Against All Odds

By W Norman Bodden, MBE, OBE

What was it like growing up in the Cayman Islands in the 1930s? In Against All Odds, retired politician and lawyer, W. Norman Bodden shares some interesting facts and his own experiences from his childhood to the present day.

Have you ever wondered how air services to, from, and within the Cayman Islands, and other developments such as tourism, the birth of Cayman Airways, got started? What about the Cayman Islands' relationship with Costa Rican airline LACSA and Jamaican engineers Smith and Walker? Against All Odds will answer many of these early years' questions while providing an interesting read.

• Language: English
• Publisher: CLM Publishing
• Release date: Feb 3, 2022
• ISBN: 9798201604981

Book preview

CHAPTER ONE

THE EARLY YEARS – A HUMBLE BEGINNING

Growing up on North Church Street in the 1930s in the area commonly called White Hall was a challenge, to say the least. North Church Street began on the northern boundary of the town centre and stretched north to the area known as Dixie, in George Town, Grand Cayman. There were six districts: West Bay, George Town, Bodden Town, Northside, East End, and Cayman Brac and Little Cayman, affectionately referred to today as the Sister Islands.

In 1943, the population of the Cayman Islands was 6,690. A mixture of middle income to people of modest means resided on North Church Street. Almost every day, there would be a neighbourhood ‘war’ brewing. Years later, when the going got tough in politics for me, I would jokingly say that I am not too worried, as I was raised in a war zone.

My childhood home was an average-size wooden house with a zinc roof. I am sure it was a nice home in its day, but the years had taken its toll on the structure. It was in need of repairs and painting, but there was no extra money for maintenance and, oftentimes, I was ashamed to admit that I lived there. A wooden walkway about 25 feet long extended from the house and led to the kitchen in a separate building. The reason, I was told, was that in case there was a fire in the kitchen, the house would not catch fire as well.

In the kitchen was a caboose, which was a wooden box filled with sand and had two iron bars crossway on the caboose top. They would make up a fire with firewood where the pots were placed to enable cooking a meal. A kitchen table was in the corner where the family ate or they carried the food into the house.

Mosquitoes were always a pest we had to deal with. They were bad all year, but especially during the rainy season of May to October, and would be more plentiful just before sunset. To combat this pest, we would make smoke pans from empty paint cans. We would take a nail and punch holes in the side of the can, put shavings from two bark trees that were fairly near our house (we referred to them as ‘bark’ trees because we never knew the correct name). We would light the bark and smoke out the house to help drive out the mosquitoes. The windows and doors were solid wood, we had no screens, and before going to bed, the windows and doors would be locked. How we managed to deal with the heat I never knew, except that I guess our bodies had a built-in mechanism that enabled us to adjust to the environment in which we lived.

One year, mosquitoes were so thick that they even smothered cattle. What a relief when these pests were brought under better control! I dare say that if there was anyone who should have been declared a hero it was Dr. Marco Giglioli, for his work with the Mosquito Research and Control Unit (MRCU). He developed the dyke road system that helped to bring mosquitoes under some level of control. Our islands would never have developed at the rate and level they have, had it not been for better control of mosquitoes.

Early in April or May, my grandfather would start getting ready for the hurricane season. He would go into the interior forest with an axe and chop down four mature black mangrove trees and bring them out on his shoulder one by one. He would position the logs against the four corners of the house just under the eaves, and would plant the other end into the ground. He would take a sharpened piece of wood and pound it into the ground on the end of the log to brace it. He called it shoring up his house, just in case of strong winds.

Survival was the name of the game, and they had to improvise in order to survive. He didn’t have much, but was trying to protect the little he had. There was no communications to provide advance warning as to when a hurricane was approaching, so one had to watch the weather and be prepared for any eventuality.

The house had two bedrooms, a sitting room that they called a hall, an area for dining and a room for storage they called a pantry. My mother and I slept on a mattress made from plant thrash leaves spread on the floor until I was eleven or twelve years old, when I saved enough money to buy two single beds from Galleon Beach Club when they were selling used furniture before closing the motel.

I was the son of a handicapped lady, Eunice Erselena Bodden, who was the first of four children. She was born on April 1, 1914, in George Town, to Levi Bodden and his wife, Eunice Matilda Bodden. My mother did the neighbours’ laundry to buy me barely enough clothes for school and Sunday school, but she was determined that I would be presentable, clean, and tidy at all times.

My mother was twenty-one years of age when I was born, at a time when it was frowned upon and considered a disgrace to have a child born out of wedlock – but we survived! One of the lessons my mother taught me by example is that you can succeed against all odds through hard work and honesty.

I had no sisters or brothers, but my mother had two sisters and one brother, and one of my aunts assisted my mother in raising me. You could say I was born amongst the poorest of the poor in our Islands – and I say this not to garner sympathy, but to tell the truth.

My mother’s process of doing laundry was to wash clothes with brown soap on a washboard, put a substance called ‘blue’ in the water for rinsing, and starch them, hang them on a clothesline to dry, and once they would dry, she would make up a wood fire outside in the yard and heat solid metal irons until they were hot, clean them in banana plant leaves, and iron each shirt and pants, not leaving a single spot on any of the clothes she ironed – the