Garfield
The palms of my hand were covered with rusty salt and mud. They gripped the winch handle shoved into the windlass and lefty loosey the anchor chain paid out at alarming speed into the 30 meters below. Righty tighty it clanked to a stop at 35 meters of chain. Not enough to hold a boat in regular circumstances but the stern was to be tied off to the decrepit dock leftover from the Pirates of the Caribbean movie here in Walalibou Bay, St. Vincent. The oxidized metal remnants allowed us to use the anchor like a grappling hook instead of the usual procedure (anchor flukes dug into the sand with plenty of chain on the ground to keep the anchor (and boat) in place). I continued to pay out the chain as we reversed toward the dock.
"Hey. Hey! Hello!"
A man in a colorful wooden skiff rowed up to the port bow.
"Hello! My name is Garfield. I get you papaya, mango, coconut!"
"Hi Garfield. You'll have to wait a sec. I need to finish anchoring."
"Yeah, no problem. You're fine," he said, referring to the anchor. "Relax."
His comment irked me a little. Anchoring is one of those things that is pretty basic but if not done well, your ass is on the beach or the boat is bumping up against that rusty dock or other anchored boats. So it is not something I take lightly. And then there's that whole people telling me what to do thing that I sometimes have a problem with...
He approached the bow and stood up, hands gripping the toerail of our boat.
"I've got some fruit. There are lots of guys here. You come to me, Garfield. OK?"
"OK Garfield. I need to finish my job here and then we can get fruit."
"OK, you need papaya? Mango?"
"Yes but I need to finish up here then we can talk." I was getting frustrated with his persistence.
In the Caribbean sailors call them Boat Boys. I have a problem with this. They are usually not boys. They are men vying for business in villages that rely on passing yachts to supplement their fishing or farming incomes. The amount some guys spend on fuel to come and meet a yacht a miles away from the harbor must negate much of what they get for helping to pick up a mooring ball or stern line. They offer fruit and inland excursions to waterfalls and sulfur springs. They will take your garbage bags to land. They offer other things that tourists want when they come to St. Vincent, Rastafarian land.
But they are not boys. They are Afro-Caribbean men trying to make a living.
Sometimes desperately.
Garfield appeared at midships on port, hanging onto the side and asking me to give him a plastic bag for fruit. The owner of the yacht was talking to a guy we bought goods from the last time we were anchored here. He was on the starboard side.
"I was the first guy. She talked to me first! Give me plastic bags!" Garfield yelled. I told him I'd like to see the fruit first as I had a cabin full of green mangoes and needed ripe ones. The owner tried to give a little business to each guy but Garfield was having none of it; he wanted to be the sole fruit purveyor. He kept insisting I promised him the business, which I inadvertently did by asking what he had available, putting me in an awkward position.
Garfield's desperate aggression rattled me. I don't like being yelled at or pressured into buying sight unseen but I also knew that this might be the only money Garfield would make that evening. In the end I let the owner divvy up the orders as it was his money that was going to be spent.
I was still shaken from all the yelling when I set a plate of fresh dorado sashimi onto the cockpit table as the two Boat Guys were rowing their separate ways. I brought up cocktails in crystal glasses and looked to the land where the houses were crude cement or wooden shacks in a jungle of green trees and towering palms. Kids played in the shallow water. A goat tied to a palm tree bleated incessantly. The smell of smoke from burning fields or rubbish drifted over the million dollar yacht.
Garfield delivered bags of mangos, guavas, and a large papaya. Overpriced of course, but what is overpriced to a rich man? "They see this boat as a mobile ATM," the owner had said at the last anchorage. He wasn't saying it contemptuously or haughtily, he was just stating what seemed to him a fact. He was a player in the game, he knew he was being overcharged (compared to the markets in town) for fish and fruit, but he also saw it as a way of helping the local economy. Circulating a few extra Eastern Caribbean dollars around the islands.
I don't own the boat, I just work on it.
But I still feel strange about the term Boat Boys, about the aggressive salesmanship, about the history of these islands, and the fact that I am visiting them on a million dollar vessel. Down here in the Caribbean every hill and plantation has a story, has blood and tears deep within the soil. Many of these islanders are descendants of slaves brought to the Caribbean against their will and forced to work the land. Sugarcane plantations run by rich slave owning men once dominated the economy. Now the moneymaker is tourism (and drugs) and dependent on (relatively) rich folks, many from the former colonizing countries. Is any job a good job or is there another way for these islands to be self-sufficient? Is tourism such a bad thing? How else could guys like Garfield survive? Or is subsistence farming better than being dependent on yachts for money and stores for food- like the Rastas live on the north end of the island?
It cannot be solved in a paragraph, a book, a discussion over frosty pina coladas on an artificial white sand beach. I know that. But the look in Garfield's eyes, the desperation floored me, still floors me, as the eyes of poverty does anywhere.
Garfield got paid for his service. We got bags full of fresh delicious local fruit. Commerce continues between rich and poor, black and white, yachtsmen and boatMen.
"Hey. Hey! Hello!"
A man in a colorful wooden skiff rowed up to the port bow.
"Hello! My name is Garfield. I get you papaya, mango, coconut!"
"Hi Garfield. You'll have to wait a sec. I need to finish anchoring."
"Yeah, no problem. You're fine," he said, referring to the anchor. "Relax."
His comment irked me a little. Anchoring is one of those things that is pretty basic but if not done well, your ass is on the beach or the boat is bumping up against that rusty dock or other anchored boats. So it is not something I take lightly. And then there's that whole people telling me what to do thing that I sometimes have a problem with...
He approached the bow and stood up, hands gripping the toerail of our boat.
"I've got some fruit. There are lots of guys here. You come to me, Garfield. OK?"
"OK Garfield. I need to finish my job here and then we can get fruit."
"OK, you need papaya? Mango?"
"Yes but I need to finish up here then we can talk." I was getting frustrated with his persistence.
In the Caribbean sailors call them Boat Boys. I have a problem with this. They are usually not boys. They are men vying for business in villages that rely on passing yachts to supplement their fishing or farming incomes. The amount some guys spend on fuel to come and meet a yacht a miles away from the harbor must negate much of what they get for helping to pick up a mooring ball or stern line. They offer fruit and inland excursions to waterfalls and sulfur springs. They will take your garbage bags to land. They offer other things that tourists want when they come to St. Vincent, Rastafarian land.
But they are not boys. They are Afro-Caribbean men trying to make a living.
Sometimes desperately.
Garfield appeared at midships on port, hanging onto the side and asking me to give him a plastic bag for fruit. The owner of the yacht was talking to a guy we bought goods from the last time we were anchored here. He was on the starboard side.
"I was the first guy. She talked to me first! Give me plastic bags!" Garfield yelled. I told him I'd like to see the fruit first as I had a cabin full of green mangoes and needed ripe ones. The owner tried to give a little business to each guy but Garfield was having none of it; he wanted to be the sole fruit purveyor. He kept insisting I promised him the business, which I inadvertently did by asking what he had available, putting me in an awkward position.
Garfield's desperate aggression rattled me. I don't like being yelled at or pressured into buying sight unseen but I also knew that this might be the only money Garfield would make that evening. In the end I let the owner divvy up the orders as it was his money that was going to be spent.
I was still shaken from all the yelling when I set a plate of fresh dorado sashimi onto the cockpit table as the two Boat Guys were rowing their separate ways. I brought up cocktails in crystal glasses and looked to the land where the houses were crude cement or wooden shacks in a jungle of green trees and towering palms. Kids played in the shallow water. A goat tied to a palm tree bleated incessantly. The smell of smoke from burning fields or rubbish drifted over the million dollar yacht.
Garfield delivered bags of mangos, guavas, and a large papaya. Overpriced of course, but what is overpriced to a rich man? "They see this boat as a mobile ATM," the owner had said at the last anchorage. He wasn't saying it contemptuously or haughtily, he was just stating what seemed to him a fact. He was a player in the game, he knew he was being overcharged (compared to the markets in town) for fish and fruit, but he also saw it as a way of helping the local economy. Circulating a few extra Eastern Caribbean dollars around the islands.
I don't own the boat, I just work on it.
But I still feel strange about the term Boat Boys, about the aggressive salesmanship, about the history of these islands, and the fact that I am visiting them on a million dollar vessel. Down here in the Caribbean every hill and plantation has a story, has blood and tears deep within the soil. Many of these islanders are descendants of slaves brought to the Caribbean against their will and forced to work the land. Sugarcane plantations run by rich slave owning men once dominated the economy. Now the moneymaker is tourism (and drugs) and dependent on (relatively) rich folks, many from the former colonizing countries. Is any job a good job or is there another way for these islands to be self-sufficient? Is tourism such a bad thing? How else could guys like Garfield survive? Or is subsistence farming better than being dependent on yachts for money and stores for food- like the Rastas live on the north end of the island?
It cannot be solved in a paragraph, a book, a discussion over frosty pina coladas on an artificial white sand beach. I know that. But the look in Garfield's eyes, the desperation floored me, still floors me, as the eyes of poverty does anywhere.
Garfield got paid for his service. We got bags full of fresh delicious local fruit. Commerce continues between rich and poor, black and white, yachtsmen and boatMen.
Comments