Back home, Steve would have called a plumber and I would have loaded the dishwasher. But back home, I can’t put on my snorkel gear, climb down the swim ladder, and watch spotted eagle rays rooting for dinner in the sand beneath me.
Ever since a cockroach escaped from a visiting cruiser’s Scrabble box and tried to move aboard Receta, I don’t take any chances—even though Steve nailed it instantly with a direct hit of Baygon, our made-for-the-Caribbean bug spray that delivers on its promise of “fast knock-down.” (I’ve never had the courage to look at the ingredients list. “Use only if necessary,” the can says.) When we acquire books in exchanges with other cruisers, I surreptitiously slip them into Ziplocs, blast in some Baygon, and seal the bags for a few days. When we’re on the hard, I make an embarrassed Steve spray our ladder and the stands that support Receta, so bugs don’t stroll over from a nearby boat and climb onboard. And on the rare occasion that Receta is tied to a dock, I spray our mooring lines, in case any bugs get it in their minds to scurry aboard and sample the cruising life. One day a fishing boat pulled in next to us. I had heard bad things, very bad things, about fishing boats and their burgeoning cucaracha populations. So undeterred by the crowd on the dock, realizing that I looked like an out-of-control obsessive-compulsive, I got out my supersized can and sprayed the dock. Steve says we should buy shares in Baygon. I don’t care: What matters is that except for the brief incursion by the Scrabble-box hitchhiker, Receta remains a roach-free zone.
My sternest anti-bug measures are reserved for groceries. Cardboard boxes—roaches eat the glue and lay eggs in them—never, ever come aboard Receta. Before we even leave the supermarket, we jettison as many as possible; the contents of the others get transferred to other containers before they go belowdecks. And every single piece of produce we buy gets rinsed with a bleach and water solution in the cockpit. Dry goods like rice and sugar get double-bagged in Ziplocs. (Steve says we should buy stock in that company, too.) No wonder grocery shopping takes all day.
Steve finally convinces me it’s time to sell Snack. But it’s illegal for cruisers to sell stuff in Trinidad, just as it’s illegal for them to work, so Steve commits a semantic fiddle: He trades Snack instead—for a pile of U.S. greenbacks, which he immediately injects into the local economy by purchasing a new, larger dinghy and new, larger outboard.
I don’t need much convincing, actually: I had long ago become tired of the cruising affliction known as dinghy butt—the salty wet bum that results from traveling in an underpowered dinghy on an overactive body of water. The only thing I need convincing about is the expense.
For the first time in my adult life, I don’t have a paycheck. All I see is money going out. I know the bank statements that catch up with us sporadically show the accounts are healthy: The house is happily rented, the cruising guides we publish are continuing to sell. But still. Cruisers—even the wealthy retired-for-life types—wear frugality like a badge of honor. In Toronto, we had heard about “gold star days”: cruisers proudly putting a gold star in their logs any day they hadn’t spent a cent.
I’m in charge of keeping track of our finances onboard. So I carefully note every peso and dollar we spend—from the $2 EC (77 cents) we paid for a round trip for two to St. George’s from Lower Woburn, to the $766.90 TT ($124) for a major provisioning in Port of Spain. (There are an appalling number of entries marked “beer.”) At the end of each month, I tally it all up in an Excel spreadsheet on the laptop, and report how we’ve done compared to our plucked-almost-from-thin-air budget back in Toronto.
Early on, the monthly bottom lines are scary—mostly because of the equipment category, as Steve continues to find stuff that Receta absolutely has to have. But by the time we reach Grenada, the bottom lines have swung the other way, and for a few months we’re actually well under budget.
The 75-mile crossing from Trinidad back to Grenada is ugly.
We leave about two in the afternoon, with the new Snack on deck, knowing we’ll be watching the sun rise as we approach the anchorage at Hog Island. But a succession of squalls—nowhere in the forecast—starts soon after we are through the Boca, the mouth leading out of Trinidad’s protected inshore waters. The 2 A.M. note in the log is a succinct one-worder: “Awful.” We have to reef the sails because the wind is so strong—but between squalls, it slacks off, and we corkscrew limply up and down the waves, lacking enough drive to slice through them. This jerky up, down, and sideways motion is too much even for iron-stomach Steve. We take turns steering and leaning over the side to puke, attached to the boat by our safety harnesses so there’s no danger of losing one of us overboard along with our lunch.
I had been looking forward to making the passage on this particular night, when the Leonid meteor shower is passing overhead. But watching the sky for any length of time exacerbates the seasickness: When I look up, the only obvious light is the one at the top of our mast, describing huge arcs across the heavens. Baaaacccckkk and forrrthhhh. Baaaacccckkk and forrrthhhh. Blech. I don’t look up very often.
And this is how I arrive back in Grenada, where the sun is rising on a glorious tropical day: dehydrated and exhausted by a night of vomiting, and seriously depressed. After my bow-to-stern, every-inch-of-woodwork cleaning in Trinidad, the boat has been trashed. Not only is there wet clothing strewn everywhere, but waves found their way—yet again—through the leaky forepeak hatch.
“Receta, Receta. This is La Esmeralda. Welcome back to Grenada.” We’re still a mile offshore when the radio booms to life. Receta’s shape has been spotted on the horizon, and the call from La Es is followed by other welcomes. We’ve come home.
The road to Dingis’s house is as steep as ever. But now, in late November, after another month-and-a-half of the wet season, the landscape is an even denser green. The flamboyant trees, blazing red a few months ago, now sport 2-foot-long pea-green pods; a few months from now, they’ll be “shak-shaks,” hard and brown, their seeds loose inside, perfect for shaking to a soca beat. The air seems freshly washed, with the unreal clarity of a retouched postcard. The wet season doesn’t mean gray days of constant drizzle; the sun still blazes most of the time, with rain dancing down for only an hour or so in the afternoon. Then the sun returns—with such ferocity that the potholes steam like volcanic craters. Perhaps because we’ve been away and haven’t seen it in a while, or perhaps because we’re just so glad to be here, the road seems lovelier than ever.
Gennel had turned fifteen while we were in Trinidad, and we’re eager to deliver her birthday gift. We had thought hard and lingered long over its selection. What would a fifteen-year-old girl like? What would a fifteen-year-old Grenadian girl like? Eventually, we settled on a wide woven copper bracelet, made by a Trini craftsman; we both agreed it would look lovely against her skin. Of course, we have a souvenir for Dingis, too, a brightly painted ceramic jar decorated with Trinidad’s national bird, the scarlet ibis.
“Let’s not bother calling first,” Steve had said. “Gennel will be home from school by now.” So we had bypassed the pay phone outside Nimrod’s and headed directly up the road.
But the house is silent as we turn into the drive. No familiar voice sings out hello, and no noisy gaggle of little girls plays under the fishnet-strung carport. The only person we can see is “Gennel’s father,” as Dingis introduced him to us once, and only once, who nods hello and continues sharpening his cutlass. The quiet is broken only by the menacing scrape of the cutlass on the sharpening stone. This, plus several goats tethered just outside the carport, makes me think we’ve arrived as the animals are about to be dispatched to the stewpot. I start to walk away. “I don’t want to see this.”
Steve takes my arm. “He’s just cutting their tethers.” Then, to Gennel’s father: “Is Dingis here?”
He shakes his head no. Gennel, still wearing the pleated gray skirt and short-sleeved white blouse that are her school uniform, appears from the house, having heard our voices. “Mommy down in deh bay,” she says, and then explains why the
house is so subdued. Dwight had an accident while diving for lobster—the bends, it sounds like—and Dingis had to have him flown to Barbados, the closest decompression chamber. He’s doing okay, but the strain on the household—loss of the breadwinner, the exorbitant cost of out-of-country medical care, daily long-distance phone calls—is clearly enormous.
Gennel’s father helping out,” Dingis says, when we’ve again climbed the hill, this time calling first, “but still I had no money to get Gennel a birt’day cake.” She has shown us a letter from the hospital in Barbados: The bill for Dwight’s care is going to cost thousands, dollars that Dingis clearly doesn’t have. The good news is that he will recover, though it will be a slow process; however, his days of diving for a living may be permanently over. Dingis’s face shows the strain of the last week.
For the first time, she invites us inside the house to talk. Spotting the lineup of flip-flops at the top of the steps, we pull off our sandals before stepping inside. A TV on a small table dominates one end of the living room; a wall phone, the other; a few chairs are arranged around the perimeter, and a couple of inexpensively framed prayers and religious pictures hang on the walls. Several rooms are directly off the living room—bedrooms, I assume—their doors pulled most of the way shut. Gennel is wearing her bracelet; she had thanked us when we arrived, just as soon as she could politely break in on her mother’s account of Dwight, but a little later, when she leaves the room to get a photo album to show us, Dingis says, “Gennel even sleep with her bracelet on.”
Her musical voice is mournful. “But I couldn’t do anything on her birt’day.” Steve and I exchange quick glances. “Come to Receta for dinner on Sunday with Gennel and the girls and Allan,” Steve says. “We’ll make it a belated birthday party.”
On the way back down the hill, we stop at Nimrod’s to say hello and buy a loaf of bread. Before we even realize what he’s doing, Hugh has two cold Caribs open and in front of us on the counter. Saying no thanks would be rude and out of the question. The problem is, we spent longer with Dingis and Gennel than planned, and it’s almost sunset. When the sun drops below the horizon 12 degrees above the equator, it’s day one minute, night the next; there’s very little twilight. And with no flashlight, opening Snack’s combination lock on the unlit dinghy dock will be a little tricky.
We drink up quickly. I leave Steve to pay, run to the dock, and spin the lock in the last remaining minutes of daylight. But Steve doesn’t appear. I wait. And wait some more.
The hazard of being considered a regular at the local rum shop: Before letting him out the door, Hugh had shanghaied him into a shot of rum. “Welcome back to sweet Grenada,” Steve announces, grinning broadly, when he finally arrives.
The cockpit and cabin are decorated with balloons from a store in St. George’s. I’d made a last-minute visit to Mr. Butters’s the previous afternoon, my first since we returned from Trinidad. The fields looked more neglected than they had two months earlier, but he was still there. So was the bulldozer—still composting nicely.
“How are things, Mr. Butters?”
“Dey still makin’ me leave. Maybe tomorrow. Most of my stuff finished.” He had the tomatoes I needed, though.
The menu has been carefully planned. No way I’m going to attempt island fare with Dingis at the table—and, in any case, I figure it will be more fun if the food is typically North American—so pots of good-old North American–style spaghetti and meatballs and sauce are simmering on the stove. Remembering the finicky tastes of my niece and nephew, about the same age as the girls and Allan, I’ve toned down my cooking: The sauce has only a little garlic and no hot stuff in it; one loaf of the homemade bread that’s warming in the oven is slathered with garlic butter, but I do a second loaf with plain butter, too. And, figuring it will be the least popular part of the meal with my younger guests, I’ve made only a modest amount of salad.
It’s instantly clear I’ve made a gross cross-cultural miscalculation. As Steve and I hand plates around the cabin table, each one with a hefty meatball perched on top of a mound of spaghetti, I explain which loaf of bread has garlic butter and which has plain. Everyone—the little girls included—digs into the garlic bread. They only move on to the plain buttered loaf when the last crumb of garlic bread is gone. “This is grated cheese.” I point to a bowl of my freshly grated top-of-the-line Parmesan. Everyone spoons it on. Except for Allan, who carefully piles it next to his pasta, like a scoop of mashed potatoes, and proceeds to eat it with gusto, like a side dish.
“Do you have any hot pepper?” Gennel asks. I deliver a bottle of hot sauce to the table and everyone—again, the little girls included—sprinkles it liberally on the sauce.
Oh, dear. So much for toning down my cooking. I’m sure Dingis is by now convinced I don’t know a thing about proper spicing. But she kindly tells me how delicious everything is, how it’s the first meal she’s really eaten since Dwight’s accident.
And the kids: By the time Steve and I clear the table, they have each consumed two large meatballs. Beef is not a big part of the local diet—and certainly not in the form of meatballs. But these kids don’t turn up their noses at unfamiliar foods. They’ve cleaned their plates, salad and all. There are no parents here urging them to eat or they won’t get dessert. They eat with enthusiasm, taking real pleasure in my cooking.
And once Gennel has blown out her candles, of course everyone finishes a big square of chocolate cake thick with chocolate icing.
After lunch, “Uncle Steve” takes the kids and Gennel on a fast ride in the new Snack to Mt. Hartman Bay, the next bay to the west, then back to the Hog Island beach for a swim, this time with a wave and a welcome from Phillip. Dingis and I stay on board to talk—about Dwight, of course, but also, as always, about food. Despite the turmoil in her household, she had once again arrived bearing a gift: green coconuts from a tree on her property. “Do you know coconut water?” I assure her we both really like coconut water—leaving out that I particularly like it mixed with gin. I also omit that we’ve yet to open a green coconut onboard ourselves.
We’ve watched the coconut vendor in the St. George’s market on every trip to town, however. He wears bib overalls woven entirely out of coconut palm fronds, with the bib top usually pushed down around his waist. A high-crowned hat, also woven from fronds, shades his face. Holding a green coconut in one hand, he gives the top a couple of quick whacks with his cutlass, its 20 inches of curved blade flashing in the sun. He slices off just enough of the shell to create a small opening in the end, small enough that none of the coconut water spills out before the customer tips it up to drink.
Coconut water—not to be confused with coconut milk—is found in young or green coconuts that haven’t yet developed their hard, hairy inner brown husk and firm white meat. Green coconuts are also called “water nuts” and, in some places, “jelly nuts,” because of the soft, quivering flesh inside, which can be eaten with a spoon. A good-sized young nut will have as much as three cups of almost-clear thirst-quenching water. “Very good for you,” Dingis tells me. “Very nutritious.” She neglects to mention its other local claim to fame: Coconut water is reputed to be an excellent hangover cure.
As the nut ripens, the flesh thickens and hardens, and the hairy brown husk develops. The smooth green or yellowish outer shell of the young nuts turns tan or brown; but this outer shell is usually removed before the coconuts are exported, so what you see in North American markets is just the hairy brown inner husk. These mature “flesh nuts” have a lot less water inside, the space now filled by dense white coconut meat—which the island women grate and soak in boiling water to make coconut milk and coconut cream. On islands such as Grenada, where there are many more coconut palms than cows, they take the place of dairy milk and cream in everyday cooking.
As I tuck the green nuts under our canvas spray dodger where they won’t roll around, Dingis warns me to open them soon. “Deh water go sour if you leave it in deh coconut.”
Steve’s bo
ught himself a cutlass—less than $6 at Arnold John’s hardware store in town—so he can open coconuts and clean lambi the way the locals do. But, now, eyeballing the wicked blade and its proximity to the fingers holding one very smooth, very hard green coconut, we agree that using it seems like a very bad idea indeed. I substitute the Chinese cleaver from the galley, the 8-inch blade of which seems downright modest.
The guy in the market made it look easy. After losing a good portion of the sticky liquid from the first nut on Receta’s cockpit cushions, we decide opening a green coconut is a two-person operation. For the next one, we both lean overboard, Steve with the nut and cleaver, and me, holding our biggest bowl underneath. He thwacks and I catch the water that splurts out. Then I break out the ice cubes and Clarke’s Court rum (“cabin table, aft compartment: good for mixing”), to put a proper Grenadian spin on the gin drink we loved in the Bahamas.
I mix the clear coconut water with the Clarke’s Court, then stir in a couple of teaspoons of sweetened condensed milk. The translucent mixture immediately turns a lovely opaque milky white. Poured over ice into tall glasses, with one of our own nutmegs grated on top, it is a seductive, dangerous concoction: barely sweet, slightly coconutty, and very refreshing. Steve votes it a permanent place on my sundown repertoire.
Steve’s parents are coming from Canada to visit next week, meeting us in Bequia. It’s time to leave Grenada for good. Dingis insists we come visit once more. “You need more coconuts,” she says, “and the golden apples are ready.”
When we arrive, she has already filled one large canvas sack with golden apples. Slicing one for us to try raw, she tells me I can also stew them with sugar. Following Gennel’s lead, we dip the wedges in a saucer of salt: A type of citrus fruit, the golden apple is tart and sweet at the same time, and full of sharp fibrous slivers that have to be cut or pulled away—a world removed from the apples we know. Meanwhile, one of the older local boys is shinnying up the trees to get coconuts, Dingis tells us, and a sack of them soon arrives.
An Embarrassment of Mangoes Page 22