An Embarrassment of Mangoes

by Ann Vanderhoof

  November Mike is the computer-generated voice of the U.S. National Weather Service. He takes his name from the call sign of the radio frequency he’s broadcast on: NMN or, in the phonetic alphabet, November Mike November. “Nosignificantfeatures,” his synthesized voice frequently drones at the top of the forecast. Early on, I thought this meant good weather. I was mistaken. Frequently, so too is November Mike.

  “November Mike says winds out of the east, 20 to 25 knots, seas to 8 feet,” I read to Steve as I climb back into the cockpit on the second morning of the passage. “Misstine”—the call sign of the flesh-and-blood forecaster I tune in next (David Jones, based in the British Virgin Islands)—“says winds east to east-southeast, up to 15 knots, with the sea state decreasing to 3 to 5 feet.” This kind of forecast disagreement is par for the course. So is my postforecast angsting: Who to believe, the one promising a delightful day’s sail or the one villainously proclaiming a lumpy, brace-yourselves ride? Unfortunately, Herb won’t weigh in like Solomon until late in the day, but based on his report yesterday, I’m afraid he’d side with Metal Mikey.

  In fact, the seas are kicked up most of the way to St. Lucia, with the wind staying close to 20 knots, and both sails are reefed. “It got lumpy this afternoon,” I note unhappily the second evening of the passage. “Forward hatch is still leaking like a son of a bitch. Belowdecks is looking like a slum. I’ve decided just to close my eyes to the chaos.”

  At least we’re no longer heading directly into the trade winds, since we’re now pointing as much south as east. When we’re in the lee of the islands along the way—Statia, St. Kitts, Nevis, Montserrat, Guadeloupe, Dominica, and Martinique—we’re protected and even need an assist from Mr. Engine, Sir. But between islands, the wind attacks, heeling us over on a fast, wet, exciting ride. Engine on; engine off. Ease out a bit of reefed jib; crank it back in. Lights visible on the horizon, go downstairs to check the radar. Down and up, down and up—there’s a lot of commercial traffic on the route we’re traveling—to make sure we’re not on a collision course. I’m downright busy on watch tonight.

  “Nosignificantfeatures,” Metal Mikey drones at 5:30 the next morning. Meanwhile, we almost lost our little stern-rail barbecue during the night: The stainless-steel mount gave way from the stresses on the boat, and Steve turned around on one of his watches to see it dangling precariously by one last twisted bit of welding. And when he now checks to make sure Snack is still tied securely on the foredeck, he fishes two flying fish out from inside it, carried onboard in waves during the night. Waves are still washing regularly over the bow and their spray is routinely nailing us in the cockpit. “Nosignificantfeatures” indeed.

  “Nosignificantfeatures,” I’ve gradually realized, simply means no sign of approaching organized tropical weather: no tropical waves, tropical storms, or hurricanes. Steve says it’s simply radioese for “you may be uncomfortable as hell but you probably won’t die.”

  Although the sun is shining, we keep our full foul-weather gear on to stay dry, and it’s by now coated with a thick, greasy film of salt. So is every inch of exposed skin. I long for a shower, but it would take more energy than I can muster in these conditions.

  “Maybe we’ll hear from Robert and he’ll have the solution,” Steve says, attempting to jolly me out of the foul mood that threatens to descend when I feel disgusting. We had run into Robert and his partner Annette on Jake—the same Robert who had presented me with Incident in the Mona Passage—in the British Virgin Islands. Over pizza and beer one night, he had drolly informed us that he had solved the problem of not being able to take a real shower underway. “I needed something I could spritz myself with that would leave me feeling fresh and clean,” he explained, while miming himself happily spraying his pits and privates. “I think I’ve finally hit on a winner: cheap mouthwash. Very refreshing.”

  When we finally arrive in Rodney Bay, St. Lucia, we splurge on a marina and its ample supply of fresh water to facilitate desalinating ourselves, our clothing, our bedding, and our boat. It takes me two soapings under the shower to get rid of the salt caking my skin, encrusting my hair, and lining my ears. I can’t imagine how much mouthwash would have been required.

  Six weeks later, on my birthday, Steve presents me with a special gift: a tank T-shirt on which he’s illustrated one of November Mike’s forecasts. The background is a weather map, showing a hurricane in progress. In front, falling squarely across my chest, he’s painted November Mike’s favorite phrase in large letters. Cruisers think the shirt is hilarious; everyone else thinks my chest has No Significant Features.

  Sometimes even when you want to hurry, you can’t.

  From St. Lucia, we’re only three day-hops away from Grenada—beyond the bottom of the hurricane box—where we plan to stay put for a while. But the weather gods are going to toy with me a bit longer—let the days tick past our deadline—before they let us take off. Which is why we get to see Nelson Mandela dancing.

  We’d stopped in a little bookstore a short bus ride from the Rodney Bay marina to supplement the reading material we pick up at cruiser book exchanges. But everyone lined up at the cash is buying not books or magazines, but little pink tickets. I’ve got to know.

  “Tonight is the closing night of CARICOM,” the sales clerk tells me, “with entertainment from all over the islands.” CARICOM—which stands for Caribbean Community—has been in the paper every day since we arrived in St. Lucia: A conference of Caribbean leaders is underway in Castries, St. Lucia’s capital. Nelson Mandela is the guest of honor.

  Steve is reaching for his wallet before I can even spit out a question about where, exactly, the closing-night event is being held and if we can get there by public bus. The salesclerk assures me we won’t have any trouble.

  That evening the 1A bus—the one that stops at the marina—drops us off at the bus station in Castries. I don’t have a clue which way we should head, so I ask two young women. “Follow us,” one of the pair says.

  After a few blocks, they stop. “We have to wait here for a friend,” the one says. “Go with them,” and she passes us on to another set of women. Lynette and Ruth lead us right to the park, where linebacker-sized, black-suited, earphone-wearing security men in dark Ray-Bans guard the gates. It seems very un-islandlike—until they start to flirt outrageously with Lynette and Ruth. “We men in black,” says one of them with a grin. “We black men in black,” adds the other. And I notice the guys providing security for the leaders of the Caribbean nations are indeed wearing large buttons that officially identify them as Men in Black.

  Lynette and Ruth take seats beside us in the bleachers and give us a running commentary of who’s who as the Caribbean prime ministers and presidents file onstage. When Nelson Mandela arrives, the crowd explodes—standing, yelling, and waving flags for their hero. As the band launches into a song written in his honor, he starts to dance, grabbing the other prime ministers out of their chairs to join him. The feel of the soft night, the island music, and the sight of Mandela, almost eighty years old, joyfully dancing as fireworks burst overhead dull my memory of the long, salty passage. It was simply the price to be paid for rewards like this.

  Midway through the event, after the speeches, when we’ve left the bleachers and have joined the crowd of thousands on the field for the entertainment, the first young woman who had led us partway to the grounds earlier in the evening approaches and asks if we are having a good time. “I’m amazed she could pick us out in this crowd,” I say to Steve as she walks away.

  “Look around,” he says. We are two of just a handful of whites. Of course we were dead easy to recognize.

  Castries has a reputation for being a tough town. So when we leave the stadium, I don’t really want to walk the dark streets alone, back down to the bus station. I’m not even sure we can find the way. Almost immediately, though, we see a 1A bus and flag it down. The driver stops, but shakes his head as I start to climb on. The bus is empty, except for a young woman in the seat next to h
im. “I’m not goin’ direct to deh station,” he says, waving me off. I press: “We don’t mind if it’s not direct.” He shrugs, “Well, you can come along if you want.”

  What ensues is an amusement-park ride up the steep and narrow streets that wind mazelike above “downtown” Castries, accompanied by reggae at ear-splitting volume. Even with my limited mental map of the city, I know we are most definitely not heading anywhere near “deh station.” Eventually, we pull over in front of a small house, the bus seemingly perched at a 45-degree angle at the side of the road, and the woman disappears inside. The driver leaves too, and we’re alone in the hot humid darkness; in the middle of nowhere, in a purportedly dangerous city, in what I now realize is an off-duty bus. Above the booming reggae, we can hear voices in the shadows. We are a mugging waiting to happen.

  But nothing happens. The girlfriend eventually returns with a small suitcase and the driver climbs back in and starts the motor. He shouts good-bye to his friends, and we head back down the winding streets, reggae still blasting. He pulls up in front of the bus station, where an on-duty 1A bus is waiting. “How much do we owe you?” Steve says. Once again, the driver shakes his head and waves us off. “Nothing. I didn’t bring you direct to deh station.”

  Lambi and Lobster

  Mammie was a great cook—the best . . . We didn’t have to buy eggs or vegetables, only people who lived in town bought things like that. What you didn’t have in your garden you got from your neighbors. If you needed to buy fish you would just stand in front of your house and listen out for the conch shell blowing.

  MARGUERITE SHERIFF, ABOUT HER CHILDHOOD IN GRENADA;

  “A RIDE ON THE BOARD BUS,” THE MELIBEA REVIEW,

  MARCH 1998

  “Would you like some mangoes?” a woman’s voice sings out from across the road, as we stand and admire a tree that’s positively dripping ripe fruit.

  Steve and I are in the middle of a game we play whenever we go for a walk lately: Let’s pretend we can buy a piece of property in Grenada; what would we choose? We have fallen in love with this island at 12 degrees north of the equator since arriving here a few weeks ago. Now south of the hurricane zone, south of the box, we’re planning to stay put for a while, and I’m beginning to relax. We arrived ten days after the insurance company’s deadline for being outside the box—a meaningful deadline only if a statistically challenged named storm had hit during that time, which (of course) it hadn’t. In Toronto, missing a deadline by ten days would have seemed the end of the world. Now it seems a fine accomplishment.

  This sweet little stretch of land, a sweat-breaking, fifteen-minute hike up the steep, potholed road from the dock at the village of Lower Woburn, is a strong contender in our let’s-buy-some-island-property game. Along with a sweeping view of Clarke’s Court Bay and, beyond that, of Hog Island and Receta calmly at anchor, it promises more mangoes than we could possibly eat, as well as papayas, breadfruit, and coconuts.

  We might have missed the accompanying house entirely, though, if not for the woman’s call. Tucked back from the road, it’s almost invisible behind the umbrellaed tops of the coconut palms and the long-fingered leaves of a breadfruit tree. But when we turn toward the sound, we see a bit of blue-green wall with a smiling middle-aged woman, her dark hair drawn back in a bun, framed in a window.

  Although my hanging baskets back on board are overflowing with mangoes, it seems rude not to buy some from this woman with the lilting voice, after being caught drooling at her tree. So I call back, “Yes, please,” and we puff our way across the road and up an almost-vertical drive—so steep it makes the road look flat. The climb is immediately complicated by the appearance of a rambunctious pothound of indeterminate bloodline, who seems intent on snapping at anything that moves—in this case, my heels, toes, and ankles. “Stinky, come here.” The voice is musical even when it’s angry.

  The drive flattens out into a sort-of carport—corrugated metal roof, open sides—with bits of outboard and drying fishnets scattered underneath and chickens pecking at the far end. Beyond it is the wooden, one-storey house, raised a good 8 feet off the ground on cinder blocks. Up a flight of steps and through the open door, a young man sprawls on the floor, watching a small TV, the only furnishing visible in the room.

  The smiling woman waits by the steps, already holding a bag of at least half a dozen ripe Julie mangoes, the local favorite. She wears a white T-shirt emblazoned with Michael Jackson’s face, which she’s paired with a long flowered skirt and the ubiquitous island footwear, rubber flip-flops.

  I pull out my cruiser’s wallet, a sandwich-sized Ziploc stuffed with small bills and change. “Nooooo.” That enchanting voice again. “These are a gift. I don’t sell mangoes.”

  We start to chat, and eventually learn that Evette does sell fish, lobster, and conch, although she doesn’t have any today—and she’s not really trying to sell us anything anyway. She introduces us to her daughter, Gennel, fourteen, a tall sturdy teenager with the most beautiful eyes, who is timid at first but gradually begins to chime into the conversation. We’re also introduced to a tiny herd of alternately shy and giggling little girls, neighboring kids Evette watches while their mothers work. Alisha, Morrisa, Dessian, and Bria, all four almost the same age and size, all four with elaborately braided and baubled hair, all big eyes and big smiles and buckets of crayons. I try to keep them straight: Alisha, white hair baubles, red shorts—or is she red baubles, white shorts? Just when I think I’ve got it, they jump around and change places and I make a mistake—much to everyone’s amusement. And we officially meet the aptly named Stinky, who is now finding the dangling straps of my backpack irresistible. As Evette swats him with a flip-flop, she gives us her phone number and we promise to return in a few days for some conch.

  It feels soooo good to know we can linger on this island as long as we want, to be able to tell Evette we will return to her house in a few days, without qualifying it by adding, “unless the weather is good, in which case we’ll have to head off.” No more timetable for a while, no more leaving a place before we’re ready, because we have to outrace the calendar. We had toasted our arrival here with a bottle of champagne purchased in St. Martin, as a double rainbow—a sure sign of good luck—arced overhead, one end disappearing into the luxuriant green hills that are Grenada in the rainy season, the other fading into a curve of creamy sand beach. We have been gone from Toronto 323 days—and 102 of them have been spent at least partially in transit, including a medal-worthy (for me) twelve nights underway.

  When we next tackle the hill to Evette’s house, I’m toting our insulated cooler bag. I’d managed to determine on the phone that, yes, today Evette has “lambi”—the Creole word for conch—although her musical accent is almost impenetrable without visual cues to help. Grenadians in general (and Evette even more so) lengthen and soften their vowels—“Ann” becomes Ahhhhnnn—and don’t pronounce the “th” combination: “three” becomes tree, “the” becomes deh. Add in the Creole words, the singsong cadence, and the unaccustomed grammatical constructions, and Ahhhhnnn havin’ trouble on deh phone . . .

  There’s a lambi dish I want to make, but I don’t even know where to start. A few days earlier, we’d eaten lunch at the Little Dipper, a five-table, almost entirely open-air restaurant tucked amidst the foliage beside the road about a quarter mile from Evette’s house. The conch was stewed, rather than fried or cooked on the grill as we’d had it in the Bahamas. The sweet, tender meat floated in a fragrant brown sauce with a hint of curry, and it had none of the rubber-band chewiness of undertenderized or overcooked conch.

  Evette immediately knows the dish, and getting her to share the recipe with a stranger isn’t a problem: It’s just that there isn’t a recipe. She cooks by feel, not exact quantities—which makes it tough for those unfamiliar with the ingredients, and the local language. How much is a “tip”? How can I tell “counter flour” from “baking flour”? What is the mystery herb that sounds like “siveantime”? Distracted by th
e ever-present Stinky, who today has focused on the straps of my sandals, and not wanting to impose with endless questions and admit either total ignorance or inability to understand Grenadian English, I don’t ask. Still, I do positively confirm that I need to “wash” the lambi in lime juice to start, “burn” brown sugar to get the dark, rich sauce, and add “a tip” of curry powder for flavor. But I’m going to have to figure out for myself how to put it all together.

  At least these conch are already out of their shells, thanks to Evette and Dwight, the twenty-something young man we had glimpsed on our first visit. Raised by Evette almost from birth, he’s the one who dives for the seafood she sells to help support the family. But we still have to do the cleaning and pounding. I give the job to Steve—seems only fair, since I’m doing the cooking—and having seen the effect of the process in the Bahamas, he heads to the beach, armed with a plastic cutting board, freshly sharpened knife, aluminum meat mallet, and pliers for pulling off the conch’s slimy skin. He returns more than an hour later in a foul mood. While he was working on the lambi’s skin, the mosquitoes and no-see-ums were working on his—“at least where it wasn’t covered in conch goo,” he mutters.

  Dinner puts him in better spirits. I stew the lambi as I think Evette suggested, with onion, pepper, and coconut milk, and serve it over rice, with steamed “spinach” on the side sprinkled with a bit of freshly grated Grenadian nutmeg. At least that was what the emerald-green, arrowhead-shaped leaves were called in the market. But they have a delicious smoky taste, quite unlike the North American vegetable. (Months later, I discover that “spinach” here is actually an entirely different species of leafy green.) The lambi, meanwhile, isn’t exactly what we remember from the Little Dipper, but we agree it’s mighty fine. The conch is tender, the sauce a deep brown . . . just rather more sweet than rich.