Don't call me white…

I don't know if this is a funny story or not, but at the time it was pretty funny. I was getting a drink at a beachfront bar in Antigua and had been talking to the bartender about my tattoos — a very nice conversation — when a mid-thirties white woman (tourist) wandered up from the beach.

Tourist: I'll have a Zambuca and Lime (or something like that; I can't remember exactly what she ordered)?
   (The bartender makes her drink)
Tourist: Have you ever tried this drink? It's really good!
Bartender: No, I've never tried it.
Tourist: Oh, you should try it! I know you'd like it!
Bartender: No, I really wouldn't.
Tourist: Well why not? You'd really like it!
Bartender: I'm a Rastafarian.
Tourist: Rasta-what? What's that?
Bartender: Rastafarian? You know, like Bob Marley.
Tourist: What's that got to do with anything? I'm sure you'd like it.
Bartender: We don't drink.
Tourist: Oh, why would you want to be like that?
Bartender: You have to have a pure body to have a pure spirit, you know, clean living?
Tourist: That doesn't sound very nice at all. What else don't you do?
Bartender: I'm a vegetarian.
Tourist: Oh, how sad!
Bartender: Enjoy your drink, ma'am.

Given that many Rastafarians are vegetarians bordering on vegan, I was always surprised at how strange veganism seems to people in the islands… They appreciated it I think, but it took some back and forth for me to explain the basic concepts when I was ordering food and so on. (In hindsight I'm thinking they may just have been unfamiliar with the terms; I probably should have just said “what food do you have that's appropriate for a Rastafarian diet?”)

Tourists on the other hand were almost hostile to it… At one meal when I ordered a vegan dish the guy sitting across from me started tossing indirect insults and spent the rest of the night glaring at me — like I was somehow harming him in not joining him in eating steak. Even those people who weren't overtly hostile about it tossed out an attitude of “what the hell is wrong with you, not eating meat” when they'd overhear my requests.

Wow Shannon, that's really annoying! What is it, 1997 on Geocities? Retroweb is NOT cool!

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