Becoming an expat – the YPT story part 2. If you’ve landed here I’ll assume that you’ve read part 1 of my story. If not I’ll briefly summarize. I was doing cock all in the UK, so decided that I would randomly I guess move to the Cayman Islands. I was to move here to “look for a job”. What job who knew? I was also traveling with my girlfriend, who was also looking for a job.
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Arriving in the Cayman Islands
Traveling to the Caribbean essentially has you going back in time, so carried on the afternoon of October 27th 2001. We met a girl from the Czech Republic whilst smoking outside and headed for the cheapest guesthouse in Grand Cayman, Eldemires Guesthouse. This would be our home for the next 2 months. Initially we had the three of us sharing a room to cut down on costs. All very cozy.
Cayman is a rich country, and much like Dubai and the like has a lot of immigrant workers not being paid very much. The guesthouse had a family of Jamaican workers who I straight away befriended, particularly a guy around my age called Ken.
Trying to find a job in the Cayman Islands
Georgetown is damned expensive and though we had spent 6 months saving for this trip money would not last all that long. Want a throwback? We had travelers cheques with us!
My girlfriend found a job pretty quickly as a swimming teacher. At this point, I was more than acutely aware that I really was not qualified to do all that much. I searched and searched, but could find nothing. Three days before my visa was to run out I was potentially looking at going back to the UK with my tail between my legs.
If you pray for it, it shall come
Feeling rather despondent my Jamaican fiend Ken offered to pray for me. I’m not all that religious, but felt it probably couldn’t do me any harm. He prayed for me for about 15 minutes, and it felt like a lifetime.
Then 5 minutes later a Trinidadian guy who also lived there walked in and said “hey I found someone looking to hire a bartender”. I went straight to the restaurant, interviewed and was offered the job. Was it the praying that made it happen? I guess i’ll never know.
You arrived as a tourist you leave as a tourist
We’d both been offered jobs, which meant we needed work visas, but as we’d arrived as tourists we had to leave as tourists. By this point we were super low on funds and had no idea where to go. The Jamaican family said “do you want to stay with our family”. We said yes and within 2 days were flying to Jamaica, again with no idea where we were going, staying, or who we were meeting.
On arrival at Montego Bay, there was a car and a guy who looked very much like Ken waiting for us. It was his older brother. We were then driven through the mountainous scenery of Jamaica for two hours to the deep countryside.
The actual place was called Joehut in Trelawny, with the nearest town being called, and I shit you not Wait-A-Bit.
Turns out Jamaica is really cool
Despite being with strangers they straight away adopted us as family. We spent the next week partying, trying “Jamaican things” eating great food and living in heaven pretty much. If we were thirsty we picked an orange, hungover there was root growing to fix you up. To this day it was truly one of the most amazing experiences of my life.
I was later to return to JoeHut one more time, but sadly under very different circumstances. About 2 years later Ken died of an asthma attack. Anywhere else in the world he would have been saved, but the hospital refused to give him the drugs that he needed. I was asked to write a few words for his funeral but instead went there in person. Open-casket was a very full-on experience. If I ever write a book this will get a much bigger mention.
Working in the Cayman Islands
With our work visas approved we headed back to Grand Cayman to start work. My restaurant was essentially still being built, so my initial work was painting and decorating.
When the bar finally opened I was in for a bit of a rude awakening. I had done “pub” work in England. This is not the same as cocktail bartending in the Caribbean. If you have ever seen the movie cocktail then my first night was like Tom Cruise’s first night. Sadly that is where comparisons between me and Tom Cruise ended.
Had they not have paid for a work visa for me I would have been sacked. I learnt the job very quickly, put in lots of free extra hours and eventually worked myself up to Bar Manager. It was a very very tough slog to get there.
Living the dream
Whilst I probably did not realize it at the time the 2 and a half years I spent there were truly living the dream. We used to rent a boat on Sundays to go to beach on the other city of the island, visit stingray city and get drunk. I was earning more money than I knew existed and partying all the time.
I also got to spend a month in Cuba as well as visit Honduras, Jamaica, and Cayman Brac during this time. Probably the best time of my life.
All good things…..
All good things must come to an end, and paradise is no different. Me and the girl I was with broke up and I decided I would go back to the UK.
Usually, a breakup is very simple, you break up and don’t talk again. We owned property together, but more weird things had happened. My mum and her dad met at our going away party. They are now married. My ex is now my step-sister. WE get on OK, turns out I make a better brother than a boyfriend.
Returning to the UK
I genuinely felt that I would arrive back in the UK as some kind of hero, but this is no fairytale world. I had stories of my time abroad, but my friends had just moved on with their lives.
I was again facing the reality of not having all that many prospects to fall back on. My mum got me a job working on the horse-racing for the Tote. This was great and involved a degree of traveling and me becoming a dab hand at gambling!
But it was not long before I realized a needed to get the fuck out of the UK. I scoured the new invention that was the internet from where I saw a job working on cruise ships. I applied and was offered an interview. Whilst I did not realize having bar work in the Cayman Islands was to prove quite handy.
Part 2 of the expat files was about to begin.
