Information overload.
After twelve days of almost total inactivity, we ventured more than half a mile from the hotel by taking an extensive tour of the island in the company of legendary taxi driver and seemingly friend of every single person on this island (almost), Boney. This is the guy. If you are ever in Grenada you could have no better guide.
It was possibly all the better for following such protracted stasis as everything seemed the more vivid and exciting and Boney was able to show us some of the real Grenada, not just because he knows where the best plants and cafes are, but also because we were welcomed into the soap opera of his life. To begin with he was having altercations on the phone with someone over their failure to pick up some keys, which made him late for his appointment with us. Then as he showed us two different variety of bananas a big concrete mixer truck passed by and then stopped a few yards up the road. Boney went up to the driver and they seemed to have quite a heated exchange. Oblivious to what was going on we weren't sure if things were about to kick off into a fight, but eventually things calmed down and as we drove away Boney explained, with some consternation, that the driver of the truck had smashed his headlight a few days previously and he'd been having trouble tracking him down for reimbursement. A mile or so down the road he stopped to talk to a man who looked like he'd been enjoying his Christmas break by drinking all the rum on the island and it was clear that this fellow should have been doing some work for Boney, but the mistake had been made of paying him up front and he'd possibly been spending the money he hadn't yet earned on having a good time. "Don't vex me," said the recently inebriated fellow. I liked that.
A further phone call about the keys sent Boney into a momentary fury, although he did not neglect his duties and in between his mini rant he did aggressively point out some trumpet flowers at the side of the road. It was a little scary and a little bit funny and luckily when I laughed, Boney laughed along too. And as the day continued his stresses diminished.
Boney seems to be the king of the island, both master of humans and of animals. He is friends with the monkeys and able to charm them from the trees and we got close enough to feed them bananas from our clenched fists (they unwrap your fingers to get at the treats) and to pet them - I only found out later that some of these monkeys have rabies, but it was still worth the risk.
Then we headed down to a lake where Boney threw a little bread into the water and hundreds of fish came to the surface to eat. He then demonstrated how it was possible, whilst clenching some bread between your thumb and forefinger to coax fish into your palm and to catch them and pull them out of the water. He invited me to have a go and it was to say the least, somewhat freaky. The greedy fish nipped away at my hand with their toothless gums and slithered out of my unpractised grasp. But after five or ten minutes of perfecting my technique I managed to pull one out of the water. It was a pretty amazing feeling!
We had lunch in a tiny little local cafe in Grenville, where Boney said if I wished I could add some local hot sauce to my fish broth. He warned me it was very hot, but I have not yet come across a chilli based sauce that has defeated me and was confident that this would be no match for my asbestos intestines. But the local men laughed and gawped as I poured in a sizeable dollop of the sauce and then were forced to register slight anti-climax as I failed to splutter or have steam coming out of my ears or rush to drink liquid to quench the fire. Instead I merely remarked how delicious it was. Some stereotypes do not hold up!
In the afternoon we visited an estate which refines cocoa beans and
makes its own chocolate. A charming young man called Ward took the two of us around the plant, which stank to high heaven of fermenting white cocoa beans and then outside to see the now brown beans drying on huge racks in the sun, as people shuffled through them, using their bare feet to break up the clusters and speed the process. It was a fascinating and detailed account of the creation of my favourite food stuff, although the stench of the fermentation process has stayed with me - though has not put me off enough not to eat one of the bars we bought at the end of the tour.
One uncomfortable moment was when Ward took us to an ancient tamarind tree that had a big bell in its branches and explained that this was the hated bell that had called the slaves to work in less enlightened times. "Go on ring it!" he enthused cheerfully. Both of us felt a little uncomfortable about this, but he was so insistent. I don't think he was trying to make us feel bad (or if he was he was doing it very subtly), but my girlfriend did eventually give it a tiny pull. Yet it was, I suppose, a good thing that it gave us a sense of the unpleasant history that our ancestors were a party to. And though it must have been tempting for the freed slaves to have smashed this hateful item, it's actually better that it still exists as a reminder of reprehensible times.
After that came another quick tour of the
Rivers Rum distillery, where we got another detailed and personal tour of the plant which makes rum that is of such a high percentage that it is not allowed (so they say) to be taken on planes because it is too flammable. It is at least 75% alcohol, which is quite impressive and this one did warm even my indestructible oesophagus when I sampled it at the end.
But in our few remarkable hours with Boney we saw much more of the island and its people than I have time to talk about here. It's a beautiful place and I am glad we got some time to go and explore. It's hard to imagine what the people here would think if they were given a similar tour of Shepherd's Bush. I wouldn't think they would be able to imagine a place like the Westfield shopping centre could exist on the same planet that they are living on.
And when we were in the cafe a TV was on tuned into CNN showing all the shit that's going off in Gaza. That didn't seem like the same planet to me and Boney and the other people in the cafe wondered how people could live in that situation. It was very peculiar to be face to face with the real world, both of Grenada and beyond, after almost two weeks of ignoring anything beyond our idyllic little bay.
But overall I will remember stroking the monkeys and the fish nibbling at my fingers more than anything else. It is cool to commune with nature shortly before returning to a place where nature has pretty much been wiped out.
