Grenada: Unequalled Glory

            The thing about Grenada is, it’s this whole other country.  Like, when you tell people, “I’m moving to the Caribbean so [student] can go to medical school!” and your voice is all high-pitched, borderline squeaky with that annoying upward inflection at the end, you don’t have the slightest inclination of how uninformed you are because you are just so super-dooper excited about the Caribbean.  Stop.  Back it up.

            The first thing you need to do is remove yourself from that dreamy fantasy you’ve caught yourself in.  You know the one: the unimaginably calm and clear waters of the Caribbean Sea stretch endlessly, interrupted only by the undulating reflection of an otherworldly sunset displaying colors you’ve never seen before, and there, on the shore, embraced by pillowy mounds of sugar white sand, framed in by perfect silhouettes of palm trees and dainty tropical ferns, beneath the sun bleached spread of a straw beach umbrella, you stand, perhaps bikini clad, wrapped in a hibiscus-print sarong, your hair tossed by an island breeze.  All of it, in its practically orgasmic perfection and unequalled glory—leave it.  Because here’s the thing, that beach that you’re desperately projecting exists only in Sandals commercials.  I guess if you want it bad enough and you get drunk enough, you can probably convince yourself any beach is that fantasy beach.

            I’m not saying there aren’t a few pretty spectacular beaches here, but if you arrive expecting every aspect of the island to compare to the splendor of the beaches, you’re going to be one pissed off housewife (or, whatever, housewife just seemed to fit the context).

            So stop telling yourself (and everyone else) that you’re moving to the Caribbean.  Tourists go to the Caribbean.  You’re going to a preposterously tiny spec of volcanic earth that miraculously happens to be an island-country, where the unemployment and poverty levels are what you’d expect from a third-world country, but will still depress you on a daily basis.  You’re not going to stay in a $500-a-night all-inclusive resort on Grand Anse beach; you’re going to live in a shitty little apartment where your husband’s eyeballs are going to fall out three days before midterms and you’re going to land yourself at the SGU clinic after eating a mouthful of raw calalloo.  You’re not going to skip through a mango grove singing The Sound of Music whilst happily plucking fresh fruits; you’re going to sweat through ever nice linen you brought, be harassed by half-naked men wielding machetes and bags of hot fruit, and stomp in piles of cow crap on the sidewalk.  You’re going to Grenada.

            Now that you understand what a few of the cobwebs look like, you’re really going to love those beaches.  Nothing takes your mind off of foot-long stinging centipedes and flying cockroaches like pristine waters and silky sand.  That sand’s going to have to be extra silky, though, to help you forget the man with thigh length dreadlocks peeing in the ditch or the wispy woman with hairy legs dropping a load in that same ditch.

            But, like I said before, you can always just drink until the beaches reach that orgasmic perfection and all the cobwebs disappear in ripples of unequalled glory.

Buffy