Day 219 - Residents and Tourists

map of Barbados

At 166 square miles, Barbados is even smaller than Qatar's 4,468 square miles. And its population, 274,200 is less than one-sixth of Qatar's 1.9 million people. The population of Barbados is so small that chances are good that only three degrees of separation exist between any two people on the island. And when the chances are that great that every resident knows someone who knows every other resident, it is easy to understand why they conclude that everyone they don't know must be a tourist.

That's the world of Barbados - everyone is either a Bajan or a tourist. Those of us who lived on the island because our work took us there were always being mistaken for being tourists. And that meant every time we walked down the street, Bajan taxi drivers would stop us to ask if we needed a ride, even if they watched as we got out of the car we had just parked on the same street.

image of tourists by Holidayextras,
via Flickr.com

Once we moved into our house up on the hill overlooking the St. Lawrence Gap along the south coast, we considered ourselves residents. But when we walked into a grocery store, the greeter would welcome us to the store and then ask us how we were enjoying our vacation in Barbados. I should have caught on and just said we were enjoying it very much, thank you, because when I replied that we lived here, the greeter's smile would disappear and she would walk away.  We frequented a pizza restaurant near our house where we ordered our pizza from the same guy every time. It took him six months to realize that he had seen us before at which point he remarked that we must be on a very long vacation. When we told him we lived there, his smile disappeared although he didn't walk away from us.

Within our first week of moving into the house, we met a couple from the British High Commission whose son was in the same class as our son. They invited us to join them at a birthday party the following weekend, to observe the 40th birthday of two members of the High Commission staff. We were pleased to go to the party where we met a number of couples, each one of which had at least one unhappy member.  The party also served as a farewell party for a couple who were leaving Barbados after completing a four-year-tour with the High Commission. That couple kept making the rounds telling each of us to give it some time, assuring us that we would eventually come to enjoy ourselves in Barbados like they did.

image of open air market in Barbados by David Berkowitz,
via Flickr.com

One of the first things we learned about being considered tourists was that tourists were always charged more than residents. First there was the ambiguity about the currency in use. Barbados also uses dollars, but one U.S. dollar was the equivalent of two Barbados dollars. And since U.S. dollars were accepted everywhere, some Bajans took advantage of this by simply stating the price in dollars, leaving it up to the person paying to figure out whether the price was in U.S. or Bajan dollars. The more unscrupulous among them, if handed Bajan dollars, would then clarify that they meant the price was U.S. dollars. Many westerners on the island sent their Bajan maids to shop for them in order not to be overcharged for produce or seafood in the open air markets. And then there was the simple fact that when someone the vendor didn't know walked up to the stall to ask the price, the price stated would be twice what a local known to the vendor would be told.

At counters where people lined up to get service, such as in a pharmacy, the staff behind the counters seemed to give preference to Bajan customers, the people they knew, making the tourists wait to one side. This disregard for the order that customers arrived annoyed most westerners, probably including some tourists, although the tourists would be gone soon so there was little reason to be concerned about annoying them.

What was the most difficult for me to get used to in Barbados was the directness of Bajans when they spoke to strangers. In addition to taxi drivers approaching us to ask if we wanted a ride and the panhandlers who approached us to ask for a handout, people did not hesitate to walk up to a stranger to tell the stranger what to do to fix a problem. "Fix your slip," or "Tie your shoelaces," were common pieces of advice passed from Bajan to someone else, ever annoying westerners who were more accustomed to strangers pointing out that a problem exists, as in "Your slip is showing" or "Your shoelaces are untied," instead of being told what to do about it.

One day in the consular section, as I interviewed Bajan visa applicants, a young woman walked up to my interview window with a button on her blouse unbuttoned. It gave me great pleasure to tell her what to do to fix the problem. "Button your blouse," I said, knowing that she thought I was being polite while I knew I was exercising my annoyance with this Bajan pattern by being as impolite as I knew I could get away with.