Day 117 - Happy 2008!!!

Today is our last day in Barbados ... for a while anyway. We have had the most wonderful time with my family and friends and needless to say we are very sad to be leaving. Of course, we will be back again one day soon ....

We are celebrating our last day with an early morning sail and a frolic at the beach followed by a delicious bajan (creole word for Barbadian) lunch of rice and peas, macaroni pie, flying fish and salad and of course a couple of bottles of plus. Then we are heading to an art gallery before going home to loll in the hammock until we have to leave for our 8:30pm flight.


Here are a few photos from the past few days:

Sunrise at Farley Hill on New Year's Day

Also went swimming (snorkeling) with sea turtles on New Year's Day. I love snorkeling and scuba. No scuba this time but had a ball with the turtles. They are such gentle creatures. I even kicked one accidentally and he/she did not hold it against me. Didn't have an underwater camera so I downloaded this from the web.



The sand on the beaches in Barbados is a beautiful pale pinkish colour or pale yellowish colour depending on where you swim. This beach is called Paradise Beach and is one of my two favourite beaches. I've been coming here since I was a teenager. The Four Seasons is currently building a hotel on the land overlooking this beach. All the beaches in Barbados are public property, so Four Seasons cannot privatise the beach. They can (and I am sure will) however block access to the beach through their property. This would mean that the next time I come back here I may have to walk half a mile through public property to get to this beach. It will also mean that it will move from a quiet and secluded beach to a noisy and crowded one. I'm enjoying it as much as I can now.

The graceful and majestic Royal Palm Trees

Poinsettias grow wild in Barbados, but in England you have to pay a lot of money to have the privilege of a small plant in your home.

Ginger Lilies

Christmas Candles

My mum has a small flower arranging business. Every week she donates two arrangements to her church. Here is one of her completed arrangements and another she is working on.

Traditional Barbadian chattel house

When I was a child many people did not have indoor plumbing and relied on these public "standpipes" for water. Many people met in the evenings after work at the standpipe and exchanged the day's news and gossip. If someone wanted to tell you you were stupid, it was common to say in creole: "You like you went to Standpipe High." = instead of going to high school, you spend all your time hanging out at the standpipe, so you didn't get formal education. Today, standpipes are less common, mostly existing in the country areas where a few people still rely on them.

Emancipation Statue of Bussa. Bussa was born a free man in Africa, but captured and brought to Barbados as were the ancestors of the majority of Barbadians. He went on to lead a slave rebellion against the British colonialists and slave holders in the 18th century. The rebellion was unsuccessful and he and many others, were executed by the British, but his name lived on as a courageous and defiant freedom fighter.



I've always thought that I would end up living in the Caribbean again ... eventually. I was therefore terribly excited when I discovered the new Errol Barrow Centre for Creative Imagination at the University of the West Indies. The centre is introducing the university's first Bachelor of Fine Arts program in the fall 0f 2008, which means that if I did decide I want to live in Barbados again, I'd have the possibility of continue to teach. Coincidentally, I met the daughter of one of my mother's oldest friends when I was visiting my mother's childhood village a week ago. She is program director for the centre and invited me for a grand tour on Wednesday. It is a BEAUTIFUL BUILDING and I was very impressed by their ambitious and edgy agenda. Could fate be enticing me to come back home?

My parent's home which will always be my home as well.