Listen to me, it is not called the chicken-got-yuh disease; it is called the chikungunya. I talking ’bout this new mosquito disease that is now running rampant in the Caribbean and which now seems to be finding its way into Barbados.
I heard a woman in the bus stand talking ’bout chicken-got-yuh disease, and a man asked her how you does catch it. I real serious here. The lady told us that when mosquitoes bite chickens, they does catch a virus from the chickens that they does then pass on to us.
But that is Bajans: we does take any phrase or word and turn it into something else, and everybody does still know what we talking ’bout, so when you hear anybody talking ’bout them ain’t wanta catch the chicken-got-yuh disease, them really mean the chikungunya.
But I tell you, I love to hear Bajans speaking. A Bajan would tell you to ope-it-in, which really means to open it, as in the case of opening a bottle of something to drink or opening a door. Or we might also say on-it-do, which also means to ope-it-in, but however, on-it-do cannot be used when speaking about opening a door.
If you asked someone to unplait your child’s hair, then you can say, “on-it-do for me”. We Bajans understand that. That is why we can say plug it out, meaning to unplug, because if you can plug it in, then surely you can plug it out.
Everybody else phones around the world does carry SIM cards, Bajan phones carry SLIM cards, and it makes sense, because the cards are indeed slim and not fat. But what would you expect, after all, when elsewhere cameras were using film, ours was using flim.
And don’t laugh, we is the only country in the world with Alistation dogs; everybody else got Alsatians. And for us a mice is the same thing as a mouse, so a Bajan would say that he just saw a mice in the kitchen, which is really an adult mouse for him, because a micey is a baby mouse.
So you would see that we got cocka roaches and santapees ’bout here, while the rest of the world got cockroaches and centipedes, and to get rid of these things we use spray, cause for a Bajan every insecticide is called spray.
And don’t talk about food at all. We got we own varieties of vegetables ’bout here. We got something name pounkin, which the rest of the world does call pumpkin, and of course we have q-pimbers, which the other people does call cucumbers. So they pickle their cucumbers and we does prickle our q-pimbers, which go well with prickle chicken steppers, or chicken feet for those from abroad.
Yes, we love eating, but many of us can’t afford trimps (shrimps), but we can afford chune-uh (tuna), and there is nothing tastier than a good chune-uh sangridge. And every Bajan know that a sangridge is a sandwich.
And, of course, here in Bim, so long as they are being used to make a cake then ingredients are called ingreasements; butter is greasy right? Hence the name.
But I guess if some politicians can speak about the physical deficit, when they really mean the fiscal deficit, then the old lady got all right to call it the chicken-got-yuh disease. After all, she did not go to any newniversity. And like she said, the chicken-got-yuh can put you in the horsepital, so get rid of anything from around the house which can harver muskeeters.
See ya.
