Barbados
By Sherry Davis Johnson
3 Mar 2008
We visited Barbados last month. We toured island locations recommended by the cruise line. We stopped at sugar cane fields and listened to the driver/guide describe how the tall canes concealed the "workers" in the field on the side waiting to be harvested and the long vistas in sight on the harvested side of the cane fields.
We toured a Rum factory that made 18 designer rum labels. Our perky guide was full of information on the rum making process. Interestingly enough, all 18 all came from one of three ages and types of rum with a wide variety of prices. They generously left a dish of rum punch for the birds and iguanas. The birds seemed to like it.
We visited the artist that makes abstract art (just polishes and polyurethanes) from mahogany tree stumps to sell small clumps for very, large prices.
There was also the largest sugar cane plantation on the island. We visited the house with 25 inch thick walls filled with antiquities nostalgically referred to as "a bygone era".
I stood in the garden and watched bus after bus unload tourists to revisit the "bygone era". Our plantation guide, a black woman, recanted the spiel verbatim wearing a glazed stare and a plastered smirk. Each tourist wandered about aimlessly admiring the way of life in this house without an utterance of how they made their living. I asked, "Where are the slave quarters?" The guide zeroed in on me. Her brows raised and her lips smoothed across her teeth as she replied, "About a mile down the road." I could tell that this topic of conversation wasn't in the employee handbook.
But the first Madam on the island, drawing proudly hanging in the plantation, was a part of the tour. I left the house feeling sickened by the experience because it wasn't used as an avenue to educate tourist about trafficking humans in order for the plantation to turn a profit. Or on how "workers" is a politically incorrect term for slaves.
Leaving the plantation we sped past a monument to freedom in a traffic circle without one word from the guide. I would have missed it if I were on the other side of the bus.
Every third house was large and abandoned or destroyed by neglect.
Returning the ship, I searched the faces and mannerisms of the people on the island on their way to work. They mostly wore uniforms/suits. Not many were smiling. There weren't any street friendly chats. Just drones trying to make it through the day.
Perhaps your travels revealed something else in this lovely place, but that's what I saw on my least favorite island.
