preven
-how di
IF YOU GO to Antigua as a tourist, this is what
you will see. If you come by aeroplane, you will
land at the V. C. Bird International Airport. Vere
Cornwall (V. C.) Bird is the Prime Minister of
Antigua. You may be the sort of tourist who would
wonder why a Prime Minister would want an air-
port named after him-why not a school, why not a
hospital, why not some great public monument?
You are a tourist and you have not yet seen a school
in Antigua, you have not yet seen the hospital in
Antigua, you have not yet seen a public monument
in Antigua. As your plane descends to land, you
might say, What a beautiful island Antigua is-
more beautiful than any of the other islands you
have seen, and they were very beautiful, in their
Jamaica Kincaid
way, but they were much too green, much too
lush with vegetation, which indicated to you, the
tourist, that they got quite a bit of rainfall, and
rain is the very thing that you, just now, do not
want, for you are thinking of the hard and cold
and dark and long days you spent working in
North America (or, worse, Europe), earning some
money so that you could stay in this place
(Antigua) where the sun always shines and where
the climate is deliciously hot and dry for the four
o ten days you are going to be staying there; and
since you are on your holiday, since you are a
Courist, the thought of what it might be like for
someone who had to live day in, day out in a place
hat suffers constantly from drought, and so has to
watch carefully every drop of fresh water used
while at the same time surrounded by a sea and
n ocean-the Caribbean Sea on one side, the
atlantic Ocean on the other), must never cross
our mind.
You disembark from your plane. You go
rough customs. Since you are a tourist, a North
merican or European-to be frank, white-and
ot an Antiguan black returning to Antigua from .
urope or North America with cardboard boxes of
uch needed cheap clothes and food for relatives,
u move through customs swiftly, you move
A Small Place
through customs with ease. Your bags are not
searched. You emerge from customs into the hot,
clean air: immediately you feel cleansed, imme-
diately you feel blessed (which is to say special);
you feel free. You see a man, a taxi driver; you
ask him to take you to your destination; he quotes
you a price. You immediately think that the price
is in the local currency, for you are a tourist and
you are familiar with these things (rates of ex-
change) and you feel even more free, for things w
seem so cheap, but then your driver ends by saying,
"In U.S. currency." You may say, "Hmmmm, do
you have a formal sheet that lists official prices and
destinations?" Your driver obeys the law and shows
you the sheet, and he apologises for the incredible
mistake he has made in quoting you a price off the
top of his head which is so vastly different (favour-
ing him) from the one listed. You are driven to your
hotel by this taxi driver in his taxi, a brand-new
Japanese-made vehicle. The road on which you are
travelling is a very bad road, very much in need of
repair. You are feeling wonderful, so you say, "Oh,
what a marvellous change these bad roads are from
the splendid highways I am used to in North
America." (Or, worse, Europe.) Your driver is reck-
less; he is a dangerous man who drives in the middle
of the road when he thinks no other cars are coming
5


What do you think is the purpose of Kincaid emphasizing all the places towards us have not seen yet ?