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| St. George’s, Grenada |
Grenada and my high school friend, Mike, are forever linked in my mind. This is my first visit to Grenada, but when I was in college, Grenada was on the news. I walked into the student cafeteria with some friends in between classes and saw all the televisions showing one thing — American soldiers parachuting into Grenada. I called all the phone numbers I had for Mike, but he was not home, and his roommate said he could not tell me where he was. That was a pretty good clue that Mike was in Grenada. I was able to confirm that later with Mike’s Mom. I stared at the screens, worried for my friend’s safety. He did come home safely, but not all the soldiers did.
President Reagan sent the US Military to Grenada to protect American students who were attending college there. The Prime Minister at that time had started eliminating those citizens who publicly disagreed with him by lining them up in front of a firing squad. No American students had been harmed yet when the US troops arrived in Grenada, but it seems unlikely that the American students would have kept quiet for long.
Grenada has a memorial for the American soldiers that died that day – October 25th, 1983. It is on a highway near the airport. Our tour guide pointed it out from the bus, but we did not stop there.
Grenada has a national holiday called “Thanksgiving” – on October 25th each year to commemorate the Americans who came and freed them from a violent government.
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| Fan Palm |
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| Almond Tree |
Today Grenada is a beautiful place, mostly recovered from Hurricane Ivan, which our tour guide called “Ivan the Terrible.” We saw beautiful fan palms, almonds growing on trees, the large breadfruit, and smaller coconuts, as well as papaya and bananas. Avocados were out of season.
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| Cacao Fruit |
We went to the Chocolate Museum in St. George’s, where we learned and tasted fresh cacao – the fruit that chocolate eventually emerges from. The fruit is sweet, similar in taste to papaya. The inside pip is where the chocolate comes from.
