Barbados, Westside

At the end of the first week we moved to Sugar Hill, a gated community on the west coast of Barbados.  From there, we visited St. Nicholas Abbey, a sugar plantation currently owned by a local architect, who has restored and maintained the property.  The plantation still processes sugar for molasses and rum, which we tasted on our tour (8 year-old dark rum, rich and mellow, and newly distilled white rum, sharp and astringent).  We watched a film made in the 1920’s by the son of the original plantation owner that showed scenes from his crossing from England, and of daily life in Barbados and on the plantation:  Bajan women and girls in their white dresses and hats; workers cutting, bundling, and loading sugar cane into horse-drawn carts; a boy waiting to catch a ride on the windmill; men firing and assembling rims onto wooden wheels for carts; a Bajan man lurching down the street after too much rum.  Lastly, we visited the mill and watched men feeding canes between its crushing wheels, the beigey-green juice dripping down into the grate of a tank for refining.  (In Grenada, we had bought a cup of cane juice of the same color from a vendor with a barrel-sized stainless-steel cane juicer.)  I remarked to Justin on the drive home how much more interesting historical places and stories become as I get older.  As a kid, I had always wondered how my parents could find such boring things fascinating.

           

“The more of a relic you become, the more interested you are in other relics,” Justin observed.

Among other phrases Toby has learned on this trip – including, “don’t do sam-sing inchledibly styu-pid,” which we repeated often to one another after our German landlord on the south coast said it, warning us not to leave the house unlocked; and “shine like a diamond,” as Rihanna is big in these parts – it was during our last week in Barbados that she learned, “We’re here to rob the Coco House,” which we would joke amongst ourselves as we pulled up to the guard’s booth at Sugar Hill, and which Toby repeated often to our housekeeper, creating some confusion and discomfort.