One of the things I have become used to about living where I live is that as soon as people discover you live on an Island in the Caribbean they instantly assume your life must be perfect. I’m not sure why, because the opposite didn’t happen. When I lived in the middle of the Canadian Prairies (which are actually absolutely delightful, but nevertheless people who haven’t been there tend to think they would be a horrible place to live) nobody ever assumed my life must be a disaster.
In any case, I’ve gown used to conversations that go something like this.
New Friend : Where do you live?
Me: Grand Cayman.
New Friend: Oh, you are so lucky. That must be amazing.
Me: Yes it is, but it has its down sides.
New Friend: As if! Don’t try and pretend you could have any hardships at all in your life. You are so lucky. Why aren’t I as lucky as you are. Boo hoo my life is terrible.
Me: Actually I don’t think we’re going to be new friends after all.
In an effort to head off those kinds of conversations I’m now going to tell you some of the worst things about living here over the next few columns and let you make your own judgement about if it’s worth it or not.
Firstly, this month I’m going to complain about the weather. You might be expecting me to say that the risk of hurricanes for half of the year is the worst. Or perhaps it’s the risk of tidal waves that comes from living on an Island where the highest point is 3 meters above sea level. (Well, technically the highest point is 6 meters above sea level but since that refers to the top of the rubbish tip we try not to mention that, it tends to tarnish the mental image of a “beautiful tropical paradise” which we are hoping will convince you to come over and spend all of your tourist dollars.)
No, the problem weather issue is simply the rain during the rainy season. Now, I know you folks have had a bit of rain here and there lately and you probably think you know how I feel but what you’ve had is nothing compared to the full-on always-raining rainy-ness of the rainy season here. It is so rainy that our flat little island, with nowhere for drainage to flow, is often knee deep in water and everything grinds to a halt. (A halt can be hard to differentiate from the standard caribbean go-slow but it is a bit more complete and usually lasts until the rain finally finds a place to drain. Then the halt is over and everybody goes back to go-slow pace.)
All that rain also means the greenery that contributes to our lovely tropical gardens is currently out of hand and growing like crazy. I keep getting lost because places I don’t go to for a week look so different I can no longer recognize landmarks. Also, there’s no point having beautiful beaches if it’s always raining. Even though I love beaches in the rain it’s frankly way too cold to go out and enjoy them at the moment. Honestly, a couple of recent days it has got as cold as the low 70s and that’s obviously sweater weather not beach weather.
Most importantly though, it is so rainy that the humidity created between rain storms is overwhelming. If you sit still long enough (and long enough is anything more than 15 minutes on some days) mold starts to grow between your toes. It certainly grows everywhere else; ceilings, walls, clothes, books-especially books of scales and other exercises that rarely get opened. Perhaps that last one is The Universe trying to tell me something?
For a long time I used to feel smug about the humidity. After all, everyone else I know at the moment is busy turning on their humidifiers and worrying about wood cracks and brittle sound boards and all sorts of stuff that I could just ignore. A couple of weeks ago though, it became obvious that the humidity was completely out of control here. My fiddle started to sound as though it was suffocating; no projection, no sweetness, just a big dull dead wad of sound falling from the strings whenever I played. And my bow? Well, there is no bad-hair day that can compete with a bad-bow-horse-hair-day! The poor thing looked pathetic and my fiddle sounded pathetic. It was time to stop feeling smug and finally do something. So, on the advice of my awesome teacher I decided I had best go out and buy a hygrometer to confirm it was a humidity issue first, and then, logically, I’d need a dehumidifier as well.
Oddly, given that this is a tropical island, it was extremely hard to actually find a hygrometer for sale. I guess everyone just assumes it is “way humid today man” and “who needs to measure it precisely”? One of the other, lesser, problems with living here, is that it is often hit or miss to buy things. Stores all sell a hodge-podge of whatever they happened to feel like selling today, and stock levels vary widely depending on how recently the last container ship came to town. Amazon.com is no help either, it routinely takes 8 weeks for 3 day packages to find us. (Being shut off from Amazon.com has actually saved me a lot of money though so I shouldn’t really complain about that.) In any case, I finally tracked a hygrometer down in the orchid growers section of the local nursery. Unfortunately, unlike the neat little digital units my US friends had, the Orchid Hygrometer was a giant wildly colored plastic disc. I felt as though I was in a scene from a Scooby Doo cartoon looking at it. (I would have gotten away with blaming the humidity on a ghost too, if only those pesky kids hadn’t meddled in my affairs!) I wasn’t totally convinced that the Scooby-hygrometer would tell me the truth, but even allowing for a bit of inaccuracy it was horrifying to look and see that the humidity in my living room was 85%. Poor Fiddle!! Poor Bow! No wonder nothing sounded right.
Off I went back to the shops to work out who would sell me a dehumidifier. Shouldn’t be too hard though, I thought, because the ocean is less than 2 miles away from anybody’s front door so surely dehumidifiers would be easy enough to buy. Three days and many, many frustrating conversations later I finally had a tiny one. It had come from the local bedding supplier, and was the only style available. Weirdly though there were 4 styles of humidifier available. I wondered if someone’s finger had slipped on the keyboard when ordering dehumidifiers or if there was something going on that I didn’t understand. Perhaps people were hoping to turn their houses into virtual swimming pools by increasing the already rampant humidity? Anything is possible in the Caribbean so I just took my little machine home, turned it on and waited patiently for my humidity problem to be solved.
And waited. And waited. And waited. Nope, not even close to making a difference, so off I went to tour the shops again-perhaps a container ship had come in in the mean time and somebody might have something for me. Eventually I wound up back at the very first shop I had tried and asked a different sales person for help. This one sweetly sent me to a giant display of huge effective-looking dehumidifiers which just so happened to be on the opposite side of the shop to the mini-dehumidifiers and humidifiers that I had found before. Who on earth knows why that seemed a sensible way to display their stock to them? I didn’t care because I had my dehumidifier.
Thankfully my humidity problems are basically solved now. The level sits around 55% with the new machine running 24 hours a day. I’ve named it Horace. Owning Horace is a little bit like having a pet cat actually. He takes up more space than seems reasonable, eats (electricity) at a ridiculous rate, makes annoying noises at all hours of the night (Why does the bucket always seem to fill at 3 am? Why is the bucket-full alarm beep more piercing than any alarm clock I have ever owned?) and Horace constantly needs me to be emptying his waste tray. But, like a cat with vermin, Horace is taking care of my humidity so I am prepared to put up with him. Most importantly, my fiddle is singing again and that is really all I care about.
One nice benefit of the Great Dehumidifier Hunt though is that I now have a tiny spare one for other spot dehumidification jobs. Which is handy because one of the other things about our weather is that the rain comes unexpectedly. Perfectly clear blue skies can dump 30 minutes of rain on you out of, literally, the blue. Which is what happened today while I was shopping, with the roof down on my car. Sigh, I’m sure it will dry out eventually, and in the meantime I have this great little dehumidifier to help with that. See, my life in the Caribbean really isn’t perfect. (But even I will admit it’s pretty close most of the time!)
Our Sponsors
