What makes the island of Saba special

The small planes that land on the short runway of Saba

I visited the Dutch Caribbean island of Saba in 2002, only spending two days there, but the images I picked up on my trip stayed with me to this day. I've tried reading about Saba in other articles and even consulted a book called Island Wise by Janis Frawley-Holler, which describes lessons that the author learned while visiting several small islands, to see if I could put my finger on its elusive character, even compared to other small islands. In those accounts, I didn't find the quality that I was looking to describe, so I decided to try myself.

My purpose for visiting St. Martin, Saba and Statia in 2002 was to study the islands' music and interview local musicians. It required considerable preparation and even then there were unexpected events that changed my plans somewhat - mostly changes in the schedule that were not too difficult to overcome.

I tried very hard not to idealize Saba, which has problems like any other place on earth. In spite of the fact that crime is almost nil, I know from my own experience that people are in close quarters there, know each other's business, sometimes don't get along, disagree on one issue or another, may compete with their neighbors for some political favor, or face issues that may not be a problem in a larger society, such as the unavailability of items that may force them to go to nearby St. Martin to purchase them. I tried to be an impartial observer for the short time I was there.

Saba is not your typical Caribbean island. For one, it sits like a gigantic boulder in the middle of the sea, and has only one beach at Well's Bay which is submerged for much of the year. Much is made of its airport which has one of the shortest runways in the world on the only flat area on the island, appropriately named Flat Point. This very small area is at the very end of Saba and is surrounded by the sea, so making a precise landing was crucial. The plane had to fly parallel to, and very near, a high cliff on the island before landing, and it appeared as if the right wing were going to get smashed by the edge of that cliff. What was more striking to me than this image was the fact that the airplane only needed half the runway to land; it felt like a cross between a plane landing and a helicopter landing.

Many people who visit Saba are divers who want to explore the richness of its underwater life. I was decidedly a landlubber, so I was more inclined to go hiking, which has its own rewards in the variety of plants and microclimates. At dawn I took on the hike to the top of Mt. Scenery, the highest peak on the island, accessible from 1064 steps carved out of the rock. Toward the top, the terrain becomes a humid cloud forest with many varieties of ferns that benefit from the continuous mist. The top of Mt. Scenery is often covered with clouds, so the purpose is not the view but rather walking through the forest.

Saba makes an effort to standardize the color and construction of houses, all of which have a gingerbread look. (Because of this uniqueness, the island had tried applying to UNESCO to make their island a World Heritage Site.) Besides the quaintness that this look creates, what also struck me was how incredibly clean the whole island was. I don't have even a recollection of a discarded piece of paper on the ground anywhere. We who are used to seeing trash, litterbugs, dirty restrooms and the like can't help but be impressed. Another observation I made was that at nighttime the island got incredibly dark. Not that I felt unsafe, but I tried to imagine what it must have been like in a small village many years ago before street lights were the norm.

What also was noteworthy was that people felt comfortable to be more direct with the visitor, engage him/her in conversation, and wave at them even if they were strangers. Once in a bar, a young man came up to me and asked me if I would find some time to play soccer with him. I didn't get to do this with my schedule, but it just seemed interesting that he would ask me. Expats who lived on the island for any length of time exhibited these characteristics themselves. There was one expat couple whom I approached to ask where someone lived. They were inside their house - the man of the house was on the computer - but the door was wide open so I peeked in and asked my question. The result was that I felt like part of the island within a short time and enjoyed engaging in conversation with both locals and visitors.

I rented a car and recall a few interesting details. First, the gentleman who rented me the car picked me up at my hotel and took me to where I would pick up the car, but asked me to sit in the back because he had a passenger in the front - a lamb! After I picked up my car and started driving on the island's winding roads - necessary because of the extremely hilly terrain - I saw an abandoned car that had crashed into the side of one of the concrete barriers and concluded, correctly or incorrectly, that it was a visitor that had tried to drive too fast around the hairpin turns.

While in St. Martin waiting for my flight to Saba I had the chance to meet an 89-year-old woman from the sister island of St. Eustatius (Statia), who engaged me in conversation. I don't recall her name now, but when I was on Saba chatting with a 76-year-old banjo maker named Alwyn "Buck" Caines, who had moved there from Statia many years ago, I asked him if he knew her. He said yes and commented enthusiastically, "Could she dance!"

Though the island feels isolated, the people do keep up with what is going on, particularly through cable TV. One gentleman, learning that I was from Philadelphia, talked to me about how the Philadelphia Phillies were doing and how one of their star players was not playing to his potential.

One evening I went to a bar in The Bottom to see a group perform. They were Caribbean-style rappers who called themselves the Destruction Band. The bar crowd was very small and I felt sorry for the rappers, who would have felt more at home in a larger venue. These places are usually for the locals and will generally not draw a crowd anyway. When I left the bar, I was approached by a young man who asked me to give him a ride to the town of St. John's. Normally he would have had to walk the entire way back to his house unless someone happened to be driving in his direction. On an island like Saba, there is no fear of giving someone a ride even if you don't know them.

The two days went by very quickly and the next stop on my Caribbean tour was the nearby island of Statia. When I finished with the rental car, I could just park it at Saba's small airport and leave the key in the ashtray, as there was no fear that anyone would steal it. I had meant to give a CD to Glenn Holm, Saba's director of tourism, but had forgotten to do so, so when I got ready to leave I just left it with a gentleman at the airport and asked him to get it to Glenn. The takeoff from the small airport was smooth and actually the landing at Statia was rougher than at Saba because of some strong crosswinds that seemed determined to push the small aircraft off course.

Probably the most interesting observation that I took from my trip to Saba is that Sabans are hard-working people but laid back at the same time. These seem like contradictions but they don't have to be. We in the northeastern part of the US seem to associate hard work with nervousness, packing too much into our schedule, rushing meals and running around, and can learn a valuable lesson from the Sabans regarding how to pace ourselves.

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Some notes about the culture of St. Martin

One of my motivations to travel to Latin America and the Caribbean is to collect recorded music, particularly folk music. There is much one can collect via amazon.com and in more conventional retail stores, but there are many places that you can only learn about by going there. St. Martin, well-known as a tourist mecca, is a case in point. In the mad rush to cater to foreign visitors and revenue, the culture of the island and the need to preserve its uniqueness as a legacy for its inhabitants are sometimes neglected.

Fortunately, there are people on the island who are serious about promoting the culture and teaching it to their children. One such person is Clara Reyes, who when I met her was finishing up a Master's program in dance at the State University of New York (SUNY) in Brockport. Clara did research into St. Martin's "ponum dance" as part of her Master's degree. The dance originated as a celebration of the liberation of the slaves on the island in 1848. Back then, as today, the island was divided between the French and the Dutch. France abolished slavery in its territories in 1848, and when the slaves on the Dutch side learned of this, they fled to the French side and ultimately the Dutch side of the island would have to grant freedom to its slaves as well. The Dutch would not abolish slavery in the rest of its territories until 1863.

Clara later took time out of her schedule to perform the dance in a presentation that we organized in Philadelphia in 2002. Shortly afterwards, Clara returned to the island after completing her studies in New York to begin teaching in a primary school on the Dutch side.

I made a follow-up visit to St. Martin in 2003 to meet people who practiced different types of folk arts. Among those I visited was Clara's mother, Regina Millet, who owned a souvenir shop in Philipsburg and posed for this picture. Regina was wearing a madras skirt which often appears in Caribbean folk dress.


Visit my webpage on the Caribbean at http://www.latinandcaribbeantravel.com/caribbean.html

Other websites:

Caribbean Folk Arts Network (Caribfolk) - Caribbean cultural network: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/caribfolk/

Raices Culturales Latinoamericanas (Latin American Cultural Roots) - a nonprofit organization I founded in 1991 that presents Latin American cultural shows, exhibits, and workshops: http://www.raicesculturales.org/

Raicesnews - Latin cultural events in the Philadelphia area: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/raicesnews

Caribbean: Aerial Views of St. Martin and Anguilla

On my trip to Antigua in 2005 I could see the outlines of the nearby islands St. Martin and Anguilla. Anguilla is the long, narrow island to the north, which belongs to the United Kingdom. It is only a 20-minute ferry ride from St. Martin. St. Martin is shared between the French and Dutch (the Dutch spelling is Sint Maarten) and is slightly south of Anguilla, with the French side on the north side of the island and the Dutch side on the bottom. The part of St. Martin that sticks out to the west is shared by both countries and features Simpson Bay, a large haven for ships of many sizes. Also on a small patch of land on the south side of Simpson Bay, on the Dutch side, is Princess Juliana Airport.

Both islands, though close to each other, have very different personalities. Anguilla is quiet and laid back with a few high-end resorts, and St. Martin is bustling with hotels, casinos on the Dutch side, traffic and tourists.

Visit my webpage on the Caribbean at http://www.latinandcaribbeantravel.com/caribbean.html

Other websites:

Caribbean Folk Arts Network (Caribfolk) - Caribbean cultural network: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/caribfolk/

Raices Culturales Latinoamericanas (Latin American Cultural Roots) - a nonprofit organization I founded in 1991 that presents Latin American cultural shows, exhibits, and workshops: http://www.raicesculturales.org/

Raicesnews - Latin cultural events in the Philadelphia area: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/raicesnews

Caribbean: Musicians on St. Martin, 2002

In 2002 I traveled to the island of St. Martin, which is shared by the French and Dutch. My goal was to look for people who were involved in music and dance traditions. One person I was fortunate to meet was Carlson Velasquez, who has spent nearly all of his life there; he was born in Aruba but was taken to St. Martin by his family when he was six months old.

Carlson is one of a generation who learned the guitar and its Cuban cousin, the tres, from other island musicians. Their repertoire includes music from the Caribbean islands, including the Spanish-speaking ones, as well as old-time American country music and religious songs. The style of music reminds people of Cuban musicians such as Compay Segundo and others from the Buena Vista Social Club. The photo shows Carlson with his resonator guitar.

Carlson also makes a bass instrument called the marimba, not the same as the marimba from Guatemala and other Central American countries. The Caribbean-style marimba comes from a smaller African instrument called the kalimba, which consists of a number of metal tongs attached to a resonator box. This instrument is still used in folk bands in different parts of the Caribbean.

See my webpage on the Caribbean at http://www.latinandcaribbeantravel.com/caribbean.html