Antigua reflection: Completing the trade triangle

 

Have been on a treat of a holiday with Tim recently; we went to the Caribbean and whilst there spent a week on the island of Antigua. It was a great week – sun, sand, sea, snorkelling, and relaxing, and we felt really blessed to be there. The Antiguans are very welcoming and friendly, and wherever we went there was good banter, and chat, and a really upbeat vibe.

For me, one very poignant aspect of the week was when we were on a booked excursion and had lunch at a place called Betty’s Hope memorial park. Betty’s Hope is an old sugar plantation and it turns out that the plantation leaseholders were, for the majority of the time that it was under British ownership, the Codrington family. This family have their ancestral home in and around the village of Codrington which is about 12 – 15 miles from our home town of Thornbury.

The information boards at the plantation gave a lot of insight into the day to day of the plantation, including the number of slaves who did all of the manual labour, and the conditions in which they lived and worked. The products from the plantation were sugar and rum, much of which was sold on the European market, and entered it via Bristol, which was one of the two main entry ports for products coming from the Caribbean and the Americas. As a result, a lot of the wealth of the Codrington family was made from the income generated by the sugar and rum that was produced from there.

Earlier this year I was in Ghana, and stood in the tunnel in Jamestown where abducted Africans stood in shackles ahead of being herded onto over-crowded slave ships, never to see their homeland again. With these memories so recent for me, it felt extra poignant, that just a few later I was standing on an ex-plantation that was served by slaves from Western Africa (did any of them come from Ghana via the tunnel at Jamestown), and that funded the fortunes of a family just near home. Returning home to Bristol and Codrington area was the completion of a journey into the trading triangle of so long ago – may I be a better person for the insights and reflections gained along the way.

 

 

 

St Lucia reflection: another day in paradise?

 

Am just back from a two-island Caribbean holiday with Tim, the first island stop being that of St Lucia. Initial impressions, as a tourist, are of an island that is very green and lush, with rainforest type flora and fauna everywhere. Tall trees, with vines and lianas weaving through them, bromeliads and airplants growing everywhere, mangoes so aplenty that they are lying rotting on the ground, tropical flowers, hummingbirds, butterflies, bananas……… To the outside eye it might seem like a little slice of paradise.

But during our stay there I had a few brief conversations with a couple of gals who work for the World Food Programme, and were staying at the hotel whilst visiting on a work trip. They were saying that they are based at the WFP regional office in Barbados, and that the WFP has an ongoing programme of food security support and provision for all of the Caribbean nations to enable the islanders to survive the annual hurricane season. All of the islands are included in the programme, and the focus of the two WFP staff that I was chatting to was about ensuring that each island is as ready as it can be re food security and stocks for getting through any hurricanes. It was interesting to chat with them about it all, as well as other aspects of the work of the WFP, the impact of USAID withdrawal, politicisation of humanitarian support, ‘Trump trauma’ etc.

Later in the week, the evening entertainment was a local band who did cover versions of well-known songs. One of the songs that they did was ‘Another Day in Paradise’ by Phil Collins. The song talks about how a situation that to so many seems like paradise can actually be far from that for some. In the case of the song the focus is on young girls caught up in illegal trafficking and sex-trade, and how the ‘paradise’ experience for the men is definitely not that for the girls (at least, that’s my interpretation of the song). As I sat in the hotel listening to the song, I reflected on the fact that many of the hotel guests might think of themselves as being in a place that feels like a slice of paradise. However, having heard about the realities of life for the islanders from the WFP staff, that ‘paradise’ is also a very vulnerable place that is at the mercy of massively destructive hurricanes, and in need of external support just to help the islanders survive.

Another day in paradise for those who are able to leave when things get tough, but maybe not quite so much of a paradise for those who have to stay and cling on to survival.