The Land, The People, The Shade

When one mentions the word “Caribbean”, what is the one thing which first springs to mind? All right, you with your hand up, there in the corner, let’s have your answer. What’s that? Sea? O.K., good answer, although not the one I was looking for. What else? You! Looking out the window, day dreaming. What’s your contribution to this session? Sand? You people obviously are inspired by Chalkdust’s calypso, “Sea water and sand,” and those are good, acceptable answers; but let’s have one more. You, with the vacant, vapid stare in your eyes. Yes, you! What you think? Sun?
Yes, sun. That’s the one I was looking for. You could find yourself in the Caribbean, and not be in sight of either sea or sand, but the nice warm, all-year-round sunshiny weather: that, you can’t get away from. So along with sea and sand, scenery, spicy cooking even casinos-we headline our attractions to the outside would with the drawing card of beautiful, warm, sunny weather.
And the tourists come, especially if it’s during those months when they’re experiencing freezing-cold, dark, short days wherever it is that they happen to reside, pulled by our siren-song of “Sun, beautiful sun.” They come wan and with skins soft and sensitive from underexposure to the elements -- because for months, they had to exist all wrapped up in layers of insulating clothing (when venturing outside), or in artificially-warmed air which, filtered through their heating and conditioning units, have since long lost all resemblance to the God-given air which is present in nature, in what we fondly call the “great outdoors.”
They come, laden with creams and lotions, screens and barriers, technologically prepared to take on the direct sunlight and bask in its rays. They know the dangers; their physicians, dermatologists and eyesight gurus have armed them with all the appropriate precautions and products, enabling them to have “fun in the sun” for us; we are more of a “fun in the shade” species. We avoid the sun, at least the direct rays of its light, as much as possible.
You know what I mean. Go take a look downtown on any sunnyday. The song, “On the sunny side of the street” wasn’t meant for us, no sirree! The sunny sidewalk of every street looks as deserted as any old Wild West ghost town while the shadyside is reminiscent of the throngs at one of those Turkish bazaar scenes.
And of course, that confounds our tourist. The morning after he arrives here, he dons his swimsuit, puts on the required number of layers of suntan oil, sun screen and ultraviolet ray-barrier, dabs some cold cream on his nose, snugly fits a deck chair under one arm, and saunters down to the beach eagerly looking forward to mingling and fraternizing with as many locals as he will find frolicking on the sands. And he expects to find several. In his mind’s eye, he can still see the brochures which he had picked up at his travel agent’s, which had convinced him to come on down and frolic with us on our beaches, in our golden sunshine.” There had been pictures of several well-bronzed smiling people, obviously local folk, frolicking (there’s that word again. Our tourist was obsessed by it) with other smiling less-bronzed folk obviously tourists, on the beach.

And now here he was; he was ready. It was his turn to frolic. But alas, no matter how hard he looked, up and down the beach in both directions, not one frolicking local could he see on the sunlit sands. Well, he did see one brown - skinned chap some way off wearing a hat made of coconut fronds, but this fellow certainly wasn’t frolicking. Actually, he looked like he was hassling some people (from the dabs of cold cream on their noses, our man deduced that, like him, they were obviously tourists looking for some locals to frolic with), until a chap in uniform appeared, grabbed him by the scruff of the neck and escorted him off the beach.
Resigned to the fact that he would find no local frolickers in the sun that day, our tourist cast his gaze inland, away from the sandy expanse. It fell upon one small solitary almond tree, barely six feet in diameter, casting a shadow of roughly the same size. And there, huddled in the only available shade on this stretch of beach, he fond his locals. Fifteen of them. Had the tree been a Volkswagen and they, clowns at a circus, they could not have fitted more tightly within its confines. Our tourist approached them.
“Hey guys,” he called,” would you like to come out and frolic?”
“Man, you mad or what?” replied one of the least frolicsome of the group, ‘In that hot sun? You want us to burn? Wait until five o’clock or so, when the sun has gone down a little, and if you’re still around, we may come and frolic (here he turned around to one of his companions somewhere in the depths of the huddled mass and asked. What is this frolic thing he’s talking about anyway?) with you. But for now, we’re not moving from here.”
And there the matter stood. Throughout his stay, the tourist had the utmost difficulty meeting with any local in any kind of a sunlit setting. Unlike mad dogs and Englishmen, our people do not go out in the noonday sun. But there is a saying--and I paraphrase -- that the stones lying on a river bank wish to find themselves in the water, and that those in the water..., you know. The same probably applies here, those who are in the cooler, darker climates wish for the full heat of the sun, and we who exist in the sunlight...
Well, I certainly admit to hugging the buildings on the shady side of the street whenever I’m out. From my viewpoint, it’s the only sensible thing to do.
Perhaps our country’s motto should have been “The land, the people, the shade” (In lieu of “the land, the people, the light”, for those few of you unfamiliar with it)?