(Ep7) Carnival to the Rescue

(This is part of a storytelling experiment called WELCOME TO YOUR QUARTER-CAREER GAP YEAR)

You’re sitting on the porch of Victor’s house, watching the sun recede into the horizon and waiting for your cousins to pick you up. These are the cousins from your paternal grandfather’s side of the family. You visited their home in Bolands a few days ago, and had a good time catching up with Aunt Eileen (your father's half sister), Riley (who feels more like a young uncle), and Riley’s family, which consists of his wife, their three kids – Tully, Brian, and Lara – and also Lara’s five-year-old son, Solomon. You last saw them a couple years ago, but that was with the social buffer of your mother and sister. Now that it's only you, you’re able to have deeper conversations and learn more about what’s going on in everyone’s life. 

“Cuuuuuuuuz! What’s uuuuuup!” yells Tully from the front passenger seat of Brian's compact SUV as it pulls up to Victor's property. This is typical Tully: early-twenties-energy wrapped in adopted hip hop swagger. Even though soca and calypso are the island’s main genres of choice, he loves the American export of rap and all its flashy accoutrements. In fact, he aspires to one day become a big-time rapper. So, when he’s not using his culinary degree to look for chef jobs in local hotels and restaurants, he spends most of his days in the “studio” (whether that means a professional space or a friend's computer program, you don't know) recording tracks for an album.

As you hop into the backseat, you hug Lara and give a high-five to her son, Solomon. Then, you greet Tully and Brian who sit in the front. Tonight it will just be you five, hanging out and going to an open mic poetry slam.              

“You ready to hear some poetry, Solomon?!” you ask. He responds with shy smile as he snuggles closer to his Mom, showing how easily he can go from drama-club-extraverted to mommy-seeking-introverted. You laugh and look out the window as Brian maneuvers the car back to the main road.

You heard about the event from one of those Facebook writing groups that the people at the bookstore told you about. Finally, you’ll get to meet some Antiguan writers. Back in the States, you had a writing group that you met up with every couple weeks, so you yearn for the fellowship that comes with commiserating over narrative struggles and bonding over storytelling aspirations. Even though this event will only be one night, you look forward to learning about the similarities and differences between the Antiguan writers and writers back home. 

But as soon as the car pulls into the deserted parking lot of the restaurant where the event is supposed to be held, your hopes drop faster than a wicket faced by Curtly Ambrose.

Not only is the lot devoid of cars, but because of the restaurant’s open-air design allowing you to see straight into the dining room, you can see that it’s also practically devoid of people. Two people are inside, sitting at the bar, but they probably work there. 

“Have mercy, man. Did you get the place right?" asks Tully, which is what you’re asking yourself. But then you see the name “Big River Restaurant” on the marquee, which is the name mentioned on the Facebook post. 

“Yeah, this is the place,” you say, and get out of the car to talk to the people inside. 

From the people at the bar, you find out that they do work at the restaurant, but they don’t have much info about the open mic. Yes, it’s supposed to happen tonight. But no one has arrived, and they haven't heard from the organizers. 

What's worse is that it’s currently 7:30PM, which is 30 minutes after the Facebook post said that it would start. 

“That’s 'Antigua time' for you,” says Brian, referring to the general nonpunctual nature of gatherings on the island. “They will give a start time of 7, but they really don’t get going until 9.” 

Obviously, you didn’t know this, so you’re torn between convincing your cousins to wait around for the next hour, or doing something else. As twenty-somethings who live with their parents, your cousins are eager to use any excuse to get out of the house, but just waiting around for an event that they’re only going to because of you, isn’t something your comfortable with. 

So, collectively, you decide to stay for fifteen minutes to see if anybody else will show up. And as you wait, Brian and Tully text their friends furiously, trying to find out alternate options, while Solomon does cartwheels in the performance space in the back of the restaurant. 

After several minutes, no one arrives, so right before you ask everybody if they want to a leave, Tully stands up and starts an odd-looking dance. 

“Pre-Carnival! Pre-Carnival! Uh, uh, UH!!!!” he says while thrusting and dancing to an inaudible beat. “Wanna go to the Pre-Carnival celebrations in town?!”

The question animates everybody. Since you’ll be leaving in a few days, you thought you’d miss all the Carnival festivities. 

But apparently not. 

“Let’s do it,” you say, without giving it a second thought. After weeks of solitary writing, you would love to hear some Antiguan poetry and commune with fellow writers, but the pull to sample a little bit of the legendary Carnival atmosphere is too great. 

So everybody piles into Brian’s car and you head back to town, blasting Carnival-appropriate music the whole way and getting in the mood. 

As you enter the city limits, you can feel the excitement everywhere. Brian turns down the music in the car, and when he does, you can hear traces of calypso and soca music in the distance, coming from different areas of town, in almost every direction. Something is happening, somewhere, you just haven't reached it yet. 

With Tully’s urgings, Brian stops outside one of the cricket stadiums and you see a mass of 30-40 people milling about and looking tired like they just came from some sort of celebration. Many of them are wearing pink t-shirts, while others wear green t-shirts. Lara says that they're part of two different mas bands, troupes of people that walk together in masquerade outfits during Carnival. 

Since it looks like things are ending, Brian drives on. As the car moves through the streets, you can tell that things are picking up. Sidewalks are flooded with people and unyielding pedestrians cross recklessly in front of the car, so Brian decides to find a parking space and everyone gets out. 

After a few blocks of walking through the streets of excited revelers, you see a mass of people ahead where the music seems loudest. 

“If you decide to take a picture, do it fast,” Tully warns. “Don’t flash your phone around too much.”

Apparently, the particular type of touchscreen smartphone you have isn’t sold in the country, so if you have it, it’s a clear sign that you’re an American or another kind of foreigner and you have some money. Tully and Brian echo something that Victor and Fawnie told you: you don’t want people to know that you’re American. They’ll think you have money and they might try to rob you.

"Yeah, but at six feet one, two-hundred twenty pounds, I'm not exactly the easiest guy to rob," you say, smiling. 

"Oh, they'll find a way," Tully says ominously. 

When you reach the mass of people lined along the main street, you see that the festival is in full swing. Around you, people of all ages dance where they stand as a slow parade moves down the road. Streetlights illuminate the area as modestly decorated floats, showcasing live bands or sound systems, create their own mobile party. This is just a warmup parade, so the floats aren’t fully decorated with all the frills and bright colors like you would expect. It's just a dress rehearsal to get everyone excited for the big party several days away. 

A long and wide party trolley rolls by, housing a steelpan band. The melody coming from their instruments is magical. Light-sounding and easygoing, it creates a relaxed vibe in the crowd. Looking around, you see how people are shrugging their shoulders and nodding their heads to the beat. This is beach bar music – it’d be perfect to listen to while sipping on a pina colada at Malone’s. 

After enjoying the trolley, you and your cousins move farther down the street where you see an 18-wheeler stacked high with two-stories worth of speakers, blasting out a extremely rapid and vigorous beat. Several people sit on top of the speakers, vibing off the music, even though the decibel level seems like it could rival a jet engine.

“O-Moo!” says the song’s lead singer, followed by a string of lyrics that you don’t understand. And then, “O-Moo!” again. The beat inspires lots of couples around you to dance-grind on each other. Others jump and gyrate. Brian and Tully look on, nod their heads, and play it cool, clearly enjoying the scene, but not wanting to get too crazy, while Lara and little Solomon look like they’re in a trance, rhythmically flailing their limbs up and down, loving every minute. 

You don’t go too crazy, either, but you’re dancing, shrugging your shoulders to the beat, taking it all in: the delicious orgy of sound; the delirious smiles on people’s faces; everything. 

It’s not poetry, or earnest conversations about story and narrative. It’s not the night you expected to have – but you wouldn’t have it any other way. 

(Ep6) Jensen the Genealogical Detective

(This is part of a storytelling experiment called WELCOME TO YOUR QUARTER-CAREER GAP YEAR)

“You’ve been staying at my house, eating my food, and you don’t even know how we’re related!” says Victor after hearing your admission of ignorance. You both are sitting at his dining room table eating mangoes as a post-lunch snack. “That’s grounds for deportation!” 

This is mock outrage; it’s obvious. But he sucks his teeth and mutters, “Unbelievable,” to add to the effect. 

“Well, I know we’re cousins,” you respond sheepishly, “but if we’re second, third, or fourth cousins, I couldn’t say.” 

Fawnie enters from the kitchen with a plate of pineapple. 

“You are his first cousin once removed. And you and me – we’re second cousins,” she says nonchalantly. 

You flash a “How the hell did you get that?” look at her.

“Here,” she picks up a pen and notebook from a nearby table and starts drawing a rough family tree. 

First, she draws you and your sister, and links them to your mother and father.  Then, she links your father to your grandmother, and your grandmother to your grandmother’s sister. Then, she shows that Victor came from your grandmother's sister, and that she (Fawnie) came from Victor.

“Ahhh, I see,” you say, taking it in. “So why isn’t Victor my uncle?” 

“It doesn’t work that way,” she says, and goes on to explain. But after a minute of listening, you’re still confused, so you just move on. 

“Well, I know one guy who knows how this all works,” you say. “Jensen. The guy you spoke to on the phone a couple days ago,” you say, pointing to Victor. “I call him the ‘genealogical detective.’”

In one way or another, Jensen is your cousin. And the first time you met was at your paternal grandmother’s (Grandma Dexter’s) funeral two years ago, but you were so overwhelmed by the hundreds of relatives that you met that day, that you don’t remember the meeting. Your sister met him, too, and a few weeks ago, he called her, trying to learn more information about your immediate relatives. While they spoke, she mentioned that you were in Antigua, and since he was visiting the island in a couple of days (he lives in St. Thomas), she passed along his info to you. Last week, you talked to him on the phone, so today, he's supposed to visit. 

During your phone conversation, you passed the phone to Victor, because by virtue of his age, Victor knows more about the Dexter clan than just about anybody. From what you heard, it seemed like they developed a quick rapport. And after Victor hung up, he announced that they had decided that when Jensen visited, you would all visit the town of Swetes, where most of the family resides. 

After taking one last bite of mango, you ask Victor another family question that you'd been wondering about. 

“So do you know Riley, my father’s nephew?” 

“Riley? Nope, I don't know any Riley” says Victor. 

“How about Raymond? Or Aunt Eileen?” you press.  

“You sure they’re not on your grandfather’s side of the family? The side of your father’s father?” 

In a flash, you see your mistake. Your father was the only child to your grandmother and grandfather, so he was the only link between two sprawling groups of relatives. And since your father passed away three years ago, you and your sister are the only surviving links to that diverse heritage within the same small country. At present, Victor, Fawnie, and the soon-to-arrive Jensen, is part of Grandma Dexter’s side of the family, while Riley, Raymond, and Aunt Eileen, are part of Grandpa Joe’s side of the family. You never met Grandpa Joe. He died when your father was 13, so Riley and your Aunt Eileen (who both live in the town of Bolands) are the best folks to speak with to understand that part of the family. 

When Jensen arrives, you’re surprised at what you see. His name sounds conservative, almost aristocratic, and after speaking to him on the phone about his fascination with documenting the family, you build an image in your mind of him as a glasses-adjusting, librarian-looking fellow. But he’s the complete opposite: he wears a dark brown t-shirt and dark brown jogging pants over sneakers, and on his head, he has on a black skull cap over dreadlocks. Not the head-in-books kind of look you were expecting, but of course, it doesn’t matter either way. You give each other a good-natured bro hug, like you haven’t seen each other for ages. 

“Wah gwan, suh?” he says. 

“I’m well,” you respond, knowing that you'll remember this meeting more than the first. 

After he greets Victor and Fawnie, you all sit down on the porch, shielded from the early afternoon sun, and start talking family. In true detective fashion, Jensen asks question after question to Victor, weighing each answer and then following up with a bunch more. It’s fascinating to behold, the back and forth of it all, but not the content – because to you, the names and the places are all foreign. You just sit there and nod, like they're speaking another language that you don't understand, but don't want to let on that you have no idea what they're talking about. You don’t pick up much, which is quite frustrating, but you’re happy that everyone seems to be having a good time. 

After thirty minutes, the decision is made to travel to Swetes, where much of the Dexter family currently lives. So you, Victor, and Jensen pack into Jensen’s rented sport utility vehicle and leave.

The drive is about an hour, and Victor and Jensen continue to rattle on indecipherably, but it’s pleasant to see other parts of Antigua outside the rural and beachy Ft. James area, and the tightly packed metropolis of St. John's. 

Out the window, as you pass through the grassy and untamed landscape between towns, you see a few small, four-room homes with dusty trucks on blocks out front, but occasionally, you also see a three-story luxury house in the midst of more modest buildings. To some, this is confounding. But not to you: this is Antigua in the throes of development.

When you reach Swetes, the car pulls into an empty grass lot at the edge of a residential neighborhood. At the back of the lot is a dense thicket of uncleared land, full of tall grass, trees, bushes, and shrubs. This is where you’re headed, so everyone gets out of the car and starts walking and pushing through the brush. The path guides you downhill, and as you bob and weave past branches and sidestep thorny bushes you realize that you’re almost at the bottom of a valley. In the distance, you can see lush green hills dotted with houses and patches of trees. Victor tells the intricate history of the area as you walk. He points to the houses on the hilltops that are owned by government officials, mentions where the sugar plantations used to be, and speaks about how the water and electricity were able to reach all the homes in the area. It’s a fascinating little summation and you learn a great deal. 

Then, you come to a cleared area of land where it looks like a house once stood. On the ground is black dirt with piles upon piles of tree trunks and branches on top of it.

“This is where it all started, where the family started,” says Victor. Then he points at you, “Your grandmother was born here. So was your father. He was raised here till about 6 years old, when he was then sent to live with his father in Bolands."

You look around and try to imagine the area as a place where you father ran around as a little boy. 

“Yes, this whole area was lively and bustling,” Victor continues. “But it’s hard to build on these slopes, so they started to build further away, like back where we parked, where the ground is more level.” 

He points to a fenced-off area with tilled ground. “Over there – we still use that. Your cousin Lester still harvests carrots and sweet potatoes there.” 

“Lester – Uncle Waylon’s son?” says Jensen. 

“Yep,” Victor answers. You have no idea who Lester is, so you go back to imagining what it was like for your father growing up here as a boy. 

After some more talking, the three of you return to the car and head back the way you came. But before you leave the area, you stop by two adjacent houses a few blocks away. These are the homes of some of your cousins. Once again, you have no clue how they’re related, but you take Victor and Jensen at their word. 

While most of the relatives talk on the side of one of the houses, you sit on the porch and chat with an 80 year-old guy who’s supposed to be your cousin. 

You want to learn more about him, but he only speaks in Antiguan dialect, which you have a hard time understanding. So, after asking a few questions and not being able to make out the answers, you decide to stop saying “I’m sorry could you say that again?” You’re embarrassed, and don’t want your cousin to feel like there’s something wrong with him, so you just nod and smile. You feel ashamed that you don’t know more dialect, but as a creole language, there’s no real way to study it. There’s no "Rosetta Stone: Antiguan" you can pick up. 

Eventually, Victor and Jensen finish catching up, and you all drive home. 

On the ride back, Jensen gives you a website where he logs all the different Dexters on a grand family tree. And when you view it later that night, everything starts making a little bit of sense. Many of the names you’ve heard today are there and stop feeling so foreign. It’ll take you a while to learn more about each person, but from now on, you know that the next time the family has another sprawling talk about relatives, you’ll have a cheat sheet to help you along. 

______

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The rants of a belligerent Chihuahua

See below for a quick story/fictional essay/whatever-you-want-to-call-it, that I did back in '07. I’m posting it in an effort to knock the farmer’s tan off some of my work.

There’s something about the piece that I still like, but admittedly, the phrase “wanna piece,” has probably fallen out of everyday vernacular.

WANNA PIECE? The Rants of a Belligerent Chihuahua

BY KEITH SAUNDERS

Chihuahuas – like me – have been getting a raw deal since the beginning of time.

People step on us, call us oversized rats and treat us like living, breathing fashion accessories. Yeah, we’re small and have big ears – but we also have big hearts. But does anyone see that side of us?

No.

They see a remote-control-car-sized piece of flesh and bone that shivers like a windup toy and barks like their life depended on it.

And my life does depend on it ­— because quite frankly, everyone wants a piece.

That little old lady pushing her grocery cart push-basket. That cop with the twenty pockets and the twenty different perpetrator-thwarting devices strapped to his person. That annoying kid who flings around that rubbery, yo-yo like thing. That Rottweiler I see walking his owner around with the chain leash and collar. And most certainly, the black and white pug I pass every morning during my 6 AM bathroom break.

They all wanna piece, and they all can’t get a piece.

Last week, my owner’s daughter had a new kid come over.

He wanted a piece.

He showed up at the door wearing a huge I’m-going-to-sleep-with-your-owner’s-daughter grin and carrying an Algebra book. But the academic paraphernalia didn’t fool me. I can see right through that stuff. I may be small, but I have a mighty big intuitive sense about me.

So, when he took one step into my domain – otherwise, known as my owner’s house – I went for his $110 sneakers. He wanted a piece. Because the moment I saw him, his smile gleamed, and my eyes were blinded by his fakeness, and everyone knows that fake-smilin’, hundred-ten-dollar shoe wearin’ fools like him want a piece. But before I could sink my hungry little teeth into his ankle, tear away a little fleshy souvenir and put it in the display case at the bottom of my stomach, I was prevented from going forward by an unseen force that scooped me up quickly and held me against their chest. And by the stench of the B.O. that wafted to my finely tuned nose, I surmised that my owner, the big, bad Cecil Demontague, owner of the house, had halted my mission.

I twisted my body to look up at the owner of my doggy license, and if I could speak human, I would’ve yelled, “You stopped me from reprimanding this fool, son!!! This is a grave, grave injustice you commit. For this defiant man in front of us wanted a piece!!!”

“He’s a feisty little one,“ my owner said to the new boy. “Don’t mind him.”

Don’t mind me?

Don’t MIND me?

DON’T MIND ME???????

I don’t think he thought about that statement before he uttered it. Because I am certainly one to be minded. I’m a Chihuahua of excellent pedigree, fit in health and strong in my resolve to chide all those who want a piece.

So with that, I calmed down and put on my okay-I’m-nice-and-I-want-to-lick-your-hand demeanor, just to play along. Because now was not my moment. To wreak terror upon this household. To devastate the ankles and the placid sense of well-being that existed around me. To unleash the wrath that is my heaven-sent gift of dealing with the disrespectful masses.

No, it was time for me to wait. To plot. To devise. To be stealthy. So I relaxed in the hands of my master as he greeted this stranger into my domain, and as the boy looked down to me, with his soft countenance that indicates a weak interior, I shivered, stopped, bared my teeth once more, and uttered in my guttural doggy growl, “Grrrrrr rrrrr RRRRR,” which translates to: “Dammit. You wanna piece?”