Barbados: Bluenosers Search for Animal Flower Cave

Keith meets Shelley. An instant connection.

The man was sitting alone at the end of a bench inside the Speightstown, Barbados bus terminal. Behind him some teenagers were hanging out at the FLOW cellphone booth. The cool, shaded terminal was a welcome respite from a burning sun.

He appeared to be nodding off, so I hesitated before deciding to approach him.

“Pardon me, sir. Hello?”

He stirred.

“Can you tell me if the bus to Animal Flower Cave leaves from Gate 5?”

He lifted his head and looked at me with drowsy eyes. “You going to the Cave? Now?”

“Yes, my wife and I were told to look for the Connell Town bus. Is this the right gate?”

He stood up and pointed to the bench.

Searching for the right bus at the Speightstown terminal.

“You sit right here. Is that your wife? Go get her. You sit right here. I’ll show you. I live where the bus stops.”

He spreads his hands on the bench to show how close he lives to the bus stop.

We sat down and struck up a conversation with Mr. Keith Michael Vancooten.

“Vancooten,” I say. “That sounds like a Dutch name.

“Yes, my father was a Dutchman.”

Like most Bajans we’ve met in our two trips to this eastern Caribbean paradise, our new friend jumped at the chance to help us. He had a pleasant demeanour, but grew agitated at my repeated queries about gate numbers and departure times.

Keith giving directions.

“Don’t worry ’bout that,” he’d snap. “You sit here. Come with me on the bus.”

“Don’t worry ‘bout that. You come with me.”

“But what time does…”

“Just sit by me. I’ll take you to my house.”

“But how long until…”

“You relax. Don’t worry ’bout that.”

Clearly, my North American anxiety over punctuality and schedules was starting to piss him off.

“So have you lived in Barbados your whole life?” asked Shelley.

“Yes, my whole life. Except for working the boats after the war. And I turn 93 in September.”

Sensing our disbelief (we both had him pegged for maybe 70 or 75) he produced his government ID.

We needed proof that Keith is actually 93!

“That’s me, see? Born 29-09-1925. It says so right here.”

I did the math. Yup. 93 in September.

“You must lead a clean life and eat really well,” I suggested. You don’t look your age.”

“Yes, I eat good, but not the last few weeks,” he said, patting his stomach. “Not feeling good here, but getting better… yes, much better.”

A lady in a tight pink skirt walks by, glances at Keith and offers a wide smile. He nods back with a grin. “I know her from church.”

We asked him about his career and family. He was a bus mechanic for more than 40 years, but before then, at the end of the war, he sailed around the world as a ship’s engineer. “Freight and passengers. We carried both.”

Because he didn’t volunteer any information about his family, we sensed it might not be wise, or polite, to dig any deeper.

Fifteen minutes later, a blue transit bus spewing diesel fumes lurched into Gate 5, and Keith jumped up. “Let’s go, you sit by me. Here we go, follow me.”

Government bus heading north to Animal Flower Cave.

No longer in the shade, another woman in the queue scrambled in her purse for the $2 bus fare as her ice cream cone dropped blobs of vanilla onto her arm and the concrete.

Half an hour later, after the noisy, kidney-pounding trip to the northern tip of Barbados, our spry Bajan guide prompts us off the bus.

“See what I mean? Look, there’s my house! You go walk to the Cave, down that road. When you come back, you come sit on my porch, right there, not in the sun. The bus will get you then, okay?”

“But what time does the next bus…”

“Don’t you worry. Just come sit on my porch. I’ll be here.”

Animal Flower Cave view – with crashing Atlantic surf.

We spend the new two and a half hours at the Animal Flower Cave buying gifts and marvelling at the pounding surf where the Atlantic Ocean meets the Caribbean Sea. We ordered salads and drinks at the cliff-side restaurant and then toured the underground cave. The group of teenagers ahead of us cooled off in a small pool and then posed for pictures in front of a frothy, roiling sea.

At this point, I start to worry that we might miss the last public bus back to Speightstown, so we make our way under the hot sun up the dusty road to Keith’s house. Sure enough, he’s sitting on his porch, smiling and waving us forward.

“You come and sit. Here, look at all the pictures of people who came here.”

Keith has fans the world over. This letter is from Oshawa, Ontario.

He opens a shopping bag full of photos and letters sent to him from Cave visitors over the years. He likes to point to himself in each picture. “You see, that’s me, sitting right here, right in this same chair.”

I try again. “Keith, what time do you think the next bus…”

“Relax, sit there. Only problem is, the last bus at 3pm goes and gets the school students.

“Did you say the LAST bus? Keith, it’s five past three.”

“It might come here. Might not. No problem. A van will come (an infamous ‘ZR’ van, that will gladly stuff 15 passengers into a space more suitable for nine.)

A white van pulsing with reggae music suddenly screams by, going in the opposite direction.

“No worries. He’ll come back. He’ll look at me, I’ll wave and yell ‘stop’ and he’ll stop and get you. Just relax.”

So with some extra time on his hands, Keith decides to show us his house. It becomes clear that he must be living on a very small pension. He has a few pressed shirts hanging in a closet; a tiny kitchen features a very tired refrigerator, lined with a thin black film of what looks to be mould. His tiny kitchen and bedroom open to the rear yard, where he also keeps a large trap.

Shelley asks him about it. “The monkeys destroy everything,” he says. “Look at those trees. They eat all the plants. I catch them and sell them to the wildlife reserve.”

“Keith,” I ask, “In this heat, you must like a cold Banks beer from time to time.”

“I used to, but then I joined the 7th Day Adventists. No more Banks.”

On our way back to the porch, we cross under a string clothesline hanging across his living room. It holds faded cards celebrating past Father’s Days and Christmases. Before we have time to ask him anything family-related, he’s back on the porch, eyes peeled for the white van, which, as he predicted, pulled to a stop.

“See? Go, run,” he barks. With no time for a proper goodbye, I clumsily press the last of our Bajan currency into his hand.

Our last selfie on Keith’s porch before our ZR van arrived.

“Thank you, Keith,” Shelley says as we sprint to our ride.

That evening, as we unwound from our long day in rural northern Barbados, we agreed that the real magic of discovering this island isn’t in the malls or the air-conditioned Massy grocery stores or on luxurious catamarans.

It’s hitting the road to small out-of-the-way places far from the crush of tourists. It’s trusting that serendipity will put you in front of the most amazing people when you least expect it.