I was
born and live in The Republic of Trinidad & Tobago, a two-island country at the southernmost end of the Caribbean
archipelago. Nowadays, many people have heard of Trinidad & Tobago; however, when I was a child and had moved
to America, the way most people acted, you might have thought I was from a country on Mars. "Trinidad?"
people would say inquisitively. "Trinidad, TEXAS?" When I finally managed to make them understand
that no, not Trinidad, Texas, but Trinidad, an island in the Caribbean, their eyes would invariably light up:
"Oh, like Jamaica? Cool! Go on, then — speak Jamaican!"
Come to think of it, even now
many non-West-Indians ask me to speak "Jamaican."
This can be pretty frustrating, especially since
Trinidad is actually one of the larger, more industrial islands of the Caribbean, primarily because of its strong oil
& gas industry. "Jamaica isn’t the only island in the Caribbean," I think to myself,
irritably. "There are other islands, you know."
But if I’m irritable about
being from an oft-forgotten island, imagine how the people from Terre de Haut, Barbuda and Saba feel!
Conde
Nast Traveler is featuring an article written by Gully
Wells, who traveled to these three all-but-forgotten islands on a quest to discover the true meaning of
paradise. Turns out, she found it:
As idyllic antidotes to big-city life, Terre-de-Haut, Barbuda,
and Saba all had the requisite degree of remoteness, that delicious sense of being totally cut off from the demonic
demands of the modern world, but it was ultimately their size that seduced me. It may be an illusion—or possibly
a luxury experienced only by the visitor—but life did seem calmer, simpler, and less out of control on these
islands.
Sounds amazingly wonderful — even for a "big-island" girl like me.