my people are renowned for being colorful in every way—by which i mean my Caribbean people for a change, and not any of the other random people i periodically claim as my own. such as...
- my people... with too many cats.
- my people... with an approaching-morbid fascination with sheep and yarn.
- my people... whose dying wish is to have their friends gather to drink good beer and watch some old-school cartoons, in lieu of the usual boring adult way of marking such moments. seriously... who wants to be remembered for all the depressing stuff??? where was i again?
naturally, this colorful tendency extends to the way we name all sorts of things, a fact which he finds as amusing as i find his (Croatian) people's tendency to stack the oddest selection of letters next to each other when spelling words. seriously... the language is
Hrvatski. who spells anything like that??? then there is the delicious Croatian soup/stew called
grah... which only ever makes me feel like i should be reaching for my
bat'leth. [he will laugh and call me a nerd when he sees that last line.]
however, it must be noted that my people have the Croatian world beat when it comes to wacky names for things. hang around a Caribbean household long enough and you are bound to hear some of the craziest phrases ever uttered under the guise of the English language. for example...
- jumbee umbrella is a generic term for mushrooms... and most of the mushrooms in the Caribbena will probably kill you if consumed.
- jumbee guava is a fruit resembling a guava... and, yes, it too can kill you if consumed.
- jumbee soursop (aka, hog apple) may not kill you... but you will regret the experience all the same.
basically, if anything has the word "
jumbee" in the name... run away!
then there are the tales that are told solely to discourage the youth from venturing out after dark.
- a lajabless (lah-jah-bless) is a devil woman who hangs out along empty roadways at night, waiting to beguile men traveling alone to their demise. oh... and she always wears a long dress/skirt to hide the fact that she has one human foot... and one cow foot. exactly!
- a soucouyant (soo-coo-yah) is a vampire-like creature who appears in the form of an old woman by day, but she slips out of her skin at night and becomes a ball of light that goes around sucking people's blood. the only way to defeat her is to find the empty skin (which she hides when she goes vampiring) and to douse the whole thing with salt, which—apparently—makes it impossible for her to get back into it. then she will—supposedly—die when the sun rises.
imagine seeing a firefly after hearing the old folks talk about that last one in the middle of the night... because there is some unwritten rule that such tales must only ever be told at night. ah, good times!
still, it is not all dark creatures and toxic foods. some of the most colorful phrases are reserved for things you actually
can eat.
- hard food is all of the (non-rice) starchy components of a typical Caribbean meal. it includes things like sweet potato, yams, cassava, and green bananas or plantains. furthermore, all of the hard food that is actually grown underground is collectively referred to as ground provision, because... you know... we need to make things even more
complicated colorful.
- buljou (bul-jow) is a dish of salted cod fish sauteed with onions, peppers, and tomatoes. add some hard food and a bit of coconut milk during the cooking process, and you will get run-down. the name implies the fact that it is usually simmered until the coconut milk evaporates (or, runs down... according to my colorful people). makes little-to-no sense, but it is delicious!
- shadow beni is the tastier cousin to the common cilantro. it usually shows up in other cuisines as culantro or Mexican cilantro
- buss-up-shot is a roti that is cooked in the usual manner (on a flat surface)... before being subjected to a battery of physical abuse when it comes off the heat. i tracked down a video demonstrating the sort of thing, should you ever feel the need to take out your frustration on a flatbread. [and, yes... rotis are super-common in the Caribbean islands, as there are a ton of Indian folks to be found there, including my (deceased) paternal grandfather.]
my absolute favorite colorful phrase, however, is reserved for a special little plant. it is called
jump up and kiss me (
Portulaca grandiflora). it is a hearty succulent that grows close to the ground in lots of hot places, and the colorful name comes from a special trick one can perform with the flowers. according to my mom—who grew up in a time and place where young ladies did not walk around wearing makeup—the girls would crush the bright-colored flowers between their fingers and apply the stain to their lips. seems it was a natural beauty product long before such things became all the rage.
so, there we were some time ago, getting ready to visit the garden center to purchase a few transplants for this year's balcony garden project. he had already talked me into planting more flowers this time around, so i found myself going on about
jump up and kiss me... yet again.
it is such a simple, low maintenance plant that produces the most impressive range of brightly-colored flowers. but, more than that, it is one of the fondest memories i have of the small, rocky garden in the backyard of my (maternal) family's place. i wanted so badly to introduce him to that plant whose poetic name always makes me smile.
as we were wandering through the row after row of mini potted vegetables, there it was at the corner of shelf of transplants that were all supposed to be herbs... one lone, solitary pack of mini
jump up and kiss me plants. no exaggeration... i dove for the thing like a baseball player going for home. then we walked through every inch of the garden center, and there was not another one to be found. [the round pot on the right is thyme.]
i planted them in a shallow terracotta container with a healthy dash of sand added to the potting mix, mainly because the soil in that back garden was very sandy, and those plants were quite content to creep across that rocky surface as they soaked up the near-equatorial sunshine.
the plant works like a weather record-keeper of sorts in this climate, as the blossoms tend to bloom in abundance following a few days of intense sunlight. they were spectacular during the heatwave, but it has been cooler over the last few days... and it shows.
still, i love love LOVE the ever-changing display of colors these few plants produce. this is one of my favorites. it is a beautiful blend of a coppery-orange and a rosy-pink.
this little bug likes the bright yellow.
the lightest shades i have seen so far are in these buttery-yellows, but i have a vague recollection of having seen white flowers among my grandmother's garden.
then there are the intense purplish pinks.
i grabbed a few petals and gave it a crush, and... there it is!
i will refrain from giving it a try, because i want to spare you the sudden, overwhelming urge to
jump up and kiss me. and, no... this one (probably) will
not kill you for a change.
