Dear Bernice,
How are you? I am still here, in the name of the Lord, as you can see from the source this letter coming from. I am in Barbados. But Barbados is looking like a strange place to me these days. It look like a strange place to other people too, because I happened to be talking the same thing with a fellow, and he up and tell me that Barbados today is not the same Barbados he and me grow up seeing. That will give you an idea of what I mean by the transformation of this place, as the fellow said, using that word to describe it to me. First thing, everybody who isn’t old, or who have a few dollars, pulling out for Britain or for the States. And now that Britain don’t want we coloured people in Britain, and since the States never wanted we, and it is more difficult to get inside of than inside a virgin, if you will pardon the word, well the only place left back is Canada. Canada is so popular nowadays in Barbados, that big girls who went to such places like Queens College and St. Michaels whiching as you know, happen to be the two most powerful girl schools in the island, even that sort of girl is putting down her name to go up in Canada as a common ordinary domestic, meaning a servant. What kind of place is Canada, Bernice? The Canadian people living in the island listen to a radio programme called the Grey Cup Game. It comes on once a year, and a fellow who works for a Canadian family down here tell me that all he could hear was a damn lot of screaming and shouting for “Kill-him, kill-him! Flatten-him, and kill-him!” and the Canadian family was so drunk afterwards that they felled asleep with the radio still on. Out of every ten white people you see walking ’bout in shorts in Bridgetown, exposing their funny looking legs and foots, well eight or nine is Canadians. They taking over the place. When once a man could walk on the beach, and if the urge take him, and he had to go to the toilet in a hurry, he could maybe stoop down behind a coconut tree or a grape tree and ease his bowels, and the only person who could see him doing that would be the big wide sea or the trees, well now, the people who would see him easing his bowels is Canadians. They are over all the beach and hotels like ants. All that freedom that we used to know is stopped now. The hotels coming from all up in Canada and they putting up fence and wire round the hotels and a common person can’t pass there no more, fatherless ease his bowels. Soon, if a man want to have a sea bath he is going to have to go to the sea with a bucket and take a bucket of sea water back home and pour it on himself through a sieve and splash-about and say Hey-hey-hey-hey-huh-huh-huh! like how you see little children used to play in the sea when there was a sea for them to play in. A man was buying some things one day in Busby Alley and a next man, a white man, not even a Bajan white man, come up to this man and tell him, Get away, you nigger! Bernice, that is the first time a white man ever called a Barbadian a nigger on his own soil. We don’t do them things down here. And Bernice, you should have seen the federation of people that congregate in that small alley which as you know can’t hold two fat women walking side by side. It was murder. It was federation in Bridgetown that morning. Well, some fellows pelt some licks in that white man arse, and the onliest thing that saved that white man from getting his behind more full of blows and maybe his death too, was the simple fact that Barbadians are hospitable people, plus the next fact that a police, a police who the people like, I mean Johnny Salt Bags, it was really Johnny Salt Bags that save that white man’s arse that morning The powers that be, in this place, have a lot of explaining to do to the poor people. I am one of them poor people. But I struggling in the name of the Lord. I have to tell you now, something that I know you will be very happy to hear. I get saved. I am a christian now, these days. And when you see next month come, I will be holding the morning service on Sunday mornings in the Ebenezer Church in Brittons Hill. I lives in Brittons Hill now. I had to give Terence a stiff cut arse with a tamarind rod only yesterday, for using bad words in my presence. By the way, when I say that the powers that be in this island have a lot of explaining to do to we poor people, I mean everybody excepting Barrow, who as you know is our number one man. Getting back to Terence. That boy, don’t mind he is your child and mine too, he must have a devil inside him. Sometimes I think he take after the mother. But if there is a will there is a way. I intend to bring up Terence in the fear of the Lord. Or if he goes on in the ways of Satan, well then his backbone will be breaken some day by the rod of justice and mercy. By the way too, coming first
