Granted, I’ve been locked up inside a cable head-end (hub and/or central office equivalent for those of you familiar with telephone companies or those Bill and Joanne Slowsky adds that relish the comforts of slow DSL speeds that allow them to enjoy life at their pace) for most of my time here, I have managed to mingle and observe some semblance of local life during my meals. Well, that is of course on the days that we didn’t order in so that we can keep working. I know. You guys think I just play around on my business trips and that life is grand when you’re an International Jet-Setter like D, but I’m here to tell you: sometimes I do actually have to do some work. Sometimes. This week has been one of those times.
But that has never stopped me before. Although I don’t scoff at the notion of being hampered by sleep deprivation like I may have 10 years ago, I still try to extend myself a bit for the sake of the experience. I’m almost 4,000 miles away from home in this tropical place so I’ve absolutely got to put myself in a position to soak it all in. On Friday I’ll be looking out my 6th floor window at the concrete jungle that exists below. I see that all day, every day. Sacrificing an hour of sleep here and there won’t kill me, at least not this week. In fact, I’d argue that it will probably make me live longer. Well, not skipping sleep, but the experiences. They’ll offer me perspective and enrich my spirit and garner wisdom.
But you already knew that. Providenciales has been a pretty formidable opponent thus far. Usually, I can step outside the hotel and be right up in whatever the locals are into. Not so in this place. Everything is very tidy here where I’m staying. It’s all very well manicured. The grounds of my hotel are absolutely immaculate.
There aren’t a lot of people around anywhere. I don’t think I’ve waited in line anywhere yet. Well, I didn’t, but I did see some folks waiting in a long line as I peered in through the glass door of the bank while using the ATM. But that’s a whole other issue. Perhaps we’ll revisit that later. In point of fact (I just like saying that…one of my Jamaican clients started a lot of sentences with that phrase and it always sounded really official and distinguished ), I have not had much contact with any natives. Sure, I’ve chit-chatted with some of the locals that work at the restaurants and hotels in my surrounding area, but nothing of any depth. In point of fact, no one has seemed too eager to talk about it. This seems almost absurd to me. In point of fact, nowhere but the United States of America do I ever hear less fervor when a citizen is talking about their birthplace. Sure, you might get a guy from French Lick, Indiana that may have some interesting facts to share about the town from which Larry Bird hailed, but very rarely will you talk to somebody that wells up with pride and plays up all of the finer points of the United States as a whole. Talk to a Jamaican or a Canadian about their respective countries and you won’t be able to get them to shut up. Don’t even bring a Nigerian into the conversation. In point of fact…oh, okay, I’ll cut it out. I’ve had my most interesting conversations with the expats that I am working with as they offer their often very educated analysis on why things are the way that they are here, and shared their experiences about not being made to feel that they belong here. Belong. There’s an interesting word, and oddly enough, it’s an integral part of the name that the people here call themselves (although I’ve yet to hear any of them say so). Folks in these parts are reportedly called Belongers. I read-up some on this but couldn’t get a real feel for the origin of this name, at least none with a terribly in-depth social analysis on the topic. My client explained to me that he and other expats are often made to feel like they don’t belong there on the island. That sounds a little arrogant to me. It’s even up there with Americans (of the United States) calling themselves Americans even though folks down in Central and South American would seem to be able to make a similar claim. Belongers, huh? Okay. Well, will a real Belonger please stand up?
Almost overwhelmingly, the people that I have come across on this island are from somewhere else, and I’m not just talking about the white expats from Canada and the UK (this is a British Territory). I thought it would a be fair assumption that the majority of the black people on the island would be from Turks and Caicos. I’m not sure of any actual numbers, but I can tell you that I asked waiters and waitresses if they had lived here their whole life (I couldn’t fix my mouth to ask them what I considered to be a silly question: where are you from?) and most of the time they said something other than Turks and Caicos. In point of fact, they were most often Jamaican. Second on the list were Filipinos. Yes, from the Philippines, you know, since that’s so close to here. What’s up with that? One story I got was that the actual natives don’t have a track record for being the greatest employees on the planet. So much so, that the Margaritaville chain allegedly flies in the majority of its employees from Jamaica for the 3 days a week that the cruise ships dock in the islands, and then flies them home to Jamaica. Why would they do that? Word has it that it runs even deeper than work ethic. The big companies that put most of the money into the island (hotels, resorts, and big chains like Margaritaville) want to sell an image. Sadly, since most people’s image of the Caribbean is for people to wear dreadlocks and speak like Jamaicans, that’s what these companies want them to get. Since, as I mentioned above, the locals’ accent is not a universal thing (apparently there were 4 different dialects going back hundreds of years) they can’t package that up in a manner that they deem suitable for tourist consumption.
It seems crazy, until you really take a look at the resort side of town. It is ridiculously expensive. There are no chain restaurants nor fast food options to choose from. Everything is pretty much a five star establishment. Some are better than others, but all cater to the high end. It’s all very plastic. It’s as if the board of tourism has fashioned itself to be the Palm Springs of the Caribbean. Most of the time I looked around, I was the youngest person in a restaurant by 20 years, and usually the only non-white patron.
By day 3, I was dying to get to the other side of town to see what the real natives lived like. I was getting very tired of hearing the American top 40 music from the 70s that most of the hotels looped for their soundtrack in the bars. Today that finally happened as my clients took me to a place called Da Conch Shack.
Finally, something authentically local. It was a little house with a deck right on the beach and had, arguably, one of the most breathtaking beach views
that you’ll find anywhere, looking back toward the expanse of resorts on the other end of the island. 
I was enjoying it immensely. While we were waiting for our order of Curry Conch (just like the neighboring Bahamas, everything here starts with Conch) I noticed a guy wading out into the water with a little mini boat and then submerging himself in the water. When he came back up, he was holding conch shells in each hand.
Wow! Hemingway probably sat in this same spot and gazed out upon this same process back in his “Old Man and the Sea” days. My clients let me enjoy it for a minute and then brought out the proverbial needle to burst my proverbial bubble after I had snapped all of these pictures. It turns out that this old house had not been there for 50 or 60 years. It was made to look that way.
In actuality, it was only a couple of years old. I was amazed. They had really nailed it. The story has it that there was a guy called Boogaloo, who hobbled around with limp and had a larger than life personality. He was a pretty colorful character that would do everything from swim out back to get the conch and cut them right out of the shells, to cooking, and construction of the less than “up to code” structure that was Boogaloo’s Conch Shack. This sounds like exactly where I’m trying to hang out. I imagined Boogaloo being the type of character that would leave a lasting impression on me like the very colorful Franco Graceffa , owner of Dolce Vita in Boston’s North End and his accordion playing “cantante”, or like Mama at Roscoe’s Chicken and Waffles on Pico in Los Angeles snapping at you to “get yo’ elbows offa Mama’s table!” Life seemed to be all good for ol’ Boogaloo until some expat businessman tried to come in and take Boogaloo’s Conch Shack to the big time. Allegedly, there was a dispute, one thing led to another and Boogaloo got bamboozled and in the process this place has taken the place of his place. I hope he gets back on his feet. The food at Da Conch Shack was pretty good (I had Curry Conch), so I would go again. But guess where the waitress/bartender was from? Jamaica. I did finally come across some Turks Islanders that had actually been born and raised here. They all keep saying that I need to check out a place called Smokey’s in the area called Blue Hills. For now, that is my mission: Get to Blue Hills and see some real Turks Islanders doing whatever it is that Turks Islanders do. Stay tuned.
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