Side by Side

I wanted to record my meetings with just a dozen of my Barbadian compatriots so that as the years slide by, future generations will not forget them.

On a small island like this, we have so many unique and eccentric characters it was hard to know where to start. Most of these people live “Side By Side”, separated by race, economics, education or prejudice, but when their paths have crossed and continue to cross they weave a dense and complex cultural fabric, completely incomprehensible to many people from away.

To a true Barbadian “away” is anywhere that is not Barbados, be it Alaska or New Zealand, England or Africa.

After I had met these people, I showed them what I had written and if I had the facts wrong or misunderstood something I set it right. My opinions, of course, are my own. These are simple thumbnail sketches of how these people appeared to me and my own observations about them.

I have written in detail about the first seven years of my life and I have tried to cover all “classes” of people, but at the end of the day we are all Barbadians. This book was written in 1999 and I drew a line under that date. Any changes in circumstances, titles etc. happened in a different year.

Recently I heard a Trinidadian referred to at a party as a “Trini”. The Trinidadian turned sharply and said “I’ve been living here twenty-eight years, I am married to a Barbadian, I consider myself a Bajan”. Wrong, my friend, you have to live here for about four hundred years before you start thinking that way.

Ann Watson Yates
Barbados, 1999

Side by Side

104 Pages
Published by Blackbird Studios
ISBN 976-8078-47-2

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