Little did I realize when I arrived on Bequia in 1977 that I would be spending the rest of my life on a tiny island in the Caribbean! Other than a family trip to Georgia as a youngster and a whirlwind school excursion to Europe in my teens I had never traveled outside of Canada, and had certainly never been to the Caribbean. The original plan was to spend one year teaching at the Bequia Anglican High school while I figured out what on earth I was going to do with my university degree, but that one year turned into two and the rest is history.
Picture courtesy of Jeff & Holly Ridgway
Bequia was SO different from life in Canada; it took me a while to get used to the lack of luxuries as well as the tropical heat, and teaching at the high school was definitely a challenge! I was quite homesick at first, but as time passed I got accustomed to living without hot showers and the foods I was used to, and grew to love my new home. The island was beautiful, but what made it SPECIAL was the open friendliness of its people, and as the year progressed I realized that I couldn’t bear the thought of leaving. Bequia was HOME.
Bequia is small, and island gossip was something that disturbed me in those early days until I learned to simply ignore it. Everyone seemed to know my business and, if they didn’t know my business, they made up stories to compensate for lack of knowledge! There were times I longed to be someplace where no-one knew me, just an anonymous face in an unknown place where island gossip didn’t have a role to play, but for the most part I enjoyed being a part of Bequia’s tight-knit community and still DO.
Over the years Nik and I have traveled to many places where we were totally anonymous instead of being recognized at every twist and turn, and for a while we would embrace this anonymity. Visiting different countries where no-one knew us was a welcome change, but after a while we would start to miss HOME. Being away from Bequia WAS refreshing but it always grew somewhat stale, and the longer we stayed off-island the more we missed it.
I came to realize that arriving back home was actually the sweetest part of going away, even when everyone told me I “get fat” when I’d actually lost weight during the trip! Nik and I would bask in the warm welcomes shouted our way, shouts that we had missed during our travels to places where no-one knew us, and rejoice in the fact that we were back home where we belonged.
They say that home is where the heart is, and truer words were never spoken.
Humans can adapt very well if where they are allows for a fair degree of choice and being productive. Your “story” is a great example!