Caribbean Beat — May/June 2021 (#164)

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A MESSAGE From OUR CEO From the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, Caribbean Airlines rolled out programmes to educate and secure the health and safety of our employees and customers. This proactive approach has kept our teams busy for the first quarter of 2021, introducing services to facilitate a safe travel environment. The end result is that Caribbean Airlines now offers several products to ensure that your travel experience is stress-free and comfortable.

In addition to the Caribbean Airlines sherpa tool www.travelguidelines.caribbean-airlines.com, where you can verify the specific entry requirements and other important travel information for your intended destination, our teams went through a comprehensive exercise and now we are the first airline in the Caribbean to obtain Platinum Status from the Airline Passenger Experience Association (APEX) and Simpliflying. This means that Caribbean Airlines has met and surpassed global benchmarks for customer-centric safety standards through a programme that provides scientifically based validation for airlines to reach beyond even the governmental requirements for safety.

One of the outcomes of this exercise is a new page on our website, the Travel Essentials Centre, where in one location you can access all the information needed for your journeys. The details shared at the Travel Essentials Centre will take you through what to do from the time you make your booking until you leave the airport at the end of your journey. Please check it out at www.caribbean-airlines.com.

Another major development in enabling a safe travel environment is our partnership with Ink Aviation, where

you can reserve appointments and pay for COVID-19 tests before you fly. This easy-to-use Passenger COVID-19 test booking portal is available via www.caribbean-airlines.com/ covid-test.

The innovative platform integrates with multiple stakeholders, including medical establishments, airlines, airports, and governments, to securely validate and share passenger health credentials, such as test results. This enables the passenger journey to be simple, fast, and safe, with all steps connected together.

The activation of this portal was a significant step for Caribbean Airlines in supporting countries in safely reopening their borders while preventing the importation of COVID-19 cases. The platform is compatible with all digital and paper COVID-19 test certificates, including results from RT-PCR, LAMP, and Antigen tests.

On the heels of the Ink Partnership, we launched Your Space, a product where passengers travelling in the economy cabin (not Caribbean Plus or Business Class) have the option to pay for the seat next to them, or the entire row, from as low as US$20. This means that at affordable rates you can opt to enjoy greater peace of mind, more privacy, or extra space to work or relax. Families can also secure an entire row should they need to.

As more travellers return to the skies, Caribbean Airlines assures you that we are taking all the steps necessary to set the highest standards to safeguard your health in the air and on the ground while in our care.

In addition to introducing these new offerings, we have expanded our network, bringing New York City and the Eastern Caribbean closer together. You can now fly direct, twice weekly, from New York to Barbados with seamless onward connections to St Vincent, Grenada, and Dominica. Visit our website www.caribbean-airlines.com for more details.

In the coming months, you will also see more routes added to our network, as we fulfil our mandate to better connect the Caribbean. Our Cargo product also continues to expand, with increased capacity of 100,000 pounds added to Kingston, Jamaica, where we operate three weekly allcargo flights each Sunday, Tuesday, and Thursday. We have also launched an additional all-cargo flight out of Trinidad on each Monday.

The last year has brought many challenges, but in the face of it, we have shown resilience and commitment to you, our valued stakeholders. Thank you for your support, and we look forward to returning to full commercial operations soon.

Garvin Medera Chief Executive Officer

Contents No. 164 • May/June 2021

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22 40 EMBARK

8 Wish you were here Marigot, St Lucia

10 Need to know

Make the most of May and June, even during the time of COVID-19 — from unusual museums to biking adventures

20 Bookshelf and playlist

Our reading and listening picks ARRIVE

22 RounD Trip

Back of beyond The Caribbean has plenty of bustling cities and popular beaches — but when you really want to get away from everything, you can also find tranquil hideaways, from tiny coastal villages in Tobago and Dominica to the indigenous settlements of Guyana’s Rupununi

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34 closeup

Out of the depths “Multiplicities” — of subject, form, and even medium— abound in the work of Trinidad-born artist Nicole Awai. She draws on personal memory, communal history, and sites of the imagination like Trinidad’s famed Pitch Lake, writes Andre Bagoo

38 Bucket List

Blue Holes National Park, the Bahamas The limestone island of Andros is home to one of the Caribbean’s most unusual landscapes

40 own words

“I Can’t imagine my life without writing” Barbadian author Cherie Jones on her writing compulsion, and how her debut novel How the One-Armed Sister Sweeps Her House become a safe space to process ideas about domestic violence— as told to Shelly-Ann Inniss

42 the deal

Finding your island home Even during the time of COVID-19, Caribbean real estate remains an attractive investment for international buyers — especially through Citizenship by Investment programmes. Natalie Dookie learns more

48 DID you even know

How well do you know the geography of the Caribbean? Let our trivia column put you to the test

CaribbeanBeat Caribbean Beat An MEP publication

Editor Nicholas Laughlin General manager Halcyon Salazar Design artist Kevon Webster Production manager Jacqueline Smith Web editor Caroline Taylor Editorial assistants Shelly-Ann Inniss, Kristine De Abreu

Business Development Manager, Tobago and International Evelyn Chung T: (868) 684 4409 E: evelyn@meppublishers.com Business Development Representative, Trinidad Tracy Farrag T: (868) 318 1996 E: tracy@meppublishers.com

Media & Editorial Projects Ltd. 6 Prospect Avenue, Long Circular, Maraval 120111, Trinidad and Tobago SėĸĩëéëĪĸéååĸæëåäģèëäæģéäæëĸĖĸ ėĸĩëéëĪĸéåëĸãéæì E: caribbean-beat@meppublishers.com Website: www.meppublishers.com

Printed by Cover Lily pond at sunset, rural Tobago Photo Altin Osmanaj/Alamy Stock Photo

Read and save issues of Caribbean Beat on your smartphone, tablet, computer, and favourite digital devices!

Caribbean Beat is published six times a year for Caribbean Airlines by Media & Editorial Projects Ltd. It is also available on subscription. Copyright © Caribbean Airlines 2021. All rights reserved. ISSN 1680–6158.

No part of this magazine may be reproduced in any form whatsoever without the written permission of the publisher. MEP accepts no responsibility for content supplied by our advertisers. The views of the advertisers are theirs and do not represent MEP in any way.

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OUR CLIMATE Pat Ganase explains how our awareness of climate change and its consequences unites the Caribbean region

T

he climate in the Caribbean is the best in the world: it is a place of invigorating air, balmy breezes, restorative rains, salubrious seas. The temperature ranges from swimsuit warm by day to sweater cool by night; hardly varying beyond 20 to 32 degrees Celsius. Why should Caribbeans be concerned with climate change?

June is the start of the hurricane season, which runs until November. In 2020, there were 30 named storms, beginning with Arthur on 16 May, and Bertha on 27 May. Tropical storms typically originate over the Atlantic from hot air blowing off the Sahara.

Remember Dorian which moved across the Lesser Antilles and Puerto Rico, building strength to destroy Abaco in the Bahamas, in 2019. Dominica had most of its building stock flattened by Irma and Maria in 2017. More frequent and fiercer storms are the spawn of global warming, already 1 degree C over the pre-industrial average global temperature.

Caribbean small island states are on the front line of climate change, susceptible to many of the adverse effects: sea level rise, bleaching coral reefs, drought and flooding threatening agriculture. They have not been doing nothing.

The Caribbean is also home to climate scientists who have been working to alert the world to the dangers if global temperatures rise by 2 degrees or over. As contributors to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Reports, Caribbean scientists at the University of the West Indies — Professor Leonard Nurse in Barbados, Professor John Agard in Trinidad and Tobago, and Professor Michael Taylor in Jamaica — have been successful in advancing their proposal that the nations of the world work to limit global warming to a 1.5 degree rise instead of 2 degrees (at which we should expect massive die-offs of species in the ocean and on land). Their research and conclusions, echoed in the mantra, “1.5 to stay alive,” was ratified in Korea in 2018.

“The declaration that we should keep global temperatures from rising over 1.5 degrees was accepted by Caricom in 2007,” says Professor Agard, “and is now embedded in the Paris Agreement.”

There is no doubt that the Caribbean identity is shaped by its climate, changing patterns of weather, hurricanes, and sea level rise, but also by the resilience of its people. Professor Taylor supports the view that Caribbeans are well positioned to innovate climate change mitigation and adaptation. “Science for resilience in the Caribbean is the science of everyday living,” he says. “In the Caribbean, when the climate changes, all life changes. We have an innate sensitivity to climate: on small islands we have no place to go. That sensitivity is now being transformed into vulnerability.”

Many of the island nations of the Caribbean have already developed adaptation plans and measures. Prime Minister Mia Mottley recently announced that Barbados aims to be free of fossil fuel energy by 2030. They added 45 electric buses to their public transport fleet, and launched a Roofs to Reefs initiative to protect the roofs of vulnerable citizens and the reefs in their coastal economy.

Since 1994, the climate conference in Barbados adopted the Barbados Programme of Action (BPOA) and set out activities to be undertaken by Small Island Developing States. The priority areas include adaptations against climate change and sea-level rise, management of wastes, preservation of freshwater and biodiversity resources, protection of tourism and energy resources, and development of its human resource. The BPOA identified cross-sectoral areas for capacity building; institutional development at the national, regional, and international levels; cooperation in the transfer of environmentally sound technologies; trade and economic diversification; and finance.

St Vincent and the Grenadines — with the most sublime waters for sailing in the world — suffered a devastating flood in 2013. They have since developed a National Adaptation Plan with the help of the UNDP and Japan. In Cuba, measures against climate change adopted since the 1990s include a national forestry programme, water resources management, soil conservancy, protection against rural blazes, food security, urban planning, and vectors control.

Trinidad and Tobago was recently awarded the UNESCO Man and the Biosphere designation for Northeast Tobago in recognition of natural and cultural heritage and willingness to protect and preserve the ridge-to-ocean ecosystem that includes the Main Ridge Forest Reserve, protected since 1776.

Caribbean small island states have accepted the responsibility to demonstrate to the world how it is possible to live within 1.5 degree C global temperature rise. They do it for their self-preservation and identity.

Pat Ganase is a freelance writer in Trinidad and Tobago.

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wish you were here

Marigot, St Lucia Four miles south of Castries, the small, pictureperfect bay at Marigot, surrounded by lushly forested hills dotted with villas, is one of St Lucia’s true gems.

This was the site of long-ago naval battles, and more recently a film location. Its sheltered waters are a haven for yachts, and a tiny sandy beach protects the inner harbour. Take in the view across Marigot’s brilliant blue waters and you’ll understand why it’s been called the Caribbean’s most beautiful bay.

Photography courtesy Westend61 GmbH /Alamy Stock Photo

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NEED TO KNOW

Essential info to help you make the most of May and June — even in the middle of a pandemic

Don’t Miss

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James Hack

Beginning in the 1830s, a rich new heritage was introduced to the Caribbean through the arrival of indentured immigrants from India. Today, Indo-Caribbean culture is woven tightly into the social fabric of our region, from religion and philosophy to art, music, and food. The arrival of these foreparents from the subcontinent is marked each year in Guyana (5 May), Trinidad and Tobago (30 May), and Suriname (5 June), typically with historical re-enactments, performances, ceremonies, and even fireworks. This year, though we commemorate the anniversary on a smaller scale and virtually, the spirit of remembrance lives on.

ett

Indian Arrival Day

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need to know A cultural performance is one of the highlights of a visit to Dominica’s Kalinago Barana Autê

Hemis/Alamy Stock Photo

Wars fan? The exhibit also showcases memorabilia from other films like Men in Black and The Terminator.

Remarkable displays spanning over sixty years of moviemaking, plus life casts of celebrity Hollywood faces, are must-sees for film buffs.

Caribbean Wax Museum, Barbados

Take Five Caribbean museums From architecture and monuments to street names, reminders of our history and culture surround us daily. And then there are the Caribbean’s many museums, overflowing with artefacts telling our many stories. Some of them are so unique and specialised — like the Crab Museum in Guadeloupe — it’s hard to believe they exist. International Museum Day on 18 May is a chance to reimagine your museum experience. Here’s a roundup of eclectic and sometimes lesser-known museums around the region.

Kalinago Barana Autê, Carib Territory, Dominica

Translated, the name means Carib Cultural Village by the Sea. Over three thousand Kalinago — Dominica’s indigenous people — reside in a reserve on the eastern side of the island. A recreated traditional village by the Crayfish River explores their cultural heritage with traditional craft demonstrations like basketweaving and pottery-making, dance performances, an herbal medicine garden, and more. The largest hut — called a karbet — stages dramatisations and other cultural presentations daily.

Caribbean people’s natural penchant for storytelling knows no bounds here.

Aloe Museum and Factory, Aruba

Simple things like the aloe vera plant 12

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can be significant and valuable. The domestication of aloe shaped the agriculture industry in Aruba for over a century. This museum houses vintage tools and equipment, along with a library covering every aspect of aloe vera. Each tour is fully interactive, with no chance of your feeling overwhelmed with gallery fatigue — possibly another wonder of aloe.

Yoda Guy Movie Exhibit, Sint Maarten

“The probability of finding a Star Wars exhibit in the Caribbean is 125,316 to 1,” reads a sign near the entrance.

But if you’re visiting Phillipsburg in Sint Maarten, the odds are in your favour. Hollywood creature effects artist Nick Maley created the exhibit after his contribution to the Yoda character in the sci-fi saga. Not a Star

Life-like wax figures of icons from across the region are under the spotlight at the only indigenous wax museum in the Caribbean. Get up close and personal at your own pace, while learning more in a fully interactive audio-visual environment. Create your own memories with soca queen Alison Hinds, cricket legend Brian Lara, the fastest man alive Usain Bolt, and many more personalities across categories of entertainment, politics, history, and sports. When you share your selfies with friends, they may not be able to tell the difference.

Chaguaramas Military History and Aerospace Museum, Trinidad

The retired BWIA aircraft visible from the roadway is often used as a landmark to identify this museum located in the Chaguaramas district — once a US military base, during the Second World War. Have you ever been in a battle tank or a bunker? Unlock your curiosity about military history at this four-acre indoor and outdoor museum. Extensive exhibits are devoted to various raids and battles in Trinidad, the Napoleonic Wars of the British colonial period, and the years Trinidad was ruled by the Spanish. The historical artefacts and the tales they tell will make your imagination run wild.

Shelly-Ann Inniss

sora shimazaki/pexels.com

need to know

DIY Pineapple for beauty It’s neither a pine nor an apple. The pineapple is actually a berry, and it’s a perennial staple at markets and on bar and restaurant menus — as well as the star attraction at the Bahamas Pineapple Festival in Eleuthera, running from 3 to 5 June. Full of nutrients, pineapple is just as good on your skin as in your stomach. Here are three easy ways to incorporate the versatile fruit into your skincare routine — try them at home!

Skin moisturiser

Pineapple has strong antibacterial properties and a high water content.

When blended into a puree and mixed with avocado and castor oils, it cleanses and hydrates the skin, leaving it revitalised with a dewy glow.

Antiaging facial

Bromelain, an enzyme in pineapple, has anti-inflammatory properties which exfoliate the skin. A splash of pineapple juice to the face unclogs pores and stimulates collagen production, enhancing the elasticity of the skin and reducing fine lines and wrinkles. Coconut milk pairs well with pineapple juice for piña coladas — and for antiaging, too. Two slices of pineapple pulped and combined with two tablespoons of coconut milk prevents dry and dull skin. Wash your face and neck with cold water, then apply evenly. Let it stay for half an hour before washing off with lukewarm water. Try this twice weekly for best results.

Acne face pack

Green tea is known to reduce acne, and we know honey isn’t sweet just on our taste buds. Combining both ingredients with pineapple should give clear skin with repeated use. Add one teaspoon each of green tea and honey to some pineapple pulp and mix thoroughly. Wash your face and neck with cold water and apply in a gentle circular motion using your finger tips. Massage for five minutes then rinse with lukewarm water.

Keep in mind that pineapple contains citric acid, so don’t leave it on your face for too long, otherwise skin irritation and redness may occur. Try a patch test before attempting any of these recipes on your entire face.

Shelly-Ann Inniss

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ADVERTORIAL

Great Outdoors Bike away

Bertl123/Shutterstock.com

need to know

A cross-country bike ride is an invigorating way to explore Antigua’s glorious landscape

The varied topographies of Caribbean islands offer endless alternatives for exploring on two wheels — and there’s no better time to start than World Bike Day on 3 June, whether you’re looking for an easy family-friendly ride or prefer something more intense. Here are three journeys that pair the exhilaration of cycling with an introduction to the Caribbean’s natural beauty.

Blue Mountain National Park, Jamaica

Antigua cross-country

Tinker’s Trail, St. Lucia

With 108 square miles of rolling plains and gentle hills, Antigua is perfectly suited to a cross-country ride. Set aside a day or two to explore, and let’s see how many of Antigua’s reputed 365 beaches you can pedal past.

Try starting at the incredible Devil’s Bridge National Park — an ancient reef formation at the island’s east end. Then enjoy the commanding views of iconic Halfmoon Bay to the south. If time permits a tour, Halfmoon Bay National Park is the perfect place to investigate Antigua’s natural biodiversity. Back in the saddle, the Shirley Heights lookout offers outstanding views of English Harbour. After all that aerobic activity, venture on to Turner’s Beach for refreshment, before your feet touch the white coastline of Ffryes Beach in the west.

This is for the hardcore bikers or adventurers looking to test their fitness — or meet their maker. For approximately eight miles, birdsong and the whizz of speeding bikes fill the rainforest air on St Lucia’s southwest coast. The trail, designed with the assistance of US Olympic cyclist David “Tinker” Juarez, covers varying terrain, allowing you to pace yourself, slightly. The trek includes a continuous steep hill rising a thousand feet from the coast. The scenic reward of the sparkling Caribbean Sea just beyond lush foliage, and the opportunity to ring Tinker’s bell, are worth the climb.

Then it’s time to go home. The winding rollercoaster descent along daring precipices makes for a good story.

Level: intermediate and determined

Level: Advanced

Level: piece of cake

Renowned for hiking, camping, and coffee, the mountain range in eastern Jamaica is also a cyclists’ favourite. At the start, your head will be in the clouds — literally — since Blue Mountain Peak is the tenth tallest in the Caribbean. Feel the tranquillity of nature first-hand as you coast down the slope through thick canopies of green. Over eight hundred species of plant surround you as you navigate the misty bends in the trail and breathe in crisp mountain air. Sweeping views of Kingston await, and maybe a cup of Blue Mountain coffee? Novice riders can tick this off their bucket list, but if you’re interested in a more challenging ride, names like Triple Bypass and Downpipe Gully give an idea of the prospects. It’s recommended to go with an authorised and reputable guide.

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Shelly-Ann Inniss

PLUMERIA INN AWAITS YOU COME EXPERIENCE TOBAGO THE PLUMERIA WAY

Lot #22 Signal Hill, Connector Road, Signal Hill, Tobago. Tel: 1 868 373-1355 email: bcharles@plumeriainntt.com

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Courtesy Shoma the Label

need to know

Courtesy Shoma the Label

The Look Shoma the Label’s Tropical Masquerade New beginnings can be daunting, but Trinidadian designer Shoma Persad trusts in timing. After a challenging year in 2020, she launched her eponymous label earlier this year with her Tropical Masquerade collection.

“With fashion, I get to do all the things I love,” she says, “including photography, styling, and marketing. This is where my passions collide.”

Shoma the Label amplifies the vibrancy and charisma of Caribbean stories through each handmade piece. And the Spring/Summer 2021

resort wear collection has the quintessential Caribbean flair wrapped in a sophisticated package. “A lot of people look outside for the muse, but I design for the muse inside your head, which is you,” says Persad. These pieces showcase how Caribbean people look beyond Carnival, both glamourous and uplifting. The look reflects “a seemingly structured chaos, equal to a Carnival section, or jungle motif.

Ruffles take on the energy of flora and fauna, while cascading features billow like a waterfall.”

The stunning prints for Tropical Masquerade were created by Persad in collaboration with designer James Hackett. Visit shomathelabel.com for more information.

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Trinidad Tel: 1 (868) 226-4CAR (4227) or (868) 493-2867 Tobago Tel: 1 (868) 740-4480 or (868) 687-BAGO (2240) Email us at: leasing@econocartt.com Website: www.roll-caribbean.com

@tobagofestivals

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bookshelf

This month’s reading picks from the Caribbean Reviews by Shivanee Ramlochan, Bookshelf editor

A Million Aunties

by Alecia McKenzie (Blouse & Skirt Books, 200 pp, ISBN 9789768267290) “Oh. That is all I can say. Mi heart full and low at the same time.” Laugh and cry live abundantly in the house of Jamaica-born Alecia McKenzie’s A Million Aunties, a familiar world of extended family ties bound by blood and tenderness, set to the central motivation of journeys towards (and away from) home. When grief-stricken Chris arrives on the heels of a fresh New York tragedy to the fictional village of Port Segovia, he doesn’t imagine that Miss Della will soon become an “auntie” to him, unlooked for but solidly reassuring in an unexpected hearth. With spry humour, warm wit, and a strong balancing hand over her numerous, colourful characters, McKenzie makes us question the names we place on our life’s strongest domestic attachments, showing us that love animates everything.

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Mrs Death Misses Death

by Salena Godden (Canongate Books, 320 pp, ISBN 9781838851194) Drop the scythe, cast off the dour black hood: Mrs Death is here to thwart what you think you know about the Grim Reaper. Salena Godden, of Jamaican-Irish heritage, turns a poet’s political passion to the subject of her debut novel: what if death were a Black working-class woman, fed up to the back teeth of other people’s collective decease? Lady Death seeks out struggling writer Wolf Willeford to tell her stories, which come to the reader as disjointed vignettes, rife with ancestral pain and contemporary grisliness, including non-binary Wolf’s own violent remembrances of their abusive grandfather.

Mrs Death Misses Death unfurls a fiercely nontraditional storytelling mode, employing galvanic stream of consciousness rants, piercing perspectives on mental illness, and the weight of death on us all — a poignant elegy during our current pandemic.

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An Autobiography of the Autobiography of Reading

Mama Phife Represents: A Verse Memoir

by Dionne Brand (University of Alberta Press, 72 pp, ISBN 9781772125085)

by Cheryl Boyce-Taylor (Haymarket Books, 136 pp, ISBN 9781642592665)

To face Trinidadian-Canadian Dionne Brand’s newest work of non-fiction is to grasp a newly-forged key to your beloved childhood libraries, filled with giltedged books in the complex manner of the beloved colonial tome. We love what we love to read, Brand tells us in this time-bending reflection, first delivered as a Canadian Literature Centre Kreisel Lecture. How then do we begin to detoxify our reading practice in a way that lets the reader into the frame, away from the aegis of racism, xenophobia, and violence that layer our “timeless” classics? If no book is safe from Brand’s scrutiny, then no realm is immune to Brand’s visioning, either: the thinking uncovered in this miniature odyssey makes vast room for an originary and dauntless signifying.

Driving hybridity’s generous heart into the deep chasm of grief, TrinidadianAmerican poet Cheryl Boyce-Taylor openly mourns and celebrates the life of her late son, iconic hip-hop trailblazer Malik “Phife Dawg” Taylor of A Tribe Called Quest. Encompassing poems, prose, dream diary entries, letters, song lyrics, and forms of such raw anguish that they seem to transcend genre, Mama Phife Represents is a dense miracle of narrative bowing to experience’s weight, then flowing with it into a long, intensely braided melody.

Phife was truly remarkable, Boyce-Taylor tells us, both as son and artist: and oh, how he was loved. Triumphant memory raises its head from the repositories of despair as the work leads us to a space where Malik’s spirit reigns sovereign, beautifully and complexly lit by the offerings of these invocations.

playlist

This month’s listening picks from the Caribbean Reviews by Nigel A. Campbell

The Rich Are Only Defeated When Running For Their Lives Anthony Joseph (Heavenly Sweetness Records) Creole griot and poet Anthony Joseph, selfdescribed Black surrealist, on this album directly and subliminally namechecks Caribbean literary pioneers — Sam Selvon, Kamau Brathwaite, C.L.R. James, Anthony McNeill — as a celebration of many island lives. Rising cadences on fiery recitations say “listen to this,” revealing a Caribbean literary heritage married to music evolved in its evocation. This is not the poetry of protest, but a dissertation for the diaspora.

The new UK jazz heroes — Shabaka Hutchings, Jason Yarde, et al — give the music here more urgency than a Congo Square memory, more variety than the blues, altogether re-framing Joseph’s words beyond the “bluesology” of Gil ScottHeron and the dub poetry of Linton Kwesi Johnson. The frenetic swing of “Language” balances the dub rhythm of “Maka Dimwe”. Confident, eloquent — a new classic.

4:00 AM

Project Spotlight

Up Front

Delgres (PIAS Records)

Various Artists (MusicTT)

Annicia Banks (RawVue Music)

Delgres is a Paris-based trio led by Guadaloupean Pascal Danae, whose music is described as “a brand of Creole blues built on strands of African and French Caribbean culture, Mississippi blues storytelling, and New Orleans grooves.”

Danae, along with drummer Baptiste Brondy and sousaphone player Rafgee — who needs a bass? — on this, their second full-length album, continue the task of interpreting the chaos of disturbed lives. Blues chronicles pain, creole blues gives pain context. Sung in his native tongue — Kréyòl gwadloupéyen — the lyrics powerfully reflect Black anguish and the oppression of the immigrant from the Antillean perspective. Gritty musical minimalism is made conscious by the Kréyòl voice. We were once told that the blues is “a special kind of music which cannot be fully appreciated and felt unless listened to within its context of Negro American music.” This album and this band destroy permanently that old thesis. Creole blues reverses the gaze. Excellent.

This collection of eight performances featuring curated talent from Trinidad and Tobago should be marketed as a collection of songs. Very well written and produced songs. This could be the soundtrack to a whole host of viral TikTok dance videos.

The accents differentiate this compilation of brilliant songs from any other catalogue of urban pop tunes awaiting placement in a TV series or film. Foreign music supervisors could have a fun time placing DNA 868 Muzik’s “I Doh Care” with his Trinidad-situated narrative of defiance and disregard for haters, but to deny the song is to deny reality. Every world culture speaks a truth beyond the generic love songs or juvenile anthems of positivity and assertive love. That is not to say that a few performances can’t go beyond the publisher’s pen. Juss Lizz shines on her anthem to “queendom,” “Best Side”. Darryl Gervais’s and Jhay C’s production gives this local effort an international appeal. Listen and dance!

In 2013, the Oscar-winning documentary film 20 Feet from Stardom showcased the stories of background singers and “the disconnection between talent and stardom.” That disconnect is bridged with the release of this debut EP from Annicia Banks, background singer to legends. Dennis Brown, Judy Mowatt, Sister Carol, and Bunny Wailer have all been supported by Banks in studio and live performance, and on this album we hear why the Jamaican music industry has celebrated and desired her voice. The music here has the smooth reggae vibe so cherished by labels in the 1980s after the passing of Bob Marley, a sound that never ages. Dennis Brown’s classic “Love Has Found Its Way” is reinterpreted by Banks showcasing a voice that balances power, tone, and clarity. Her range is exploited on “Hush”, a cautionary admonition on the practicality of patience in the face of adversity. Seven songs, mainly composed by Banks, sing of love, life, and Jamaica. A talented star.

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round trip

Back of beyond

Michaela Arjoon

Sometimes you just want to get away from it all. The Caribbean is full of bustling towns, popular beaches, crowded festivals — but also quiet retreats, from remote mountain escapes to charming coastal villages

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Parlatuvier, Tobago There’s ample competition for the title of most picturesque beach in Tobago, but for those in the know, Parlatuvier Bay is always near the top of the list. An hour’s drive from Scarborough, Tobago’s capital, this quiet fishing village with its iconic wooden jetty is surrounded by forested hills, and Parlatuvier Falls a short hike away. Pause to take in the view along the Leeward Road and admire the crescent of golden sand and perfect blue water of the bay.

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Hillsbourough, Carriacou

Robert Harding/Alamy Stock Photo

Largest of the Grenadine Islands, and a dependency of Grenada, Carriacou is sometimes called the “Isle of Reefs” for its unspoiled dive sites, especially on the western side of the island. With a population of eight thousand, the island is just big enough to provide some bustle in Hillsborough, the capital, but small enough to offer a hideaway to those looking for peace and quiet. Some of the best beaches are accessible only by foot, with a scattering of offshore islets for true seclusion.

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Grande Riviere, Trinidad Separated from most of Trinidad by the ridges and peaks of the northern range, Grande Riviere on the island’s north coast was once the centre of a sprawling cocoa estate. Today, the village thrives on eco-tourism, with a series of low-key lodges lining the beach. This is a major nesting site for leatherback turtles, and one of the best places in the world to see these strange creatures come ashore to lay their eggs during the nesting season.

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Chris Anderson

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Nappi, Guyana

Pete Oxford

Guyana’s Rupununi Savannah is a landscape unlike any other in the Caribbean: gently rolling plains stretching to the horizon, dotted with small creeks, sandpaper trees, and indigenous settlements, like the Macushi village of Nappi, near the foothills of the Kanuku Mountains. Community-run accommodations are rustic, but the real attraction is the extraordinary wildlife to be encountered in the savannahs and the nearby forested mountains, from giant anteaters to colourful parrots.

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Culebra, Puerto Rico Twenty miles off Puerto Rico's eastern tip, and geographically part of the Virgin Islands chain, the island of Culebra, was once a US naval base. Today it's devoted to far more tranquil purposes. Here you'll find some of the Caribbean's best beaches — including Blue Flag–rated Flamenco Beach — and a wildlife refuge, home to seabirds and nesting sea turtles. Hundreds of larger and smaller bays indent the coastline, with dramatic cliffs, mangrove forests, and sandy coves, and over a dozen tiny cays dot the surrounding sea.

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Hemis/Alamy Stock Photo

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Peter Schickert/Alamy Stock Photo

Calibishie, Dominica The coast around Calibishie, in Dominica’s far northeast, is said to be the most scenic part of the island — which is saying a lot, considering the natural beauty of the Caribbean’s “Nature Island.” In some ways, Calibishie offers all the attractions of Dominica condensed into a small area: gorgeous beaches, lushly forested mountains, rivers with waterfalls and hidden freshwater pools, and trails for hiking. Instead of typical tourist resorts, you’ll find friendly guesthouses and tasteful private villas, with views of Guadeloupe to the north.

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closeup

Out of the depths

P

icture it: ten million tons of pitch, the largest natural deposit of asphalt in the world, its surface a charcoalcoloured crusted thing, flat and without lustre, for as far as the eye can see. Until it rains, and it becomes a mottled mirror, with rippling signatures of water, a patchwork of bruises, one hundred acres of blues, purples, grays, a festering sore that secretes, gurgles, spits gas and miracles, holds pools of mystery, pools pierced by reeds and wild lilies, pools that conceal darker matter; an exhausted thing unburying itself, breathing out objects back to its surface, objects swallowed years, decades, centuries ago like some kind of ancient trash compactor — this is Trinidad’s Pitch Lake.

Artist Nicole Awai’s work is hard to pin down. It straddles mediums (her materials include paint, paper, resin, plastic, nail polish, clay, polyurethane resin, nylon netting, metal fencing, construction foam, and wood) and even dimensions (some of her pieces cross the line into sculptural assemblages.) It’s as though paintings have peeled themselves off the wall and become arte-

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“We live in such multiplicities,” says Trinidad-born, New York–based artist Nicole Awai.

And the idea of multiplicity — of mediums, perspectives, forms — always informs her work, drawing on personal memory, collective history, and sites of the imagination such as Trinidad’s haunting Pitch Lake. Andre Bagoo learns more

facts, agglomerations of stories, people, places, textures, colours, as in Awai’s 2018 work Persistent Resistance of the Liquid Land. Or 2017’s Vistas, in which moving puddles of bitumen seem to have picked up nearby detritus and become beautiful clumps that look two ways at once: backwards and forwards.

Paradoxically, while inconsistency is a kind of consistency in her work, it is also evident that Awai is not concerned with depicting one thing: the artist has no programme or set agenda. What her motley band of painted forms and ideations amounts to is difficult to say, might baffle even the most alert viewer. Until, that is, you consider the Pitch Lake.

Once you see the lake in Awai’s work, it is hard to unsee it.

But when I speak with Awai — who was born in Trinidad but is based in New York City and spends time in Texas — the distance between her and the lake could not be more apparent, as is the distance between her present and her past.

“I’m sitting here in Austin after all of that winter storm crap,” she says. It’s late February. A few days earlier, a historic winter storm pummelled through the state, triggering a power crisis and prompting shortages of water, food, and heat. “The buildings here are not insulated like up north, so you feel the cold to a degree that’s unbearable. I have colleagues whose roofs caved in or the heat broke down.”

Awai is an assistant professor at the University of Texas at Austin, where she teaches painting and drawing. However, she’s based primarily in Brooklyn, New York. She has exhibited at such institutions as MOMA PS1, the Brooklyn Museum, and the Queens Museum — all in New York — and the Salvador Dalí

Photography courtesy Nicole Awai Opposite page and left Installation view and detail of Asphaltum Glance (2013; bituminous (asphaltum) paint, acrylic paint, nail polish, graphite and soft pastel; 206 x 84 inches), a site-specific temporary wall drawing at Alice Yard, Port of Spain, Trinidad

Museum in Florida. She has been an artist in residence at institutions like the Studio Museum in Harlem and the John Michael Kohler Centre in Wisconsin. She has been invited to discuss her work at the Whitney Museum of American Art, and was a critic in painting and printmaking at the Yale School of Art from 2009 to 2015. Her work has been featured in The New York Times.

In 2000, Holland Cotter, a Pulitzer Prize-winning critic at the Times, described Awai as “a figurative painter with an unprettified technique and a metaphorical bent. Colonialism and how it shaped the West Indies is her subject, built up through overlaid images of tropical birds, wallpaper patterns, antique prints, and

illustrations from the British-published schoolbooks with which she grew up. Background and foreground in her paintings keep shifting, which is a good way to think about history.”

I find Cotter’s reading persuasive until I speak with Awai. I ask her about her past in Trinidad, about her relationship with the Pitch Lake. We speak about this for some time, but at one point in the conversation it’s clear she’s mindful of the risk of narrowing the scope of her work. She gently resists any kind of pigeonholing. She’s not “depicting” a lake or specific place or history. Her ties to spaces and elements of her identity are, if relevant, just parts of a broader framework. She’s inclined to

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look forwards. It’s understandable: we all resist being labelled and packaged. We all prefer to look forwards rather than back.

“We live in such multiplicities,” she says. “Things are many things at once, and I have always been interested in multiple perspectives.”

A

wai was born in Trinidad in 1966. She grew up in Blue Range, Diego Martin, but during her early life she shifted back and forth between Trinidad and the United States, where she spent some years as a child before returning to attend university. There was one constant through all of these movements. From the time she was three, Awai sensed what she was going to become.

“I was always an artist,” Awai says. “My mom said I was forever painting and drawing. She said while we were in the States, I’d be sat at a little utility table painting. I’d take a break to watch Mister Rogers’ Neighbourhood, Sesame Street, and The Electric Company. Then it would be back to painting.”

In Trinidad, Awai went to Bishop Anstey Junior School then Bishop Anstey High School — both in Port of Spain. She took up oil painting at the age of seven. “At home I would be oil painting, but at school, classes involved water-based stuff.”

But the idea of being an artist seemed scary, especially in Trinidad, where such possibilities were not widely embraced.

“For a hot second I thought about architecture,” Awai says.

Good sense prevailed. Her mother supported her interest in art and ensured she got extra lessons. It was clear that she would have to study further abroad. She received her BA in 1991 and an MFA in multimedia art in 1996 from the University of South Florida (chosen for the warm weather.) She also attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in 1997.

“I just wanted to do art, which felt like a huge decision,” Awai says.

Perhaps it is safer, then, to agree with Cotter’s assessment of Awai’s work as shifting. Shifting between axes: past-present,

past-future. Or perhaps we can go even further and say the work dispels with linearity entirely. Each piece is a kind of Janus: facing all directions at once so that we trouble our understanding of what encompasses it and us.

“My practice moves in and out of dimensions,” Awai says.

“Over the years, it has moved from two-dimensional to three-, and everything in between.”

Then during her time as artist in residence at the Studio Museum, from 1999 to 2000, a breakthrough happened. “I remember making these paintings where the objects started to take on a life that seemed like they needed to step out of the paintings and into a physical space,” she says. “It was this idea around the idea that worlds could be parallel: they were coming up to the surface of the canvas and they wanted to cross over into our own world, and I thought, ‘I want you to come out and reach out from the surface. I will let you loose.’”

Flowing through Awai’s work is an interest in these types of antinomies: inside, outside, fluidity versus solidity.

“Her drawings, installations, and sculptural works process

“My practice moves in and out of dimensions,” Nicole Awai says.

“Over the years, it has moved from two-dimensional to three-, and everything in between” a range of inferences derived from her negotiations with the persistent, mired, and myriad games of identity and labelling,” the Trinidadian artist Christopher Cozier wrote of Awai in a 2004 BOMB magazine profile. Cozier ended by noting Awai had begun a new venture, one exploring “a world of conflicted components and definitions in an endless process of amorphous meltdown.

It is also an in-between state.”

I

n 2013, Awai returned to Trinidad briefly for an artist residency at Alice Yard, the contemporary art space in Port of Spain, to explore more fully the presence of the Pitch Lake in her work, a presence manifested by a concern with “oozing.” She had not visited the lake before, but had, like most people in Trinidad, heard stories about it. In local lore, the origins of the lake, which is said to be inexhaustible, is tied to the fate of an indigenous tribe. The tribe is said to have done the forbidden by eating hummingbirds. As punishment, the gods opened up the earth, swallowing the village.

“What I was realising was that ‘ooze’ in my work was about that space, but more importantly it was also the idea of that space being the site or place where there is a connection between narrative and materiality, between history and materiality,” Awai says. “It’s a place that makes time irrelevant.”

For her residency, she produced an installation called Asphaltum Glance, a wall drawing/painting that was simultaneously a visual and olfactory experience. Images of dark residue coated the walls of a small white gallery space, visible through a wide glass door. Awai used bituminous paint, its pungent

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Installation view of Persistent Resistance of the Liquid Land (2018; resin, asphalt, horticultural charcoal, nail polish, acrylic paint, ink, glass beads, synthetic paper, graphite, construction foam and wood; 8 x 12 x 8 feet), in the Alchemy exhibition at BRIC, New York

smell noxious yet familiar to anyone in Trinidad who has been on a road being paved. The effect was both epic and intimate: a sense of something being overwhelmed, of having to hold your breath.

“It was also acknowledging that somehow we are connected to the environment,” Awai says. “For me, the ooze is a site of destruction and creation where time is elastic. We are using these carbon resources but we are all going to end up part of that ground anyway. It’s all a cannibalistic circle of life.” It’s perhaps ironic that the same environment is now fighting back, she says, noting the storm damage that occurred in Texas.

Home, history, personal life — they are all combined and compressed, like carbon matter under pressure oozing out from beneath the surface of things.

Awai would like to look forwards and move beyond the notion of the lake as a specific reference in her work. But five years after her 2013 trip, when The New York Times asked a group of artists to imagine new monuments, Awai created The Spirit of Persistent Resistance of the Liquid Land. It’s an artwork in which the solid becomes molten in order to recast the future. The ooze is still there, as though Awai has tapped into a subterranean resource she can never fully exhaust. n

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Courtesy the Bahamas Ministry of Tourism & Aviation

bucket list

Blue Holes National Park, the Bahamas The stunning limestone landscape of Andros is home to one of the Caribbean’s most extraordinary national parks

Blue Holes National Park THE BAHAMAS

Andros Largest of the Bahamas, Andros — actually an archipelago with three main islands, lying due west of New Providence — is home to numerous natural wonders. There’s its barrier reef, the world’s sixth longest, and the Tongue of the Ocean, a magnificent undersea trench reaching to depths of almost seven thousand feet. Andros is also home to the world’s greatest concentration of blue holes — flooded limestone sinkholes that dot the landscape, surrounded by pine forests. These geological formations are a habitat for unique fauna, protected by the 40,000-acre Blue Holes National Park, and they offer a thrilling experience for swimmers willing to plunge into their azure depths.

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Charles Stirling (Diving)/Alamy Stock Photo

Opposite page The blue holes dotting the landscape of Andros are both tranquil and eerie This page Exploring the deeper reaches of one of the blue holes by scuba

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own words

“I can’t imagine my life without writing” Barbadian author and attorney Cherie Jones on her compulsion to write, and exploring the topic of domestic abuse in the safe space of her debut novel How the One-Armed Sister Sweeps Her House — as told to Shelly-Ann Inniss Photography by Brooks LaTouche Photography, courtesy Cherie Jones

I

’ve always understood that writing is a very big and extremely necessary part of my life. It is as natural to me as breathing. I can’t imagine my life without it. I struggled for several years with the idea that writing wasn’t something that could support me and my children. There’s always a story being worked out in my head, and I think I’m more present and able to give myself to other areas of my life when I ensure I take the time I need to write. I’m not pleasant if there’s a story buzzing in my head and I can’t get the time to write it down and work on it — it’s a compulsion.

I’ve given up on the idea of balancing all aspects of my roles at all times. I’m never doing everything perfectly at any

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point in time — I’m human. I’ve accepted that some areas of my life will require more of me at particular points.

I kept several diaries and journals as a child — and as an adult. I instinctively understood, even then, that writing was a way for me to process life. It was like I was better able to understand the world and everything in it if I wrote things down — so I did, in detail. I wrote poems to distil some of my thoughts, experiences and observations. Unfortunately, a relative found and read those diaries when I was young and used extracts for a university thesis. That led to writer’s block lasting for years. I felt like I couldn’t risk writing the truth as I saw it in those journals, because someone

might find them. I think that might have contributed to my interest in stories.

Stories were a way to examine the truth in an indirect way. It was then I began to understand that a story could be a safe space, not just for the writer, but for the reader as well.

I’ve been practising law for over twenty-three years. Insights on my characters and their motives don’t necessarily come from that. Those things come from being able to observe people and situations as I seek to examine and understand them in a non-judgemental way. I don’t think that’s as a result of my legal career — it’s something I’ve always done. My legal career helps with my ability to ask the right questions of my characters in an effort to understand what the real story is — and to craft and present that in the best way possible.

I

can never anticipate where the spirit will lead, but when I arrive, I understand that I’m meant to be there at that point in time. I was meant to write How the One-Armed Sister Sweeps Her House. It’s part of the reason I wrestled with it for so long, and kept picking it back up, even though it was so wrenching for me to write. I’ve experienced domestic violence, as Lala [the novel’s main

“I’m not pleasant if there’s a story buzzing in my head and I can’t get the time to write it down and work on it”

character] has. Her experiences are not mine, but I think I was better able to write authentically about some of the psychological trauma she experiences, and to better explore the impact of that violence on her body and her psyche, and that of the community in which both she and Adan [her husband] live.

My personal experience with domestic violence is part of what made writing the book so wrenching, but it was also an incredibly healing experience. It was important to me to write women as I saw and experienced them at the time of the novel [set in the 1980s]. I feel that a number of realities — some worldwide, some more acutely experienced at home — coalesce to constrain women in the

Caribbean and continue to do so. I do not believe that the answer is breaking free from these constraints to realise self within the current patriarchal parameters of the world as we know it. I believe that the answer is building a more balanced

world, that prioritises the realisation and actualisation of self, without partiality, irrespective of sex.

The level of power experienced by women in the novel will probably be measured based on a patriarchal standard, but I hope that by sharing the story, people might be moved to walk the walk that these women walk. I hope they examine some of the themes explored and consider what changes need to be made, personally, nationally, and internationally.

Writing is so personal to me that I probably can’t separate myself from my writing self. It’s ironic that a lot of the dreams I had for a writing career started to come true when I decided not to burden my writing with the expectation of having to support myself. Nothing happens before its time. n

Cherie Jones’s novel How the One-Armed Sister Sweeps Her House, published in January 2021, is about Lala, a hair-braider who works on Baxter’s Beach in Barbados. It’s 1984, and Lala is about to give birth to her first child with her husband Adan, a career thief and ganja-smuggler. On the night the baby is born, a wealthy tourist is murdered in gruesome circumstances in the botched robbery of a luxury villa on the same beach. How the One-Armed Sister Sweeps Her House explores how these events are linked, showing the reader how race, class, power, violence, and poverty are connected in the Caribbean.

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the deal

Microba Grandioza/Shutterstock.com

Finding your island home

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With many countries still under COVID-19 lockdown, and investors deciding where to ride out the pandemic, the attractiveness of Caribbean real estate to international buyers is growing. It’s driven mainly

by Citizenship by Investment programmes and high rates of return, writes Natalie Dookie. She learns more about the increased uptake in purchasing island properties

T

he Caribbean has always been among the best places in the world to live and vacation. Warm climates, beautiful beaches, lower costs of living, affordable real estate, direct flights, and tax breaks make this an ideal destination for buyers looking for a change of scenery. Another plus: many islands offer a Citizenship by Investment Programme (CIP), taking the hassle out of foreign property ownership.

The region is very diverse: buyers can select from flat islands with sandy beaches to tropical havens with rainforests, mountains, rivers, and waterfalls. Caribbean real estate markets range from mature to underdeveloped, and offer a wider range of price points and options, including single-family dwellings, condominiums, and branded luxury resorts. Resorts offer extra perks such as no maintenance fees, access to family programmes, spas, restaurants, water sports, tennis, and golf.

While the local real estate market suffered in 2020, the international sales segment showed positive signs, and experts project that this trend will be sustained throughout 2021 and 2022. Relatively low COVID-19 transmission rates in the region, along with large price reductions, have driven growth in this segment. Realtors have responded by digitising operations to improve efficiency and convenience for buyers here and abroad.

They have integrated new technologies such as online multiple listing services, online networking, and selling channels, and conducted virtual home tours.

B

ased in Dubai, Lisa McShine — a partner at ROC Citizenship — specialises in government-approved residency and CIP solutions in the Caribbean. Responsible for CIP purchases in Antigua and Barbuda, Dominica, Grenada,

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St Lucia, and St Kitts and Nevis, McShine says that, post-COVID-19, she has received fifty per cent more enquiries and eighty per cent more conversions in the region. She works mainly with buyers from the MENA region (the Middle East and North Africa). McShine’s buyers are predominantly interested in the hospitality segment, such as hotels and luxury projects. Big international brands — which tend to have a higher rate of return, three per cent and more — are well received.

The deciding factor for most buyers is the number of countries their new passport gives them

to the CIP concept, as the buyer must hold the title in order to be granted citizenship.

Governments in the region benefit from CIP by obtaining much-needed revenue and foreign exchange, particularly US dollars. The programme also creates jobs, as developers must use local tradespeople, and a percentage of the materials must be purchased locally. In the longer term, there is also job creation with respect to maintenance and upkeep.

McShine predicts a bright future for the international real estate market in the Caribbean. “I

Caribbean realtors have responded to COVID-19 by digitising operations to improve efficiency and convenience for buyers here and abroad

Microba Grandioza/Shutterstock.com

access to. McShine says she has seen significant interest from Iran, although its citizens are subject to international sanctions. Dominica remains an active market for these buyers. St Kitts and Nevis, having the oldest CIP in the world, tends to be the most popular destination — recently it has seen an influx of Chinese CIP investment. Antigua and Barbuda are second in line.

“In some territories,” McShine says, “foreign buyers have to pay an alien tax, which can be as high as twenty per cent. Buyers need to be aware of the legalities for each market — for example, in some you cannot purchase a property under auction without a local partner.” While non-nationals can obtain mortgages locally, this is not applicable

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project a sixty per cent increase over the next few quarters,” she says. “From December last year, we have seen a significant increase in interest. 2021 will be an amazing year in my industry, especially with the rollout of global and regional vaccination programmes.”

D

onovan Reid, President of the Realtors Association of Jamaica (RAJ), paints a more cautionary picture. “Based on the figures from the Planning Institute of Jamaica, while the economy shrank by about 10.2 per cent, the real estate sector only reduced by 2.5 percent, and the construction sector shrank by 0.8 per cent,” he explains. “The association did not discern any

significant change in the real estate market, nor did we observe an increase in the international real estate segment.”

Prior to COVID-19, the RAJ had noted an uptake in international real estate interest, but since the start of the pandemic the status quo has remained the same. Generational purchases from the diaspora account for a large part of international transactions in Jamaica. However, if a local address is used or local borrowing takes place, this may go undetected. Therefore, statistically, international real estate purchases appear low, as the numbers predominantly reflect third-party purchases such as second-home buyers and investors.

Dual currency, either US or Jamaican dollars, is used for land acquisition locally, which is a plus for foreign buyers. Jamaica has a robust, competitive financial market with a large number of institutions offering mortgage services. There are several unique financing products available, including “design your own mortgage,” which allows for balloon payments, and up to ninety per cent financing is on the table. The recent reduction in the transaction costs of purchasing a home, now down to as low as two per cent, presents another cost saving for international buyers.

While Jamaica does not have specific entry programmes targeting international buyers, there is a six-month stay option available. A special consideration when buying in the Jamaican real estate market is to ensure that the property’s title is registered, versus having a common-law title.

The RAJ remains optimistic that as the local

Buying your dream home in the Caribbean? Here are a few tips to get you started: • Each island is different. Research the language, culture, lifestyle, reliability of infrastructure, and access to healthcare and services.

Spend time in different locations to understand which community best suits you.

• Engage a licensed, reputable real estate agent, and conduct a background check on the agency.

• Visit the property in person, and hire an independent third party to value and survey the property.

• Caribbean islands have varying laws regarding the purchase of properties by foreigners. It is advisable to hire a local licensed attorney.

• Check out the financing options available to foreign buyers.

• Be aware of the associated costs of buying — different islands require different fees from non-nationals.

• Remember the Caribbean can experience extreme weather, so ensure your new home is prepared for all scenarios.

• Government processes and cultural differences can make the process lengthy. Be patient.

• Don’t forget to consider maintenance — hire a property manager for when you are out of the country.

vaccination programme gets up and running, and the pandemic begins to trend downward in Jamaica, they will see an upward surge in the market.“This is an opportunity which the association is plotting the course for,” Reid says, “by mapping out the value proposition for foreign buyers to invest in Jamaica. Jamaica has a good future ahead of it — we are hopeful that in 2022 we will rebound.

We expect that the rate of appreciation of property

Governments in the region benefit from CIP by obtaining much-needed revenue and foreign exchange, particularly US dollars values will continue to trend upwards, the rental market will continue to remain fairly stable, and we think that with the stabilisation of the pandemic Airbnb’s short term rentals should also improve.

Jamaica remains a secure place to live, do business, and raise families.” Purchasing a property in Jamaica can also bring a good investment return, especially in an economy where the US dollar is appreciating over time. n

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CaribbeanAirlines Cargo

did you even know

Geography lessons This issue’s “Back of Beyond” feature takes you to some of the Caribbean’s hidden corners. How well do you know the geography of our region? Try our trivia quiz, and check your score in the answers below!

1. Which country has the highest mountain peak in the Caribbean archipelago?

Cuba Jamaica

Dominican Republic Puerto Rico

2. What is the smallest independent nation in the Caribbean?

Grenada St Kitts and Nevis

Barbados St Vincent and the Grenadines

3. Which island has the insular Caribbean’s longest river?

Cuba Jamaica

Haiti Trinidad

4. What is the name of the area of sea that separates

Cuba and Haiti?

Mona Passage Windward Passage

Leeward Passage Navassa Passage

6. On the summit of Mt Roraima, the boundaries of three countries meet — not including which of the following?

Venezuela Guyana

Suriname Brazil

7. New Providence is an island in the Bahamas, home to the capital, Nassau. But where is the Caribbean’s corresponding Old Providence?

Also in the Bahamas St Vincent and the Grenadines

Colombia Belize

8. You may have to check Caribbean Beat’s online

5. The easternmost point of land in the Caribbean archipelago is in Barbados — what is its name?

archive for this one! The second issue of the magazine, published all the way back in 1992, featured on its cover an iconic location associated with space exploration in which of these territories?

Ragged Point Bell Point

Puerto Rico Florida

Kitridge Point Crane Point

French Guiana Cuba

Answers: 1 Dominican Republic: Pico Duarte, at 10,164 feet 2 St Kitts and Nevis, at just over 100 square miles 3 Cuba: the Cauto River, 230 miles long 4 Windward Passage (Paso de los Vientos in Spanish, Passage au Vent in French) 5 Kitridge Point 6 Mt Roraima’s Triple Point brings together the borders of Venezuela, Guyana, and Brazil — not Suriname 7 Colombia: the island of Providencia, once known as Old Providence, is part of an archipelago lying north of mainland Colombia 8 French Guiana: the cover of our Summer 1992 issue featured a photo of a rocket launch at the Guiana Space Centre in Kourou, a facility run by the European Space Agency

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H E L P P R OT E C T T H E F O O D S U P P LY A N D N AT U R A L B E AU T Y O F T H E C A R I B B E A N

Declare Agricultural Items

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U.S. Department of Agriculture U.S. Customs and Border Protection Caribbean Plant Health Directors Forum

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ACROSS 3. The chosen spokesperson for the Don’t Pack a Pest program.

6. Pests and disease can be transported through _______.

9. U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) conduct inspections at various _______ of entry that are pathways for the introduction of pests and disease.

11. Unsuspecting _______ bring in food, plants and other agricultural items containing harmful pests and diseases.

12. Approximately 50,000 species of plants and animals have _______ the United States.

14. Any good that is made from animal or plant materials is an _______ item.

16. Passenger _______ is a critical component of the Don’t Pack a Pest program.

17. Visit DontPackaPest.com to _______ yourself on prohibited items.

20. The global economy spends $1.4 trillion annually combating _______ species.

21. Straw hats and other woven goods can carry the red palm _______ which causes severe damage to palms and banana trees.

23. Is the Caribbean spokesperson for the don’t pack a pest program.

25. A _______ dog is trained to target a specific odor, thereby locating prohibited items.

26. Unprocessed _______ like carved masks and other handicrafts can potentially harbor invasive insects.

27. The Asian citrus psyllid is a vector that carries huanglongbing, also known as _______ greening disease and arrived in the U.S. on imported items.

28. Help _______ our food supply.

29. Each year these types of pests destroy about 13 percent of the U.S. potential crop production, that’s a value of about $33 million.

DOWN 1. The giant African land _______ is one of the most damaging pests in the world because it consumes at least 500 types of plants, can cause structural damage, and can transmit disease.

2. Even one piece of _______can transport harmful pests.

4. If you do not declare agricultural items, you can be subject to _______ between $1,100 and $60,000.

5. An invasive species can be any kind of living organism, or even an organism's seeds or eggsnot native to an _______ and causes harm.

7. Before traveling with agricultural items you should ask yourself can I _______ it?

8. _______ all food and agriculture items when you enter the United States or other countries.

10. Agricultural risks grow with the ever increasing amount of this.

13. The USDA and state departments of agriculture work together to _______ introduced pests.

15. All agricultural items are subject to _______, to try and detect and prevent the unintentional spread of harmful invasives.

18. An acronym meaning animal and plant health inspection service.

19. More that 110 CBP agriculture _______ teams provide screening for agricultural goods.

22. APHIS and PPQ are acronyms meaning animal and plant health inspection service and plant protection and quarantine which are a part of what U.S. federal department?

24. When you travel please remember Don't _______ a Pest!

25. On an typical day CBP inspectors will _______ 352 pests at U.S. ports of entry and 4,638 quarantinable materials, including plants, meat, animal byproducts, and soil.

ACROSS 3. Linus 6. travel 9. ports 11. travelers 12. invaded 14. agricultural 16. awareness 17. educate 20. invasive 21. mite 23. Sassy 25. detector 26. wood 27. citrus 28. protect 29. insect DOWN 1. snail 2. fruit 4. penalties 5. ecosystem 7. bring 8. declare 10. trade 13. eradicate 15. inspection 18. APHIS 19. canine 22. USDA 24. pack 25. discover

ANSWER KEY