Monthly Archives: January 2010

Football in Barbados

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In the book ‘Why England Lose’ by Simon Kuper & Stefan Syzmanski, they bring mathematics and economics, geography and statistics to prove various football facts; why England don’t win more cups and which countries strike above or below their expectations. When they come to the section concerning the percentage of the population that plays football, Barbados comes 8th in their world league, with 13% of the people playing regularly.

To back this up, there is a premier league followed by three further divisions in the men’s leagues with each containing at least twelve teams. The men’s master’s league is a two division 11 team league. The women’s league has another 7 teams.

That’s an astonishing 77 teams with around 25 players per club just in the main leagues. A number of these clubs also have under 18 teams, under 15 and so on down to under 11s. All this in a population of just 275,000 people.

FIFA lists the youth clubs as well so their figures are:

All Players 37,550
Registered players 15,840
Unregistered Players 21,710
Clubs 134
Officials 1,326

The older members of the population try to make out cricket is the top sport in the country. By memory, it is. The local newspapers feature cricket as the main sport. However, look anywhere there’s a field and you’ll see boys and girls playing football more than cricket, all year round. It’s obvious to the eye that more people follow football than cricket these days.

The book mentioned does state that many of the top percentage of population that plays football contains many islands. They suggest that’s because there’s ‘not much to do but play football and watch the waves roll in.’ This isn’t the case in Barbados. There’s so much to do yet so many still watch English premiership football, wear the shirts of those teams and play football whenever they can. They’ll talk for hours about their ‘English’ (and sometimes European to be fair) team. The times are a changing.

Football and cricket share pitches across the island. As soon as that stops, football will move forward even further.

There are positive plans to make the men’s premier division full time and professional with special funding from FIFA. Only time will tell if locals are positive enough to put their money to the test to watch local games.

Land Ho – From The Ground Up

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In the first installment in our From The Ground Up series, we started our search for a Barbados property. Our next move was to narrow the selection.

Although we knew we wanted to self build, we also looked at existing property as renovating an existing dwelling remained an option. This was an interesting experience. Like the US, property can be listed with several agents, though one usually takes the lead. A trip to St Philip to see a former West Indies cricketer’s house (or so we suspected from the number of trophies displayed in the room) found us outnumbered by the agents, as there were two people from our agent’s office and two from the office of the lead agent. It was quite difficult to get away and have a private chat about the property.

Golf View

A golf course view, Barbados

Could this be the site of our dream home?

While on our travels, we spotted a large plot (or lot, as it’s called in Barbados) near an old mattress factory. Calling the number on the board led us to another agent to check it out. Sadly, we lost out to a church (there are more than 100 religious groups on the island). However the new agent showed us a few other properties, including a windswept plot at Inch Marlow in the south which really tempted us. Just as we were dithering about whether we could afford it, he emailed to say he had another piece of land available opposite a golf course. I groaned, but my husband was delighted and we duly drove to a lot with a clear view of Durants Golf Course.

Finding The Perfect Place

The plot was nearly 8,000 sq ft. To give some comparison, most four bedroom homes in the UK stand on about 2,000-3,000 sq ft of land. We drove around the estate and realised that this was a rapidly developing area, with lots of lovely – and huge – houses under construction. Next door to our plot – we were beginning to think of it as ours already – was a two storey apartment building in a Caribbean style, with lots of verandahs overlooking the golf course and the sea.

Assessing The Lot

Over the next day or so, we visited the plot several times, assessing all the possibilities and pitfalls. On the plus side, it was a three-minute drive to our favourite beach; a five-minute drive to the nearest shops; a seven-minute drive to the airport (we timed it) and close to the ABC Highway for easy access to other parts of the island. On the minus side, it was a bit smaller than we had wanted (10,000 sq ft is what most locals would consider adequate for a home) and it was near several main roads.

Could We Do It?

Back at home, my husband got out his spreadsheets and worked out that if we downsized we could afford to buy the land. Then all we would have to do is figure out what to build and how to manage it.

So that’s just what we did. The UK property market was booming in and our four bedroom house in Nottingham sold before the ink was dry on the particulars.

In no time at all we had put in an offer for the land and had it accepted and by October the land was ours. However, the next step, finding an architect and getting planning permission, would prove to be far more fraught.

Extra car purchase costs

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It’s always amazing, in any country, how many extras need to be charged for a new car to be put on the road. The dealer wanted $250 as its handling fee. For what; selling us the car? They arranged a weight certificate for the car at $12. This means that the car is physically weighed so we know which license fee is applicable. Surely the dealer knows the weight of the car from the brochure? The license itself, giving permission for the car to be on the road, requires another $331. License (number) plates added a further $98. It was essential that we added a tint to the windows. Not because of our celebrity (just joking) status, but to try to keep the hot sun at bay while driving, bringing a further bill of $345.

We did splash out on one extra for the car. We chose to add a reversing sensor which cost us another $250. Having driven with a reversing sensor for three years now, I’ll never drive a car without one again if at all possible. When I hire a car abroad, I now have to reverse with extra care.

All of these extras meant we had to budget for $1300 more than the actual cost of car. We did get car mats thrown in for free which effectively saved us $140, but probably cost the dealer $30-$40. The hi-fi in the Ford is very good. We could have spent another $500 and had it upgraded to an MP3 player. Luckily our cell phones have a feature where music can be played directly through the hi-fi by selecting the right radio frequency. We also decided against the soaring cost of a center armrest. $2000 just to rest your arm was a stretch too far.

The dealer originally offered us free servicing for three years. When we visited the dealer to sign on the dotted line, they withdrew the offer for free servicing because they realized they would be out of pocket on the deal. After all, they were selling us the car, at the price they paid for it. After the car salesman and his manager sat embarrassed in their office for 20 minutes he finally offered a deal of an extra seal on the underneath of the car. This is required in a country like Barbados, because of the weather, the closeness of the sea salt, and the lime that falls with the rain from the clouds. We would have paid for this extra anyway so in effect we were saving a thousand dollars. I knew we would be paying $1500 a year for servicing for three years.

I know that if we were in another country we would probably have argued the case and the legalities surrounding the original offer, but we didn’t want to cause the salesman to lose his job or to have to pay personally, for his mistake.

Travel in a tango

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The final choice of which car to purchase became quite clear when the dealer directed us to one of his special offers. He needed to move some cars at the price he paid for them to gain some cash flow for his business. Yes, we are aware of car salesman’s con tricks all over the world and no doubt this dealer was going to make some clear profit on our purchase, but the price he suggested for the Ford Focus eventually purchased was extremely inviting compared to the Mazda 3, which we also liked, but was some $8000 more.

The new car salesman may have in fact been telling the truth. Barbados is a small island with a relatively small population and only a few of those people are buying new cars. Cash flow is very important in a small business and while we may not have exactly got the deal we originally agreed having got over the shock of the price of a car in Barbados, the deal looked good.

We had stepped into the Mercedes dealer’s office previously. For a few years in the UK, I kept my eye on the purchase of a Mercedes C class model. The base model was often around the £21,000 mark in the UK. The local dealer told me that the C class would start at around $170,000. Also he didn’t stock the base model so we were looking at $200,000 for a new Merc. We changed our sights and set off for the Ford dealer.

He had four cars he needed to shift from his stocks. One car was red; I’ve never liked red and even if I was buying a Lamborghini it would not be in red. They had one available which they called ‘tango’ color. This is a blend of red and orange so it doesn’t look red, but equally does not look orange. In hindsight this been a marvelous choice and it doesn’t particularly show the dirt that is picked up regularly in a dry dusty country.

By coincidence we have seen three other Ford Focus tangos on the island, probably all part of the same deal. Unfortunately, we saw one involved in a complete write-off and then there were three. At the least the driver stepped out okay.

Barbados Jazz Festival 2010

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Jazz on the Hill, Barbados 2010They came; they saw; the place was packed. The final day of the 17th Barbados Jazz Festival, known also as the Jazz on the Hill, took place at Farley Hill National Park on Sunday, 17 January 2010. We arrived early and claimed seats a few rows back from the centre stage and it was just as well, as people kept on arriving all through the afternoon.

Due to start at 1 PM, things were up and running within half an hour. Local artist Alex M kicked off proceedings. Although perfectly acceptable, after an hour and a half of his warmup act, I was beginning to find him a bit dull.

Arturo Tappin works the crowd at the Barbados Jazz Festival 2010

Arturo Tappin works the crowd

After a short break it was on to local jazz artist Arturo Tappin. With his trademark hat and locks down to his knees he worked that saxophone, coming into the crowd for his penultimate number and leaving everyone entertained and uplifted. Next, he introduced Marisa Lindsay who belted out some songs with a power that could have used some restraint. That duo was popular with the crowd. Canada’s Warren Hill was next — we could have stood to hear a bit more of his smooth sax sounds.

And then, when it was dark, around 7:30 PM, came moment we had been waiting for – Kenny “Babyface” Edmonds was on stage. The crowd sang loudly, screamed his name and enjoyed a polished performance of just a few of the hundreds of songs he has written for himself and others. It was a fitting culmination to the event, and so mesmerising that people continued to stand in the rain at the end of the event to hear him sing (and this is very unusual in Barbados). It was a great day out.