While I could easily live without the enormous crawling insects with big feet (I almost stepped on one last night), one thing I do miss about living in the tropics is the flora. Everything is such vibrant colours, and with all the sunlight it all just grows and grows and grows… (and so do the insects!)
Yesterday while at Little Bay, I was talking to a guy who was showing me the shellfish he caught nearby and at the same time was rubbing his head with the leaf — and I use this term loosely since it’s more like an octopus tentacle — of an aloe plant. I asked him why he was rubbing his head with it, if it made his head cooler, and he laughed so hard his laugh ate his answer. I had to ask him to repeat (like I’ve had to do with nearly everyone in the countryside), but all I could understand from his thick Bajan accent was something about the roots… i.e., the roots of his hair? Hell if I know, but it was entertaining to listen to him.
It’s been quite the linguistic adventure the past four days, but it’d probably take six months of living here to fully catch on to what people are saying. I listen very carefully and try as I might, I still only recognise a word here and there. I remember it took a few months to get by with the lingo in Australia, and at least that long in Scotland to understand the farmers. It is most interesting — trippy, even — to hear people learn English as a second language here. It’s English in theory, I suppose, but not really in practice! Wish I had an example to demonstrate this, but you’ll have to use your imagination… imagine a Chinese accent mixed with Caribbean English!
One creature I’ve been waiting to see but I’ve missed all the times they usually come ’round, I’m told, are the monkeys. Green monkeys have lived in Barbados for centuries, but the parish I’m staying in isn’t their prime location. My host sees them daily, around 5 o’clock, but I’m never here at that time. I doubt they’d stay still for my camera, but I’d like to at least see them for myself — I haven’t seen monkeys in the wild since I was in Malaysia.