Stephen Thorpe

My Caribbean favourites

A few of my favourite Caribbean experiences:

Lessons in Caribbean Life... I’d just accepted a Planning Consultancy role in Kingston, and there was a lot to consider. On my second morning in the office the boss suddenly exclaimed “Lawd Almighty, forgotten this, a damn meeting in Mobay at noon, get up you’re coming with me !”. Bundled into a car for an unnervingly fast, sometimes hair raising four hour cross country drive, we arrived in the nick of time.....or so it seemed. To a bemused reception. “Sorry bwoys, yuh a lickle late, dat meeting dis time last year.” Salutary lessons learned--- never rush in the Caribbean, the clock is rarely an issue, and always, always double check on meeting times (then add an hour, or even a year). Oddly, my employers then were a DC too. Design Collaborative, Jamaica, to whom I owe much, not least a lifelong passion for the country and its people.

Down the Grenadines... Way back in the 1970s living in Barbados, it was normal practice to get off island at holiday time. Easter was always the Grenadines, when a small like minded group of roustabouts would charter an old timber schooner out of Union Island, the Scaramouche, (latterly appearing in Pirates of the Caribbean) and still skippered by Martin Jennett who washed up on these gilded shores a while back now. Lashings of rum were the natural order from boarding on a four day odyssey around the islands, all nearly shipshape and fancy free. First stop Mustique, still then a relative backwater; I wandered off with a bloke I hardly knew, tramping up hill and down dale, eventually staggering onto a windswept beach hours later-- to espy our vessel disappearing over the horizon. No mobile phones then either. I lay in the surf feeling like Benn Gunn, burnt to a cinder, trying to clear my head. My pal, never did know his name, took off and returned a long while after. 'See that headland over there', pointing to an outcrop over a mile away, 'there’s two very nice Swedish girls in the cove beyond it.' I’d suspected he was deranged, and this confirmed it. 'Oh, and they’re naked. Gone native, fishing, living in driftwood huts.' Our boat captain apologised eventually, four days later when they picked us up, saying he’d weighed anchor and forgotten the headcount. I told him not to worry, we’d made new friends. Marooned in Mustique. To be recommended. Could you re-enact this now, down Macaroni Beach say? Er no, you’d more as likely be frogmarched away, in chains.

Helpful directions... Anywhere in the Caribbean: You’re asking for directions, either in the wilds or in a a car downtown, and this is how it sometimes goes. “ Well it down soh (looking one way, waving vaguely another, with a sweep of the arm), swing leff, den it way up soh on yuh right, or it may be de leff”. Never follow this kind of advice, or you’ll rue the day. It’s the West Indian way of saying “I don’t really know, but I don’t want you to feel bad”. Thank the adviser warmly, and move on.