on the job. While I have been ambivalent about Barbados, I respect holidays and traditions, and hoped to experience the real Crop Over in some way.
From my end, all I saw were closed shops and banks, empty streets, a quiet Holetown, and ex-pats scrambling to get together. Many had already been part of Crop Over in years passed and just wanted to get on with their lives today and some were in situations like mine, just not really willing to bus the girls to Bridgetown for bacchanalia in the heat, rain, and crowds, though the rain and wind probably gave the jumpers some break from this broiling heat and humidity.
That was yesterday. Today, the banks and stores are still closed. I imagine there is quite a lot of recuperating going on on the island today. Even better for us. Because today, we ladies had a special treat. We met up, well actually, we were picked up by my friend and the girls' swimming instructor, Wendy and her two little girls, both former classmates of Lily's, and taken to the beach at Sandy Lane. Sandy Lane is an incredibly posh hotel on the island, actually THE posh hotel which also has a housing development full of lovely homes and a golf course and all things lovely on Barbados. It is truly stunning. Tiger Woods, God bless him, got married at Sandy Lane, and though he unsuccessful prevented people from taking the access road through the property to prevent paparazzi et al from getting in, he was able to shut down the rest of the place. I can see why he'd want to. It is gorgeous and well maintained. It's where all the British celebrities stay when they are here. (And they are here much more than anyone from America.) The beach is lovely and today was quite calm and quiet.
The girls got to playing straight away and we all got in the water, it being too gorgeous to resist. Wendy is right up my alley, something I surely haven't said much since arriving here. She is funny and witty and we found we had more in common than we'd known. I don't feel like I have to be selective about what I share, trying to protect her from my potty mouth and sarcasm and felt I could be more forthright about our life here.
There is a lot of pretense in Barbados. Surely everywhere, but there is a facade I think quite common in resort communities where people either pretend to have more than they do, to be happier than they are, to adore everything they experience on a daily basis and give you a look of repulsion if you say you think the emperor is really not wearing any clothes. Now I am certainly a great pretender, I made my living that way for a time, but I have missed honest, open dialogue, irreverence, and just shit-talking. I have always needed to talk it out to figure it out and I find the more I have been able to do that of late, the better being here has been. Better. I am not selling the farm just yet.
It was a lovely morning with just one meltdown, finally not mine or Lily's, and I arrived home happy, contented, and absolutely burnt a nice chocolate brown. My little caramel and milk chocolate dewdrops were satisfied too. Now isn't that a way to spend a holiday.
(c) copyright 2010. City Mom in the Jungle.
