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| Port Elizabeth, Hamilton, Cemetery Hill, O’car Reform, and Belmont viewed from Old Fort Hamilton |
[NOTE: I am cross-posting this to my Active Voice (writing)
blog and my Green Fence Farm (farming and eating) blog, which means that the 14
of my Facebook friends who signed up for the Active Voice and Green Fence Farm
pages will get multiple notices. I’m a little bit sorry for that because I know
you liked both pages, not because you actually LIKED them (in that junior high
school crush sort of way), but because you felt sorry for my feeble attempts at
taming the social media lion and wanted me not to go back to sending you
updates, many of which looked like manifestos from psycho-killers, just not
quite as well written, typed on my (self-correcting, mind you) electric
typewriter from college. I’m only a
little sorry because I do like the impression the multiple posts (of the same
piece) gives of great productivity on my part.
And the reason this is ending up on the Green Fence Farm page is that,
though I am on an island (Bequia) and nowhere near the farm right now, I am still
eating and writing about it.]
When I last wrote, I was pondering the impossibility of ever
writing my planned guide to the island of Bequia because I had discovered I was
going to have to do research, which could involve a lot of work (THIS is why I
know I am destined to be a fiction writer, or one of those essayists who just
looks out the window and writes about birds, because I am much better at making
shit up than researching, especially if it involves leaving my chair, which I
take great pains to put in an interesting place (Look! Birds!) and pillow up
adequately).
This whole research problem reared its ugly head when I
realized that my “Where to Eat” chapter was going to involve more than just
going to a bunch of restaurants and eating a bunch of courses (something I am
particularly good at). No, I would have to taste Nick’s food too, which will be
a struggle because one of the tenets on which our marriage is based is a
commitment not to share food. I’d have to interview the owner or the chef – who
around here is either going to be a native Bequian or a Scandinavian (and I
can’t understand either accent) and get some quaint story about how they wanted
to continue their dear mother’s tradition of boiling the crap out of stuff in
crockpots or how their grandfather always dreamed of coming to the tropics and
smoking fish. And I would have to RESEARCH (see? That word again) the hours and
addresses of the places.
I know what you are thinking – “you’re going to the places,
you must at least already know the addresses” – but you would be wrong, which
is why you have not yet written a travel guide (unless you have, in which case,
it is why you have not written a travel guide to Bequia). There are no
addresses here; there is no mail delivery (see previous post on guy handing
mail out of the back of the ferry) and only one main road, which was built, I
believe, by the Romans and hasn’t been maintained since (OK, you homeschoolers,
don’t write that last part down, I made it up: the bit about the Romans, that
is, not the maintenance).
What there are are many, many, many “towns.” Most of these
would fit into what we on the mainland would call “a block.” Some would fit
into what we would call “two huts and an abandoned rum shack with a goat living
in it.”
For example, the main grouping of towns (which the locals
refer to, confusingly, as “town”) consists of the following: Port Elizabeth,
Hamilton, Cemetery Hill, O’car Reform, and Belmont. There cannot be more than
100 structures total in these towns, and from any place in anyone of them you
can pretty much see all of all the rest of them.
The ferry from St. Vincent arrives in Port Elizabeth, which
is also referred to as the capitol of Bequia in any tourist guide you can find.
So, the traveller coming into the port would assume, as I did, that the
groupings of houses and a couple restaurants to your left; the half pedestrian
mall, half street (with a boundary that is fluid and the subject of vocal
controversy, mainly among pedestrians who have just had their feet run over and
the taxi drivers that did the running over), shops, stands, and a government
building in front of you; and the waterside cafes and small hotels to your
right were all part of the thriving Bequian capitol, Port Elizabeth.
You would be wrong.
In fact, as far as I can tell, Port Elizabeth includes only
the port itself; the tourist information building right as you exit the port,
the lady selling knitted Rasta hats to its left; the tree under which the taxi
drivers hang out and discuss how much they hate the current government and why
tourists keep sticking their feet under their cabs’ tires; the government
building across the street; and a small canal of festering runoff from the
gutters. If you walk from that government building less than a dirt road block
to Knight’s Food store, you are in the town of Hamilton. A block to the right
and you are in Belmont. A block the left you are in O’car Reform. Cemetery
Hill? To the right and up another block from the port, near the cemetery (duh).
The whole metro area can be walked in about 10 minutes, 15 if you stop for ice
cream.
The Port Elizabeth/Hamilton distinction really tripped me up
our first week on the island. We had asked Cass, our housekeeper and native
Bequian, where to get groceries. She informed us that Hamilton had a Knights
(the Bequian version of Safeway, except without the parking lot, pharmacy, produce
section, soda section, meats, or pretty much anything but rum, fruit juice, canned
beans, and staples tied in small plastic bags without labels so you have to
smell everything to make sure it is salt, for example, and not laundry
detergent. Knights deserves and will get its own post later).
Nick did the first shopping trip on his own, and later that
day, as we were driving to a restaurant in O’car Reform, he pointed out the
store, which is about the size of a White Castle, and I said, “So that is why
you came home with only a can of pigeon peas and a small bag of laundry
detergent. You were supposed to go to the store in HAMILTON,” which I assured
him was no doubt a fabulous marvel of megastore efficiency, with Whole
Foods-like displays of local fruits and Starbucks coffee.
Despite the fact that, by the time I had finished saying
that sentence, we had arrived at the restaurant that was in O’car Reform – and
despite the fact that I knew from Cass that O’Car Reform came after Hamilton –
I still insisted that we go the next day to find the real supermarket in
Hamilton.
We took the main road over the pedestrian mall, by the port
and the restaurant from the day before, around herds of goats, school children,
and a guy carrying a fish on his head, persevering even when it really seemed
the road had turned into someone’s driveway and finally got to – a dead end at
a lookout and a historic plaque about the fort that used to be there (also a
couple of old canons, which made the trip not a waste for Nick).
So, yeah, the Knights in Hamilton is the Knights that is 20
feet from Port Elizabeth, and Cass had a huge laugh over us driving “all the
way” to Old Fort Hamilton (like we drove from DC to Beckley, WV looking for a
Sam’s club). The island communication network being what it is, that story made
the rounds pretty quickly, and I think I heard a local guitar group singing a
ballad about it a couple nights ago (“Oh the stupid white man and his fat wife,
drove all the way to Old Fort Hamilton looking for a store, do dah, do dah),
though it could have been Day-o. I really have a hard time with the local
accent.
Apologies for my Green Fence Farm readers that I have yet to
get to anything about food yet, unless you consider laundry detergent a food,
but I will in the next post, at which point you will, I assure you, appreciate
all this essential background information.
