The Kindness of Bajans Part I

When I left off writing this blog in 2010, I was in the middle of recounting our efforts to avoid the Oistins Fish Fry Traffic Jam by visiting Bottom Bay in the afternoon before going to Oistins for supper (from the opposite direction to everyone else!).

It turned out to be a hot and slightly uncomfortable walk from Bottom Bay back to where we could catch a bus. We found ourselves sitting on the kerb in a small settlement on a sleepy Bajan afternoon. Behind us in a vacant lot, three or four young men were sitting and shooting the breeze in a peaceable way.

We noticed another man walking around unsteadily on the street in front of us. He was obviously rather inebriated (I'll call him Mr Cups) and, unusually for a Bajan, just a little on the surly side. He came and squatted down in front of us and started asking us why we were looking at him. I didn't feel threatened, but it was plain that he was invading our personal space. We really did not want to offend him, so we kept smiling and saying that we were just trying to be friendly. However, he didn't go away—just kept staring and questioning.

One of the young men from the vacant lot came over and told him to stop harassing us. When Mr Cups refused, the young man grabbed a fallen palm frond and chased him off with it, making like he was thrashing Mr Cups' behind. Everyone started laughing—including Mr Cups—and the tension was broken.

Watching the young man chase the town drunk down the street with his makeshift whip, we felt like we were watching a scene that has probably played itself over and over, all around the world, for hundreds and hundreds of years. It was touching to me that a stranger would come to our assistance this way, and that he would do it humorously and without either physical or verbal violence. There's not many places in the world you could count on that happening. While I was rather sorry that we had caused a little scene (one reason I've neglected my blog for over a year), I also felt like I had gained an insight into local Bajan life that we'd have missed if we'd stuck to the tourist tracks.