San Francisco-based creative director George McCalman immigrated to the United States in the early 1980s from Grenada. He recently returned to the small Caribbean island of 110,000 and documented his trip on Instagram. The shots, shown here, defy Thomas Wolfe’s assertion that you can’t go home again.
Grand Anse Beach is the best-known (and most touristy) of Grenada’s beaches. But at the far end, locals come to relax and play.
My grandfather was one of 22 children. Twenty years ago, my family had a reunion in celebration of his remaining siblings. We rented out a “rhum-running” boat from the carenage, St. George’s waterfront promenade. I had too much to drink and threw up over the side of the boat. My grandmother took me home and nursed me. I was mortified. The story has become legendary in our family.
Today, my grandmother requested that I accompany her to church at St. George’s Anglican. She has an elderly ladies’ group that picks her up and drops her off every Sunday. The conversations I overheard were devout, philosophical, political, and also x-rated.
Grannie and I went to the fish market. Today’s catch: snapper and tuna.
We ate curried goat, stewed peas, green banana, salt fish pie with cheddar cheese, dasheen (a type of taro), and sweet potatoes with lime juice.
In preparation for my cousin Fayola’s wedding, my other cousins and I treated my grandmother to a morning at the spa. She got her hair done and a mani-pedi. When she got home, she tied up her hair, grabbed a giant knife, and continued scaling fish.
My grandparents had adjoining bedrooms. My Grandmother said it was the secret to their 60-plus-year marriage. I was always mesmerized by the color of these walls as a kid. She gave away a lot of his clothes after he died, but she kept his favorite bathrobe and work jacket.
I attended St. Mary’s Junior School until I was 8, when my mother and I moved to Brooklyn. The school in St. George’s has been renamed, but I saw these kids pouring out of the building in the early afternoon. Check out the sassafras in the center. She is T-R-O-U-B-L-E.
I visited my Grandfather’s grave today. I got caught in a rainstorm and had to huddle next to this woman, Fernanda. Turns out she knew my grandfather, Rex Holder, from his days as a bartender in the ‘50s. She said she enjoys coming to the cemetery to “visit with the dead.”
While I was on Paradise Beach in Carriacou, I came upon these dogs bathing in the ocean. They jumped in and out of the water for over an hour, as if they didn’t want to leave—I know the feeling.
>> Next: The Caribbean Island Tourists Overlook and Locals Love
