ST VINCENT & THE GRENADINES
Roache. Tall and statesman-like, the former history teacher dedicates his time to community development, including tutoring local children. “Mayreau’s population is about 300 and 70% are young people,” he tells me as we watch two boys dip-fish with buckets off the dock. “We’re a transit for marijuana,” he says of the nation’s licence to export the crop to select countries where it’s legal; locally it was decriminalised for personal or medical use in 2018. “This can change our youngsters. They need careful direction.” John’s work-in-progress book, Wahya (‘who we are’),
explores the Grenadines’ history. St Vincent and the Grenadines was the last of the West Indies’ Windward Islands to be ceded from the British, in 1979. “A daily issue in the Caribbean is succession. Lots of people left after independence.” And despite his development work, he says, “many in Mayreau still today don’t own their land”. When not teaching, John runs the island’s sole grocery store, where he displays the multiple prizes he’s won for good works, proudly showing me letters of commendation from Queen Elizabeth II. “We must embrace the complex multiplicity of our Caribbean nation,” he says of this perhaps surprisingly loyalist display. “We’re Black but also English, Irish and Asian. To progress, we need to bring all of us into the fold.”
Nation builders Masani Defreitas is singing in Swahili. It’s rehearsal time at Ashton community centre on Union Island, a brief pre-dusk moment bringing biting sandflies, and we’re all
trying not to fidget. Dressed in a Ghanian headscarf and skirt, Masani has her crew in check. As her voice rises, a 15-strong contingent from the Imani Cultural Organization joins her in a chorus of song and drumming. The dancers pause, and their previous barefoot steps, spins and jumps give space to electrifying sound. “Our DNA on Union Island traces back to West Africa,” says Masani at the song’s close. Whether in Swahili or Creole, Union Island’s folk culture
of song and dance is going strong. It’s front and centre of the prestigious Maroon Festival before the rains in May, and weddings here still involve a ‘cake dance’ where women do a tricky ballet of cake balancing. “We also do ‘meeting up’, when bride and groom parties meet in the street for a dance-off,” says Masani. And with that, the group launches into a ‘cherub song’ whose lyrics chide a man for being too late: his girl’s marrying someone else. The dancers — tonight ranging in age from seven to 17, and one adult — tag each other in and out of the circle. “I started this group in 1986. Some kids are now adults but still dance with me. We’re currently raising funds for a Ghana cultural exchange. I want these children to understand where they’re from.” Union Island is in the business of preservation. Just
three miles long and one wide, this coral-fringed idyll was once little-known to outsiders beyond sailors and kitesurfers. But in 2005, a new species of gecko was discovered here by local citizen-scientists Mark da Silva and Matthew Harvey, putting Union on the map. “We were
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