Ping Yark – U.K. Bajans Who Love Barbados

Can any Bajan really leave Barbados?

Oh yes, you may have been born in your mother's bedroom in Pool Tenantry, Barbados (Hello Auntie Moses!), then moved to Bridgetown for school and your first job. A few years later you completed your degree in Jamaica – and then post-grad work in New York and Boston.

As disco was ending and Donna Summers was writhing her last, you met a strong but kind lover from The Hague – and eventually, you ended up living just north of Biggin Hill in Greater London where together, you and your lover raised a mess of children. ("Mess" is the group descriptive for many children, isn't it? "Murder of crows. School of fish. Mess of children…" Yes, sounds correct. )

So many years. So many different countries and cultures. So much change, adventure and adapting.

Yet… you are still Bajan. Maybe you haven't been home for seven years (money is tight and the store isn't doing so well), or maybe your ten-year-old son has never had real flying fish or cou-cou.

But you are still Bajan…

In the U.K. there is an irreverent newsletter published by homesick Bajans for other homesick Bajans: Ping Yark.

Leigh Bourne and a handful of others who refuse to surrender to Londontown publish Ping Yark quarterly in the U.K. … or to be more accurate…"more-less" quarterly.

Alas… Ping Yark is not available online – you must actually send money and receive dead trees via snail mail.

But holding the newsletter in your hands, and turning each page, you will be rewarded with memories, current politics and many oh-so-secret secrets of the elites. Who was drunk at the British High Commission Christmas bash? Where is the next big Bajan party in London? Who will vote for whom in the coming Barbados election?

Send your 5 British pounds to Leigh and be rewarded with a bit of home held in your hand.

Just make sure you a rum in de other hand… 'cause you sure will need it!

Love ya Leigh… Keep up the good work and the good fight…

To subscribe…

Ping Yark
c/o 127 Violet Lane Croydon,
Surrey CR0 4HL
Phone: 020 8239 9545
Mobile: 07775 824832
Fax: 020 8686 8934
email: pingyark@hotmail.com

post by Shona with a bit of assistance from Robert