For North Americans vacationing in the Caribbean Islands, it seems to be an ideal lifestyle, but their Caribbean counter parts believe that the grass is greener on the other side.

One of my childhood memories of growing up in Guyana, was the excitement our family felt whenever a piece of mail arrived from North America. Between the smell of Air Mail, and the contents in the envelope or parcel, I couldn’t wait to read the letters out loud to my family, or to dress in my new garments that were sent by an Aunt or Uncle. When post cards would arrive, I'd fantasize of one day being in the scene of the card. I would search the cards for images of places that I’d want to visit once I got there, and when no one was looking.....well, I just hid them in my special drawer of favorite and precious treasures.

My curiosity as to whether my neighbors felt the same way got the better of me, so I kept an open ear. It was always quite easy to hear your neighbor’s conversations without eaves dropping. I later found out that they had exactly the same enthusiasm whenever they received mail or parcels from North America. It was excitement, followed bragging to each other, even me. So I would endure mostly the bragging of how their family members were in colleges while working, about the discos, the supermarkets filled with foods, the snow, and of course the cool clothing. This would sometimes be followed by photographs of their residing relatives posing by sculptures, tall building, foods, and dressed to the nines. I can recall hearing phrases like, “Here’s my cousin, that Cat is cool!, just look at his duds, he’s got everything because in America things are cheap and plentiful, and people make a lot of money.” My eyes would pop out of my head in wonderment.

In the end America lives up to its portrayal of some of those things. I am sure the first immigrants felt similarly to the current ones here in this country. But just for the record, we do not pick up money from the streets, and there is no gold lying around. With hard work, dreams can come true. And we must pay for all those clothing and groceries in the supermarket. Even the ones imported form the Caribbean.

For a Caribbean food blog site, please click on the link below.