No one in Barbados has a last name. I learned this very early during my stay here. Whenever you meet someone, you get their first name and then an associative physical or geographical characteristic. "Hi, I'm Peter." And Peter is tall and bald and from Denmark and so that's how Peter is known to you from then on. When you describe Peter to someone else, those characteristics become that person's last name. Person A: "Do you know Peter?" Person B: "Maybe. Peter who?" Person A: "You know. Tall. Bald. From Denmark?" Person B: "Oh right - Peter!" What's incredible is that people fully accept that this counts as "knowing someone," and I can think of no better way to encapsulate my time on the island than that: a series of very intimate and personal connections, shared experiences, and fun where no one even knows your name. It's hard to say what I'll miss about Barbados because I believe that in time, this pl
Anton Chekhov believed that every element of a story should contribute to the whole. "If in the first act you have hung a pistol on the wall, then in the following one it should be fired. Otherwise, don't put it there." A month ago, I was sitting in my driveway, talking to my neighbor. We were talking about fights in Barbados. I was curious to know how the men here typically behaved when a fight broke out. Did they throw fists? Was anyone quick to grab a knife? How often did shootings happen? Ever see some wild shit? She laughed and said that none of those things happened all that often on the island. She went on to note that of the three or four fights she had witnessed in her life, all of the men picked up a rock to use as a weapon. "Huh," I thought to myself at the time. "Good to know." Fast forward to this morning. I've been trying to get a new routine down since restrictions have loosened and gyms were allowed to re-open. I settled on this: wa