Nelle's Stuff

The photo below is of the church gates. The white statues atop the pillars (which are actually bronze underneath the white paint) are of St John the Baptist and St John the Devine and are believed to have been taken from one of Napoleon's ships.
When we wandered into the cathedral to have a look at the interior, we happened across a rehearsal for an upcoming girls’ high school graduation ceremony. As their names were called, the girls took turns in walking up to the front, curtseying, shaking their teacher’s hand and pretending to take their certificates. By the cheering of their peers, one would almost have thought it was the actual graduation ceremony! It was actually quite strange for me as it seemed that about every fourth or fifth girl was named Janelle. As usually I often don’t come across many other Janelles this was very peculiar! Antigua – home of the Janelles!

Next stop on our adventure was the Museum of Antigua and Barbuda. “Antigua and Barbuda” is actually the full name of this country which is comprised of these two islands (and actually a few other smaller ones, but who’s counting). The museum is housed in a beautiful big old building. However, once you enter the building it seems rather small and consists of only two rooms of exhibits and a gift shop. Despite the small proportions and obvious layout of the building, a museum volunteer still considered it necessary to explain the layout of the museum and inform us of the best way to see all that it has to hold (“First you walk anticlockwise around this room, then you can have a look through the gift shop, and then you can look through this other room. After that, you can sign the guestbook and make a donation.”). She also delighted in informing us that unlike other museums we could actually take photos inside the building.

The first few exhibits were of different types of rocks, and then there were some pieces of old cooking implements and weapons found through archaeological excavation. These were quite interesting, but unfortunately there was little explanation provided to explain what it was we were looking at. Then we saw a replica of a typical Arawak hut (the Arawaks were one of the first tribes to live on Antigua) which was quite cute.

The most interesting (but disturbing) exhibits were those of the island’s sugar plantation and slavery history. It is absolutely deplorable and difficult to conceive how people could treat other people so very very badly. They have pictures showing how tightly the slaves were squeezed into ships to be brought here from Africa, and of the torture instruments used to discipline them. They also have copies of slave auction posters and of receipts for their sale. At one stage, over 90% of the islands inhabitants were slaves. Although there were a few recorded attempts at rebellion, the slaves were only freed in 1807 when English parliament finally made it illegal for any Briton on the planet to trade in slaves. As you can imagine, the vastly outnumbered plantation owners feared for their lives when the slaves were set free. However, instead of seeking retribution for their years of suffering, the newly freed slaves headed to church to thank God for their freedom. Makes it pretty clear what remarkable people they were.

After leaving the museum, and walking along the hot city streets (taking care not to fall into any of the gutters!), we decided it was time for a drink, and stumbled across Hemmingway’s Caribbean Café. Hemmingway’s is a gorgeous little second-floor café overlooking one of the city’s busy intersections. It was nice being able to watch the goings on in the streets below us without having to deal with the occasional smelly gusts from the streets’ open gutters! In fact, we liked the place so much, we took Dave and Mack back there for dinner that night!

After our drink at Hemmingway’s we ducked into a few shops for a look-see, and then decided it was time to meet up with our other halves for lunch.

The walk back to the office under the Antiguan sun, with the Antiguan humidity (much like Ipswich really) was quite a hike and by the time we got there we were practically drenched! After getting a bite of lunch, we couldn’t wait to get back to the cottages to have a shower and get into some fresh clothes!

posted by Nelle @ 8:29 am