MEMORIES OF MY ISLANDS

My islands are St.Vincent and the Grenadines, West Indies. Most of my memories are of the times spent on Bequia, the first island south of the mainland. I remember as a child and even now the night skies there are so clear and the stars are so bright, the billions and billions of them visible to the naked eye. Nothing like we see in North America due to the pollution and the lights. In those days, my grandparents houses did not have electricity. When evening came, we used oil lamps. It is a time I remember fondly. We didn't have television to distract us, we would go for walks in the cool night over to a neighbours to spend some fun times together. That's what I remember most about those days, the togetherness and sense of community. Bequia still has a very strong sense of community that does not compare to anywhere else in the world.

I remember one time walking over a steep shortcut to get to my Aunt's house over on another hill. There was a long line of us following one behind the other, my aunt was up ahead with the flashlight. My Mom was holding my hand, guiding frightened little me who had been filled with horror stories of possums dropping out of the trees on top of people at night. In the pitch black darkness of the forest canopy I fearfully trudged, firmly fixing my gaze on the shadowy form of my mother's backside in front of me, for fear of seeing something that should scare me out of my wits. All of a sudden my aunt said, "watch out for the stump!" Her exclamation alarmed me, I thought I heard her say, "watch out for the skunk!!" Frightened little me started screaming and climbing my mother's legs just as we were passing on a very narrow strip of path above an almost vertical drop. My aunt who was ahead, had to come and save the two of us from nearly dropping off the precipice. Now, as we sensible grown-ups know, there are no skunks in the Caribbean. We've had good laughs from that incident ever afterwards.

It was Christmas in 1992 when I first participated in an old island christmas tradition called "Nine mornings". It is a tradition of going around at 3 a.m., for nine days until Christmas, to people's houses singing carols and playing cuatros (some know these as ukeleles), and guitars. We moved from house to house until sunrise, and many times the occupants would wake up and give us refreshments and a bit of change. We trekked through the bush to many different parts of the island, it is a trip for only the sturdy. This was done for nine days in a row, until Christmas Day. It's a lot of walking, laughing and goofing around, but also a lot of scratches and bruises from stumbling in the thick darkness of the forest, but no one cared 'cause we were having fun. On Boxing Day we used the money collected from those nights to pay for food and drinks for a picnic day at the beach, complete with cricket and football (or soccer as you would call it). Naturally we spent a lot of the time in the sea, having water fights and playing water volley ball.