A Drink to Wakeup D Dead

The Caribbean Island of Dominica is pronounced Do-mi-NEEK-a, which I didn’t know until the day before we got there. Prior to that I was accenting the second syllable, as in the “Dominican” Republic, which is a different island, elsewhere in the Caribbean. The proper pronunciation brings to mind that silly Domi-neeka neeka neeka tune from the 60’s, which we sang -- very briefly -- in the piano bar the previous night.

Christopher Columbus & co. were the first Europeans to see this place, during their second voyage in 1493, and they didn’t even bother to stop. Ol’ Chris was an Italian whose voyage was financed by the Queen of Spain, and he came up with the name “Domenica” - Italian for “Sunday” - simply because that was the day he sailed past.

The Italian-sounding name turned out to be inappropriate because neither Italy nor Spain was interested in Dominica. It became a British possession, complete with pounds and shillings and that left-side-of-the-street driving that’s so dangerous to spaced-out American pedestrians like me.

The ship was not scheduled to stay long, a 3PM departure, which was unusually early. Waking up late, and not really getting in gear until 11:30 AM, I couldn’t go very far, for very long. So it was time for another Aimless Walk to Anywhere, hopefully with some interesting local color to be found.

And I certainly found some local color. Only 2 blocks from the ship was a strange-looking building, cinder-block gray with brightly painted yellow and red sheets of plywood attached. It was literally the burned-out shell of an establishment destroyed by fire, with the roof gone and the top scorched by the fire.It was called, quite appropriately, The Ruins. It was quite “Rasta” in flavor, with some loud reggae blaring out onto the street, and dreadlocked personnel inside. I immediately spotted some piano bar patrons, who strongly advised me to try the rum punch. 3 shots of rum in that punch, for a mere $7.

It was a ridiculously cheerful place. Sort of indoors, sort of outdoors. The building, which would have been condemned by any official inspector from America, had a few sheets of corrugated metal serving as a crude partial “roof“. There was also a 10x12 patch of bare ground inside, with a little garden, over which there was no roof at all. The rain could come right in, onto the garden and elsewhere.

No rain today however. The noontime sun, directly overhead at this latitude in April, shined through the big opening, keeping the establishment brightly lit.

In the meantime the rum punch was keeping the patrons brightly lit. It was served in a very tropical-looking “wooden” cylinder, topped with a coconut half-shell with a hole for the straw. I wanted this container for a souvenir, and was directed to a side room called the “spice shop“. In addition to various souvenirs, this side room had many rows of big glass jars, each one of them containing some herb or spice, with a Rasta counterman explaining their various health benefits.

Within an hour I’d consumed two rum punches - 6 shots of rum - and had already gotten very silly. To avoid doing or saying something completely foolish, I left this dangerous place and strolled the waterfront.I went down an old street along the water, glancing around at little residences and shops. I was suddenly taken aback by some strange signs, posted on the fence of a yard, next to a little shack. They were neatly drawn, yet goofy enough to photograph, especially in my altered frame of mind.

At the time there was a tune stuck in my head, an old R&B ditty called “Sixty Minute Man” which I’d just learned, and performed for the first time the previous night. The lyric was a tad risque, in fact the tune was banned from a few radio stations back in 1951. I was blissfully singing this tune, over and over, louder than I might normally sing on a public sidewalk, as I studied and photographed the funny looking signs, and the odd spellings. After a couple of minutes I turned to my right and there was an old Rasta guy standing near the front door of the little shack, staring at me. He was the owner of this funky establishment and the author of the funny signs. And I was the tipsy tourist with the camera, singing the silly song.

The moment was ripe for an inane conversation. He started by asking me if I’d gotten permission to photograph the signs. I said I didn’t know that permission was necessary. Had I known better I would have knocked on his door before pulling out the camera. No he said -- I needed to ask permission from the signs themselves, not from him. What? OK Mr -- what did you say you name was? - RasAlgi? OK -- if I DID ask the signs for “permission”, how would I know if they said yes or no? They don’t talk do they? Oh Yes They Do said RasAlgi, if one is “in tune” with the signs.

He spoke on about saying Please and Thank You with all things, both living and inanimate, prior to using them. This certainly applied to all plants and animals used for food. He got down on one knee and demonstrated by mumbling some Rasta gibberish to a weed growing out of a crack on the sidewalk, encouraging me to do the same.

Probably just to patronize this well-meaning fellow and show respect for his beliefs, maybe to apologize for taking the photos, I got down on one knee also, actually tried to focus on the weed with him. But it really wasn’t a good time to try something like this, with all the rum in my bloodstream, and I just couldn’t persuade myself to talk to the weed. I begged off, promised that I’d try it again at another time when in a more appropriate state of mind. I then got permission to take a photo of him. He posed in front of a large sign that had escaped my attention before, a very professional looking sign. It turned out that sign-painting was his profession, whether on rusty sheets of metal or high-quality surfaces. He was an artist.
After I mentioned the cruise ship and the piano playing, he led me to his front door. Just inside was a number of conga drums of various sizes, and he suggested a future jam session, as if I could stop by sometime with a keyboard. I didn’t find out if he could actually play or not, but I wondered if he asked the conga drums for permission to hit them. Then I imagined myself saying “Excuse me Mr. Piano, would you mind if I played a song on you?” Strangely enough, that does not sound completely crazy to me, maybe RasAlgi is onto someting.

It was getting late, and I didn’t have the time to sit down in his living room and hang out. Before I left we spoke of energy and focus, neither of us being particularly young anymore. He offered me a bottle of his own “RasAlgi’s Herbal Energy Drink - a Drink to Wake Up D Dead.”, as it said on the label. I imagined it being useless junk from a huckster, and I also imagined it being an effective tonic, a well-kept Rasta secret maybe?

He asked for $30, which was way too much for 10 ounces of God-Knows-What. I dickered him down to a price I could live with even if it was a bottle of urine. The payment would compensate for the photos taken, and the entertainment of watching someone seriously talk to a weed.

I took the bottle back to the ship, uncapped it, and was happy to find that it wasn’t urine, and did seem to be some herbal potion. Kinda looked like homemade apple cider. After a sobering nap I went to the Internet to check out the 3 ingredients -- Genseng, Messe Marie, and Bois Bande.

Genseng is pretty common, and highly peddled in the USA. On the other hand, I Googled up “Messe Marie” and found absolutely nothing in the way of an herb or anything consumable.

Most intriguing was “Bois Bande”, and there was a lot of Internet info on it. It was the bark of a tree (Richeria Grandis) unique to Dominica and a few other Caribbean places. One could use the bark itself, or make an extract from it. On closer inspection of RasAlgi’s bottle I found a good-sized piece of bark soaking in the potion.

One source -- the Caribbean Travel Advisor -- said “it is believed that Viagra and its close cousins Levitra and Cialis were synthesized from the chemical properties of Bois Bande…not wanting to let the cat out of the bag, locals are hip to this phenomenon and want to keep it to themselves.”

Another source - a vendor - said “Yeah Mon! We Got The Bark…had to sail south for days to purchase this famed aphrodisiac…virility-enhancing reputation.”

RasAlgi had not mentioned this aspect of his Herbal Energy Drink, but apparently it really IS designed to wake up something that’s dead, or at least dormant, so to speak. I held my nose, I closed my eyes, I took a drink. Actually just a teeny sip, just to get an idea what it tasted like. Unpleasant but not horrible. The label said to “take 1 to 2 shots”. Which I will do, when the opportunity pops up to really test this potion. RasAlgi’s phone number is on the bottle. Who knows, this could be the beginning of a beautiful friendship, mon.