By Matthew Wilson
It was in March 1999, only a few months after I had joined the Barbados Foreign Service, that I took my first professional trip abroad. Since then, 17 years have passed, hundreds of work trips have been completed and I’ve not only changed jobs but changed countries. But that first trip remains vivid in my mind. It was to Guyana.
I had my red diplomatic passport in hand and all of my family came to the airport in Barbados to see me off. All of the family. And my late grandmother handed me a brown paper-wrapped package tied with a piece of string containing six ham sandwiches. ‘This is if you get hungry when you land,’ she said.
When I arrived into Georgetown it was a rainy Sunday evening. The shops were closed and there were