Two weeks in Barbados

Barbados was another one of those island dream places that I had only heard of from romance novels. Of course, like the other islands, I had an idea of what it would be like but it turned out to be nothing like I imagined. It is a lovely place with very nice people who surprised me with their educated population and overall higher standards than some of the other islands I had known by then. As far as I know, they still maintain this standard of excellence that gives their residents an advantage over those of the other islands as far as progress and individual opportunity is concerned.

Barbados is a British territory and the residents there are known to take advantage of the opportunity to travel to England and attend school, returning to their island home to provide their educated skills and expertise to the job market, affording the islanders better salaries, business opportunities, and lifestyles. It was ironic, however, that they were still an island with very little outside influence such a franchise restaurants, stores, and the offshore banking industry as is seen on some of the other islands at that time. When I arrived there in October 1989, McDonald’s had just opened as the first and only fast food restaurant and, I learned, was the new hot spot where people took their special dates out to dinner. I am certain all this has changed in the 20 years since I was there. They did have many fine restaurants then which I did not have the opportunity to sample and I‘m sure they still do, along with, now, fast food chains too.

I learned about chattel houses in Barbados. I thought chattel was an interesting word for the little houses I saw all over this island. Chattel means personal property. I did not know this until years later when I took a real estate licensure course but the chattel houses on Barbados were exactly that, personal property. The people owned little houses that could be moved. They were built of wood but were about the size of a mobile home, only not as long, not built so cheaply, or on wheels as we are familiar with in the states. I didn’t see one being moved but was told that they could be and that even though they didn’t look like much many of the residents did very well in their employment and had fine things inside and drove very nice, expensive imported (everything was imported) cars. Therefore, in this way, it was impossible to ascertain by the size and location of a home, just how well of its owners were. I found this a very interesting concept. Whenever these people wanted a change of scenery or did not like their neighbors, they moved. Since many people on an island are related, they probably had family all over the island that had land they could move to but I suspect that they did not move all that often.

I spent two weeks in Barbados. Most of that time I was either on the beach or in bed. I was given a bungalow at the Divi Southwinds Resort. At first, I introduced myself to the marketing manager who ran the operation there and she showed me around and let me follow her, learning how she did her job, which was the same as the one I had on St. Croix only much, much bigger. She had a team of 30 or more OPCs and had meetings, set quotas, had incentives, and competition for bookings. I wished I could go back to STX with my new knowledge and apply what I had learned but there was no job for me there. They had no job for me in Barbados either and in fact, they began to get suspicious of me after I had been there for nearly two weeks and asked me to leave. They did this because they have very strict immigration laws and will not let outsiders come there and take jobs that could be given to Barbadians. I was ready to go. I had done nothing much there except read books. I did not have anything else to do. They paid for my accommodations but not my meals and I had begun to eat very little to save money, I was broke. It was time to go. I had a return ticket that was open dated and would take me back to St. Croix but I planned to use it to see all I could on my way back.

I stopped in Antigua where the Divi Corporation was in the process of opening a new resort. It turned out they were not hiring yet so there was no job for me there but I stayed a week with a friend whom I had met on St. Croix. Justin was a pilot and flew for the West Indies Air all over the islands. He lived there and was dating an island girl whose family had lived there many years. I went to her home and met her family who were gracious and obviously a major part of the upper echelon of the white islander society on Antigua. I believe they had been there for many generations and would now enjoy hearing more of their family history but at the time I was nervous about being the female guest of their daughter’s boyfriend so didn‘t ask too many questions. I will not go into details here about my stay with Justin other than to say we enjoyed seeing each other again and as far as I know, he still had a girlfriend when I left.

Justin’s girlfriend spoke the island lingo/dialect and I picked it up very quickly while I was there. It was uncanny how well I was able to mimic her. I enjoyed this but was not sure what they thought of my newly acquired vernacular, if it was mockery or just plain weird. It is my chameleon linguistics ability. I still have it and only play with it but I think I should have or still could capitalize on it somehow. I can copy many dialects. Australian, Indian, and Irish are easy and of course, the English of England is a favorite. I do hillbilly exceptionally well.

In the islands, I encountered so many people from the North East. I could pick out people from different parts of New York and almost always from New Jersey. It really was not hard to guess because most of them were from there anyway. I still play a little game with the tourist with whom I come in contact with here in Eureka Springs whereby I listen and try to detect where they are from. In the Midwest, there are differences and I can usually get pretty close. People are amazed when I can guess where or from which direction they are from. South Arkansas is easy to detect because my mother is from there and I know it well. Louisianans are a dead give away. Tennesseans have a little more twang than Arkansans but Missourians and Kansans are sometimes hard to separate. Yankees are always a stand out here.