Tag Archives: Barbados

into the dark

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I drove home from work well after dark last night. It’s 7am and it’s pitch black outside. I saw the sun out my window yesterday just before lunch, and that was the only natural light I really saw for the day. At least we could see the sun, there were quite a few days last week where you didn’t know where in the sky the sun was, because the cloud cover was too heavy.

I know I left Barbados at the young age of 9. I know that most of my life has been spent with winter days being short and dark. Still, I just can’t get used to it. I want to live somewhere that the shortest day of the year is still over 11 hours. Yes, it got dark shortly after dinner every day in Barbados. Yes, that’s a stark difference from summer nights here, when we can still see the sun in the sky after 9pm. But that consistency of seeing the sun every day, the wonderful experience of having it be bright and clear… and warm… every morning, this is something I wish I had.

I don’t think I’d ever end up living full time anywhere except Canada, but when I retire I’m going to do my best not to be in the dark for January and February. I am going to seek out holidays that are filled with long, bright, warm days. These short, cold, dark winter days are really not my thing.

Voices, Ambition, and Action

“Today we need the correct mix of voices, ambition, and action. Do some leaders in this world believe that they can survive and thrive on their own? Have they not learned from the pandemic? Can there be peace and prosperity if one third of the world literally prospers, and the other two thirds of the world live under siege, and face calamitous threats to our well-being? What the world needs now my friends, is that which is in the ambit of less than 200 persons, who are willing and prepared to lead. Leaders must not fail those who elect them to lead.” ~ PM Mia Mottley

Take a few minutes out of your day and listen to Barbados Prime Minister, Mia Mottley’s entire speech, which not only shares the eloquence above, but also an attainable strategy to fight global warming.


Well beyond enjoying the lilt of her Bajan 🇧🇧 accent, reminding me of home, this entire speech is a calling to those in power to take action on climate change.

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I also really appreciate when intelligent people use a word I don’t know, and then I look up the definition to discover that it is indeed a better word than any that I would have used:

ambit

ăm′bĭt

noun
  1. Sphere or scope, as of influence. synonym: range.
  2. An external boundary; a circuit.
  3. Compass or circuit; circumference; boundary: as, the ambit of a fortification or of a country.

Pronouncing words ‘well’

I drew up in Barbados and came to Canada at 9, just before the start of Grade 5. It was challenging because no one understood my accent, and questioned even if I was speaking English. My sister had the same issue, and after 2 notices home, my mom had to go to the school to tell them that she didn’t belong in ESL (English as a Second Language) classes because she only spoke English.

I struggled a lot to be understood, having a ‘I’m not in Kansas’ moment happening in October, after I was moved in a seating plan. I was placed next to the only black kid in the class. This was comforting for me, coming from the Caribbean where most my classmates were black. On the first day sitting together, something happened that I was excited about so I turned to him and blurted out what I wanted to say in my full Bajan accent. He looked back at me, deadpan expression, and said, “I don’t know what the f*** you just said,” and turned to talk to someone else.

I remember sitting there thinking, ‘Oh man, even my brother doesn’t get me. I’m in big trouble!’

That was a big moment, I worked diligently to break my accent after that. I chose a horrible strategy of saying ‘STOP’ in my head after each word I spoke, to prevent me from linking and slurring words together. This did help me say things more clearly, and made it much easier for Canadians to understand me, but it left me in a catatonic state for seconds at a time. My conversation would be so much slower than my mind, that I would literally get lost telling a story.

My mouth would fall 5,6, even 7 sentences behind my mind, behind my regular speech pace, and I’d get lost. I would be saying a sentence and the next sentence in my brain would be 7 sentences later, and I’d forget how I got there, and even why the story was relevant. I’d freeze, on the outside, but inside I was a hot mess as I scrambled to figure out what to say next. I would literally block out everything in this panicked internal state, leaving the external interaction I was having. I can remember my mom saying to me, after a comatose moment, in her Bajan-Trinidadian accent, “Boy, wass-a-matta wit-chu? You on drugs?”

I still sometimes struggle to find words, decades later, and I know it stems from me trying to talk in a way that was completely alien to me. I joke that I am ESL and my second language is also English.

That said, while my parents tell me that my transition to Canada was really challenging and that I struggled a lot. Beyond that not in Kansas moment, my memories of that grade are almost all positive. That’s a testament to the resilience of kids.

Many aren’t as fortunate as me though, and I was not in a situation where I had to try to learn a whole new language. I have so much respect for people who move to another country and have to fully immerse themselves in a language foreign to them, and often they aren’t given the opportunity to engage with many people who are native speakers because those native speakers don’t make half the effort to converse with them that they have to make.

But going back to the idea of English being my first and second language, many people pronounce words ‘wrong’ or ‘not well’ because that’s the way they learned the words. I still have word choices and phrases that I use, that Canadians don’t use. A simple example, I struggle to use the word ‘beer’ without sounding like I’m saying ‘bear’. It makes for a strange offering when a friend comes over.

While that example is just a wrong pronunciation, when an entire group of people say a word a certain way… it’s not wrong. It’s not miss pronounced, it’s an example of how words evolve over time.


We shouldn’t be too quick to make judgements about how different groups use words in different ways than we do. A perfect example would be, imagine going to the southern states and every time someone said, “Y’all” instead of “You all”, you corrected them and told them they were saying it wrong?

There are many words and phrases used today that we should be far more accepting of. Less judgmental of. The words are being pronounced well, just not the way you/we pronounce them.

A little context

A couple days ago I wrote this about a heavy 3am rainfall that woke me up:

“The sound took me back to my childhood. In Barbados we would have these short, intense rain showers. They seldom lasted more than 20 minutes and they came and left without warning. We had a galvanized roof and the sound of heavy rain hitting it was thunderous. But it was never scary. As loud and fierce as the rain sounded hitting corrugated metal above us, it was also a sound that was soothing, comforting.”

In a video chat my dad said he read it and said that it brought back memories for him too. My youngest daughter joined me on the phone and he asked if she had read it, she hadn’t. So he went on to ask if she knew the sound of rain on a galvanized roof. She didn’t know what that was. Then, like me, he went on to describe a corrugated metal roof. I said, she probably doesn’t know what that is either… she didn’t.

We have an aluminum roof on our current house, so a metal roof isn’t an unknown thing, but a loud, uninsulated, galvanized, corrugated metal roof is not something common to Canada. It is something a tropical islander would know all too well.

Here is a video sharing the sound of ‘heavy rain’ falling on a galvanized, corrugated metal roof:

https://youtu.be/VDu-YwKJ2uA

While the video description says ‘heavy rain’, this sounds quite gentle. It’s a sound of a constant flow. Often as a kid, when the sound of rain on a roof woke me up during the night, it would be an intense and truly heavy rain attacking the roof that would wake me. It would settle to the sound in the video, but imagine a louder, more violent version of this thundering above as a passing storm went by.

It was interesting to realize that the experience I was describing could connect my dad to a shared experience, but the same description meant nothing to my daughter. It made me realize that I was sharing a contextual experience that not everyone has had. Furthermore, here in Vancouver, while it rains a lot, the rain just isn’t the same as in Barbados.

The Bajan rains come fast and are intense, and leave as quickly as they come. Here in Vancouver it can drizzle for hours. In Barbados when it rains you stay under cover because you know it will stop soon, and a 15 second walk from your car to inside would leave you drenched like you went into the shower with your clothes on. Here in Vancouver, it rains far more often and I never carry an umbrella. For most rainfalls here, I don’t even think about covering my head when I walk in the rain for a minute. Rain here is not rain everywhere.

I’m reminded of the Inuit having several terms for snow, while we just call it snow. And that some cultures can’t distinguish between blue and green, because they don’t have a term for blue, but they also see shades of green that we can’t distinguish or tell apart. Our contexts growing up shape us. And our experiences don’t always create a shared understanding. To me a corrugated, galvanized roof is a musical instrument played by rain, to others it is an unfamiliar sound.

Torrential Rain

At about 3am this morning I was awoken by the sound of torrential rain. It was bouncing off of our roof with such force that it seemed to be attacking it. It’s all at once a threatening and comforting sound. It makes me feel happy to be under warm covers, rather than outside being pelted by heavy, biting bullets of water.

The sound took me back to my childhood. In Barbados we would have these short, intense rain showers. They seldom lasted more than 20 minutes and they came and left without warning. We had a galvanized roof and the sound of heavy rain hitting it was thunderous. But it was never scary. As loud and fierce as the rain sounded hitting corrugated metal above us, it was also a sound that was soothing, comforting.

If the rain came as I was falling asleep, I would fight sleep just to be up and hear the chorus of raindrops drumming the roof. If it came while I slept, it would wake me from sheer loudness, yet I wouldn’t be able to stay awake long enough to hear the rain stop.

Last night was a reminder of these childhood memories. It is fascinating to me that such a violent sound could be so satisfying to listen to. Lying in bed, protected by the ceiling above, a torrential rain is a musical interlude rather than a scary interruption of sleep.

“Here comes the rain again, falling on my head like a memory.”

It is a reminder of my childhood, a sound that evokes fond memories of growing up on a tropical island… Of rainstorms pounding our roof. Of running into the ocean since the rain would soak us anyway. Of driving under a cloud and instantly needing maximum speed windshield wipers to be able to see ahead, then suddenly hearing the squeaking noise of the full speed wipers streaking across a dry windshield seconds after driving out from under the rain cloud. Rain falling like a memory, and a melody, evoking a sense of comfort, a feeling of being home.

Here comes the rain

I woke up before my alarm this morning to the sound of heavy rain. It’s actually a nice sound to wake up to, but it also is a reminder that we are heading into the dark and cold of winter. For those of you that don’t know, I spent almost 10 years growing up in Barbados.

When you live on a tropical island, not too far from the equator, every day gets close to 12 hours sunlight. The rainy season means an hour of heavy rain daily before its sunny again, and sometimes the sun is still shining during those rains. Also, it doesn’t get cold. Ever.

Now I’m living on the edge of a Canadian rain forest on the wet/west coast. I like it better than the chill of Toronto, where we first moved when we came to this country, but sometimes the rain gets to me. Sometimes the damp feels really cold. Sometimes I really miss the sun.

In Barbados the rain was a welcome reprieve from the heat, although sometimes it brought uncomfortable humidity. Here, it can bring a chill. It can come with dull skies that hide the location of the sun in the sky… for days on end. When the rain comes, it can sometimes feel like it’s not going to leave.

For this reason, I load up on vitamin D, I have a natural light lamp on my desk, and I start dressing in layers that includes pairs of long underwear (that I’ll start using soon). People think it’s funny that I wear long underwear from late October through April, but I get chilled easily and am more comfortable hot than cold.

The rains are here. The cold is coming. I have to psych myself up. I have to prepare myself for the short, wet, dark days. I know what lies ahead, and I have to keep my chin up, and keep the clouds outside from creeping in.

Bajan Sun

I grew up in Barbados and loved spending time in the sun. Summers would be spent at the beach, arriving on the sand after breakfast, and often staying until late afternoon. The beach was only a 5 minute walk from our apartment on the second level of a two-story quadplex, and sometimes we’d walk home for lunch, but usually we’d bring a lunch or buy something on the beach.

I’d get so dark that my bathing suit tan line looked like it divided two completely different people. The amazing thing is, I never used sun tan lotion. That was stuff the tourists used. And we saw a lot of burned tourists.

My grandparents lived in a big house on our street and they owned a motel at the end of the street, about 25 meters from our apartment. I can remember my granny’s institutions to newcomers, in her Bajan accent.

“Listen ta me. I got two important things ta tell you. First, don’ go in the sun between 10 and 2 for your first few days… and watch out for the Bajan rum!”

Like clockwork there would be a couple that ignored her warning about every 2-3 weeks. It usually went like this: The first night I’d be woken up late by a taxi dropping a couple off. The husband would be slurring and generally being an ass, drunk on our strong rum. And his apologetic wife would be unsuccessfully trying to corral him into their room while trying to keep him quiet and not wake anyone up. Or they’d both be drunk and making a ruckus.

Next, I’d see them visiting my grandparents the following evening, either just the husband or both of them, red as lobsters, arms outstretched, and asking what to do about the sunburn pain? Basically, being hung over, they would decide to just go to the beach, ignore my granny’s advice and sleep in the sun during that blazing hot time between 10am and 2pm. My granny’s advice was always the same: vinegar. Keep it in the fridge, put it on a soft cloth and dab the burn. She used to give the vinegar out for free, or at least with the cost of an ‘I told you so’ lecture.

I can no longer sit in the sun for endless hours without sun tan lotion. I don’t know if it’s a difference in the sun or my soft Canadian skin, but I can’t handle the sun like I did as a kid. I hate suntan location though, to me it feels like a film of dirt being added to my skin. So I still don’t use it much. Instead of using it, when I go to the beach, I sit in the morning sun, enjoy the feel of soaking in some natural vitamin D, then seek shade after that. I listen to my body and it tells me when I’ve had enough. Sometimes the sun is unavoidable beyond that and yes, on those days I still use sun tan lotion, but mostly I am just cautious about how much sun I get. I still tan well, but it has been decades since I’ve had that stark tan line just above my bathing suit.

Growing up on an island I saw many raw, burned tourists. I saw t-shirt lines so dark, I thought their white bodies were shirts with chest hair. I saw skin peeling off their arms and backs. I saw Santa coloured cheeks, and Rudolph coloured noses during every month of the year. And I heard my granny’s warning over and over again to newcomers, to watch out for the Bajan sun and rum!