St Kitts and Nevis

Borealis Wednesday 03.05.2023 

We sailed into St Kitts at 8 in the morning. It was the usual approach through mysterious unknown islands, whose identity is a mystery while we still view them half-awake from the balcony. St Kitts seemed at first sight much like Tortola, with verdant green hills and a scattering of largely white houses along the lower flanks of the hillside, and a final concentration of buildings at what purports to be the capital of this island nation. It boasts a total of 57,000 inhabitants, the majority of black or African origin, of which 45,000 live on the main island of St Kitts an 12,000 on neighbouring Nevis, which is barely 15 miles away. In fact, we could clearly see Nevis and its single mountain from the ship. The capital and main port of St Kitts and Nevis is Basseterre, and that is where we are docked. The main currency is Eastern Caribbean Dollars, which is the same as St Lucia, where I spent our last holiday back in 2019. However, as we have been warned, everything is practically speaking payable and even costed in US dollars.

 

This was once the island of sugar. Sugar was brought here as a crop by the British after first arrival in 1623 and became the main product of the island. However, that trade brought in that sinister by product which was the importation and exploitation of slaves from Africa to work the plantations. Despite the abolition of slavery in 1833 and the granting of independence in 1967, sugar remained the main export until 2005. Over the years the maintenance of the sugar industry became too high to sustain as the cost grew, so the government decided it was time to close the industry and replace it with tourism which was becoming increasingly profitable. But it was still sugar that shaped the appearance of the country as it appears today, with attractive colonial houses in Basseterre and Sandy Point, great swathes of unused grassland where the sugar was once grown, a large black African or Afro-European population forming 92% of the country's residents., and a railway line once used to consolidate and convey the sugar export crop to the port, which has now been converted to a successful tourist attraction. The descendants of the dreadful slave trade have now inherited the land and we white intruders are but their guests, not their masters. It is a reflection too on another colonial atrocity in 1626 when the early British and French settlers, fearing a war, invited the original Carib population to a joint celebration of their cooperation hitherto at which they massacred as much of the indigenous population as they could and deported the remaining survivors to Dominica. That is why the black population of Kittitians now have nobody to share the country with.

 

Our morning tour was a journey around the island on what was previously the sugar train. Now the train has been transformed into a tourist attraction with six two storey carriages. The top floor is open but rather uncomfortable with seats around the side facing inwards. The lower level is similar to a typical first-class saloon with large windows. When a coach collected us in the morning and drove us to Needsmust Station (a curious name?), everyone scrambled to climb up the steep steps to the top open floor. Once I had seen how tightly everyone was sitting upstairs, I suggested to Albina we stay below. In fact we were the only people to do so and basically had the run of the carriage to ourselves along with the staff serving pina colada, with or without rum, sugar cookies and two dancers in local costumes, who danced for us before proceeding upstairs.

 

The landscape layout is attractive with large wooded green hills, one of which could perhaps be promoted to being a mountain. It is in fact listed as a volcano called Mount Liamigua. Nearly all these Leeward Islands were created by volcanic activity and every now and again a sleeping giant in these sleepy islands will erupt, as recently happened in Monserrat, just to keep everyone on their toes. The hills are surrounded by equally green lowlands, more extensive than those of Tortola, which in turn are surrounded by the blue waters of the Atlantic and the Caribbean on opposite side of the island, and the occasional beaches on the Caribbean side. We could watch this constant landscape from our train as we spent an hour and a half circumnavigating the island. A lady somewhere up top  in one of the carriages gave a lively commentary on the intercom system highlighting some of the more interesting features on our route. These included the picturesque curve around Frigate Bay but with barely visible dark sand beaches facing cold and dangerous Atlantic rollers hitting the shore. These did include nesting sites for turtles, though we would have been too far away to see them. On the other side of the track we also had a bat cave in the escarpment of the nearest hill. We also passed several ruins of dark stone sugar mills, sometimes with accompanying chimneys, standing as grim reminders of the old 18th century sugar plantations. Seeing these monuments, I think that Kittitians eventually abandoned sugar manufacture with relief, not only because it was increasingly uneconomical, but also because of its connotation with a cruel and humiliating past. An interesting feature of the journey were four stark and unadorned bridges at various valley crossings around the island, steep and narrow, which were still feats of nineteenth century functional engineering. The older buildings that still remained were numerous churches, Methodist and Roman Catholic, all built of volcanic black stone, looking like something out of a Welsh mining village. Te Roman Catholic churches seemed to predominate in the former French zones on the outskirts of the island. The British colony was in the middle of the island. Eventually the British took over all of the island. 

Near the end of the train journey we passed a rare example of a modern international investment, namely the St Kitts Eco Park. Our journey was also cheered by the large numbers of butterflies, yellow and blue and white. They seem to fly happily without any immediately vidible predators. Attention was drawn by our train narrator to the individually cultivated plots of land with apple trees or to groves and small fields with pineapple, sweet potato, yams, banana or corn on the cob, often near village halls and schools. I was pleased to hear, talking of schools, that all education including higher education, were subsidized by the government. That included one hot meal a day. However, I was concerned that the government, which owns 80% of the land, has basically left it fallow after sugar and tobacco production was dropped nearly twenty years ago. We had passed through several miles of fields and meadows consisting of nothing but long green grass. On the positive side I could see from the train that roads appeared to be of good quality. However, I was shocked by the large number of wrecked cars and construction equipment left abandoned along the side of the tracks, often growing their own vegetation inside the wrecks. Was this some kind of counterculture as a monument to the past, or just carelessness? At least the train journey had been comfortable for us inside the railway carriage. Upstairs every sat tightly squeezed, facing inward and having to hold on to their hats in the brisk wind. I happily settled for what we had got, even though it was not our first choice.

 When the train journey ended in a loop with a siding, we found more of our party from the ship waiting to swap places with us. We returned to the same coach numbers we had before the train journeys, whereas they swarmed on to the upper decks of the train. We them continued by road through the town of Sandy Row and various villages on the route. The houses were neat and painted white and included large numbers of state owned estates of small two storeye houses. At least they were not being herded into large anonymous residential blocks, but then there was plenty of land to spare. Highlights on this route included a tall hill topped with the formidable Brimstone Hill Fortress, which had been dubbed the Gibraltar of the West Indies, after it had been besieged in numerous wars by the French, and in its later stages proved impregnable. More pogniant was the site of the masacre of the Carib people by the British at Bloody Point. A recoded narration of the event was given over the loudspeaker. It was obviously a British version of the event which described how they prevented a massacre of British settlers by the natives. However it ended with a massacre of all on one fateful day so that the local river ran red with  easily run theirblood, while the rest of the survivors were deported. Again, not something I was taught at school. The bus carried us eventually to the harbour entrance.

We stopped to do a bit of shopping and met up with Rafal and Iza, one of the Polish couples, at the harbour entrance. We chatted about their plan to rebook for an 101 day Olsen tour next year, mainly taking place in the Douthern hemisphere. They found they could easily run their commercial roofing business while enjoying a world cruise. They returned to the ship but I wanted to visit the National Museum. In all my 70 days of cruising so far, I had not had the time or opportunity to visit a single museum. It was just off the harbour shopping stores, with the front hidden behind scaffolding.  As the stairs were rather steep Albina opted not to come. I went in alone. I found three rooms, the last seperated by a balcony. The first concerned a social and cultural history of the country, particularly of course the history of local reggae musicians, but also including histories of their Christmas festivals during the colonial days, and later their own annual carnivals. The second room designated for the political history was only partly full, as many exhibits were being renovated and supplied with new descriptions. There were pictures of nineteenth century factories and goverrnors and almost nothing of post-independence St Kitts and Nevis. One exhibition case showed handcuffs and leg irons, as well as whips, used to restrain slaves in colonial times. Across the balcony were exhibits showing the tragic story of the sinking of the local ferry, the Christena, with massive loss of life just 50 years ago. It was the local ferry between St Kitts and its sister island Nevis and it was probably the country's most traumatic event in the Twentieth Century. There was a large model of the vessel and a fund collecting for a proper commemoration for the event. There was a white memorial stone standing outside the museum. 

The Museum showed the difficulties which this country faces. St Kitts has invested in tourism as the main export, but it does not seem to have any fallback in view of increasing competition from neighbouring tropical islands and even the more temperate islands in the Atlantic and the Mediterranean. It occurs to me that long term they would near more international investment similar to the Eco Park to create an additional attraction for tourists. However each such investment could hamper the development of the country's new indigenous culture, so reliant until now on the provincial monuments of its colonialist past and deprived of a pre-colonialist indigenous tradition. The true culture of its people lies in its music, its paintings, its costumes. Yet it also needs an alternative source of income, from agriculture  or from industrial development to sustain itself in order to develop that culture.

 I rejoined Albina downstairs as she was standing by the Christena Memorial. Just beyond the museum I saw a square with a middle sized green clock tower with a drinking fountain called the Berkeley Memorial. It is another tourist attaction that commemorated a local Nineteenth century plantation owner. Beyond it was a shopping street with colonial architecture but whch we had no time to visit.

We returned to the vessel.That evening we had a Caribbean Grand Buffet Party based on the concept that every participant would be wearing white. I actually had a new white cotton shirt and trousers which we bought in Tortola yesterday. so I put it on. Albina sat it out as usual. I danced a little, took some photos, and left the party, bringing a chicken leg with a pineapple and mango salad down to Albina in the cabin. 

I went up for the General Knowledge Quiz. The full team was there. This time we got 13 out of 15 answers right. We came joint third so we had to answer a deciding question. The three winning tema were asked what was the one year whe Morocco participated in the Eurovision contest. By saying 1964 we came nearest to the right answer of 1960 and for the third time this cruise we won our bottle of champagne. Now we have three bottles to share between three households. The details can be sorted out later.