uk_grenada

https://womenwholiveonrocks.com/25-w...pen-in-cayman/

Gordon Barlow

Yes indeed! She got most things right, but a few wrong or only partly right.

Her item 1: Staycations have been offered by hotels, condos and air-b -& b only since the lockdown - in March last year when the borders closed and the tourism industry was destroyed. No tourists since then, and none on the horizon yet. Some of our richer residents - and there are plenty of them - had to forgo their usual trips to the US, and decided to stay at local hotels with the money they saved in airfares etc.


Item 7: the supermarkets have people specifically hired to scour the Island and bring the carts back from the bus-stops and homes where they're left!

Item 9: Our Post Offices haven't been receiving any overseas mail since the lockdown. Well, a bit, but not much at all. In normal circumstances, there's plenty of junk-mail! There is no street delivery of mail, so most of us do have mailboxes - although many of the boxes serve several people. When I first came here, I used my employer's box - and for a year or more after that, until I got my own.

Item 14. Gaelic Football was the origin (150 years or so ago) of Australian Rules football, the #1 sport in Oz. So every Aussie of sporting age plays the Gaelic, and every irish, and a few barmy other expats.

Item 22: it depends on the humidity. I myself - being bald - wear a woollen beanie to bed when the temp falls to 75. Last night I got the blanket out of cold storage (well, you know what I mean) for the first time this winter.

Item 24: Ah, she's absolutely wrong about having no taxes. We have a plethora of taxes - dozens of taxes - just no Income Tax or corporate profits-tax. The $9 she pays for her romaine lettuce (three to a package) includes $1.50 or so Import Duty.

And one thing she forgot to mention is that our dollars are worth US$1.20. That dates back to the 1950s or '60s when Cayman used the Jamaican Pound which was worth US$2.40, the same as the British pound. Later, we were allowed to cut loose from the Jamaican currency and to have our own currency notes and coins; each dollar was worth US$1.20. We don't have a Central Bank so the Cayman dollar has no value (is not recognised) outside our Islands, and is forever tied to the USD. It's a coupon-currency, in reality.

Item 25: one is more likely to pick up Jamaican or Caymanian slang and speech-patterns than anything else. Those are our two biggest ethnic groups by far, of the 100-odd nationalities resident here.

Anyway, I'm glad she likes it here, this "Kate Amigo". I like it after living here for 43 years. Especially, these days, I like the absence of masks and social-distancing. The other day our politicians upped the crowd-limit from 500 to 1000. That was thoughtful of them...