Flora
August 29, 2010
One of the things that I remember from the time I spent as a missionary on the island of Barbados was the plant life. Some plants I’d never seen before, nor have I seen since, were things such as sugar cane, cotton, and breadfruit.
The sugar cane was generally found in large fields and was anywhere from 8 – 12 feet tall. The stalks had huge blade-shaped leaves on the top and some of the fields were harvested shortly before I left Barbados at the end of February 1994. My first experience with sugar cane was when I was walking down the street with my companion, Elder Hans Carlson, and he showed me what it was. There were some scraps of cane on the ground and we picked a few pieces up and took them home. He showed me how to use the knife to score it around the stalk to make it easily breakable, then how to cut the recently broken chunks into pieces small enough to fit into ones mouth.
Oh, my, talk about a dentist’s dream come true. Apparently, you don’t eat the cane. You just suck on it until all of the sugar is out of it. My guess is that the process of sticking it between the cheek and gums and leaving it there for hours was probably bad for the teeth. Now that I think about it, I don’t remember the Bajan people being very well known for having good teeth. Hmm, I wonder if there is a connection.
