Society highly values its normal man. It educates children to lose themselves and to become absurd, and thus to be normal. Normal men have killed perhaps 100 million of their fellow normal men in the last fifty years.
The Islands of the Caribbean are a culture lost. A soup of cultures with the original ingredient lost in the early stages of cooking. The Arawak Indians' culture was destroyed by the Caribs (both originating from mainland South America) and the Caribs' by the Europeans. The Carib culture prior to the white man has been reduced to the odd clay pot dug out by the archealogists, though some Carib people still survive in Dominica and Honduras. The word Cannibal was derived from the Carib people, known as fierce warriors who tortured and ate their enemies.
The current culture of the Caribbean islands (I'm only talking about the West Indies - a small part of the whole Caribbean rim) was born when the Spanish, the Portugese and later the Brits, the Dutch and the French were all flexing their muscels overseas. The motives of acquiring these remote islands as their external territories were varied. Gold, Silver, Sugar Cane, Political leverage, military posts and who knows what.
Perhaps it was sometimes like a young man extending his dick with a sports car. Back then the slaves, brought in from Africa, were the equivalent of the horsepower of a Ferrari. The labour to spin the wheel. Like a Captain would rather be an Admiral of a fleet, a King would rather rule an Empire than a small country. One flag on a tiny island across the ocean satisfied this need for power and made even Sweden an "empire" for a while. (Saint Barthelemy).
Tobago, our first port of call, turned out to be the most relaxing, pleasant and beautiful location. Hanging out on the beach in Pirate Bay in Charlotteville.
Nearly six million African men and women were walked into ships like cattle, about four million of them survived the two-month voyage to the paradise islands of the Caribbean. Weren't no paradise for them. The human suffering is beyond my imagination. Hundreds of years later the remains of the struggle of the slaves has been translated into Reggae, Calypso and Rastafarianism among many other things.
The white European history has been translated into hotels, resorts, yacht charter bases, marinas, shopping centres and english language. Oh, sorry, and the french language. All this awful soup is now the Caribbean - a bizarre mix of love and war, Creole, English, French, Calypso, Reggae, Disco, Rap, Black, White, French, English, Dutch, Indian, Asian, Yachties, Tourists, Farmers, Shopping Malls, Cheap Rum and so on. Like I said, it's a soup. A soup I'd like to taste again. Maybe more on my return from Finland.
My meagre experience of the few islands we visited is recorded below:
TOBAGO
Using Cmap, we slowly drive into Pirates Bay in Nortw West Tobago at midnight. The moon is up and a group of anchorlights is guiding us in. We are tired from a 40 day passage from St. Helena. Loud Reggae from the beach. Paula goes to bed, I stay up and bathe in the fuzzy feeling of a goal achieved. Maaan, I'm in Caribbean!!
At 0630 in the morning some guy is yelling out to us. I put my sleepy face out the hatch and see a large open boat with locals, rowing towards us. "You're in our fishing area! you move your boat or otherwise our nets will catch in your anchor chain and there be big problems. Move your boat now!"
I'm not happy with his tone of voice and try to argue the case but there's not much I can do. I'm in their turf and have to respect the locals and their fishing. We move to the end of the group of yachts and drop anchor in 14 meters, much too deep for us, having to haul the ground tackle up by hand.
The first impression of Caribbean and Tobago wasn't too friendly but I remained optimistic. In the small three-street Charlotteville I smile enthusiastically to everyone and say hello. People are not unfriendly, though many are indifferent and uninterested in more than a nod or a quick grunt for a reply. Later I discover that a little more effort was needed to warm the Tobago people. I minute of smalltalk and people started to smile, joke and show their true colours. The customs and immigration were laid back and friendly as well as apologetic about the US60 overtime fees for clearing on a Saturday. Within a few days my first impression has faded and we feel relaxed and happy.
I start boat work to cut our time in Trinidad and extend our stay in the clear waters of Pirates Bay. I pull the wind vane off and lube up all its parts. I sped half a day cleaning the hull, removing perhaps a good 20kg of long neck oysters, barnacles and grass which snowed down to the bottom, much to the delight of surrounding fish.
Pirate Bay next to the small sleepy town of Charlotteville in NW Tobago.
I change the oil and filters, install a new bilge pump. The old one had burned out in Atlantic and I had thrown it over the side. I clean the engine room and top up the batteries with water. The 4hp Yamaha outboard was running on and off and needed several attempts of carbie cleaning before it settled to its normal quiet four-stroke idle. We spend an afternoon on the beach with a couple of rastas and other yachties, drinking rum and eating corn, cooked in open fire. The rum is not as cheap as I expected, $US 12 in Charlotteville, $US 10 in Scarborough, $US 8 in Trinidad and finally a more reasonable $US 5 per litre in the Duty Free.
Paula and I continue our relationship on a tightrope. Most of the time we get along just fine, but the tiniest things throw the delicate balance. It's all my fault, of course. Paula is talking about staying in the Caribbean. At the same time she's also talking about what stock we need and what needs to be done before crossing to Europe. I can't work out what she's going to do, so I give her a deadline to make up her mind. "By the last day of April I need to know if you're going or staying" I tell her. Paula does all the laundry and goes through all the lockers, counting tins and supplies. We have shitloads of food, enough to cross Atlantic again. "All we need is tin tomatoes and fresh vegies" Paula says, confirming her position as the first mate. She wants to see the Santa Claus and a little Finland too.
We take a 2-hour bus trip to Scarborough, on the other end of the island. The road is narrow and windy and the ride is exhilirating. Full speed into the blind corners in the middle of the road and if another vehicle appears, both will dash into their own sides of the road, foot on breaks, rubbing mirrors. Uphill the engine alarms come off from overheating, down hill it cools and as there is no alarm for overheating the breaks, the downhill sections are quiet.
Scarborough is noisy and busy and the anchorage looks unprotected and unattractive. We are very happy to return to the peace and quiet of Charlotteville. Aliisa is reasonably tidy and it's time to move on. A day sail to Store Bay, to the south of Tobago. It's Easter and the locals are partying. The music is loud and inside the boat feels like under the stage of a rock band. The music ends around 4am, replaced by the screecking of a few hundred seagulls. We take off for a 60-mile passage to Trinidad.
