Let’s Not Crash and Burn

(a draft of an essay about racism and other lovely things, like sexual harassment) 

It was English, but English in a Bajan dialect, a backwoods Bajan dialect at that, and the guy’s voice sounded like a machine gun firing underwater. White motherfuckers. It took a moment for my mind to process the words—slow them down and spread the clipped language out a bit. When I did finally get it, I let out an involuntary cough. Motherfuckers? What the hell?

The man pulled off a hat and shook out his granite-colored dreadlocks as he crossed the dirt road towards where we—myself and the two girls I was with—sat on crudely cemented concrete blocks. The U-shaped, three-foot high structure was, or was supposed to be, a bus stop somewhere in one of only two landlocked parishes in Barbados.

We continued to sit quietly. The girls didn’t seem to notice what he said and I decided not to bring it up. The man, old and gaunt, was now talking to another woman who sat on the other end of the U. After being on the island for over a week, I still couldn’t get over how immensely different the English language sounded. It tumbled out to a cadence so lyrically different that I might as well have been in Java or India. I was used to a Caribbean lilt and what it did to words; I liked it even. It had a calming effect on me whenever I went to a Caribbean restaurant at home or heard it walking down the streets of New York City or elsewhere. The levity in the air that backed up any word the person said made me smile. Saying go away was just the same as give me a big hug. 

Maybe it was the media that kept this fantasy in my mind, an inundation of “Come to Jamaica and feel all right” commercials or an endless playlist of Bob Marley songs at anything that could even slightly claw at calling itself a reggae or Rasta event, but I still couldn’t help but keep the image of a happy Caribbean in my head. Some other part of my brain told me that everyone had the capacity to be mean, and really mean it, but I was choosing to ignore that.  I wanted it to be all smiles and laughter.

Even if I wasn’t really on vacation (I wasn’t), I wanted to at least feel like it in some way. I was in Barbados to learn, but I was there to learn about the culture. I needed to be among the people every day in order to do that. Sure, in order to fully see the culture, I’d need to see the people happy, sad, angry, and every emotion in between, but I was content just seeing the happy side. It would make the trip more fun. I knew they would get angry at some point, I didn’t need to see it.

But here, on the easternmost island in the Caribbean, an island only one-hundred and sixty-six square miles large, the interior of the island was another world. I had felt more comfortable in Germany the first time I was there—a few months of beginner language classes at least allowed me to pick up a word here or there, smile politely, and give an answer resembling what I hoped was the right response. If not, I could just smile sheepishly, shrug and mumble something else about not understanding. Here, though, when the Bajans looked at you—the ones that didn’t work in the tourism industry at least—they just expected you to know what they were saying.

The two Bajans continued talking. I tried to focus on the crossword puzzle book in my lapbut couldn’t. White motherfuckers. I couldn’t get over it. I really hadn’t done anything to him. Hell, I was helping him, even. In Barbados, tourism is the lifeline of the economy as well as the Achilles’ heel. If it died, there goes everything. Stores, restaurants, hotels all survive because of the tremendous amount of tourists that visit the island every year (somewhere around a million per year). A week here for one family, two weeks there for honeymooners, they all add up. I was doing more than that; I was there for three weeks. I needed food and transportation and everything else everyone who lived on the island would need.

If the guy couldn’t figure that out by the fact that we had ventured to nearly the center of the island, far away from any beach, then a bartender I met who had referred to the inner part of the island as backwoods, was starting to seem more and more right. I had laughed the comment off originally. It was the liquor talking; the bartender had spent some time in the states and was probably just joking around. He had heard the term and now used it freely, like I did with y’all when I was at home in the North, far from the line that separated the acceptable southern drawl zone from the you-do-it-and-we’ll-harass-you-mercilessly zone. I don’t say it because I think I am a southerner, I’m not and I never will be. It falls off the tongue easily and at some points makes sentences shorter. That’s all.  The bartender didn’t know what real backwoods was. It was the rum talking. He lived in paradise. Paradise, for Christ’s sake. Sun-baked beaches, a seemingly eternal font of Mount Gay, the world’s oldest rum, and enough fresh fish to have it three times a day every day.

This man, though, old, grizzled and grumpy, a tall, Rasta seventh Dwarf of sorts, was making that drunken comment a reality. Every once and a while the two locals would glance in our direction and then continue their conversation. They couldn’t get off the topic of us. How kind of them. If I were just there for sun and sand, would I bother making my way to a giant stone lion on a hill that takes all of five minutes to see and maybe take a picture of? I wouldn’t. Most young adults wouldn’t be caught dead doing that type of thing, on vacation or not. Senior citizens on air-conditioned bus tours did that. Five minutes one place, snap a photo, hobble back onto the bus and off to the next captivating vista. Okay ladies and gents, speed up those walkers, we’ve got eight more sites to visit and only a little bit of time before your ship departs. Instead, I’d be culling a painful cherry-red out of my pores while ice cubes slowly diluted the rum punch that sat next to my beach chair. I did that anyway, but I also saw the things that tourists wouldn’t—like the pottery factory located on top of what the Bajans would consider a mountain. It was high enough in elevation, far enough away from the sandy flat coast that our bus’s bumping and stalling caused visions of friends at home to flash through my mind, rolling in front of my eyes as steep roadside banks passed under them. Making the effort had to count for something.

A few more minutes (or moments, it all seemed slower, the pace of everything on the island was slower) of hushed conversation passed and the two locals walked down the block away from us, and got in a car together.  The car rolled by and as it passed and the man shouted something else over the sound of the struggling engine before driving off down the dirt road towards Bridgetown. It took me another few moments to process this word—I was and am not good at the “being fast” thing. It seemed to be one syllable and came out “Rist.” Rist. Wrist. No, he wouldn’t say wrist. It made no sense. I figured he was missing a syllable or two so I had space for another sound. Realist, rapist, Rehnquist, racist. Racist. Yes, racist. That seemed to fit the vein of one-sided conversation the guy had with us, really? I didn’t shout at every person I saw on the island to get back into a sugarcane field (something not so far removed from an island that was begun as a plantocracy). All I was trying to do was get the hell away from his little tin house, anyway.

First, I’m a white motherfucker, and now I’m a racist?  Clearly this guy really didn’t realize that my being there was helping his island. Everyone else on the island seemed to. People in the capital or on the street and in restaurants were nice enough. Cab drivers lauded their island to no end, delighting in telling stories and the history of little landmarks passed on short rides. There was a passion behind their words, an energy that belied the same excitement a Labrador shows when waiting to chase down a ball. That made everything more interesting. They really cared and it showed. They loved their island. They bled blue, yellow and black—the nation’s colors. Why couldn’t this guy be like that, too? A smile, a wave, a hello, something that didn’t insult me. Even if it was fake, like I’m sure some of the people I had encountered had been, it would’ve been fine with me. In the moment, it would be appreciated. I know not everyone would really love their country, love the fact that tourists clogged their capital and beaches and bars everyday, but, because I am a tourist, couldn’t they act like they do?

Even some ex-patriots got in on the action of picking on tourists. This I found the most stunning, since at one point they had been in the same position as I was.  They were at one point fresh young tourists, looking for a little adventure, getting a lot of sunburn and somehow falling in love with the place anyway.  Now, decades later, they had established themselves, living out their days slowly and comfortably, rising each morning to fresh fruit and the hot Bajan sun, going to bed each night, soothed by an orchestra of the little chirping frogs of the island, a cacophony worse then an army of crickets, that one eventually gets used to (by the end of the trip, unless it was pointed out, I didn’t even hear them).

I was standing at the bus stop down the road from our hotel on our second morning then when one of these ex-pats decided to get a little feisty. Our class, divided into small groups, had been sent out on a scavenger hunt to familiarize ourselves with the island. Our teachers told us to take the public buses as opposed to privately owned “zedders,” vans that shook and thumped along to reggae music and got you to the same destinations faster while adding a splash of danger and excitement to your life. After one ride, sitting next to the window, seeing just how close these vans came to other cars and people, you might have visions flash through your head—first kiss, best home-cooked meal, first sexual encounter—like I had. Being the good students we were, not yet ready to break the teachers’ rules—we didn’t feel like getting in trouble nor did we exactly trust the crazy looking vans yet, even though they turned out to indeed be better transportation in the long run—we were waiting for a public bus, watching and waving off zedder after zedder, telling them we were waiting for a different bus.

An older woman, who’s skin was a shade somewhere between Gran Marnier orange-brown and melting caramel, before queing up for an upcoming zedder herself, turned to our group.

“Are you too good for these?” she asked. We shook our heads.  No, we were told to wait for the… “Are you racist against these things? Why do you have to wait? These are just as good…better, even.” We were told, we began again. More of the same guilt trip. Finally, she got on and left. After waiting another thirty minutes, we gave up on a bus and did the same as her.

*

Later on that day, I was confronted with my first language problem and in retrospect, one worse than the racist comments by the angry old man in backwoods Barbados that I’d hear later on. Part of the scavenger hunt was to visit one of the department stores on the island so off we went to Cave Shepherd, a Mecca for duty-free seeking tourists. I needed a book for class, so we went up to the book section of the store and after fruitless searching I gave in and asked someone. His words were fast and as far from understandable on the spectrum on clarity as they could get.

I wasn’t in Germany anymore; I couldn’t smile and shrug here. Hell, I had asked him for help. If I did shrug it off and blindly agree to whatever, I think I still might be some sort of paradisiacal sex slave. Something, most likely stupidity tinged by the fact that the sun was actively frying my brain even after only a little exposure, caused me to ask an old man in the book department where the poetry section was. He was wearing the same tan color as some of the workers and I, for some stupid reason assumed that he, an old guy just standing around doing nothing in particular, was a worker, too. He was just standing there not working, jut standing. I didn’t think to take three steps over to the register to the cheerful looking cashiers, their English tinted by British schooling at some point. At home, I don’t go up to random people who might work in the store and I still cant’ pinpoint what part of my brain told me this would be the time to start doing that. If I do find out what part, it’s got a thorough poking with a Q-tip coming its way.

He started talking to me some more and I could feel my brain thwacking against my skull going stop, no, stop, no I. Don’t. Understand with all the force of a Swedish death metal band. He finished what he was saying, made some hand gestures towards me, and smiled. His gums weren’t totally pink, more like purple in spots, and the few teeth he had were a ripe corn yellow. So on top of speaking too fast, he was mumbling through pudding gums. There he went, talking again as I took slow steps backwards. More hand gestures and I managed to recognize a few words. Something about sex and going somewhere. Sex and going somewhere and hand gestures. Did this old guy want to have sex with me? No, he couldn’t why would he want that? Right in the middle of a store, no less. It had to be my mind, I was convinced, just playing tricks on me. I had heard things about sexual harassment and my overactive imagination was taking it to the next level. My subconscious was creating a way for me to be the center attention, this guy was harmless, utterly harmless. But then he repeated himself and like listening to a song on repeat, I got more words this time around. My mind finally jumpstarted, an lawnmower kicking back to life after a long winter. There was no way I was going to be his little white sex slave.

No. No, no, no was my mantra as I took another step back and bumped into a bookshelf. Flower arranging books shook in their spots. He took a step forward but stopped when I held up my hand and shook my head. He took an over exaggerated look around the store and mumbled something about gills. Girls? Did I have any girls for him? Did I look like a pimp? was all I could think. I was trying to give this guy the benefit of the doubt, I was just an tourist with an overactive imagination and he was just a regular Joe, living his life, looking for some books. I really tried, but as he worked his gums and spoke again, repeating himself, it was hard not to judge him. Why would he be doing this? Did he do it often and if he did, did any tourists ever actually agree?

Our teachers had warned us about the girls being sexually harassed by locals before we came, that is why the guys were put into the various groups, to stop that. Hah. I think I might’ve been the first male traveler to Barbados to ever be sexually harassed.

Luckily, the only other offers I got the rest of the time were to buy drugs. Being a more common part of their society, though still a detrimental one, I found this more tolerable. Addicts with open sores and bloodshot eyes did this to me all the time at home. I was used to it. No, I don’t want to smoke up. No thanks, my veins are all filled with cocaine already. Ecstasy, you say? Well, shucks I just took a tablet five minutes ago. Maybe tomorrow.

*

Sitting with my feet dug in the sand, watching the brown hump of a turtle rise and fall under the surf fifty feet from shore, my mind wandered. No matter how many things I had encountered every day or how many new people I had met, both nice and not so nice, I kept thinking about the angry old man and the pervert. They hung around in my mind like men at rum shops, there all day with nothing to do. Was I took quick to judge them? Was I just overreacting because my mind couldn’t process things fast enough and just chose to freak out instead? At least, with the perverted old man, I knew mostly what he was saying. He said it enough times for me to get a good idea of the words that zipped by me. Context clues. The other guy, though, was I completely wrong? He wasn’t smiling and his body posture was more I-want-to-hurt-you than come-let’s-have-a-beer. But maybe he just didn’t want us there.

I tried putting myself in his shoes. When I saw tourists in my town (or even in New York City, close enough) how did I act? I ignored them like my life depended on it. Tourists ranked somewhere between vagrant and guy in a hot dog suit. With their cameras held out constantly, snapping pictures of everything, every last disease-ridden pigeon. I’d take a wide arc around them, even purposely not waiting for a light to change and crossing the street to away. They clogged the streets. They took up precious space in small cafés and delis, eager to try “true New York Deli.” Maybe this guy thought that way, too. He didn’t want tourists on his island, he was happy enough without them. He fished or grew cane or something that didn’t depend on foreigners. He did all he could to avoid the pale-skinned foreigners that ambled down streets in packs like cows being led to slaughter. Sure, they brought money to the island, but was he getting any of that? Probably not.

My mind bobbled the same thoughts in it for the rest of my stay on the island. This guy, just living his life, just didn’t want us there and I freaked out for no reason. But, what if he did call me a racist? Why would he do that? Even if I did put myself in his shoes, understand that he didn’t want us there, when I see tourists I just ignore them, I don’t open my mouth and harass them. If I saw him on a New York Street, waiting for a bus, I’d ignore him, that’s all. Why couldn’t he have done that? Was I missing something?