LIVE A LIFE YOU LOVE
When you move to the islands, you quickly find yourself doing things you’d never imagine doing on the mainland. Like…
Drinking and driving. Ok, perhaps in your “real-world” life you occasionally drove home after enjoying a glass of wine. Or two. But island life is slightly different. Not only doesn’t the island frown on a roadie in your cupholder, it practically encourages it. I’m not saying you should get blotto’d and climb behind the wheel, but a singular ice cold adult beverage in your favorite insulated “to go” cup is simply not cause for alarm.
Handling wildlife. If it isn’t extracting iguanas from your pool, it will be eliminating vermin from your cupboards. Or cockroaches from your shoes. Or rescuing wayward flamingo babies from the middle of the road. If it’s wild, you will eventually encounter it. Closer, perhaps, than you’d like.
Deteriorating grooming standards. Holes in your clothes no longer merit immediate delegation of said item to the garbage bin or cleaning rags pile in the laundry room. And your hair and make-up? Fuggedaboutit.
You will do these things and eventually not even bat an unmascara’d eyelash. And soon none of them will even strike you as unusual anymore.
But there is one thing. One thing I had a hard time with when I initially landed on my rock. It was probably due to the fear tactics drilled into me by my parents when I turned 16 and got my ticket to freedom, a/k/a my driver’s license. Or perhaps because I came of age during the Ted Bundy years. Whatever the reason, the one thing I hesitated to do when I started driving the dusty, meandering roads of my adopted island was pick up hitchhikers.
Of course, I eventually relaxed my ways and quickly became an unofficial taxi service for quite a few folks here. As it happens – despite all the parental admonitions or the very remote threat of a serial killer – helping hitchhikers here has become part of my near-daily routine. If someone is thumbing it on the side of the road, I’m the Island Girl they hope passes by.
My first foray into joining the island hitchhiking culture occurred about one month into my arrival. I came across an elderly woman, laden with shopping bags, on the side of the road. How could I not stop? It was high noon and about 1,000 degrees in the Caribbean sun. Plus, she hardly looked like she was going to do me any harm. So I pulled over and she slowly climbed in. She spoke zero English and my Papiamentu was sorely lacking, yet she was able to direct me to her house and I was happy to help. In hindsight, I was pretty glad she didn’t live on the other end of the island.
My initial success buoyed me into making myself a promise to help anyone I could with a lift whenever possible. After all, I know how crappy it is to not have transportation here, so I help when I can. Now before you shake your head disapprovingly, rest assured I have self-imposed limitations on who I will – and won’t – pick up. Decisions happen on a case-by-case basis depending on a variety of factors including time of day and area I happen to be in. I may have given up a lot of things when I moved to the islands, but my desire for self-preservation is not one of them. So far, so good.
Since that first rider, I’ve been serenaded by a musician en route to his gig that night. I’ve also improved my Papiamentu language skills by requiring a gentleman I regularly pick up to teach me a word or phrase each time I give him a lift to town…which is often since he lives down the hill from me. (Cheeky bugger always asks me for a quarter when I drop him off, too…and I always comply.) And I don’t limit rides to people, either. There’s one guy I’ve driven home a few times who always has his dog with him. Jump in, Fido, no worries.
But the other day, my laisses fair attitude towards being the unofficial taxi service of the island was really put to the test. There’s a guy who walks around a lot, and he is recognizable to almost everyone. I have given him a lift a few times over the years. He is mildly amusing, mostly because he is usually drunk when you encounter him. But then again, he is a harmless drunk (aren’t we all?), so it’s fine.
When I saw him stumbling out of the bushes onto the corner of a busy intersection on my way to work one recent morning, I was preparing to slow down when I noticed something strange. He was clutching a pickaxe in his left hand while flagging me down with his right. Now, I understand that the logistics of wielding a pickaxe in the passenger seat of a Dodge Durango don’t really suggest mortal injury is imminent – after all, there’s hardly enough space to build up the momentum needed for a lethal swing. But still…I just couldn’t stop. I suddenly heard my mom’s voice – loud and clear – shrieking at me along the lines of “That is how young girls get murdered!”
While I’m no longer a young woman, I still don’t fancy the murdering bit. Not that I imagine that was the gentleman’s intent, not by a long shot. But old mainland habits die hard, it seems. So I kept on driving, studiously avoiding eye contact with him for some reason. And I also felt bad for not stopping. Really, Liz? Embarrassed because you won’t stop for a hitchhiker casually wielding a potentially lethal weapon? Apparently I will never escape my need to please others.
But I did have something to laugh about the rest of the way to work. Because some island sights are simply absurd, even if you’ve been here a long time. And the sight of a guy holding a pickaxe at 7:30 a.m., emerging from the bushes and looking for a ride fits squarely into the absurd category. It also reminded me that you never, ever know what you’re going to encounter on an island. This is my “new” normal. And I love it. Because even after all this time, I still encounter things that make me laugh, cringe or shake my head in wonder. Which is sort of the whole point of choosing to live in the Caribbean.
And it also reminded me that despite the laid-back lifestyle and “anything goes” attitude of islands between the 30s, some appearances do still matter. At least when you’re thumbing a ride.
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