I Ask for Strength and Guidance
On being home and musings on island hopping
Hi, hi!
So many new subscribers to these love letters now that I have officially divested myself of Instagram. I’m thankful you’re here, gifting me your sacred attention.
These days, I’m in Belize, in my grandmother’s home, caring for her in the way that she used to care for me when I was young. It is a deeply, deeply humbling experience. The circle of life is circling and, as I deep clean her house, I’m allowing myself to feel the furthest reaches of discomfort, sadness and, strangely enough, honor.
Perhaps because I spent last year caring for my mother-in-love, who left us earlier this year at 93… I loved her and…honestly, we had tenuous relationship, due to her dementia. But with my grandmother, even as her memory slips and slides, it’s different. It is my honor to care for the woman who laid the foundation of my life, even as she tuts at my complete disinterest in having children. I’m speaking to her in Garifuna and she laughs at my accent but encourages my effort. I rub her feet and she smilingly calls me ‘Mother Hen’.
There’s a number of songs from my archives that I want to share with you all, but these circumstances inspired me to share this song that I honestly haven’t listened to since I first released it in 2022. It’s from my EP, Spring Awakening and it’s called ‘Guidance’, featuring my grandmother’s honest response when I asked her what she wanted her children and grandchildren to always remember after she is gone.
At the time, I had recorded her voice over the phone simply to have access to her in moments when I couldn’t just call her up because of the massive time difference between Los Angeles and Madrid. Separately, I wrote and recorded the song in early 2021, in the midst of feeling lost, and when I later decided to record it, I wanted her words in the song as an injection of confidence and guidance. Fair warning, she’s really into Jesus, but you know what? That’s my granny right there and she was sharing her truth.
I’ve been in Belize just one week and already I’ve extended my time here in order to support my family. I have one month of stillness, cleaning, caring and learning Garifuna ahead of me. It’s a blessing to have this kind of flexibility, though I dearly miss my partner and my chosen-family in Trinidad. It’s a discomforting thing, being torn between two countries—torn between the life I have made for myself and my family of origin. Though, perhaps that’s just what it means to be an adult, especially given the roaming soul that I am.
“My niece, you travel like white people!”
This statement can mean so many things and there are so many ways to respond.
When my dear auntie said this to me, I burst out laughing because I understood what she meant. I grew up near the bus terminal in Belize City, and even now it is a common sight to see backpackers—one or two, but sometimes a hoard of them depending on the time of year. Often, they are white people with giant backpacks going to god-knows-where. I used to see them passing by and I’d wonder: where are they going? Why are their backpacks so big? What’s wrong with a suitcase?
Now I’m in my early 30s with a backpack of my own, though I’d like to think it’s moderately sized. I’ve been traveling the eastern Caribbean over the last two years and I’m often met with stares of curiosity from locals. A couple months ago, the customs officer in Wadadli (colonially known as Antigua) exclaimed “That’s all you bringing?” To which I responded, in my best Caribbean accent, “Yeh man! I just need 2 pants, 2 shirt and a bikini.”
Traveling as a solo backpacker in the Caribbean has been an intriguing experience given that I am from this region. Each island is, of course, its own country with its own uniqueness, but given the small size of these territories, their proximity to one another, and the shared history of European colonization and indigenous erasure, there is a large degree of one-ness among us. And so, I’ve witnessed people shift the way they orient towards me once they find out that I’m from Belize. On hikes, tour guides have modified their spiel once they realize I can identify a breadfruit or calabash tree, and I’ve gotten unofficial local rates in super touristy areas.
(honestly, I do feel that inflated tourist rates are a form of reparations but that’s a conversation for another day)
People ask me: why are you traveling the Caribbean? The explicit or implicit inference being, why are you here or going there when you could go to *insert American city here* to go shopping for the same price? And they’re not entirely wrong. I can tell you from experience that it is oftentimes cheaper to fly round trip from Port of Spain to Miami (just under 4 hours each way) than it is to go to Barbados (about an hour).
There are a few reasons why I island-hop, but one of the main ones is that I genuinely want to see what’s there with my own eyes. I want to get to know my region both as a tourist and as a pseudo-local. When I lived in the US and Spain, both times, but more so when I lived in Spain, I felt a strange other-ness. Meanwhile, on nearly every single island I’ve visited so far, people tend to assume that I’m local and one guy in Ichirougánaim (colonially known as Barbados) told me, “You look like a Bajan gone ’way-come back” In other words, I seemed like a Bajan from the diaspora. I had a similar reception in Hewanorra (colonially known as St Lucia) last month.
For years, I’ve struggled to articulate this feeling elicited from being recognized as one’s own. To not be ‘other’ in the way that I am in the global north. To be in an airport terminal and half the other female travelers also have their heads wrapped in colorful cloth. Here, the only reason (I presume) that people find me interesting to look at is because my hair is green and/or because I have this backpack. After living in relative isolation and other-ness in Spain, it’s deeply healing to simply be on an island as a fellow CARICOM national. Our cultures and food are so similar, our music spreads region-wide and, as I like to joke, we all take the same CXC at the same time.
(CXC is like the Caribbean version of the SAT but often taken in multiple subjects—similar to British O-levels)
Many people of African descent dream of visiting Africa. I dream of visiting every Caribbean island (and ideally climbing all their volcanoes (except the one in Montserrat—that one is extremely active and I’m not tryina die)). As a Garifuna (colonially known as ‘Black Carib’) woman, I want to soak in the lands of my ancient ancestors.
After witnessing for myself how every island can see another in the distance, I have a deeper understanding of why the British labeled the area as the “Carib Republic”. I read a 17th century account by a French solider1 of large, powerful canoes that the indigenous people utilized to traverse the islands, first for trade, and then to gather support as British and French colonizers encroached. There is even some evidence to suggest that indigenous people aided the Haitian Revolution2.
I’ve shared elements of what I’ve learned from my travels with my grandparents, and they both told me “Ahhh, Garifuna buguya”, which translates to “you are Garifuna”. To them, my roaming soul makes sense, though unusual for an unmarried woman. Even so, the affirmation is imprinted into my heart.
Until the next new moon,
~Feroza
🌱 the Spring Awakening EP is freely available on all streaming platforms, though I invite you to support me by purchasing it here
🌱 I’m steadily learning the indigenous names of every Caribbean island as I visit them
🌱 I’m cooking up a new project, but I’m holding it close a little while longer. Suffice to say, I think I have two (!!) albums in the works along with handmade merch. I shared a bit about it in this paid-only post back in December.
🌱what I’m listening to on repeat these days:
Lyrics:
Oh, ‘why is this my life?’
Do I have the strength to try?
I thought I was on to something,
A knowing deep inside
I ask for strength and guidance
I ask for yours to guide
I ask for strength and guidance
I ask for yours to guide
Oh, I cry “Why?”
I wonder, where will I go?
How will I feel when tides are low?
Without you in my life,
Without these songs in my soul,
When the earth is dried out,
And there’s nowhere to go
I wonder, can I run away?
’Cause I know a place that’s so far away
But without you in my life,
without these songs in my soul
I don’t think there’s meaning
So tell me which way to go
I wonder, I wonder
How will I know?
And I cry, ‘why is this my life?’
Do I have the strength to try?
I thought I was on to something,
A knowing deep inside
I ask for strength and guidance
I ask for yours to guide
I ask for strength and guidance
I ask for yours to guide
Palacio, Joseph O; The Garifuna: A Nation Across Borders, 2013
James, C.L.R; The Black Jacobins, 2022 (originally published in 1938)
The rates to travel throughout the Caribbean truly is a tragedy but I love to see your journey through them all! Have a blessed time at home, give your grandmother my love, and see you when you return!
Beautiful!