TriumphAnt

Grenada 2006 (Two of however many it takes…)

Jenny’s Place in Grenada is home to two residents that don’t make it into the brochures – their guard dogs.

Grenada doesn’t seem like the sort of place that suffers from a high degree of residential theft, but it does seem that almost every home that reflects any degree of wealth is surrounded by an extremely well-constructed fence behind which prowl any number up to about half a dozen seriously angry guard dogs. (Actually, now that I think of it, that probably closes the circle and explains why Grenada is not the kind of place that suffers from a high degree of residential theft.)

At Jenny’s Place, their resident canine security comes in the form of a young Alsatian (a breed of German Shepherd) and an enormous Rottweiler. The Alsatian, Brandy, is still not much beyond puppyhood. (Not too far off Rockefeller, here, in appearance: http://www.theusyellowpages.com/german-shepherds/images/rockefelleraug2005.gif ) Certainly she is full-grown but that’s only recent, and her approach to life is still very much that of a puppy. The Rottweiler, on the other hand (paw?) is every inch and every pound a fully-developed adult watchdog. And yet in all defiance of the image she presents, she answers to the name Shirley. After encountering her shortly after we arrived, comfortably restrained on her owner’s leash, I concluded it was actually “Surely”, as in, “If you step on this property after dark and you are not supposed to be here, you will be surely ripped to shreds.”

That “not supposed to be here” qualifier is very much ingrained into the dogs’ training. There was, in fact, one occasion where a small band of boys was walking past outside the property fence as my wife and I returned from an excursion. The sound of their passage obviously triggered a “Gotta check this out” alarm in Brandy because, just as my wife and I got three steps through the gate, Brandy suddenly appeared in full charge from around the corner of the house. Seeing us, she quite literally did that cartoon thing where the animal’s front legs shoot out as it skids to an “urk-urk-urk” halt. One quick sniff of us, however, must have registered as “OK”, because she then immediately re-accelerated and tore off to the perimeter fence where the boys were passing, there to unleash a torrent of barks by way of asserting her property’s boundaries.

The passage of kids just outside the fence was a daily event. A couple of enormous mango trees grow immediately next to Jenny’s Place and knocking the fruit from the tree, when it’s ready, is a daily expedition for the boys.

Which, I guess, is why it’s perfectly OK for a great many people in Grenada, including boys as young as 7 or 8, to casually carry wicked-looking machetes with them wherever they go – in case they should come upon a fruit tree.

We were advised that if we walked anywhere a couple hours after the sun had gone down, we should stick to the main road. If we chose to walk on the beach, we were told, and someone or ones should attempt to harrass us, “then just run into the water”. (“Why?” “Because locals won’t go there at night.”) I was going to further explore “Why?”, but I began to harbour a wild fear that not too far along we would be told, “Because that’s when the sharks come in close to shore.” So I left that bit of curious thirst unslaked.

Back to the dogs.

We were free to pat Brandy whenever we encountered her and she was fawningly friendly to all of the guests. Shirley, however, was a bit “skittish” around people, we were told, so patting was discouraged in her case. And it turns out she comes by her skittishness honestly. She still bears the scars of several vicious machete cuts she received a couple years earlier.

One day, my wife and I were enjoying one of our bob-around-the-Caribbean dips. Brandy, who just loves the ocean, was playing with us in the water and demonstrating a surprising lack of fatigue even after long minutes of dog-paddling all around us. Suddenly, her ears pricked up and she turned towards the beach. A group of local kids, with their dog, was passing by and Brandy obviously had interpreted this as a violation of part of her guard dog mandate. Whoops. A shouted, “Brandy, no!” from me had no effect whatsoever as she splashed out of the surf onto the sand. Even worse, I watched in stomach-sinking fear as one of the kids casually raised the two-foot long machete he was carrying and swung it sharply down at the young, charging and growling Alsatian. But rather than what I expected, what I heard was the resounding “smack” as the flat of the blade landed along her side. Brandy, lesson learned, scuttled back through the gate on her side of the fence and proceeded to bark vigorously.

Just another day on the beach for the kids. In Grenada, c’est la vie. For me – just another dozen grey hairs and a near-defibrillator moment for my heart.

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A political snippet. A good many of Baby Duck’s readers might remember that Grenada was actually the site of a full-scale US military invasion in 1983. The Prime Minister at the time was Maurice Bishop and among ordinary Grenadians, he sits maybe a foot and a half below God on the staircase of reverence. He came to office after a “nearly bloodless” coup in the spring of 1979. Four years later, a second power struggle resulted in a somewhat less bloodless coup as Bishop and several members of his cabinet were executed.

That was declared to be a sufficient breakdown in civil order that the Governor General of the day, Paul Scoon, was deemed to have “invited” the Americans in to restore order, which they did in a little order-restoring process they called Operation Urgent Fury.

In many ways, Urgent Fury was for the Americans what the 1942 raid on Dieppe was for Canadians – a great many blunders became the source of valuable lessons that were to serve them much better in later invasions.

To cite just one example, during part of the battle a unit of elite US Navy SEALS was caught on the ground in a fairly sharp fight for possession of the Governor’s mansion. Pinned down and in desperate need of air support, they could actually see US helicopter gunships circling overhead, but their radios were incompatible with those in the helicopters. One unsung and, to this day, anonymous bright light actually did succeed in getting into the mansion and, on a whim, tried a telephone sitting on a desk. To his shock, he discovered the lines had not been cut and successfully placed a long distance call to his home base in Fort Bragg, North Carolina. How in heck he managed to convince whoever picked up the phone in Fort Bragg that he wasn’t a lunatic is one of the untold stories of this war, but he had someone in Fort Bragg get in touch with whoever was in charge of the Grenada invasion air support gunships and deliver the message that a SEAL unit on the ground was taking heavy fire outside the Governor’s mansion and would really appreciate it, please and thank you, if somebody would bomb the s**t out of the bad guys.

If you’re really, really interested, a thorough military history of the invasion, warts and all, is here:
http://www.acig.org/artman/publish/article_159.shtml

(Hollywood has also created a film that centres on the invasion and it too deals with the blunders. “Heartbreak Ridge”, made in 1986, stars Clint Eastwood.

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Fort George in St George’s, where Maurice Bishop and his Ministers were executed (there are still official histories that describe their deaths as “caught in a crossfire”) is a fascinating place, but maddeningly bereft of onsite information. The first fort built on the site – a promontory overlooking the harbour – was erected in the mid 1600s. That alone would qualify it for National Historic Monument status in the US, but in Grenada the attempts to preserve its history are at best desultory. And for tourists who make the energy-sapping steep climb to the site, there is almost nothing to relate to you the history of the structure and the cannon arrayed along its parapets. Thankfully, there is Google and a nice history of the fort can be found at: http://www.forts.org/history.htm, which includes the heartbreaking note (for anyone with an interest in military artifacts) that in 1983 the fort was “strafed sporadically” because it housed anti-aircraft guns.

(Lord knows the history of a site has never kept the US and its allies from reducing it when it threatened more contemporary warriors: http://www.encyclopedia.com/html/C/Cassino.asp. Or, for that matter, their enemies: http://www.rawa.org/statues.htm )

We saw one plaque on the site, a moving commemoration to Bishop and his seven colleagues, on the wall against which they were standing when they were shot. But given 400 or so years of history on that ground, surely something more than a sign welcoming you to the present-day Grenada Police Academy, located among the historic buildings, would seem appropriate.

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Grenada is home to several “sugar” factories. The reason that’s in quotes is because not one of Grenada’s sugar factories makes sugar any more. They make its distilled by-product, rum. What this means to the local economy is that almost everything they consume, except rum and a locally brewed beer called Carib, has to arrive on the island from somewhere else. No surprise to discover, therefore, that rum is among the least expensive beverages sold in local stores, whereas soft drinks, fruit juices and even bottled waters are surprisingly – to us anyway – high-priced.

I’m not typically* a rum drinker, but I did discover a brand called “Old Grog” that, despite its name, was so fantastic that it could be consumed like a really fine brandy – sipped straight up in a small glass. It’s described quite concisely, but accurately, in a note about it how it came to be so named on the website of Clark’s Court, the distillery that produces it: “Old Grog Rum dates back from early days when the finest of Grenada's Rum was shipped to his Majesty George III of England. In order to identify the King's Rum, the casks were marked G.R.O.G., which is the abbreviation for Georgius Rex Old Grenada. Old Grog rum maintains Grenada's tradition of producing the finest blend rums. It is an aged spirit that is copper-gold in colour. Medium bodied, with a tropical fruit and spice flavour, with a long buttery finish, that is 40% alcohol by volume. Old Grog won awards at the Caribbean Rum Fest Competition in the following yearly Award Winner 2001.”

(Now if you’re willing to believe that “grog”, the term universally applied to harsh, cheap watered rum, derives from the Latin / English blend, “Georgius Rex Old Grenada”, then I know a Nigerian investor who wants to park several million dollars in your bank account, and who would be very interested in meeting you. Besides, everyone knows that “grog” is an abbreviation for “Great Rotgut to Oil the Goodtimes”.)

*Once you discover a cocktail called rum punch, you can never again deny being a rum drinker. Rum punch is delicious. Rum is to the Caribbean what vodka is to Russia, tequila to Mexico and bourbon to the US. It’s their regional hard liquor staple. In fact, for the first couple days whenever we decided to imbibe in a local bar, I never got anything other than rum punch or ice-cold Carib in response to a request for “the drink that best says ‘Welcome to Grenada’, please”.

Rum punch is like pizza in that its recipes are as many as the number of places selling it. Everyone will claim theirs is the best, with a “secret ingredient” whose identity is as fiercely protected as Colonel Sanders’ “secret mixture of eleven different herbs and spices”. There are some core ingredients: at least two – frequently three – kinds of rum (white, dark and coconut), angoustura bitters and some kind of sweetener like Grenadine or “simple syrup”, a dense cloying syrup made from a blend of water and dissolved sugar and then boiled down. From there, fruit juices are added. Orange and/or pineapple are the favourite choices. Finally, depending on the upscale-ness of your setting, various fresh fruit garnishes and serving containers up to and including a hollowed-out coconut shell can be presented as wholly unneeded accessories.

I found one recipe that called for Bacardi 151, a fearsome rum that derives its name from its proof. Yep – Bacardi 151 is 75.5 per cent alcohol and, in Ottawa, its label actually includes a prominently printed warning not to pour it anywhere near an open flame because it is “HIGHLY FLAMMABLE”.

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Travelling Grenada roads by public transit is remarkably easy, as long as you know what number bus you need to get where you want to go.

A “bus” in Grenada is a “van” in North America. The only people who travel in what we call a “bus” are the medical students at St George’s University who are shuttled from residence to campus in one, and maybe the occasional tour group that arrives in a cruise ship and has signed up for one of the many trips that are offered departing from the cruise ship dock. Everybody else rides the reggae bus.

Grenada’s roads have occasional paved nooks on either side and that’s where the reggae bus stops. You either stand there and wait, or you walk along the road in the same direction as traffic until you hear a “beep beep” from behind. Grenadian drivers use their horns about as often as they exhale. The sound is a near constant on the streets and, after a time, you learn it means one of three things: “Hi”; or “Do you want a ride?”; or “PleaseGETOUTOFTHEWAY!!!” If you are looking for a ride, you just lift your arm and it’ll stop. It’s almost always full, but people will happily shove over to make room for one or two more.

Oh, why (you ask) is it called the reggae bus? Because, without exception, it always has reggae music thumping from a full set of interior speakers so loudly that it feels like you’re sitting inside a sub-woofer set to about 6 on the Richter Scale. It’s even more entertaining at night. A reggae bus is lit within by a very bright blue light (a lot like the poster blacklights of the psychedelic 60s), casting a weird blue tint on the faces of the riders. Watching these rolling discos approach from a distance is like watching something from another planet. (An image further enhanced by the fact that, as it approaches, the rhythmic thudding of the bass is felt long before the rest of the music catches up with it, sounding a lot like the engine noise generated by that alien probe in Star Trek IV, The Voyage Home.

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Non-Grenada snip

There is a regularly enjoyable online ramble that keeps an eye on many things Atlantic Canadian – especially music, if one had to zero in on a topic that appears most frequently. But there is also lots of sidebar material presented with a sense of humour and a “Here’s who I am; take it or leave it” style that is just plain fun to read. I commend to you the website of one Darryl Wright.