The Neighbourhood and more foodie stuff

Hi again from me….it is my blog after all! Anthony is now, 2 weeks in, very relaxed too, and showing a worrying tendency to blog away while I am off at work! I am joking, well, sort of, as it is great to hear his views and to share, but if his writing takes off do expect there to be a justanthony.travelblog appearing. As he said, I think he could write a brilliant novel, we are just trying to think of a viable plot between us as we sip rum punches by the Caribbean Sea.

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I wanted to share something about the locals and some of the visions, oddities and character of the area where we are living. Firstly, the neighbours. Our immediate neighbour is Rosemary who owns a huge avocado tree with the most enormous avocados you could ever imagine. I have been eyeing them up since I arrived and when I saw her in the garden, being a very neighbourly girl, I went out and introduced myself. I may have happened to mention in passing my admiration for her avocados and she made sure that she dropped one round that afternoon. Apparently, the avocado season is just starting and since then we have seen Rosemary, pronounced with the stress on the second syllable, Rosemary, a couple of times and been kindly given 2 more of the monsters 🙂 I have made my own guacamole and we have enjoyed it for lunch and in a salad, and that is only the first one. When it got a bit mushy, I gave myself an avocado hair conditioning treatment and have other plans for the flesh and stones of the other two which we are waiting eagerly for. Just google 50 uses for avocado, apparently shampoo and an aphrodisiac are among them. I do also fancy baked avocado balls (not linked to the last use!!).

Our neighbour in the bungalow the apartment is attached to are Marie and Mikey, an older couple who seem to spend most of the day indoors with the TV on. They seem to have poor mobility and I think Mikey may have had a stroke but they are very friendly. They rent from our landlord, Jackie, too.

I have given nicknames to the neighbours down towards the main road. I have only driven up the road the other way so have not knowingly met them. The other side of Rosemary‘s bungalow is a white family, unimaginatively called ‘white family’, and I have met the lady of the house a few times as she walks her small white fluffy dog around the time I leave for work. Next comes, chained up dog family. Catherine CM will be horrified if she comes as this seems to be quite common practice here as dogs appear to be mainly for guard dogs not as pets, apart from ‘white family’. On the corner is ‘country and western guy’ who rarely chains his dog. He goes to work in army camouflage gear, but I have no idea if he is in the army or just loves the outfits. Often when he gets back and at weekends, he plays country and western music, sometimes quite loudly, that wafts out through his 70s brown beaded curtain that hangs instead of the door of his living room. I have never seen a door shut but he does have a guard dog, and he may be in the Army so he wont need to worry (does St Lucia even have an Army? – note to self to google that one!). He is friendly and always says ‘Hello’. Opposite ‘country and western guy’ is a family, as yet unmet, who I call ‘the dog family’. They have 3 dogs, not chained, who stand and look over the wall at you as you go past. They barked like crazy at me the first time I walked past and then seemed to recognise me, so just look. They barked like crazy at Ant, the first time he walked past and then not, just the same. The weird thing is that when we both walk past they bark…not like crazy, just a bit, but they bark. What is that about? It’s as if they think we may be a gang and as guard dogs they should bark at gangs, even small ones of white middle aged folk. Who knows.

Next to the dog family is ‘papaya tree folk’. I have briefly met and said ‘Good afternoon’ to the lady and man of the house. They have a modest size papya tree in the front garden with a garland of large fruit around it, roughly the size and shape of a 38dd. I do have papya envy, only the fruit, but have not had an opportunity to comment on them and see if they feel generous. Across the road is ‘Alsatian family’, not met but with the said Alsatian and one smaller dog, not chained up, and next down is ‘man sitting outside’ bungalow. A small thin old man sits outside most days in the late afternoon and greets with a cheery ‘Good afternoon’ from behind his shrubs as we walk past. Because of the shrubs we can’t see much of him but he obviously sees us. There are three more houses before you get to the road. One I have not met and there is nothing distinguishing to name them, and the 2 nearest the road are empty and having work done to be rented out, or one is as it says to rent in paint on the road side of their concrete wall.

There are also the boys, and sometimes men, who play football evenings and weekend in the field in front of us, and the man who has had a stroke who walks around the block 2 or 3 times a couple of days a week, and always says ‘Hello’. A nice neighbourhood where we have to be a bit more security conscious than at home but where we feel comfortable.

So, the single most dangerous thing that I am doing here is catching the bus to work. Elaine, the Physio, gives me a lift in and out most days when she is here, but a week after I arrived, she went on holiday to the UK and Germany. She is British, but came here about 35 years ago, met her husband and fell in love, and never left. They have 2 boys, both in Europe now, her parents live in Devon and her brother and sister in law, wait for it…..in Ventnor! Yes, I know! It is so true that wherever you go in the world there is a link to IW, 5 places removed and all that. She was in Ventnor for a few days at the beginning of August and said she enjoyed the cooler UK weather. Anyway, I digress, back to the buses. While she was near you, I was on the St Lucian buses most mornings, except Thursdays, when Aritha picked me up to go to Vieux Fort. The buses are really minibuses, of various size and quality, from barely legal (or definitely wouldn’t be in the UK) to plush and air conditioned. For most, the air con is the old fashioned kind….you remember, the windows wide sort, with a lovely breeze as you head over the hills to Castries. As you get on, everyone says ‘Good morning’ (gud marnin – the ng sound- SaLts know- is not one they have here either-see earlier blog), then sits in silence until someone shouts, ‘bus stop, driver!’. The journey is often pleasant, taking you past 2 Sandals resorts, with numerous sea glimpses, into the capital of St Lucia. Half way there, is a dual carriage way, and like my island, it is known as the highway (motorway). Also, like my island, this is the only dual carriageway and similarly lasts for around a mile and many people try to go at motorway speeds for the thrill, poor deprived souls. Unlike my island, it is not straight. St Lucian roads are always weaving around or up and down mountains, so gradients like those in St Lawrence, Steephill (so aptly named by the caulkheads) and Ventnor are frequent and hairpin bends are the norm. Add to this picture narrow carriageways with rock one side and a low concrete wall on the other, and you can begin to see why I may sometimes be in a vulnerable position on my bus to work. I must say that most bus drivers are good drivers, but one or two are, quite frankly, maniacs! One in particular, ‘cracked windscreen driver’ is so bad, that I have totally blacklisted him. From his name, you can get the picture of his van, for van it is. He has had not one, but two, bad impact fractures of his windscreen with multiple cracks across the whole screen and I would be surprised if he can see clearly through it. Combined with this, the whole bus is of the barely legal variety and he drives like he wishes it was a deserted M25 in the early hours of a Wednesday morning and he has never been on a motorway before! You may be thinking that, well, Allie can be a bit anxious at times, maybe she is a nervous passenger and exaggerating for effect? Well, when I told this story to Aritha and to Elaine’s husband Tony, they both said that they had blacklisted him and won’t get in his bus anymore either.

I got in a week after this, with another driver who had a smarter bus, but who was also of the ‘let’s-race-down-the-motorway’ variety. I was feeling slightly nervous by contained until he decided to overtake a lorry at the end of the dual carriageway, going into one lane, approaching the brow of a hill and on a bend. As we came round the bend, alongside the lorry, with nowhere to go, we were faced with 2 lanes going the other way, a car on the inside and another lorry coming straight towards us. I have no idea how we managed to avoid getting crushed, but I guess he sped up and swerved in, while the lorry we were overtaking braked as did the oncoming lorry. I did let out a rather pathetic yelp, but the other 3 passengers just carried on scrolling through their newsfeeds.

Most drivers are great though, and I have given a few names as I idle away the 15 minutes or so it takes to get to my stop (as I am not on wifi unless at home or work – or a couple of bars/restaurants- I am not scrolling like everyone else). There is ‘bible channel driver’, ‘girl topknot driver’, ‘calypso music driver’, ‘lady driver’ (only 1 so far), and ‘fox tail driver’ (some sort of adornment hanging from the mirror).

A few other local oddities are the bar boat, a creative and funky way to use an old boat (Yarmouth look out!), the crazy fruit boat (ditto), the flattened frogs (these are big, the size of a large guinea pig) and crabs that seem to roam across the roads at night and the truck that randomly goes up our road with a man in the back blowing a long horn (I know!! Not found out what that is about yet). Yes it is a funky place to be living and very different from IOW. I am still pinching myself that this is now my life for 6 months. No, 5 now, as I have been here over a month already! Where did that go to? It is stimulating and all encompassing in the best ways, and is just what I needed.

Before I finish, I will tell you the promised foodie updates. I continue to be amazed by the variety, abundance and, in most cases, size of the local produce. As Anthony was saying in his post, we are trying to eat locally produced food as much as we can, although Albert’s Victorian Chutney seems to have wheedled it’s way into the pantry. Below is a selection of what has turned up in the last 10 days.

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In addition to what you see above, we have been given green bananas (I made my first green fig salad, a bit like potato salad, very nice), makaboo (a plantain like fruit, or is it a veg, that you fry or bake and have with meat and fish….lovely), I was given 3 as extras from the street seller I got a lovely local pumpkin from, local passion fruit (a whole bag for $5 EC from a seller near Vieux Fort and not the same as the ones we get in the shops at home) and plantains, also freebies. I tried the love apple and sour sop, which is sweet, not sour, and love them. The passion fruit went into a delicious fruit salad and made some juice to drink.

I have tried street food at the jump up which is delicious. Lambi and prawn skewers with green fig salad and plantain fries, fried Marlin with rice and onion sauce and fried chicken with rice and beans. I have also had jerk chicken with salad and breadfruit balls from the restaurant next to CDGC which always sends delicious aromas into my office each afternoon as they cook for lunch and evening service. The local spinach and kale are luscious as are the herbs, and we are eating more healthily than I think I ever have. Both of us, I think, have slimmed a little, although we have no scales here and are enjoying every meal too.

Well, that is it for today, Saturday. We have been to the Marina today and booked a hire car from there for next weekend to go to Soufriere and the Pitons. I have sown, finally, tomato, pepper, aubergine and cucumber seeds that should yield in a few weeks. Tomorrow we take a water taxi to Pigeon Island, across the bay and have lunch at a recommended restaurant, Jambe de Bois, pronounced ‘jamde bwos’, or ‘wooden leg’ in French creole……tough life here!

On the other hand, we have just had our first hurricane warning an hour ago, through the CDGC watsap group, and been advised to stock up with tins. Tropical storm Dorian is heading this way and increasing in strength but may veer north west, as many do. If it comes here, it will arrive Tuesday and I am told that I can go to one of my colleagues homes up the hill. Fortunately, Rodney Bay is one of the better protected areas, facing west, when hurricanes approach from the east. The power can be lost for a day or so (hence the tins), trees come down and in other parts of the island landslides are a risk. I doubt we will have to evacuate but will keep you posted. Much love and bye for now, Allie xx