Barbados - Large up wunna self!

The time has come to say goodbye to Barbados.  As usual, my blogging has left me with a burning desire to visit the places I've been blogging about - actually, a friend of mine is going to Barbados in the next couple of weeks, so I'll have to experience the island vicariously for now. 

A summary of the themes

It's been a great learning journey and, I must say, I've been left with a very favourable impression of Barbados - a small island nation that has managed to forge a respectable place for itself in the 21st century world.  During the past (almost) two months, I've learned about the geography and history of the island.  I've learned about Barbados' national 'religion' - cricket - and how the West Indies cricket team dominated the sport during the 1970's and 80's.  I learned about the darker side of Barbados' history, about the Red Legs and the 'ethnic cleansing' of Ireland.  I also learned about Barbados' strong historical links with Britain and the Commonwealth of Nations.  I learned how to cook the Bajan national dish, Cou Cou and Fried Fish and I read novels by two of the countries' most famous writers, George Lamming and Glenville Lovell. 

Tools for research

I read three books as part of my research for this blog:

To Hell or Barbados: The ethnic cleansing of Ireland by Sean O'Callaghan
In the Castle of my Skin by George Lamming
Song of Night by Glenville Lovell

I also watched three movies/documentaries related to Barbados:

The Tamarind Seed - (1974), starring Omar Sharif and Julie Christie, is partly set on Barbados and features scenes shot on the island.
Fire in Babylon (2011) is a really inspiring documentary about the West Indies cricket team.
Legends of Cricket - West Indies (2008) is a documentary series covering world cricketers

Research materials

I try to use the Insight Guides as much as possible when I'm researching for my blog.  I can usually pick up older copies fairly cheaply on Amazon and I find that they have a lot of interesting article and provide a good background to the societies I'm blogging about.  I was also lucky enough to come across a copy of The Nation - Barbados' national newspaper - in a newsagents on the Uxbridge Road.  I've used Wikipedia quite a lot and various other sources around the Net, to verify the information I've been blogging about.

And, of course, whilst I've been blogging, I've been listening to lots of great Calypso and Soca music. Barbados is renowned for its Crop Over Festival in late summer, where the Calypso wordsmiths compete to win the title of 'People's Monarch' or 'Pic-o-the-Crop'.  I hadn't realised how witty and political Calypso music is and I look forward to finding out more about Calypso in future.  For now, I'm going to share a YouTube video with you, from one of Barbados' best female groups Square One - this track is called 'Controller' and I hope that it will have you, like me, jumping all over the dance floor like a grasshopper!



Other themes

As usual there were themes I just touched on during my research, that I didn't really have time to explore in greater detail.  These were:

The saints that Barbados' parishes are named after
Coral Reefs
The Sugar Trade
The Taino people
Hurricanes
The world's most densely populated places
Persecution of the Methodists
The Monmouth rebellion
Bajans and the building of the Panama canal
Marcus Garvey and the Rastafarian movement
The world's greatest Wreck Dives

Dinner Party Trivia

And for those of you who are regular readers, here are some quirky facts about Barbados that you can use to impress people at your next dinner party!

The original name for Barbados was Ichirouganaim which means 'red land with white teeth'
Barbadian coins are struck at the Royal Canadian mint
Bridgetown is twinned with the London Borough of Hackney
Reading, in Berkshire, has the largest Bajan community outside the Caribbean
The English singer, Des'ree is of Bajan heritage
Barbados is believed to be the only place outside the US that George Washington visited
There are no poisonous snakes or spiders on Barbados
Barbados has the third oldest parliament in the Americas (set up in 1639) - after Virginia and Bermuda
The Carib word for rainbow literally translates as 'God's plume of feathers'
The original inhabitants of the Caribbean called Europeans 'misshapen enemy' because of their clothing and armour
The first synagogue in the Americas was founded in Bridgetown in 1654
There are over 140 religious denominations in Barbados and it's reputed to have the highest concentration of churches per square mile than any other place on earth
Between 18,000 and 20,000 Bajans died in a cholera epidemic in the 1850's
Bridgetown's main square used to be called 'Trafalgar Square' and predates London's Trafalgar Square - it was renamed National Heroes Square in 1999.
The tallest building in Barbados is 11 storeys high.
Barbados still has the death penalty on its law books - it was last used in 1983.
Malibu is produced in Barbados, although it originates on the Dutch island of Curaçao
The word 'rum' comes from 'rumbullion' which is an archaic word for a brawl!

The Beauty of Barbados

Of course, no blog about Barbados would be complete without paying homage to the island's most famous pop star, Rihanna who was born in the parish of St Michael's in 1988.  I'm not a die-hard fan, but I do

I'm going to leave you with one of my favourite Rihanna tracks, We Found Love (featuring Calvin Harris) again from Youtube.  The video was shot in County Down, Northern Ireland and caused some controversy when a local farmer objected to the rather 'saucy' scenes that were being acted out in his field!  Enjoy and next time, I'll be blogging about C . . .



Image credits:

The image of the book cover and newspaper were taken by me.

The videos are from YouTube

Barbados - Pride and Industry

It's 1800 kilometres (1100 miles) north from Manaus, the capital of Amazonas, to Bridgetown in Barbados, the place that I will be blogging about for the next month or so.

Barbados is one of the those places I've always dreamed about visiting.  I've only ever been to the Caribbean once, to Cuba, but Barbados would be high on the list for my next visit.  The country's motto is Pride and Industry and, from what I have read about Barbados so far, they have good reason to be proud; of their culture, of their democracy and the fact that Barbados is considered to be somewhat of a success story in the developing world.

Beach in Barbados by Loimere

It's a tiny country - the smallest one I've blogged about so far - it's slightly bigger than the Isle of Wight, a bit smaller than Lantau Island in Hong Kong and roughly the same size as Brooklyn and Queens put together.  I've also discovered that it's located a little bit apart from the other Windward islands of the Caribbean (eg. Martinique, St Lucia or St Vincent) lying about 100 miles to the east of the Windward chain. 

Barbados is also geologically different than its 'neighbouring' Windward islands.  Whilst they are mostly the volcanic summits of submerged mountains, Barbados is made up of coral and protected from the seas by a series of reefs.  It's very flat compared to other Caribbean islands and the difficulty of navigating ships to Barbados meant that, despite its Portuguese name (meaning 'beards'), Barbados remained continuously in the hands of the English from the 17th century until it gained independence in 1966.

Anglican-style church in Barbados by Loimere

Barbados has often been referred to as 'a little piece of England in the Caribbean' and ties with the UK remain strong.  It's believed that the island was originally inhabited by the Taino, a Carib people whose disappearance from Barbados is unexplained.  One theory is that the entire native population was transported by the Spanish to work on their plantations in Hispaniola (compare the fate of the Carib tribes in my earlier blog post about Jamaica). 

The word hurricane comes from the Taino word for their 'storm God', Juracan, who lived on El Yunque mountain in (what is now) Puerto Rico.  When he was angry, he would stir up the winds and seas and wreck havoc on the Caribbean islands, much as hurricanes do today!  Although Barbados lies directly in the path of many hurricanes, they tend not to hit the island directly and usually pass harmlessly northward. 

A busy street in Bridgetown by Loimere

The national language is English, but most people speak a dialect of English called Bajan. The dialect is believed to have been influenced  by languages of West Africa, such as Yoruba.  Like Yoruba, Bajan has no past tense, pronouns such as we have no accusative form (like English us), eg. in Bajan you would say - He see we (not He saw us). 

I'm hoping that, in the next few weeks, I'll be able to experience more Bajan culture.  I want to cook a traditional Bajan dish and read one of Barbados' most famous novels, In the Castle of my Skin by George Lamming.  I want to learn more about the role of sugar in the Atlantic slave trade.  I want to find out more about the West Indies' love affair with cricket, that most English of games!

Scene from The Tamarind Seed

I've already started listening to Calypso music and, as an introduction to Barbados, I watched a 1974 movie called The Tamarind Seed, starring Julie Christie and Omar Sharif - one of the few movies to be set in (and filmed in) Barbados.  I really liked the movie, which is about a love affair between a young English woman and a Soviet military attache.  You can catch glimpses of the island, as they drive around the countryside looking for a Tamarind tree that Julie Christie's character believes will have unusual seeds, shaped like the face of a man.  It's a movie about innocence and espionage.  The glimpses of Barbados were tantalising, but not nearly enough to satisfy my curiosity! 

Image credits:

The photos of Barbados, used to illustrate this blog post, were taken by flickr member, Loimere, aka Derek Hatfield, who is a self-confessed 'geek with a personality' from Wawa/Thunder Bay in Ontario.  You can see more of Derek's work on his website. 

The image of the still from the movie, The Tamarind Seed is from a photo taken by me. This image is being used to illustrate this blog post and promote Blake Edward's film. By publishing this image, I'm not condoning or encouraging reproduction of this image on the Internet or anywhere else. This image is not meant to bring the actors into disrepute or suggest their endorsement of this blogpost, but is meant to highlight the performances of these actors in this movie.

By coincidence, this is the second time I've blogged about a movie starring Julie Christie and Omar Sharif - see my earlier blog post about the movie version of Dr Zhivago.