Still no room for Fibonacci I’m afraid. He’ll keep, but things keep happening to me here that require immediate telling.
Every other Monday I go to the hospital in George Town to have my blood tested. Later in the week I visit my GP and I sit in terrified silence while she stares, expressionless and silent at her computer screen for a couple of minutes. There’s only one reading that I’m frightened to hear. It’s the only reading I’m interested in hearing and she knows that and so she takes her time.
Recently, she has introduced a new weapon into her arsenal of delaying tactics: the phone call. Twenty seconds after she starts staring at the screen her phone rings. Always. It happens every time. It can’t be coincidence. She gives me a sort of apologetic look and picks up the receiver.
“Yes ……… yes ……… give him four …… no … oh no, two won’t be enough …… not with that nasty discharge …. long pause during which she looks at me and raises her eyebrows in a gesture of resigned apology ……………. OK ….. yes … no, yes tell me now. I’m in no rush … no …. I’ve got a patient with me but he won’t mind waiting …… No, really ………. He’s been in the waiting room for an hour and a half already so a few more minutes won’t matter .………………...………………..……. Right ………. OK then. Bye.”
She puts the phone down. “Where were we?”
It’s my haemoglobin level I’m waiting for. I really don’t care if my sodium is high or the potassium appraisal is abnormal or even if the tacrolimus reading is deviant. Those problems can all be put right by tinkering with the quantity of the pills I take or by modifying my diet.
But, if my haemoglobin level drops below 10, I can look forward to extreme pain twice a week. I will have to receive injections and the accompanying grief is considerable. It’s not the needle that hurts; it’s the fluid as it enters my tender, delicate and very soft tissue. Yes, I am a wimp. The fact that Caroline administers the jabs and witnesses my total lack of machismo just makes things worse.
I was walking out through the main passage of the hospital on Monday morning, having bravely relinquished my five phials of blood, when I was accosted by ‘Beyoncé’ and ‘Kate Beckinsale’ lookalikes. They had been sitting on a bench and as I approached, Kate stood up blocking my path. She stared at my chest and read aloud what was printed on my t-shirt.
Don’t take your organs to heaven as heaven knows we need them here
She gave me a smile. “Are you a donor?” she asked, breathlessly.
“Not yet. I’m a recipient. Liver,” I said.
“Oh, that’s so cool. Look at this,” she said to Beyoncé, pointing at my shirt.
Beyoncé stood up and so there I was, standing with the two most beautiful women I’d seen since I’d left home an hour earlier. (That should get me out of doing the washing up for a day or two).
“Is he all OK?” asked Beyoncé.
“Who?”
“The guy whose liver you got.”
Someone, tongue in cheek, once wrote in an article about living in Grand Cayman, “We have no poverty or beggars. It's too expensive here to be poor. Poor people can't afford to live in Cayman.”
It’s not true, of course but it’s not so far from the truth either. Caymanians like to describe their home as an ‘Island in the Caribbean’ and not a ‘Caribbean Island’.
There is a difference between those two descriptors and it is not subtle. Apart from the climate, Cayman has very little in common with other islands in the region. We are isolated. The nearest land from us is Cuba 150 miles to the north and Jamaica 220 miles to the southeast and we are some 250 miles from mainland South America.
Kurt Tibbetts, when Leader of Government Business a couple of years ago, said that, “It is an immense source of pride to Government – and should be for Caymanians as well – to learn that we have the lowest rate of poverty in the entire Caribbean.”
Most Caribbean islands show signs of extreme social deprivation and poverty. The National Assessment of Living Conditions study indicated that only 1.9% of the population in the Cayman Islands, about 1,000 people, live below the poverty line. Cayman’s 1.9% poverty level compares with 9.3% in the Bahamas, the next lowest and that is closely followed by the British Virgin Islands at 11%. Our unemployment rate is one of the lowest in the World at below 4%.
Absolute poverty is very different from relative poverty which is the condition of having fewer resources or less income than others within a society or country. Definitions of poverty vary considerably among nations. Rich nations generally employ higher benchmarks when measuring standards of poverty than poor nations do. In the UK 14% live below the poverty line while in the US it is 12%.
In Cayman the majority of those classified as poor, are non–Caymanians. The 1000 poor people living in Cayman tend to be unskilled workers from Jamaica, Cuba and various South American countries particularly Honduras.
The fact that these migrant workers continue to live here in such relatively poor conditions says a lot about the situation in the countries that they have left. Kurt Tibbetts once explained this by saying that many of them choose to live in poverty because they send the bulk of their earnings back home.
Cayman is a British Overseas Territory with, until recently, very little crime or poverty. It has a sophisticated infrastructure and a reputation as one of the cleanest, safest and most well connected, luxury holiday destinations on Earth. The Cayman Islands have enjoyed astonishing capital growth in the last thirty years or so.
You might be wondering what the state of the Cayman Islands has to do with Kate and Beyoncé. “Everything” is the answer
A group of about 100 young people from a Christian church organisation in southern California descended upon Grand Cayman last Sunday to do God’s work. This included several activities that in most developed countries are done by government or volunteers.
‘Kate’ and ‘Beyoncé’ are two of that contingent. At 7:45 on Monday morning I was the first Caymanian they had met.
“Are you a visitor?” asked Kate.
“Well, I don’t work at the hospital,” I said, “and so I am a visitor but I live here and so I’m not a visitor in the way I think you mean it.”
“Oh, you’re English,” said Beyoncé, smiling and showing dazzling white, perfect teeth. “How cute. We’re here to do all we can to help you.”
“Why?” I asked.
“Because it’s what The Lord wants,” Beyoncé said, smiling more broadly than ever.
“Does He? Wouldn’t He prefer to have you doing His work and helping in Haiti or Cuba or Mexico? They need assistance more than we do.”
“We’re here for the children too,” said Kate.
“What!” I exclaimed. “Have you seen the children here? Many of them are overweight. A lot of them are fat and many of them are obese. Does your church know what’s going on in Haiti? Do you ever watch the news or read a newspaper? The best thing you could do for Caymanian kids is to blockade Burger King and Wendy’s. Mexico’s a neighbour of yours. Why don’t you go and help them? We don’t need you here. It’s like a group of English people going off to help the poor in Switzerland.”
“We’ve also come to spread love,” Kate said, clearly a little taken aback by my vehemence.
“Well, that’s different,” I said, trying to smile, softening my tone. “You can spread all the love you want.”
“Come here,” said Beyoncé, throwing one arm around my neck and the other around Kate who was moving in, obviously well aware of the procedure.
I stood there with my arms by my sides being hugged by two beautiful women.
“Hug us too,” ordered Beyoncé, stepping back a pace. “Share our love.”
We stood there, locked together cheek to cheek, cheek to cheek, cheek to cheek for a long time. Nobody spoke. People were passing by and were giving us strange looks. A nurse I see quite often walked past and mumbled, “Good morning Mister Terry.” I nodded at her. Beyoncé and Kate carried on hugging.
I suffer from an arthritic knee and cannot stand still for very long and after perhaps two minutes I was beginning to feel real pain. I tried to break their grips but they were expert huggers. In the end I had to cry out,
“Enough! That’s enough love. My leg hurts.”
They pulled away. Kate looked at me intently.
“May God bless you,” she said.
“I think he just did,” I said.
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