Complacency in Grenada: You will Submit

            Grenada is not a country of great wealth.  Generally speaking, almost every local you meet is in some descending state of poverty.  With rampant destitution comes a definite lack of consumerism and demand.  This is basic economics, right?  It’s for this very reason that, at some point during your stay, you will need (define need) something that you simply cannot attain on the island.  If you are anything like the thousands of others before you, you will need many things that you won’t find on the island.  Of course the obvious reason for this—as alluded to above—is general supply and demand.  There’s not sufficient demand for many of the convenience and leisure items you’d like.  (Again, walk around Grenada, then define need.)

            So what happens when a small and temporary fraction of an impoverished country’s residents want and expect items or services that aren’t available?  Said fraction becomes petulant, defiant, and vengeful before finally fizzling out into reluctant complacence.

            Read this and think all that you want that you won’t ask for anything that isn’t available.  You will happily settle into the “simpler life” (how quaint that sounds before you’ve tried it) without complaint.  You will complain.  You will have one horrid, wretched day and want only one simple item—something, you’ll longingly remember, was carried at every convenient store back home—and it will not be anywhere on the island.  Then you’ll become the petulant, defiant, vengeful person you knew you would never become.

            Here’s the good news: you’ll get over it.  And you’ll become complacent.  Like all the other sheep that do their time here in Grenada, you’ll be defeated so much that you’ll stop recognizing the defeat and just start shrugging and saying cute little soliloquies like This is Grenada or What are you going to do or I guess that’s just how it goes here.  It’s not like you really needed that specific prescription medicine, right?  Whoops!  This is Grenada!

            The items that you can get your hands on are typically not offered by more than a couple vendors and those vendors are not usually right next to each other.  So, say you’re back home and you’re shopping at K-Mart.  Your favorite scent of body wash is available, but instead of buying it, you’re going to walk next door to Wal-Mart to see if it’s carried there for a lower price.  In Grenada, your favorite scent has never been available.  In fact, the only store in a ten-mile radius that carries body wash may only have two on the shelf (bottles, that is, not scents) and if you’re lucky enough to be in the right place at the right time and grab one, you will pay twice as much for half the quantity and the cashier will give you so much attitude, you’ll wonder, despite knowing better, if you’d done something to offend her.  After the worst service in your life, instead of vowing to never return, you’ll keep coming back every week because you have no alternatives.  And what’s worse—if you get that cashier again, to try to avoid her nasty attitude, you’ll be embarrassingly gracious and overly generous.  And she’ll still be sneering at you the whole time.  But, I guess that’s just how it goes here.

Buffy