The following story is part of an anthology of short stories titled Funny Tales of the Virgin Islands: The Adventures of a West Indian Villager. Photo: Provided

Dickson Igwe. Photo: VINO/File

On his farm in Ballast Bay, it is a late sleepy afternoon. A couple of brown horses and a young colt graze on thick grass that sits in a small field by a large pineapple patch. The horses, spied upon by three nearby chickens, are proudly owned by our wild horse tamer. The horses are the progeny of animals once owned by a wealthy English planter during the bad days of slavery. The beasts are shaded from an oppressive sun by tall trees of various types.

A tree loaded with mangoes, mostly ripe, beckons to anyone willing to pluck its delights. In this most fertile part of Tortola, another tree is loaded with ripe breadfruit. This tree bends burdensomely from the thick crop of breadfruit on its branches.

Surrounding these trees are the ever present palms: tall, divine, and with a natural and tropical elegance. These are a quintessential feature of the West Indies. The palm fronds that sit at the top of very long trunks that arch upwards in majestic fashion, shuffle and shift noisily, as the sea breeze blows and cools the Bumpkin farm and home.

These are also known as coconut trees. They are often loaded with coconuts, some ripe enough to be plucked by Bumpkin, who uses a thick rope to scale to the top at record speeds. The coconuts provide a pleasant drink known as coconut water. The jelly inside the shell is edible and the women use it in their baking and cooking. The shells can be used for building and the making of furniture and local crafts.

Mules and donkeys nearby amble and trot about aimlessly, undulating in the hot sun. Kids at play add to the Caribbean essence of the Lesser Antillean afternoon.

In a large pig pen, Bumpkin’s pigs are fast asleep. A number of piglets roam around their sleeping parent. Our wild horse tamer also owns scores of sheep. These graze peacefully alongside Bumpkin’s herd of cows. Island roosters hobble about seeking food. Large white swans ride on the backs of the cows that are grazing in a serene herd.

OK. It is a hot, breezy afternoon. Our village square Plato has been put to sleep by a spectacular sea breeze also called a zephyr that originated out in the Caribbean Sea somewhere.

The breeze majestically soothes and cools Bumpkin’s mountain top house. It further rustles through foliage, and the fronds of palms trees, giving off a noisy but pleasant sound. The palm trees bend and bow, to a hidden deity, high above the rooftop. Despite the windy afternoon, the sun sits eternally static above the still blue seas that wash the Virgin shoreline.

The eternal sound of the ocean is always music to the ear.

Our proverbial day dreamer is in deep slumber on his hammock. He dreams that he is presently sitting on a glorious beach on his fictional island: the Cerebral Antipodes. He is resting on a giant tortoise that acts as a prop for his back.

Bumpkin is watching the golden sun as it descends into the vast multi coloured, crystal Clear Ocean out front. He is engaged in his favourite pastime. His brain is working at maximum capacity! He is in deep thought.

Our farmer and philosopher ponders on life past, present and future. He reflects, that today’s sophisticated town and city dwellers have forgotten the lessons learned. They have ignored the history lessons and oral traditions from their much more formidable country bumpkin ancestors who lived in a humble age gone by.

All politics is local they have forgotten. They have also forgotten that the plodding country rat of folklore ended up better off than his cousin Mr. Town Rat. Town Rat ended up crushed in the proverbial trap.

That the eternally slow Mr. Tortoise ended up ahead of that quicksilver Mr. Hare.

Mr. Hare failed to understand that ultimately, paying ten thousand dollars for an acre of land in Humble Ruritania makes more sense than spending a million bucks for a broom cupboard in Madoff.

Mr. Countryman Farmer with his patch on Sage Mountain is probably wiser than Mr. City Slicker of Conman Bank, with his lap top, blackberry, and time share in Vegas.

After City Slicker’s legacy goes up in smoke, he will turn to Countryman Farmer for the ochre, tomatoes and mutton stew that will keep him and his posh family alive and well.

Bumpkin believes that it is time for a reminder of the basics, especially to the village youth. The recognition that our common agrarian, rustic, genial, and Judean Christian past is a basic manual for living worth re-opening and studying carefully during these uncertain and dangerous times.

Bumpkin’s mind is now on overdrive: “For when the 21st Century futuristic, space age, mind boggling axioms and precepts; the highly revered scientific ideas, principles and math of this new digital age prove inconsequential and futile, and unable to meet current contemporary difficulties and challenges, it is back to the economics of the countryside that we will all ultimately have to turn.

When World War Three or Four beckons, or natural catastrophe hits, it is back to Mr. Countryman Farmer with his hoe, pick, and shovel, and his country ways that emancipation and relief will be sought. It is Mr. Countryman Farmer who will put that proverbial piece of bread on all our tables. Hail the rustic man!’’

A violent jolt brings our peasant thinker back to his all too familiar Ballast Bay Hamlet. The Cerebral Antipodes, his mental sanctuary, is now as far away from reality as Jupiter is from Planet Earth.

His friend and neighbor, that “old scamp’’ Pig Farmer is pounding him aggressively on his chest. There is “big trouble.’’ Mrs. Bumpkin and his two pumpkins are terrified.

To be continued

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