Thursday, 24 October 2024

Paradise?

Two DVD box sets - Death in Paradise Series 1 and 2

 I've been rewatching Death in Paradise. It's a fun detective series set on a fictional Caribbean island.

Two uniformed policemen and a plain-clothes policewoman. The two men are black - Dwayne is aged around 50, Fidel is 25. Camille is mixed-race and in her mid 30s. They are all dressed for a tropical climate - the men in short-sleeved open-necked shirts, the woman in a vest top.
Officer Dwayne Myers, Detective Sergeant Camille Bordey, and Sergeant Fidel Best

I've also been reading the autobiography of Olaudah Equiano - a former slave who was involved in the British abolition movement.

A portrait of Olaudah Equano. He is a man from West Africa, wearing late 18th century British fashion - long hair (or a wig) puffed at the sides and tied at the nape of his neck, a white cravat wrapped high round his neck, and a red coat and waistcoat with big buttons.
Olaudah Equiano
 
He spent a number of years in the Caribbean, and mentions several of the islands referred to in Death in Paradise. I was interested to read his opinion of it:
"every part of the world I had hitherto been in seemed to me a paradise in comparison of the West Indies."
I guess you don't look at the Caribbean as paradise when the sun, sea, and sand is combined with slavery, brutality, and injustice.

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