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Aug. 25th, 2010 10:03 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
searingedrockThe old lighthouse stands at the border between the civilised and wild in the island. It marks the southern border of the little dusty capital, looking over a dark and muddy bay, with the poor mired along the coast in huts, clothes on lines dancing. The lighthouse is painted white and red, small, with claustrophobic and winding stairs. After the lighthouse there were no country clubs or yacht clubs, no cocktail evenings or company barbeques. Although at most a 2-hour drive, going past the lighthouse was an excursion. You announced that you were "Going South", and you prepared as for a long journey. Past the lighthouse were the cane fields and houses of poor people, labourers. And also the rich whose ancestors employed them and now they were making money from oil. Now, south of the island are miles of hot dusty roads and dirty hot roadside cafes. From a journey south you are always drained and tired. Southerners are cheaper and the beers from south are cheaper. People are murdered there, girls are kidnapped there. They take them into the cane fields and leave them there. No sugar production now but the cane remains.
Immediately after the lighthouse is the dirty fishy market on the left where I was almost lost as a child once when I let go of my mother's hand. On the right are the business headquarters for our local oil company, and the mud huts and storage warehouses. After that is just the ghetto, which was hidden behind a high wall for the Commonwealth convention when Obama visited. As if no one knew they were there. And after that, nothing, nothing, nothing. Bush and farms, and bush, and small roti shops, rum shops. Rank vegetating nothing. Along the highway are the villages, the Bamboo where stolen car parts are sold and the markets with root provisions and strange vegetables. Further east is the University and a different aristocracy, an East Indian one.
South of the lighthouse are the three hills Columbus saw when he sailed into view and brought death to the Amerindians, and seeing them, with the certainty of a European he named us, La Trinidad.
Immediately after the lighthouse is the dirty fishy market on the left where I was almost lost as a child once when I let go of my mother's hand. On the right are the business headquarters for our local oil company, and the mud huts and storage warehouses. After that is just the ghetto, which was hidden behind a high wall for the Commonwealth convention when Obama visited. As if no one knew they were there. And after that, nothing, nothing, nothing. Bush and farms, and bush, and small roti shops, rum shops. Rank vegetating nothing. Along the highway are the villages, the Bamboo where stolen car parts are sold and the markets with root provisions and strange vegetables. Further east is the University and a different aristocracy, an East Indian one.
South of the lighthouse are the three hills Columbus saw when he sailed into view and brought death to the Amerindians, and seeing them, with the certainty of a European he named us, La Trinidad.
