Barbados: Can You Ever Go Home Again

By Terry E. Johnson

Stress in the work place is palpable. Money is tight. Cash starved businesses are barely holding on. The news is terrible, and it goes on and on and on. An inexpensive trip to Barbados may be just the thing to renew the spirit and help to re-focus on the brighter side of life.

That is exactly what I did recently. While in Barbados I ate so much good food that I had to jog almost every evening. There were belly laughs, too, - like the time a tourist thought she blew her head off while taste testing rum - and breathtaking panoramic views of beaches and sweeping landscapes.

The politics and history of the island are just as hypnotic as the sound of waves from the blue-green sea crashing onto the white sand beaches.

To get there, I jumped on US Airway’s newly inaugurated direct flights from Philadelphia to Barbados.

The last time I visited the Island was 23 years ago. So much as changed on the 20-mile long, 14-mile wide Island since then. Sugar used to be the main industry, but is tourism now. With the bustling tourism industry has come wide roads replacing narrow that used to be lined with sugar cane crops growing so close to the edge of the asphalt that you could hear the ruffling of cane leaves as cars swish by.

If street life is any indication of the quality of life on Barbados, one of the things that jumps out immediately is that unlike many other Caribbean Islands, there is very little bagging on Barbados. About the only desperate hawking of goods was the street corner stands selling coconut water.

It is easy to understand why the nation of 250,000 people could become a vacation destination. It has summer temperature at about 85 degrees, and the US dollar weighs in at 2-to-1 against the Barbados dollar. The island has a literacy rate of 98 percent. Though it is an English-speaking nation, a careful ear can pick up the African influenced in the Bajon dialect.

Tourism geared toward the British and Americans require strange contortions of a nation’s history. Some bits of history our distorted while other painful stories are completely ignored.

Barbados is among the most developed nations of the Anglophone Caribbean. Life, at least to the outsider, has a nice, easy flow. Soca is the music that animates life, but a new brand of hip hop influenced sounds is making its presence felt. Rihanna, a Barbadian singer, is one example of this new music.

Many of the homes on Barbados are built with cinder blocks and painted in vivid colors. The small wooden homes are called “chattel houses,” a term that goes back to the plantation days when the home owners would buy houses designed to move from one property to another.

I arrived on the Island at about 3 p.m., four hours after leaving Philadelphia flight. I jumped into a taxi and headed straight for Sweetfield Manor, a bed and breakfast at which I was booked for a four nights stay. It was a short ride.

Chris, the taxi driver, turned right into what at first appeared to be an ally with huge concrete walls until the van stopped at a high raw iron gate. The gate opened and we drove a short distance until reaching a huge white house surrounded by colorful flowers and palm trees.

George and Ann Clarke (Ann is an absolute charm, George talks too much) bought the property in 2002 and renovated it. They opened it in 2005 as a bed and breakfast. It is an inviting place with eclectic furnishings, reflecting the creativity of Ann, who is a painter and author of a children’s book. Guests stay in one of seven private, air-conditioned rooms. A former tennis lawn now contains a landscaped lagoon pool with a spa set into the upper rocks.

After a dinner that night at Brown Sugar Restaurant, which serves excellent food, I retired to my comfortable bed and slept well in preparation for a hearty breakfast and a fast moving day.

Ann is a great chef with some training coming from a culinary school in Florida, but most from her mother’s side while growing up in Michigan.

Most of her breakfasts are based on fruits and seasonings that are no more than a step or two from her kitchen door.

That first day, I woke up to a breakfast orange-pineapple juice; with; brochette wrapped eggs and mushrooms with tarragon sauce on top of a slice of roasted pineapple followed by a course of orange French toast.

I was so stuffed that I had to wrestle myself out of he chair to head off to an inexpensive visit to some of the historic sites in Barbados.

It is not just visiting historic sites that fascinate me, but it is also the moving around, the watching and listening to people, and brief stops at tiny stores that I find riveting.

Context is needed to appreciate contemporary life in Barbados. The Amerindians and Arawak Indians originally settled the island. Later the British introduced sugar cane to make rum. Eventually sugar became the dominant business. Some Irish Catholics were used as cheap labor, but as the plantations grew, an estimated 387,000 enslaved African workers were pressed into service.

My first stop was to the Lancaster Great House. On the way to Lancaster House, we drove through a traffic circle with a statue of a black man holding his arms in the air with broken chains dangling from his waist. It was a statue of Bussa, a slave rebel.

Bussa’s rebel helped speed the demise of slavery in Barbados. In the 18^th Century, Bussa launched an island wide rebellion aimed at toppling white plantation owners. Though he was killed in battle, his troops continued the fight until they were defeated by the superior fire-power of the British. Following Bussa’s attempt, and the end of slavery by the British, it was also ended in Barbardos.

Bussa was honored with the Emancipation Statue 169 years after that rebellion.

But everything about Barbados, the architecture, the music, the food, somehow goes back to the colonial, slaveholding period.

The Lancaster House is a magnificent example of 17^th Century architecture. It was built in the early 1799s almost certainly the result of master African craftsmen. Once owned by two acting governors, it is now an art gallery. The building as large, sweeping rooms and it is situated to maximize easterly winds. Like so many of the other sites in Barbados, with tropical flowers and birds, grounds of Lancaster house can leave one speechless.

After my visit there, I stopped by St. Nicholas Abby, one of one of only three Jacoban mansions in the Western Hemisphere.

Following lunch at a small seaside restaurant in Speightstown, I dropped by Arlington House Museum. The Museum is housed in an eighteenth century building and features three floors of exhibitions, including an interactive audio-visual display.

That evening I dined at 39 Steps Restaurant. While it is said that ambiance and good conversation can make any dinner good, I want to testify that this meal would have been great if I was eating it alone in an ally.

One of my favorite meals was fried flying fish. I had eaten it before, but I had forgotten how good it is. Flying fish is so intensely flavorful that it would be a capital crime to put hot sauce on it, and you know hot sauce and fried fish is a strong tradition.

These vignettes paint a brief portrait of how I spent my four days on Barbados. None of my site visits cost more than $10 to $15 Barbados dollars. While the bed and breakfast might have been a little pricy, rooms on the breaches can be had for very reasonable prices. So, on my trip to Barbados there was much good food, great people and a tropical paradise to die for.

One of my last visits was to the Mount Gay Rum bottling company, which is based in Bridgetown. I was taken on a wonderful tour of the factor with a hostess that wooed visitors with her ease and charm. Among the tourists were a man accompanied by two women. All three of them had pleasant smiles. After the group left the factory floor where the rum was poured into the bottles, we were taken to a bar area for a sniff and taste test.

The man and two women stood at the bar, which they could barely see over. As I listened to them, it was clear that they were British and seemed to have a strong Cockney accent.

The bartend explained the various brands made by Mount Gay and poured the brands into glasses. The man tasted the first one and indicated it was strong. One of the women tasted hers and grabbed onto the bar as she leaned slightly back.

When the second round came, the man began drinking his straight away. The bartender then laughed and said, ‘I see you’re warmed up.’ The man grinned and shock his head yes. This time the same woman smelled her rum and her body was thrown back again.

Third round up. The man only takes a sip, shakes his head and frowns.

The woman took another sip, frowned and, in her best cockney, said: “Nearly blew me head off.”

My inexpensive trip to Barbados left me with memories that will flow through my mind for the rest of my life. I think I need another vacation in Barbados to get over being in Barbados.