A few months ago I was in the Caribbean island of St. Kitts, and due to a raucous
Nomination Day and a car accident blocking the road our guide took us on the reverse route around the entire island to get back to our starting point. On the way we passed many of the ramshackle seaside dwellings typical of the Caribbean. Though these houses sometimes look like shacks, in reality they are carefully put together, and families live in them for generations, replacing parts over time.
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Others are solidly built from concrete but remain modest in size. So close to the sea – everyone on this island lives right on the edge of the ocean, as the middle of the island is an inaccessible volcano – I had to wonder what would happen in the case of a major hurricane. I can’t imagine many here would fare well. But for now, it remains generally sunny on St. Kitts, and the houses are surrounded by flowers.
The political campaign was in full fervor, with much of the island coated in red signs (signs sponsored by the Labour party). Many were quite blunt. With a population of only 32,000, this is a small-town election but the signs were bigger and more abundant than any small town in which I have lived.
Towns hugged the coast all the way around, with sturdy cement bridges and flood channels built in each one.
An old French church sits on a fallow coconut plantation at the north end of the island. Throughout the Caribbean, we saw unused agricultural land – cane (disused due to the flooding of the market by cheap, subsidized American corn syrup), bananas, and coconut.
And as we rounded the north end of the island, the houses disappeared and the open stretches of the old sugar cane fields revealed a stunning view of the Dutch island of Saba. I swear, half the islands in the Caribbean look as if they are about to explode. Dimly visible beyond Saba is St. Martin.
And then more small towns, and more campaign posters (the conservative candidates were yellow):
We came around the back of the island in under an hour – St. Kitts is a small island compared to Dominica, Barbados, or St. Lucia.
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