People Watching

20th February 2010

“I want to be a Billionaire so f…g bad
Buy all the things I never had”
is thumping and everyone is singing along. The black guests are singing the anthem the loudest as they line the dance floor in pairs, the girl moving to the music.. Up and down, her back to her boyfriend, sliding against him as he sways gently, his face expressionless. We are in Abracadabra’s the local outdoor night club where (mainly) young people from all over the world, - yachties, Antiguans, temporary residents and holiday makers mingle in a tight heaving mass on the dance floor every Friday and Saturday night. The girls are dressed in short short dresses. The black girls wear enormous heels, the whites flip-flops. The black hairstyles of both men and women are varied and wonderful, hair extensions, wigs and natural hair piled onto the top of heads or down the back in long long dreads. The whites are more uniform - the girls with long blond hair and the men short back and sides. We all dance side by side, sometimes together, bumping and then apologising with a polite smile, everyone friendly. As the night turns to the early hours the yachties get more drunk and I have to leave… being bumped into and drinks spilt on me is no longer my idea of fun. Andy and I walk home by the light of the full moon … “tonight is going to be a good night ….” ringing in our ears.

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The early morning bus to St Johns is filling up with office workers. Even the pull down seats at the end of each bench seat in the transit style minibus are taken. Seventeen of us tightly packed. The last seat is taken by a tall thin neatly dressed young man with dreadlocks pulled into a neat pony tail and an Antiguan Utilities Authority ID card round his neck. He has his small son with him. His son starts crying .Dad gently pulls his son onto his lap and talks to him quietly, pointing things out to him as the bus drove along. The child is wearing a backpack almost bigger than him and starts playing with a smart toy car. Dad hangs a colourful child’s backpack on the back of the seat in front.

“Bus stop”. We stop in front of a colourful building - a nursery. Dad picks up child and disembarks. I call out - “you have left your bag” but the lady next to me reassures me “he come back”. And sure enough, the bus waits while dad settles his son at school before returning to complete his journey with what is obviously sons cast-off backpack.

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Cloggies and it is bar-b-q night. The food is finished and the disco ramps up the volume. The place suddenly fills with young people, chatting, catching up with fellow crew, comparing notes, networking. I am chatting with Splif, one of the YC sailing instructors who is pretending he is upset with me because I beat him on the water in a Laser the previous evening. I am full of myself because I had been at the front of the fleet for the first time in all 4 races of the evening. Secretly he is pleased with me - just gently teasing. Then I realise there is a uniformed man standing near me. A policeman. I smile and he smiles back so I ask if he is a real policeman .. “yes”. I wonder why a young policeman on duty would be standing in the middle of a dance floor while the drug dealers do there stuff outside. I guess this is the Caribbean.

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Bryan seemed very self assured, cocky some would say. 40ish, well tanned, once slim but beginning to show a tum, he was Piers and my diving instructor at Christmas. I was not sure if I liked him at first, he seemed distracted and had his hands full with his very cute but bouncy and chatty small daughter. Not conducive to teaching diving. But over the three days I began to sympathise with his situation - newly separated from his wife and having to live on his dive boat, caring for his daughter when his wife requested. But diving was his passion and he was very sure of his ability.

A month after I qualified with my Open Water I heard that Bryan had had a diving accident. It seems that he had got carried away when diving on a FAD (Fish Attraction Device) placed 300 metres below the surface after the game fishermen on his boat had landed half eaten big, big fish - obviously eaten as they were brought up. There must be big sharks down there. Bryan got his tank on, grabbed his camera and jumped in long before his diving buddy was ready. His buddy waited at the surface for several minutes before diving himself. Visibility was fantastic - he thought at least 25 metres and at 25 metres he could only see bubbles. He decided to surface. Bryan came up suddenly - he had run out of air, distracted by his camera malfunctioning while he continued to fin down and had not been able to stay for his 7 minute safety stop. His dive-watch was alarming but buddy thought this was because he had gone below a preset of 27 metres and Bryan seemed OK. He got himself out of the water and his buddy followed. He found Bryan later self administering oxygen. Buddy asked if they should abort the fishing trip and get back but Bryan has many debts so said no and he got off his bed and went on deck. Later Buddy realised Bryan was nowhere to be seen and went to check on the bunk. Bryan was back on oxygen and was now obviously in a lot of pain. In a moment of clarity Bryan requested that the boat make for home. Buddy checked the watch - maximum depth 90 metres. He called the emergency services. By now Bryan was passing in and out of consciousness and Buddy was worried he was dead at one point.

We are on Antigua. Antigua is a developing country with few medical facilities but within hours Bryan was en-route to one of the French islands and a decompression chamber. By now he was paralysed from the neck down. Over the next few days he started to gain movement above the waist but he will never dive again and may well have to spend the rest of his life in a wheel chair.

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I heard about a swim across Falmouth Bay - a distance of nearly 1 mile and decided I would do it. When I arrived at the start at least half the participants were children from the local swimming club and many were very little. As an oldie I was put with the under 12’s group(!) and found myself next to a tiny boy. I asked him how old he was … eight years old!! We were lined up on a yacht dock, literally shoulder to waist, told to make for a dot of sand in the distance and then put under starters orders. We jumped the 12 feet to the sea en-mass, a seething group all trying to find clear water in which to swim. I was very concerned about the little ones, especially a little girl who could barely swim.

Once in the water I couldn’t see the beach. There was a strong wind blowing off the land taking you out to sea and to cap it all there was a keel boat race taking place. I was so close to one that Errol who was crew and I were able to greet each other!

But we all made it safely to land, no one drowned and I made decent time. In fact I won my group (I was also second and third as I was the only female veteran!)

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I had been queuing in the bank in Nelsons Dockyard for an hour. At last I was out and as I left a lady pounced. “You have mail”. She was “my” post lady and she had obviously seen me go into the bank and had been waiting for me to come out. She was not the sort of post lady that delivers the post as we have no delivery, but the one responsible for the occasional letter that arrives at the small post office and waits until I go and claim it. There are several of these ladies - I guess one for each street or two in the tiny town of English Harbour where we live. My mail was a Christmas card. Over one month late!