The Cultures that live in Cayman

THE GOOD LIFE

The Good Life is a column written for the Caymanian Compass by Dave Martins and appears on Fridays.

Living in Cayman with this wide range of nationalities (100–plus) in such a small landscape, you gain fascinating insights into cultures that you would not ordinarily get unless you did a boatload of travelling.

You will find out, for example, that the Jamaican cuisine has a marked disposition for Lima beans. Nowhere else in the Caribbean would you find, as I did in the Foster’s morning buffet recently, a dish with cod fish and copious Lima beans.

I don’t think I ever saw a Lima bean before I left Guyana at age 21 for Canada; nor ackee, for that matter. Why is it that this tree – so easy to grow, so abundant a producer, with ackee so easy to prepare – is almost unknown in the rest of the Caribbean? Puzzling cultural forces operating there.

Living in Cayman you will also learn that the traditional Caribbean view of the Englishman as a reserved, conservative guy, given to the most meticulous manners, is largely a myth.

The English, in fact, are the most unconventional people in the world, happily displaying the most outrageous behaviour, and often breaking barriers of what’s proper and what’s not in public.

Let me throw some names at you: Boy George; The Profumo Scandal; Hugh Grant; Elton John – you don’t get more outlandish than that. And while we’re on the subject, the notion that the Scottish are the cheapest people on earth is another myth – it’s actually the English, as the folks at Sunset House can tell you.

In Grand Cayman, as opposed to Bridgetown or Kingston, you can walk into a restaurant and find yourself transported to a foreign country – Italy, China, India, etc – complete with the nationals of those places and some inside information.

You can learn, for example, in a Chinese restaurant that the love–making potion West Indian men use is actually a toothache anaesthetic in China. Try not to confuse the two uses.

If you’re an American or European living here, by rubbing shoulders with Trinidadians, you will come to know that carnival for those people is far more than a time of year – it is virtually a way of life that is with them all year round.

Trinis are the only people I know who, invited to your house, will actually come in the doorway chipping to some personal beat although no music is playing. They are also the only people I know who will make a joke – a picong they call it – about any and everything including, for example, the fact that you just mashed up your new car and broke your leg in the process. Don’t throw your crutches at them; it’s a cultural thing.

Mind you, it’s not all contradictions.

You will come to see, for example, that the stereotype of the all–knowing, smug American often holds true. Americans do believe that they’ve got the answer for everything “back in the States”, even though they’ve got 2 million people in jail, 40 million with no health insurance, and a hole in Iraq you could drive a country through.

To give them their due, however, the Americans will laugh at themselves when you challenge them; the Jamaican will tell you about your family.

And the other thing about Cayman is that the culture thing is an ongoing process. With the advent of Filipinos in recent years, for instance, we now know how they are about chickens, although, for the Italian waiters in the restaurants, we’re still trying to figure out what they do besides shouting “Hey paisan” and singing “Happy Birthday” with tambourines.

It’s a learning curve, and you’re getting the bad with the questionable – all part of the good life.--http://www.caycompass.com/cgi-bin/CFPnews.cgi?ID=1022587