The Island that Disappeared
Page 46
CHAPTER 20—‘MAYBE THEY DON’T KNOW WHAT IS AN ISLAND’
1. The poll was conducted by Harold Bush in 1988. Isabel Clemente, San Andrés y Providencia: Tradiciones culturales y coyuntura politica (Uniandes, 1989), p. 243.
CHAPTER 21—‘STILL A LITTLE BEHIND TIME’
1. See http://www.folkplay.info/Texts/86sk–lj.htm. Also the Wikipedia entry for the Derby Ram.
2. James J. Parsons, San Andrés and Providencia (Oakland, CA: University of California, 1956), p. 75.
EPILOGUE
1. ‘Empire Strikes Back,’ New Internationalist (2013).
Acknowledgments
IN RESEARCHING THE EARLY HISTORY of Providence, I referred to few primary sources, so I am grateful to Professor Karen Kupperman, who must have spent months deciphering the handwriting of William Jessop and the other contributors to the Providence Island Company’s journal. My interest in Providence was first sparked by her Providence Island 1630–1641: The Other Puritan Colony, which covers the subject in depth.
I’d like to thank Jeremy Gibson of the Banbury Historical Society for the kindness and generosity he showed me on my visits to the birthplace of Henry Halhead, and Martin Fiennes at Broughton Castle for showing me around the ancestral home of Lord Saye and Sele. Dr. Mark Jamieson illuminated me on the ways of the Miskitos.
I am grateful to Monica Orjuela at Patrimonio Natural, Patricia Enciso Dharmajyoti, and Amparo Potón for helping me find accommodation on Providence, and for introducing me to the islanders with the longest memories. For sharing their thoughts on the modern island, my thanks to Marcia Dittmann, Annie Chapman, Juan Ramírez Dawkins, Gabriella Domínguez, Ana Isabel Márquez Pérez, and Harold Bush. Sam Cuming is a fellow student of the island’s history, and he was often the only person I could talk to about the Puritan colony. Sam became my walking companion, as well as my drinking buddy and I owe him a big thank you.
This book would have been a much drier read without the insights into daily life that I was given by the many islanders who agreed to be interviewed. Thanks are due to Amparo Taylor, Gloria Rapón, Josefina Huffington, Rodrigo Howard, Antonio Bryan, Wilberson Archbold, James Henry, Erminda Henry, Laura Newball, Narcissa Howard, Ingrid Robinson, Richard Hawkins, Victor Newball Abrahams, Henry Howard, Carol Robinson, Ed Forbes, Cecilia Davis Carr, Carmelina Newball, and Hazel Robinson. I’d like to extend special thanks to Luz Marina Livingston and the late Antonio Archbold, for the interest they showed in my project and the good vibes. Thanks are also due to those who had little to say about the island’s history but were a pleasure to spend time with all the same: Marv Bryan, ‘Pink Floyd,’ Antonio ‘Basha’ Fernández, and yes, even you Ed…
Providence is not the only English-speaking community in the western Caribbean to have become a bit player in a Spanish-speaking drama, so when it came to leave, it felt only natural to extend my trip to the Caribbean coast of Central America. The towns that I visited—Portobello, Colón, Bocas del Toro, Cahuita, Puerto Limón, San Juan del Norte (and the ruins of Greytown), Bluefields, and the Corn Islands—share much of their history with Providence, and have faced similar problems in modern times. My acknowledgment of the help and support I was offered on the coast is tinged with regret that there isn’t more room in this book for the stories I heard there. Thanks, all the same, to Rolando Sankey at the Museum of Afro-Caribbean Life and Walter ‘the Calypsonian’ Ferguson in Cahuita; Abraham Goldgewicht and Winfred Cross in Puerto Limón; Edgar ‘Rasta’ Coulson in Greytown; and Carmen Cash Joseph, Shirlainie Howard, and Deborah Robb Taylor in Bluefields. Thanks too to Onix Wilson at the Culture House on Big Corn, and Wanki Clarence on Little Corn.
This book has taken longer to write than I thought it would, and would not have been possible without friends who were kind enough to lend me their holiday homes. Thank you Liam Craig Best, Professor Jonathan Rosenhead, and Poppy Golding. Special thanks are due to my ever-supportive mum, Deirdre Feiling, for letting me stay in Penzance for as long as I did. In the last stage of the writing process, I received a fellowship from the Hawthornden International Retreat for Writers, and a John Heygate award for travel writing from the Authors’ Foundation of the Society of Authors; my thanks to the trustees of both organizations for their generosity.
I was able to count on Michael Ryan, Sam Low, Pablo Conde, and Richard Garner for valuable feedback on early drafts—my thanks to them. Thanks too to Richard McColl at Colombia Calling, and Giles Edwards and Bethany Sagar-Fenton at BBC Radio Four, for taking an interest in the story I had to tell. Last but not least, thanks to my agent, Broo Doherty at the DHH Literary Agency, for her support and encouragement, and Andrew Lockett at Explore Books, a patient publisher and sagacious editor who saw the story’s potential when others did not.