Reasons To Be Cheerful Part 10
Canaries(or Kannawi in Kwéyòl)
Disclosure: My mother’s family is from Canaries. They lived there until the late fifties, and I really do love the place. In the early seventies a violent Hurricane took our family home and the road it stood on, all washed away and taken to “Davy Jones Locker.”
What’s left below of our family House in Canaries.
On leaving Anse-La-Raye, the transition and the magic ensues. The road is up-hill down-hill, full of hairpin bends, accident-causing meandering goats, and even more breath-taking distracting scenery. (Not forgetting the snake charmer and his Boa Constrictor at $20 a stroke!)
Somewhere around Anse Galet there is change and transformation in and with the country -the dividing line between the north and south of the island. Also cheeky peeks of the magnificent Pitons become visible.
Adeline’s Art Café Canaries
Top Tip Coffee Break: Just before you get to Canaries, stop for arguably the best cup of coffee on the island, at Adeline’s Art Café – a must stop. As well as the most beautiful cup of coffee or organic juice, and delicious home-made “Black Cake,” there is wonderful art on sale painted by Adeline’s’ son.
The art and wood carvings are exceptional and of very high quality. The place is a real joy and treasure trove, it’s well worth a visit.
Adeline’s Art Café. Arts & Crafts
Adeline the proprietor is a wonderfully charming friendly lady with a magnificent warm and welcoming smile.
Adeline’s Art Café also has a high-quality Bed & Breakfast guest facility for holidaymakers and travellers.
Inside Adeline’s Art Café Canaries
Canaries Beach & Rock
Canaries is a small calm fishing village, it is located along the West Coast road, between the other fishing towns of Anse-La-Raye and Soufriere.
Canaries is very typically St Lucian, colourful, laid back, amiable, and completely unphazed about modern desires and cravings. It has an attractive picturesque beach, a sweeping coastal road, charming local bars, a very handsome old church, and very beautiful inhabitants. The people drive and walk noticeably slower in Canaries, even by St Lucian standards. There is no need to hurry, because Canaries will not speed up or change. And it’s all the better for it.
The name Kanawe is reported to come from the Native American word for cooking pots. Like most of the larger villages in St Lucia Canaries in the past had a large sugar plantation that ran inland up the valley towards the interior of the island.
A Room With A View In The Shade
Records show that most of the original settlers of Canaries came from the neighbouring island of Martinique. Which accounts for the noticeably French feel to the place and most of its citizens having French names.
Canaries Beach & Sea Cliffs. The fisherman Boats At Rest.
Canaries Looking South
Down In The Village
I bumped into one of the Knights & Dames of St Lucia in Canaries. The Guv’nor of the Ire Bar (in Gros Islet) Andy and his beautiful partner Anna. (See Blog No3)
Chilling At A Bar In Canaries
Andy & Anna were just shooting the breeze, relaxing with a drink. He told me he is a “very proud” man of Gros Islet. But he liked to “Chill and Lime” in Canaries. (“Lime” is a St Lucian word for ‘shooting the breeze,’& relaxing with friends.) He said. “He just loves the relaxed vibe of the place. It is how Gros Islet use to be in the 80’s & 90’s before the commercialisation and hotels.” And I won’t argue with that!
Canaries From The Jetty
The Church of St Anthony Of Padua
The local parish church of St Anthony Of Padua is noteworthy. Externally it’s a handsome stone building with an ingenious structural clerestory and window formation. Which provides natural light, ventilation and an airy ambience inside the space.
Internally the church is austere and simple. The traditional mahogany-coloured wooden pews seem to be the only source of colour in the spotless building.
St Anthony of Padua is the patron saint of the poor, of sailors fishermen, and lost articles amongst other things. So it seems right and fitting that this building is located in Canaries.
Charming Older Canaries Homes.
Canaries still has many charming older homes that have withstood fire, flood and hurricanes.
Rush Hour in Canaries
Really charming friendly guys, partaking in a very serious game of Dominoes. (St Lucia’s national pastime.)
Standing at the bar. I watch a game of dominoes. The guys politely ask me if I want to take a hand. Struck by sheer panic and fear I politely decline.
The noise of the dominoes crashing against the table resembles a thunderbolt hitting a mountainside. I knew I didn’t have it in me to make such a stirring noise.
There’s very little conversation during the hand – knowing looks, knocks on the table and nods of the head says it all – until the hand is complete, signified by the final last crash on the table of the winning domino issuing the coup de grâce by the victor. Then the game analysis and joshing begin, as the dominos are stirred around on the table for the next hand.
Canaries Looking North
I leave my beautiful Aunt’s house high on the slopes of the city. Today I’m deliberately attempting to get lost, but with the safety of the waterway to find my way back home.
On the bridge I pass a tall, very pretty young woman with gorgeous striking Onyx-blue complexion. Skin so smooth and exquisite as the precious stone itself. She stirringly smiled at me through the most beautifully shaped red lips and straight white teeth as she simultaneously adjusted her blue hair-curlers, which were peeking out from under a pink & white polka-dot hair net.
A Pedicure By The River (Near Rodney Bay)
She was pushing an old fashioned large black canvas spring wheeled Silver Cross pram. (obviously a hand-me-down) Which is unusual because babies in St Lucia are normally carried. I strain my neck to take a look in the pram. Pink ribbons matching her mother’s bonnet were attached to the most beautiful new born face with huge eyes that were staring back at me. It must be a girl.
The mum stops the pram and smiles and said to me. “You like babies?”
“I love them, she’s so gorgeous.” I replied.
She cheekily said in a beautiful St Lucian drawl “Well I’m not ready for any more!”
I wasn’t sure is that was a coquettish flirt, or an informative comment on a difficult birth. I chose the latter and bid her good day and quicky moved on.
Love Shack Canaries
The river level is full, the recent heavy rains have done their job, as the water is touching the grass on the banks, cutting contour shapes into the mud.
Beside the river, a woman and a young girl were seamlessly chatting and hand-washing clothes in the water – rubbing the cloth with the legendary “Blue Soap’ with their hands, and then wringing out the excess water, making that twisting mangling sound as the material is squeezed as the excess water is rung out.
I was too far away to listen-in on what they are saying. But the indecipherable chat between them, and the noise of the running water was exquisitely beautiful.
St Lucian Bath Time.
Further down the river. Captured in the beautiful morning cerulean light cutting through the trees. I watched spell bound as a mother bathed her toddler-son in the river.
He stood in the ‘washing’ of the clear-clean water, his arms clasped together above his head forming the arc of a diver, as she with boundless care and devotion poured water over him from a blue enamel basin. He cries out a laugh, as his mother tenderly pinches his nose as she traces the water down his neck and over his shoulders, As they sing and giggle together.
His skin shone and glistened with the efficacy mirrored by the sun, as if kissed by the glow of light from his mother’s baptism of love. I was so privileged to witness this sight of adoration and maternal love.
Children Playing In The River
In a place as beautiful as this, spiritual analogies come easy. “Garden of Eden.” “Beside quiet waters.” “Where peaceful waters flow.” “Wade in the water.” “Many rivers to cross.” “Down by the riverside.” “Bridge over troubled water.” All of that and more, but the indissoluble bond between mother and child was never more beautifully displayed. I was truly humbled to be in the presence of such indominable honesty in a place of such numinous beauty.
Back Home
Back home on my balcony another gorgeous golden-red sunset shows off its splendour. Night falls quickly in the tropics. So the great reveal is not for long.
I borrow from my friend Donna Brown’s description of sunset. “The incredible golden light pouring onto the earth”
As the pale-yellow globe of a tropical full moon makes its way from the back of the house towards the now purple glow-haze of the beautiful St Lucian horizon. My thoughts turn to my day at the riverside. Rivers are truly magical things. Just sitting next to one and watching it flow just eases the heart. Rivers are a constant balm that puts everything into perspective and context. That makes us realise that there’s always something new.
Sunset
Final word
I remember my aunt telling me that they would meet their friends and they would all wash, swim and bathe in the river before going to school in Canneries.
They washed their clothes and wares in the river, and the river-bank became a wash-house community where news, gossip and tales of family history were exchanged and passed on through the generations.
One can’t put a value on these magical stories passed down from the elders. All those beautiful conversations lived and shared via love, by the river.
A space where the young were apprenticed and the old were watched over. Where has the time for community and those beautiful safe places gone?
Acknowledgments:
- Kwéyòl Dictionary Ministry of Education Government of St Lucia 2001
- Lorraine Mulcahy for her love understanding!!
- Tony Nayager for corrective guidance. (He knows what I mean!)
- Geraldine Waring for additional photographs.
- Marylin St. Rose for keeping me right.
- Fenella my beautiful cousin for additional photos.
End of Reasons to be Cheerful Part Ten
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