To lime or not to lime…..

maz felt very welcome!

 our last day in Grenada is upon us so before depart to the most eastern of the Caribbean islands, Barbados, tomorrow we thought that we’d give you all and update on our last week here.

the title of this post has connections to the local phase which has become a bit of a mantra for us since arriving in the capital ‘St Georges’ last Monday. 'Liming' or to 'Lime' really means to chill out, relax with friends or to do nothing in particular other than enjoy yourself.

street vendors make use of all available space

so we're pleased to report that over the last week we have been mostly 'Liming' at the cricket, a match at the national stadium between the West Indies and England which, as with normal test matches, took place over five full days so therefore there was plenty of time to ‘Lime’.

we arrived in St Georges to stay with a couple who we had literally ‘bumped into’ on the beach, we suppose you could say that they were 'Liming' on the beach when we got chatting to them and told them our story about staying on the YWAM base and working for a charity in  South Africa. we also mentioned that we had yet to secure accommodation nearer to the cricket ground, and to cut a long story short they invited to contact them later in the week, where they kindly offered us a bed.

maz liming

we couldn’t have happened on such a wonderful couple as Richard and Angela who have not only made us welcome in their home, but made sure that we have eaten well and caught our local bus into town each morning.

it seems that Richard has had a varied career, he currently does some training sessions locally and leads worship at the local evangelical church, he also hosts a weekly radio show, where we even got a mention last week, he's the sort of person who everyone knows with many contacts and a never silent phone! 

buses (think south african taxi) at the terminal

Angela heads up a local charity (called New Horizons) working with the poorer communities around St George, they focus on helping adults learn to read and write as well as ensuring that the older people in the community have their health needs met.

it’s funny how God connected us with people with a similar passion, we suppose we shouldn’t be surprised as He has proved before, 'He has all things in His hands', although at times we can be too busy and miss those opportunities we are so glad to have made contact on a remote beach miles away from Richard and Angela’s’ home for such a time as this!

but when the sun shone it really made for some good lime time

as we said most of our 'Liming' has taken place between 9.45am and 6pm each day during our time at the cricket, it has to be said that both teams are at a low ebb at the moment but to see the support given to the England team from their fans and supporters who are commonly known as ‘the Barmy Army’ is a testimony to the ‘never say die’ attitude of an English sports fan. it was a little disappointing to see a low turnout from the local’s, however they were probably 'Liming' somewhere more interesting.

that said the local support was nothing but a riot of colour and music with a steel band, exuberant drummers and dancers attending each day and even as England hit the winning runs late in the afternoon of day five they were still singing and playing their rhythmic, if not somewhat repetitive, beat!

yellow bakkie!

one of our highlights of this trip has been the friendliness of the people, our days started early in the morning with a local bus (think South African taxi) journey with up to 15 other people into the bus terminal, again think of Cape Town’s taxi rank with literally hundreds of Toyota mini buses jostling for custom and position, all fitted with extra seats to cram as many people as possible into these projectiles which thunder along the tight and very hilly roads which cover the whole island. it has occured to us that the only people on the island who aren't 'Liming' are the bus drivers and how there aren’t more crashes no one knows.

queues at the public bus terminal 

once at the terminal we have had the pleasure of walking away from the hustle and bustle of the town of St George along a road with busy little shops and market stalls on one side and the beautiful Caribbean sea on the other. traffic is noisy with horns beeping but the fans travelling to the ground are busy chatting away with the expectation of the days play on their lips.

bring on the covers, again

the National Stadium is quite an impressive structure, which was rebuilt after hurricane Ivan ripped through Grenada in 2004 , and has great stands on three sides of the ground, our seats are  perched high with a good view of the scoreboard and replay screens, which operate on an adhoc bases, and with no local radio coverage this was one of the things that made it harder for Maz, who was attending her first test match, to follow the proceedings.

barmy army celebrate joe root's century 

the first couple of days were very very slow with some unexpected rain halting proceedings on a number of occasions, the local's blamed us for bringing it from England! however it was great to see little Joe Root hit a wonderful 182 not out, coming on St Georges day when we were in St Georges was equally special.

maz engaging in a five day test!

Maz continued to make a real effort to engage with the game and has, via the use of her newly purchased binoculars, a hearty knowledge of the intricacies of Johnathan Trotts interesting antics before he readies himself to face another ball or Shivarine Chanderpaul’s crab like stance (neither of these performed too well during this test and we would be surprised if Trott is playing when we see them again this coming Friday) and she was equally vocal as Jimmy Anderson literally turned the game on its head on the fifth morning with a performance with the second new ball on a lifeless pitch.

the local people sitting around us were so welcoming, allowing us to try lots of their home made food, each day more and more on offer as they encouraged us to ‘Lime’ with them. we also met up with some great English fans as well and to cheer on the side with lots of local banter was great.

maz enjoying some local fare..

we will be very sorry to leave this wonderful island, full of colour, flavours and smiling faces but we will be back, soon we hope, however as we have been enjoying ourselves we are very aware that the world has been hit by some major disasters since we last updated our blog, so we know that everything isn’t all as rosy as life here in Grenada is for us, so we send our thoughts to those affected by the earthquake in Nepal, the avalanche on Everest, the unrest in Burundi and the continuing issues the plague those escaping Africa for the ‘dream of living in Europe’ and obviously South Africa (on their 'freedom day' today especially)

so as we finish this section of our journey we are already planning our next trip where England are due to play the West Indies in February and March 2019, if you wanna join us 'Liming'  in 2019 then you’d best start saving now!