Grenada, St-Lucia + Kiskeyan Caciquess+ Aesthetically challenged Dad

Georgia in Grenada and St Lucia
Georgia Popplewell has been off from Global Voices this week touring the Caribbean. Thankfully, she is taking us along for the ride through lovely updates on her blog:

• Sent Lisi: Kweyol Lessons
  This appears to be about Creole but it is also about condoms and differences in how they're sold in St-Lucia and Trinidad.
  
• Her Grenada Flickr Photo Journal
• But most of all, her musings on Grenada's Chinese Village at GV.
  






Kiskeyan "Caciquess" Anacaona.
Cover of Edwidge Danticat's The Royal Diaries.

Djaloki to my Kiskeyan Caciquess
Also, among recent updates to my Caribbean Blogroll (bottom right of the home page) are

• Djaloki's Pawol Apranti-Saj whose earliest post (2004) predates any Haiti-based Haitian blog I've been aware of. The difference between he and (the now defunct) Haitian Mofo or Yon Ayisyen however is that he 1)blogs in all three of the Haitian languages (French/Creole/English) and 2) blogs almost exclusively about spiritual matters unlike the other two who are pundits. Now that he's called me a Kiskeyan Caciquess (!), you know I'm converting to his PARADIGM SHIFT FACILITATION. I must admit, I'm not altogether clear what it is but it sounds very poetic. I mean his life calling is
  

  
  Activating Postmodern Cultural Keys for Global Balance and Sustainability.

  
  
  Which he breaks down further into:

  - Transconsciencing- Metamidwifing- Wholikeying- Globainment (and related Globainability) [for Global Balance and Sustainability]- Syshamanism (for systemic shamanism)- Key Mending

  
  Priceless.

• What is a Kiskeyan Caciquess, you ask? I know Djaloki has his own explanation for it that cannot possibly be as literal as this one but: Kiskeya= One of Haiti's many Taino/Arawak names and Caciques =what native Taino/Arawaks called the kings of the kingdoms the island was subdivided into. I believe there were 5 such kingdoms when Columbus arrived but I'm no historian. Caciquess is therefore Djaloki's adaptation of the word Cacique to my gender. *Swoon*

Handy but Aesthetically Challenged Dad

• Gary Dauphin, former Village Voice writer, says in his blog's "about me" section that his family is from Haiti. So I wrote and asked: "Can I add you to my Haitian Diaspora blogroll?" to which he acquiesced. I found this gem of a quote on his handy but aesthetically-challenged dad in the Haiti category of his blog, in a post titled Eye and Hand of the Father:

  on the crucial question of aesthetics we will likely remain at loggerheads. My dear old dad, you see, did not much believe in beauty. For example, to my great chagrin he made my first bicyle out of a pile of parts he had collected at the no-joke, actual junkyard. The thing worked fine but was a mess to look at - seat, frame, spokes and handle-bars a mish-mash of styles and eras, states of disrepair and decay. I had to force him to put a new seat on (he was going to throw this crazy, gold-speckled banana seat he had found back in the junkpile), and it was another ordeal getting him to paint the thing a single color. I think he could have turned me on to the pleasures of symetrical ownership and sourcing sooner (i.e., pre-posthumously) if he had been less engineer and more artist, but therein lies the tale, right?

  Right.

Gary Dauphin - Djaloki - Saint Lucia - Grenada - Kiskeya - Cacique - Caribbean - Haiti - Haitian Diaspora - Haitian-American

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