Purpose of Heart

Of White Rice, Coffee, Beans and Beef!

‘The World is a book, and those who do not travel read only a page.’  ~St. Augustin

Let’s just put it this way….. I like to read! In Barbadian parlance, “Janna, you doan evuh stop home!”

T-pain blamed it on the alcohol, I blame it on wonderful parents who from the time I was in the womb, ensured that I knew more than Barbados’ 166 square miles. Almost 23 years later, Janna is on a teaching assistantship in the land of the colonel who waited forever for that letter (Gabriel Garcia Marquez), where Mona Lisa apparently went on the opposite of a diet (Fernando Botero) and where the presence of white rice, coffee, beans and beef will live on!

To travel is to discover that everyone is wrong about other countries.  ~Aldous Huxley

“You are going where!…You ain frighten you get kidnap?…Don’t do drugs!”

This is my second time in this Latin American country and I can say it almost feels like home. How? You will not find Janna Nelson trekking through known danger zones. Like anywhere else in the world when walking on the streets at night you are cautious of where you go, if with friends it becomes a stroll rather than a walk-a-thon to the nearest bus station ;)

Oddly enough, I have not been tempted with any white stuff everyone seems to equate this country with. In some areas you may smell it in passing but that is true for the Caribbean, the USA and Europe….

Crime is everywhere and too often we believe everything we see in the media. Stereotypes….don’t you in this globalized ‘learned’ age know not to believe them. If I were to offer you a plane ticket to New York or Colombia, which would you choose and why? J

If you reject the food, ignore the customs, fear the religion and avoid the people, you might better stay home.  ~James Michener