Day 234 - Bajan Hospitality

Rosie and Joey

We spent a lot of our time entertaining in our home or being entertained at the homes of colleagues. But we didn't spend a lot of time in the homes of Bajans. This was yet another example of the cultural differences on the island.

There were two couples we thought of as Bajan who we spent time with in their homes, Rosie and Joey and Orrie and Nancy.

Rosie worked in the personnel office at the embassy and was always inviting members of the embassy - both American and Bajan - to their home at the northern end of the island. Their home was at the end of a long and narrow drive with trees lining both sides, draping the leaves and branches over the road like an arch. Every time we drove to their home, I could feel the tension flow out of my body as we got closer to the house.

Rosie and Joey had three cats, four turtles, and about six or seven dogs, in addition to chickens and cows. The cats ruled indoors. The turtles had their own enclosed area in the garden. And the dogs ruled outside. A couple of them were border collies who would try rounding up the chickens if they strayed too far from the coop. I loved watching Joey feed the dogs. He would put down one dish for each dog. The dogs would line up behind a bowl and wait for Joey to pour food into the dishes. There was no fighting or contention. The dogs waited for their turns.

Rosie and Joey's dogs

Orrie was Alex's colleague with the Barbados Telephone Company (Bartel). Alex's project involved inventorying all Bartel's properties in order to recommend properties that were no longer needed or that needed improvements.

We thought Rosie, Joey, Orrie, and Nancy were Bajans, but eventually we learned their experiences on the island were very much like ours. They rarely, if ever, were invited to the homes of Bajans. Rosie and Joey were from Saba, another Caribbean island, although they had lived in Barbados for many years. Orrie and Nancy were from Guyana.

We were invited to the home of one Bajan couple, our next door neighbors, Allen and Elaine. Allen and Elaine moved into their home shortly after we moved into ours. Both houses were the most recently built on the hill. Allen was a veterinarian so there were cars parked on our street every day as pet owners brought their dogs, cats, and other small animals to Allen's office. Most people didn't roll up the windows on their cars so our Sharifa would often end up going for short rides as she would jump into the cars and settle down in the back window until someone noticed her and would return to Allen's to let her out. So Allen got to know our cats before we met him and his wife.

Hospitality at Rosie and Joey's

Our first official visit with Sharifa to Allen's office was the day after Allen and Elaine had been our guests for dinner. There were many more dinners at either our house or theirs. Elaine was also one of my contacts at the embassy as she was a realtor who had been negotiating with the management officer who married the DCM to lease a new building for U.S. Information Agency. When the management officer and DCM left, that project ended up on my to do list.

Allen and Elaine had traveled to the U.S. frequently. Allen had attended university outside of Barbados. As a result, they were more comfortable around foreigners than most Bajans. One weekend, Allen and Elaine told us they were inviting some of their friends for a party. They wanted us to know because there would be some noise. But mostly they wanted to explain that they weren't including us because they knew that their friends hadn't been outside of Barbados and they were concerned that their friends would leave us out of the conversation. They didn't want us to feel uncomfortable.

Even one of the Bajan employees who worked in the Budget and Fiscal office, Angela, told me she didn't feel welcomed by Bajans. She and her husband had lived in England for several years. They married there and their parents remained in England when Angela and her husband decided they wanted to raise their children in Barbados. They had been in Barbados for two years by the time Angela began working at the embassy. In spite of her Bajan citizenship, she said she still felt like an outsider. When she learned that I would be leaving Barbados a year earlier than planned as a result of my volunteer response for Moldova being accepted, she asked if I could help her get a job with the U.S. embassy in London because she and her husband had decided by then that they would likely feel more comfortable in England than if they remained in Barbados. For the sake of their children, they decided they needed to be comfortable in order to be good parents. Shortly after we left Barbados, I heard from Angela that she had been hired by the Federal Aviation Agency at the embassy in London so she and her family were able to return to England.