An Embarrassment of Mangoes

by Ann Vanderhoof

  We need bellee to survive Carnival.

  The printed schedule says the semifinals of the National Soca Monarch competition start at 10 P.M. Steve and I arrive right on time. The club is deserted, no equipment on stage. We’re on our own tonight; even those cruisers who are interested in island music are put off by the hour—past everyone’s usual bedtime, and requiring late-night reef-running dinghy rides to and from shore. And these are, after all, only the semifinals.

  We wander around by ourselves in the over-air-conditioned room until someone takes up residence behind the bar at the far end. “Aren’t the soca semifinals here tonight?” Steve asks him.

  “Yeah, mon.”

  “What time do they start?”

  “Jus’ now.”

  With typical North American logic, we interpret that to mean in a couple of minutes. By 10:30, a few people have wandered in and a couple of guys have started to arrange some mikes and amps. By 11, the room has begun to get crowded. Still no performers, though. Finally, around 11:30—when we, and the entire room, are well lubricated—the first singer takes the stage. The judging is based not solely on the music—in fact, the backup bands are on tape—but also on the performance: how the singer incites the crowd to a dancing frenzy. By 1:30, when we call it a night because I can barely stand or breathe in the steamy gyrating crowd, the competition is barely half over. And this, by the way, is a weeknight.

  Castro’s speech had started “jus’ now” too: Thousands of Grenadians (and us) had sweltered in the hot afternoon sun for three hours past the scheduled time before the prime minister took the stage with his honored guest. Three hours. Steve says the literal translation of “jus’ now” is “jus’ throw away the schedule.” It is the perfect island phrase. We adopt each other.

  The finals of the soca monarch competition are at Seamoon, a huge open field where rallies, conventions, concerts, and sports events are held. A pavilion and stage are at one end and covered bleachers at the other, where we sit with Terry and Nancy from La Esmeralda. Like us, they jump at the chance to check out local happenings; Terry had taken charge of this outing and organized the transportation to Seamoon, more than midway up the island in St. Andrew’s parish. “Bleachas deaaaddddddddd,” shouts the emcee on the stage. And, comparatively speaking, I suppose we are. Most of the crowd—thousands of people—is on the field, dancing deliriously, jumping, waving flags, shirts, towels, rags in the air, a churning mob in the darkness, dancing, madly dancing, crowding the stage, backlit by the lights. “Stay calm, stay calm, staaaaaayyy caaaalm,” the emcee exhorts the crowd, in tones intended to build the riotous excitement. Every few minutes, a flame shoots skyward from between the flags and rags, when someone ignites the spray from an aerosol can—hair spray, I think—throwing part of the spectacle into vivid silhouette and imprinting the ecstatically dancing figures on my eyeballs. We had been told we couldn’t bring bottles inside the grounds; flame-throwers, obviously, are a different matter.

  The competition started jus’ now and will go till dawn; we finally depart around 2 A.M. I fall instantly asleep in the van, but awaken suddenly when it slows, squinting at the watch I’ve put on especially tonight: An hour has passed, we’re in the center of St. George’s, and we’re surrounded by music—the sound of a full orchestra—and light so bright it’s as if we’ve been flung into the middle of the next day. A pan band—a hundred or more players, some of them with five or six steel drums apiece—is practicing for the Carnival pan competition the following evening. At 3 A.M., in the middle of the street. “Why not?” shrugs the woman I later ask about this surreal practice session. “Dis way, no one know what deh band gonna play.” I can feel the music pulsing inside me, such a powerful complexity of melody and rhythm it’s impossible to believe it comes from instruments that are essentially oil drums. Then the van moves forward, the music recedes, and I am sure the brightly lit scene was an island dream.

  Monday Night Mas. The gathering place for the Heineken band is in the parking lot of the supermarket on the lagoon across from the Carenage. “Do not pass your truck, do not pass your truck.” The order booms into the night air from a 10-foot wall of speakers on the back of the truck that we are not supposed to pass. There’s another truck, too—no speakers on this one, just coolers and kegs of Heineken. Hundreds of Grenadians and maybe a dozen cruisers mill around the trucks, clutching plastic cups of beer and wearing Heineken T-shirts. When the sound truck pulls out into the road, the DJ on the truck starts the music and we all fall in behind; the beer truck brings up the rear.

  Perhaps a dozen bands like ours—Carib, Coca-Cola, Brydens (a liquor distributor, among other things)—are gathering in the steamy dusk along Lagoon Road, each with a truck equipped with a wall of speakers and a DJ. The DJ chooses the soca hits, the speakers blare them out at deafening volume, and soon we chippin’ and winin’ into town.

  “Chipping,” a rhythmic, foot-shuffling walk, allows one to save one’s energy for “wining,” a style of dance that involves rotating one’s pelvis in a suggestive, arousing figure-eight movement. The name comes from “winding,” which nicely sums up the pelvic rotation. Wonderful to watch—and impossible for most of us middle-aged outsiders to do, though we try our best and though the people around us are more than pleased to demonstrate. At one point, I’m sure Steve has got the motion, as he’s gyrating behind me, making subtle contact in a most appealing manner—Steve, who is the first to admit he’s no dancer even when the steps are more conventional. Then I notice Steve is standing next to me, and it’s someone else’s pelvis gyrating against my tush. “Dat boy could wine we, eh?” one of my other dancing neighbors comments, grinning with approval.

  The lyrics of one song demand that the band “Reverse, reverse.” The Heineken mob begins moving backward as one—except for the cruisers, who are still running the lyrics through our internal translation devices. I’m rammed into Steve and give him a beer bath, taking one myself from the cruiser klutz in front of me. We chip to the beer truck at the back of the band to refill our cups.

  Whenever we approach one of the multiple judging stations along the route, the dancing reaches fever pitch. “Wave deh rags, wave deh rags,” the DJ yells over the music, and a sea of towels, kerchiefs, flags, and other bits of sweat-soaked cloth pulses overhead. The judges will select a Road March Band and a Road March Monarch, the creator of whichever song is played most frequently during Carnival.

  Not surprisingly, “Inspector” is crowned Road March Monarch . . . for his song “Deh Bellee.” Not surprisingly, the Heineken band isn’t crowned anything. I figure the cruiser contingent, with our pitiful dancing and gradually waning energy, was a serious detriment, although our still-dancing neighbors assure me otherwise. But by midnight, we chippin’ and winin’ very slow; my calves are aching—five hours of nonstop dancing up and down hills—and my head is threatening to. I’ve used up all six of my beer tickets—though, in my defense, I spilled the better part of several cups.

  When we get home, we undress in the cockpit. Our clothes stink of beer and sweat, and I refuse to allow them into the cabin below; in fact, I consider burning them. According to the newspaper reports the next week, 35,000 people—a third of the island’s population—were in St. George’s tonight. I never felt the least bit threatened in that sexy, drunken, gyrating crowd.

  “I would even cross the Mona Passage again if it meant getting to Grenada for Carnival,” I say to Steve as my head hits the pillow. There is no higher praise.

  Post-Carnival the radio airplay changes, moves on to other songs, more reggae and rapso than soca and calypso. But we’re not ready to move on—we can’t get the Carnival hits out of our heads. We need to hear them. We need to visit Doc.

  Doc is an imposing man with the build of an NBA center and a fondness for gold jewelry: several immense rings, a heavy link bracelet, and a thick chain around his neck from which dangles a pendant the size of a saucer. Doc is no shrinking violet.

  He’s the proprietor of Music
City Record Centre, and a fixture of the St. George’s music scene. The first time we visited his shop, on the second floor of a building near the fish market, was a few days after the Mighty Sparrow concert. “Let’s try to get the new Sparrow CD,” Steve had said, “and maybe one by that young guy with the dreadlocks and the fabulous voice. Do you remember his name?”

  “Ajumal, I think.” He’d been a standout of the performance, a crowd favorite, obviously one of the island’s stars.

  The entrance to the Music Centre had a metal gate locked across it. “When does it open?” Steve asked a guy in a nearby store. “Jus’ now,” he replied.

  After hitting the bank, dropping off film for developing, having a late breakfast, and browsing in an art gallery, we returned to the Music Centre. Still locked. Off to the market, a handicraft shop, and a bookstore. Finally, around noon, we return to find the gate has been pulled back, and we walk up two flights of narrow steps into a dim, un-air-conditioned, barren space. The display cases are almost empty—just a few flags and kerchiefs—and the only music that appears to be for sale is on vinyl: old record albums hanging on one pegboard wall. It’s so unpromising and so uncomfortable—I’m already dripping with sweat up here right under the tiled roof—that I’m tempted to turn around and go back down the steps. But by then a commanding presence has appeared behind the counter, and turning on our heels would seem rude.

  “Good day, do you have any CDs by Ajumal?” I ask, trying to sound knowledgeable. “Ajamu,” the commanding presence says. “No, but I’ll call him at home. Maybe he can bring some over.” Steve and I exchange glances, picturing the manager of Sam Goody’s on the phone. “Hey, Mick, sorry to bother you, but got any Bridges to Babylon on hand? Customer here wants one.”

  Ajamu can’t help, but Doc—he’s introduced himself—promises he’ll bring us back an Ajamu CD from his forthcoming trip to New York, and the new Mighty Sparrow CD, too. Meanwhile, he’ll play something else for us, and give us a crash course on Carnival and the Grenada music business. Because of the country’s high duties on CDs, he explains, he can’t afford to keep a lot in stock, and the musicians can’t afford to bring many back into the country when they’re manufactured abroad. Tapes are a different story—those can be whipped up right on the premises. Copyright doesn’t seem to be an issue.

  From then on, we make Doc’s a regular stop on our trips to St. George’s—or as regular a stop as his irregular hours will allow. Doc’s is also a rum shop, with live music at night, which explains the erratic opening hours. We get our Ajamu CDs—jus’ now—after going away empty-handed on a couple of trips; and we get the complete Carnival schedule Doc promised us—also jus’ now—after he eventually piles us into his car, drives to the Carnival office in another part of the city, and goes inside himself to pick it up.

  “Doc,” Steve says, on our post-Carnival visit, “is there a collection of this year’s Carnival hits we can buy?”

  “No problem, mon,” says Doc. He’ll just put a tape together for us. Exactly which hits did we want?

  “‘Bellee,’ ‘Deh Monkey,’ ‘Four Kings,’ ‘Jumbie,’ ‘Stamp Up,’ ‘Aroun’ deh Town’ . . .”

  “Don’t have dat one yet. Radio station has deh only tape. But Elvis”—creator of “Aroun’ Deh Town”—“gettin’ me a copy soon.”

  Creator-sanctioned bootleg tapes. We order up one for us and one for Nancy and Terry on La Esmeralda. Doc tells us when they’ll be ready.

  I return on the appointed day to pick them up. Good thing Doc’s is also a rum shop. I can have a drink, read my book, and wait. My order will be ready jus’ now, the young man running the tape machine tells me.

  Pasta from Mr. Butters’s Garden

  Quick, easy, and tasty. Serve the pasta with crusty bread and sliced tomatoes drizzled with olive oil and sprinkled with chopped basil. The tomatoes provide a lovely contrast to the green pasta sauce.

  1⁄2 pound smoked sausage, sliced thin, or fresh sausage, casings removed

  2 tablespoons olive oil

  2 cloves garlic, chopped

  1 bunch escarole, roughly chopped (about 10 cups)

  Salt and freshly ground black pepper

  Splash white wine (optional)

  1⁄2 pound penne or other pasta

  Parmesan cheese, freshly grated

  1. In a large frying pan, cook the smoked sausage for a few minutes until it releases its fat, or cook fresh sausage, breaking it up with a fork, until lightly browned. Remove meat from pan and set aside. Drain fat from pan.

  2. In the same pan, heat olive oil and gently sauté garlic. Add the escarole a bit at a time, adding more as the first batch begins to wilt, and sauté until it is all wilted. Season with lots of black pepper and a little salt. Add a splash of wine or some of the pasta-cooking water if it seems dry and cook a minute or so longer. Return the sausage to the pan and toss all together.

  3. Meanwhile, cook the penne and drain. Combine with the escarole mixture and serve with Parmesan sprinkled on top.

  Serves 3–4, depending on how hungry the crew is.

  Furious Georges

  For several hundred years, many hurricanes in the West Indies were named after the particular saint’s day on which the hurricane occurred. . . . In 1953 . . . the nation’s weather services began using female names for storms. The practice of naming hurricanes solely after women came to an end in 1978.

  NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE, NATIONAL OCEANIC

  AND ATMOSPHERIC ADMINISTRATION

  Grenada has not been hit by a hurricane since 1955. But furious Georges is not behaving as he’s supposed to, and the cruisers at Hog Island are worried.

  Mid-September is the dangerous heart of hurricane season—September, remember—and tropical waves are rolling off the coast of Africa with nerve-wracking regularity. In fact, three of them are marching across the Atlantic at the moment. By itself, a tropical wave isn’t really something for us to get worked up about, although they bring wind and “convection activity,” that lovely forecast euphemism for clouds, squalls, rain, thunderstorms, and other such unpleasantries. The real problem comes when a tropical wave starts to become “organized” and develops a low-pressure cell to become a tropical depression; which can become further organized and start to spin around the area of low pressure, developing into a tropical storm; which can then grow into a hurricane; which is exactly what Georges has done.

  The storm started life last Wednesday as a tropical depression off the coast of Senegal. By Thursday morning, he had started to show some “rotary circulation” and wind speeds above 39 miles per hour, and was upgraded by the National Hurricane Center in Miami to a tropical storm. At this point, he was assigned the name Georges. The World Meteorological Organization has six alphabetical lists of names, which are used in rotation, one list a year. Georges is the seventh named storm in the Atlantic in 1998. We start plotting his position and projected path in grease pencil on our hurricane tracking chart, a $2 piece of erasable plastic I had hoped we’d never have to use. Every eight hours we tune in the National Weather Service on the SSB radio to get the latest “tropical storm advisory” and update the chart. By Thursday night, Georges has been upgraded to a hurricane, which means winds of 74 mph or more. He is at 41 degrees west longitude, 1,300 miles directly east of the West Indies.

  I’ve learned enough about weather in the last year to know that as storms move westward off the coast of Africa, they tend to track northward, and if they move far enough north fast enough, they peter out harmlessly at sea. However, if a storm passes 40 degrees west longitude without a significant curve to the north, watch out. Georges isn’t showing any inclination toward curving north and is already being discussed in the forecasts as a serious threat. In fact, unless Georges decides to change direction in a hurry, he is going to slam the Eastern Caribbean in three days.

  The next morning’s forecast has him entering the Eastern Caribbean just 170 nautical miles north of us, midway between Martinique and Dominica. We are way too clos
e for comfort.

  On the current track, Grenada won’t be in the most dangerous semicircle, to the north of the hurricane. But we will be in the southern semicircle of Georges’s sphere of influence. “Be prepared for strong winds and seas from the northwest and southwest,” says David Jones (a.k.a. Misstine), the British Virgin Islands–based forecaster. Our lovely Hog Island anchorage is open to the south. Winds at the center of the system are forecast to reach 126 mph in the gusts, with wave heights reaching 25 to 30 feet. If Georges sticks to the projected path, we could experience dangerous storm surge. And if Georges decides to take even the slightest jog to the south—not usual hurricane behavior, but not impossible, given he’s already showing signs of not acting like a “typical” hurricane—we’d be in very serious trouble.

  “At the moment, there are no signs of a swing to the north, but it’s always a possibility.” David’s voice has an entirely different gravity than I’ve heard before.

  “This isn’t supposed to be happening,” I moan stupidly. We lived up to our part of the bargain—we got our asses outside the hurricane zone. I am saved from Steve’s refresher course on statistical probability by our need to make some quick decisions.

  “What do you think we should do?”

  “I don’t know, what do you think we should do?”

  Staying right where we are isn’t necessarily a bad idea: We’ve been at Hog Island long enough to know our anchor is well set. We’re positioned well, with plenty of space around us, and sheltered by the reefs and the hills. But this isn’t a hurricane hole, and a storm surge could well make Hog’s protective reefs about as efficient at stopping the ocean as a chain-link fence.