Island Resilience

A few days ago I sat with a twenty-one-year old girl – about five feet tall, black skin, beautiful smile, and coarse pulled-back hair. A three-year-old clung to her leg like a life raft, a baby slept next to her breast, and three months of life lay growing inside of her belly. The noise from the bar next-door echoed off the walls, muffling our conversation. And the smell of cigarette smoke and burning incense ironed its filthy stench onto our clothes and our hair. We talked of gratitude, hope, marriage, infidelity, abuse, and most importantly….options. In an instant it occurred to me the hopelessness of her situation. If I were home sitting with a friend who was in the same situation, I would suggest moving in with a relative, calling the police, or finding a shelter. But I’ve learned that not all cultures are the same and the lack of education and income can erase hopeful options just as quick as one can scribble them down.

I live in a land with two faces. We shop at the Americanized grocery store, relax at the University Club pool and order chocolate smoothies and loaded burgers. We spray for bugs and enjoy our cleaning lady that mops our floors once a week. We joke about some of the conveniences we miss – affordable rent, new clothes, Barnes & Noble, and decent hair.

But then I visit Grenadians in their wooden homes that have weathered more storms than I’ll see in a lifetime, and my perspective morphs into a different creature. I talk to women who have been mothers since they were teenagers. I take a seventeen-year-old boy to the public library and he gasps when I tell him we can check out his books for three weeks. His mother never took him to the library and this is the first book he’s read. I ask another teenage boy if his mom works. He says that their only source of income is the profit they make from baking coconut cakes and selling them on the street. He comes home from school, quickly makes the cakes, and then goes out to sell for the rest of the night.

There’s a quote hanging in the Dean of Students Office at SGU that says something like, “Island people are the best. Whatever happens, they’ve always seen worse.”

I hope I can be as resilient as they are.

I pray that some of their situations aren’t as hopeless as they seem.