Hitchhiker’s guide to St. Lucia
Corey W. Byrnes photos
Islanders played dominoes in the fishing village of Anse La Raye during the Friday night fish fry. The weekly street party draws tourists and locals from all over St. Lucia. Below, a farmer carried harvested bananas along the Tet Paul trail, south of Soufriere.
Mary Kovaleski Byrnes is a writer living in Cambridge.
The woman in the back of our rental car measures her children’s years by hurricanes.
“My son was born during Dean,” she tells us. My husband slows the car around another hairpin turn; we’re still getting used to driving on the left, to cars passing us on blind curves with boisterous honks, to cows, goats, dogs, and roosters that seem to view the road as something they generously share with us. We have to learn the rules of St. Lucia’s roads quickly, or else end up in the Caribbean Sea.
We’ve learned this: On this small island with one main road that ribbons along a rugged, hilly coast, hitchhiking is an accepted mode of transport. And as a car with an empty back seat, we should be part of this economy of hitching. So far today, we’ve picked up three people: a woman going to meet her children, Dean and Kira, at school; a teenage boy carrying a rat trap, heading to his aunt’s house; and an old man with a burlap sack bulging with sandy, fresh-fallen coconuts.
We slow to let a cow cross our path outside the town of Fond St. Jacques, and a young woman holding a bouquet of vibrant ginger lilies looks our way hopefully.
“Need a ride?” we ask. She nods, smiles, and climbs into the back of our car. Her name is Cornelia. We learn that she picked the flowers behind her house, which sits on the edge of the Edmund Forest Reserve, St. Lucia’s lush rain forest region in the center of the island. She is taking them to brighten the nursing home where she works as a chef.
“When I’m finished cooking for my family, I go to the seniors’ home to cook for them,” she says. She asks where we’re from. When we say Boston, she gets excited.
“My sister lives in Worchester!” she shouts, charmingly mispronouncing the city's name. “She hates the cold!” We drive her the 6 miles to the nursing home, a long, fluorescent-lit building facing the water. The nursing home is on prime real estate, off a dirt road at the base of the Pitons, the island’s famed peaks that jag out of the sea like two fangs. The side doors of the home are open to let in the light breeze; a glance in reveals one long room lined with rows of iron beds. Cornelia waves goodbye to us before she gives a lily to a woman sitting by the door. Including her family of six, Cornelia will feed 62 people today before she hitches back home.
To most Americans, St. Lucia is known for its natural beauty, its rum, and ABC’s "The Bachelor: 'Wings of Love,' ” which set its two-hour finale in St. Lucia and drew 15 million viewers. For better or for worse, it helped make the island one of the top honeymoon destinations in the world.
Thanks to our hitchhikers, we’re learning there’s more to this island than glammed-up resorts and rose ceremonies. Beyond the gates of the all-inclusive resorts is an island with a strong sense of community and an endurance of spirit.
Omuwale, who goes by Omu, is quick to tell us that the hotel we’re driving him to is just his summer job.
“I’m doing this to save up for another school year -- I’m getting my certificate in electrical installation at the university in Castries,” he says. Castries is the capital city, about an hour and a half from where we are in the southern part of the island.
“Do you live up there during the school year?” I ask him.
“Oh no,” he says. “I take the bus there everyday. I live with my mother and younger brother, so I can’t leave them.” Omu pauses to shout a greeting in Patois to a group of fisherman hanging their nets out on lines along the waterfront. The sun is beginning to set, casting orange and purple light into our car.
“Sometimes, you know, it’s frustrating -- I get all the way to Castries and the professors don’t even show up. Some of them aren’t very dedicated.” He motions for us to turn off on a road that leads toward the hotel.
“But, OK, I want something better. I have to just keep persisting. I want to be my own boss some day. I’ll keep studying and praying. It will happen.”
Juno, the black-garbed security guard we pick up on our way to the beach the next day, speaks with a similar spirit of persistence and hope. He’s just come off the night shift and is on his way to his grandmother’s farm, where he’ll help harvest mangoes, bananas, and pineapples he sells to area restaurants. He hasn’t slept more than six hours in the past two days. “If you want to see the best waterfall on the island, I’m your man,” he offers us. “It’s only a 3-kilometer hike up the side of Mount Gimie," he said, referring to the tallest mountain on the island covered with the densest rain forest.
Nellie is on her way to her niece’s First Communion. It’s Thursday, the feast of Corpus Christi. Today we find that many of the main roads are clogged with processions of girls in dresses white and frilly as ocean foam. We can hear singing from the church miles before we see its bright-painted steeple. Nellie is carrying heavy trays of food -- she’s been up since dawn cooking her special chicken for the party afterward.
“My niece loves this chicken,” she explains. Our car holds aromas of bay leaves and garlic for miles after she’s gone.
On our last day on the island, Sunday, it seems no one is going anywhere. Our backseat stays empty for miles. The radio won’t play any more reggae -- we suspect the snap we heard driving under the fern trees at the last pitch in the road was the death of our antenna. We travel to the airport with only the music of occasional cars and distant waves on the coast, missing the sound of someone telling us their story.
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