what's wrong with St. Martin?

For a long time now I've been trying to gather my thoughts and succinctly explain what my feelings about St. Martin were and why they tended more towards the negative than the positive. Every time I meet someone who hears for the first time where we lived and that we were not as thrilled about the experience as honeymooners usually are about being in the Caribbean, I realise how little people outside the Caribbean know about its reality. I think that through this blog and through conversations I've head I've managed to astonish quite a few people.

But to astonish them was not the point. I was under the impression that many of these people thought I was just ungrateful for the 'fortune' of an experience in the tropics, or worse, that I am just a difficultly satisfied spoiled snobby westerner - even if I'm not a westerner;) So I hope it is clear to all, I did not complain about St. Martin because I'm thankless or because it sounds cool to say a desired and unreachable for many place sucks.

I would love to have triggered a thought provoking process with all the negative SXM aspects I drew attention to. This is probably not the last post on the topic. I still feel there's so much more I can say about the reality of the island and that somehow this will at one point translate to someone's positive doing and 'fixing' of the 'wrong'. I just don't know how to link the 2 yet. I feel I have to spread the word about what I learned there, what I saw, what I experienced. SXM is not a paradise. It is a ruined paradise; ruined by people, people who wanted to exploit the paradise without any consideration for it's fragility, for its limits, for the irreversibility of certain actions or for the costs of trying to restore balance, or for the natural, social and economic side effects of certain activities. To use a popular term, there was never an impact assessment done, or if there was, it was ignored.

SXM is a place out of control in many aspects. The best illustration to this statement is a video uploaded to the following link of a local SXM ngo, (Caribbean Foundation for Sustainability) with which I was involved while living there. First 40 seconds show you the paradise you expect to see, later you see the reality the island is made to endure. The second half of the video is what shocked me at arrival and what kept impacting me all along my stay.

Notwithstanding the state of affairs, there are plenty of great civil society actions under way in St. Martin. It is not a forgotten by God place, but the ones who care and want to fix or restore seem to be outnumbered by the ones who keep not caring. It was really a difficult place to live and to accept it all, especially the not caring.

careful what you wish for

It's been a while since I was able to blog. Life surprised me in one of the hardest ways and kept me occupied, stressed and completely reprioritising for a while. As much as I wish not to write about all of these events they have a consequence for the blog other than there being a few months of silence. I will be leaving the island of St. Martin. Going to my next place, for the moment unknown. Thus the blog will shortly come to a natural end.
Those who have followed my entries know that although I've tried hard to be an optimist I never really felt I fitted in. I didn't directly express wanting to leave but I think it was clear for the sensitive readers, my attempts of making St. Martin a home were giving poor effects. Now that I know I am leaving for sure and for good, I feel like I have not done all I wanted to. And there will probably be no time to squeeze in what's not yet ticked off. There were places I haven't gone to, food I haven't tasted, events I haven't participated in. The pain of most likely not experiencing these things is somehow double; for one I won't know what it's like - just for myself, won't enrich my exposure, my senses, my observations, I will feel less fortunate for not having my own opinion on x, y, z; and secondly, I won't be able to write about it here, in other words, I won't fully analyse it, digest it, put it into carefully considered words and share through the blog. This makes me sad.
I am as strong believer in that all things happen for a reason and that, oh well, if for example I did not go scubadiving here in St. Martin, this is just an excellent opportunity to make it up elsewhere, ect., ect. I won't have a number of experiences here I wish I had had, simultanously I'll be having others I did not anticipate, in a different place. Life is always full of events, so here or there, something will be happening to you, if not a, then b.
Since I know I won't be able to make up for time lost in the future, rather than planning on doing just certain most desirable things, I will most likely frantically catch the opportunity and jump at random activities that pop into my mind. After all if I end up leaving for good without having done something, I will only after realise, I really wanted to do, St. Martin will still be here 10, 20 and 30 years from now.
How does it feel to know to be leaving? It feels as if even though, this is what subconciously my mind wanted all along, it's too soon, too unexpected and too violent, like I'm too little in control and like this is not the way I wanted it.
I will probably have some more gaps in writing, I'll prefer to focus on final experiencing and picture taking; I'll be able to do my writing ex post from the next 'home'.

water & electricity

I recently noticed that we have interruptions in the delivery of both much more frequently than before. What really bothers the most is that power cuts mean no internet:(
I realise these polls test more your feelings and subjective perceptions than reality but the impression you have is often not that much exaggerated and a fair reflection of the true situation. So although no one marks down how often they couldn't shower or use any electricity run devices, most of you have an idea of how much/frequently these occurrences annoy you. Therefore I trust everyone's replies will paint an honest picture of utilities' delivery on the island:) Don't let me down, vote!
And yes, if among the readers there are the unfortunate ones who have power cuts and water supply stops more frequently than 3-5 a week...just mark that answer. Although it must be much more annoying to have that happen more than 5 times in a single week, for the sake of this poll let's just assume that that is the extreme.

shopping in St. Martin

[edit 25 nov]

I discovered that there actually is a Benetton on the island. Or rather I've seen the sign and heard the ad on radio, not yet seen the shop, so I guess white t-shirts for less then 60 euro a r e possible;) Also saw that one of the jean shops in West Indies Mall carries Diesel, so no need to go to the Bahamas just for those;)

I would not be a women if I wouldn't talk about shopping. The truth is, it is a difficult activity here. There is a specific shop reality, meaning, it is nothing like anything else experienced hitherto. It is neither the typical large city with a plethora of all budget, all target group, all brands, all size; and it is also not the typical delayed little town reality. If you live in St. Martin, or if you are visiting with the intention of shopping for clothes there's just a few shops you're likely to look into. Although there are plenty of establishments, about 90% you would not go into. The majority of shops are focused on tourists - offering diamond and other gem stone jewellery, electronics, perfumes and similar souvenir type goods.
For people who live here, the actual shopping experience is quite limited vis-à-vis the actual shop presence. I have already written about the West Indies Mall in a post in March, and that offers a few shops you can enjoy as anywhere else in a shopping centre; plus there are 2-4 shops in Philipsburg I look into on a regular basis and 2-5 in Marigot. Regular means in fact completely irregular, rather, if I'm in town when the shops are open I stop by. About 50% of the times I stop by, I end up buying something; but I am in town rather rarely.

The island offers supposedly tax free goods, which is great for computers, perfumes or in general for branded expensive buys. The sad reality is that if you are not after a Furla belt, Tag Heuer watch, Burberry scarf, mac computer or Hermès bag you are likely not to notice at all you are profiting from the discount. Not to mention now, when the Euro is so strong and it makes a a great difference whether you are paying a 100 USD Dutch side, or a 100 Euro French side. Let's say you need a regular white t-shirt, or beach shorts, or whatever garment which is not meant to be brand conscious, you're stuck with paying (cheapest) 60 Euro for your T-shirt, as you just can't get plain regular items at a supermarket, wallmart-similar-establishment, decathlon or a chain shop as Benetton, Zara or H&M. You're left with the uber cool, uber expensive boutiques, or the places targeting poor locals (example Backstreet of Philipsburg) where most items are India/China made, the ambience is depressing, lighting dim, fitting room scary, the variety close to zero, the up-to-datedness very behind:( likelihood of cheap t-shirts very high.

And don't be fooled by the few chic brands I flashed at you above. The island does not offer all possible high end delicacies. For Dior, Louis Vuitton and company you're better of shopping at nearby St. Barth. I had to go for my Tods to Miami, my Diesel to Bahamas - just to name a few.

Yet in this weird reality there are a few places which target moi as a client:) yey! And I have nothing against Hermès sandals or Longchamps bags - I am in favour all the way, but I need my variety, my options, my comparesen, my free choice! Filiberto often compares the island to a large dutyfree airport shopping area, and he has a point. You have your liquor, cosmetics, high end brands, etc. But who can survive shopping only at an airport? Which is why I am so thankful for a few shops which make the island a little less dutyfree like... This post is dedicated to those places, the Tommy Hilfiger, Ralph Lauren and Cocolito of Philipsburg as well as Showroom, MaxMara, Coco Island and Ici Paris of Marigot. I unfortunately don't have pictures of all places I mention but hopefully this will be corrected soon:)

findind peace

Ever since my resentful post in February about taxi dispatchers at the PJIA, I have gone away and come back a few times and therefore had to take more taxis from the airport. Taught by the previous encounter I now orderly stop at the booth outside the exit door and tell the uniformed man a) that yes, I want a taxi, b) where I am going.

I still find it pointless, very big-brother-like and wish I could just do like everywhere else, queue and board the first in line. But I conform.

I do many things which are against my nature, but carry a prize which is worthy the 'sacrifice'. In this case, a hassle free getting out of the airport, and a day without a pointless fight with a total stranger, which would only entail becoming upset for no reason and ruining my otherwise feeling good, IS worth the effort of conforming to pointless rules:)

ziplock bags, cake covers, etc

Since we have moved into our new home, we have discovered that there is plenty of products we can't live without, or new habits we need to strictly observe. Our home was not well kept by previous tenants and when we arrived it was a tropical zoo, lizards, cockroaches, an every now and then mouse, grasshoppers, and all sorts of insects I have not seen before, suddenly were part of our household. We soon discovered that cleanliness is only partly a method of keeping our home just to ourselves. Closed windows help as well. Nevertheless, we are below the tropic of cancer so certain living beings are inevitable. But we have implemented a few rules which help reduce the occurrence of our little friends;)
Since insects and roaches easily enter cupboards and drawers, at first we would wash everything (plates, cutlery, cups) right before using it, even if it was just washed recently and put in place. Soon we realised this habit is cumbersome and difficult to follow a l w a y s . But we do keep our utensils in zip lock bags, a few cups and plates for daily use are stored in a plastic cake cover and basic pots and pans ended up in a large see through click close storage box.
Other habits we had to take on involve never leaving any sort of food out in the open, including unbegun fruit - I personally really dislike eating straight out of the fridge - so fruit I foresee to eat in the next day or 2 are kept in a clay bowl with a lid. Dishes with any food remains (even if it's just bread crumbs) should never be left in the sink. And although I have never liked a full sink, now it's not about aesthetics, now it's a bit of paranoia that any minute food might invite little hungry insects.
The most difficult habit to follow is the closed windows:( we have AC, but a part from it being unhealthy, apparently electricity is very expensive here on the island. Plus it seems so illogical to sit in a closed room, when we live in the Caribbean on a hill with plenty of nice cool wind. In fact, when the windows are open, as they're are on opposite ends of the living room, we can get the house perfectly breezed through with no effort, never feeling the above 30 degree weather outdoors. The minus is, this is how all the little living beings enter. We plan to find out if there's a provider of net doors on the island. As it seems the most logical solution, yet it's a solution I have only seen applied in 1 of the many houses we visited during the house hunt.

But I still like the turquoise views...

the weather and consequences

We've abandoned our blog a little. A bit of travelling, a lot of getting our new home into shape and most importantly, have internet connection at home just as of few days ago.
Last night, after a week away from the island, we went grocery shopping. To our surprise the super market we usually go to (biggest and usually most crowded on the island) was half empty, in terms of customers and produce. When I saw just one or two shelves empty I didn't make much of it. But as the vacant shelves became more frequent and especially when they were clustered next to each other, we started worrying. Finally we read the notice: due to bad weather the ship is delayed...food has not come in..
This was an aspect I did not envision when taking the decision to move here. Since we were gone, we had not really realised how bad the weather had been. Yes, the day we landed it was raining and much more windy than before, but I guess it must have been like this for consecutive days. Neither did we realise the impact of such weather, beyond the deep puddles on the already bad roads.
How can I best describe the way this otherwise very western super market looked like. Even though I was raised in communist Poland, I don't really recall the empty shelves, everyone notoriously mentions when speaking of before '89. Maybe because the shops were not as big, or maybe because I did not do grocery shopping myself those days. Whatever be the reason, the image I saw yesterday seemed much more scary, than any of my childhood shopping memories. It looked like a pre-war, or natural disaster scene - that is in the fresh produce section; naturally chemicals and anything packed with additives and preservatives was plentiful. We hardly managed to find tomatoes and salad, which were neither covered in fungus or just brown from growing old. There weren't even bananas..which btw grow on this island, so no need for shipment from abroad. But perhaps in my rookie tropical ignorance I don't know that now is not the time for bananas in this part of the world.
Long story short, we'll need to go back grocery shopping soon enough, and hopefully the ship will have arrived then.
Really makes you think about dependency...

the island is not so bad after all....

Yes. Finally, I had that longed for feeling, of walking on a street of Philipsburg and being content, just for being there:) The feeling, when you realise you are smiling and there is no apparent reason.
I think I am finally beginning to feel at home, and finally ceasing to subconsciously fight against everything I experience, which is different than I'd (subconsciously) expect it to be. Good to at last discover that the adjustment period is entering its less seismic phase.
Also I am beginning to question the powers of this blog, as since I have published it pointing out certain issues I dislike, things have started improving..hmhm

examples:
1. the garbage dumps on the beach, suddenly have been tidied up and the rubbish ended up being collected into garbage bags, although no one has picked these bags up, it looks light years better;
2. our shipment - arrived!:) well, we were only informed of the arrival 5 days later, and only when we ourselves called to enquire, buy hey, at least we know it's not lost at seas;
3. we found an apartment! which means we are finally not homeless! We can at long last give an address, our address, not my or Fili's parents, not last valid in Ams, not temporary ...finally a stable address we can call our own:)

In this post some images of Caribbean rain; it rains very often, at least once daily, otherwise how would everything be so green?:) But, just as the clouds here differ from the Benelux ones, local rain is also a different atmospheric experience.

The dark side of the moon... Philipsburg Marina St. Maarten

St. Maarten has the peculiarity of combining the typical Caribbean images of the a beach party, of happy people dancing around a bbq while sipping ice cold drinks, and the total lack of care for the same Caribbean landscape. The peculiarity is the 2 things are combined, seemingly intertwined at the very same time, in the very same place. Like if it were normal that the 2 sides of the moon could show themselves at the same time, by explaining each other.
So on the very boardwalk, as the street along the sea is called, while an fund raising beach party is going on - fund raising from a Saving the Sea association - broken bottles and sun faded cans - not too mention old engines, pneumatics and plastic stuff - lay on the ground 10 mt away. With a roaster happily seeking for food in all this mess!

house hunt is not going

maybe it's difficult to believe, a house with this view (it's smudged because of the mosquito net) was actually not perfect...
although I guess you agree the view is




this one, even though it had a banana tree in the garden...also wasn't it..

emotions

Perhaps the hardest part of arriving to a new place is realising you don’t like it. I don’t want to say this is the case with me and SXM. But as anyone who has moved around knows, when you move, you go through all phases of love and hate with your new ‘home’, you compare it with all other places you know, you love and praise it for everything it has that others didn’t, and you degrade it horribly for lacking whatever you took for granted in the former places.
I guess 3 weeks (exactly today) into living on the island is an expected moment to fall into my negative sinusoidal part of relationship. It’s hard for me to complain already because I still haven’t written anything good here…and don’t want to start of on a negative. So as therapy to myself I’ll write about both, what drives me mad and what is quite OK about the island.
I just remembered what Olivia and Nick once said about Barcelona, which could actually help me deal my current feelings; they said Barcelona doesn’t suck:) maybe that’s how I should approach SXM…

So what I find fantastic is:

1. being dressed 60 seconds after I shower, don’t need to towel-dry
2. my feet are the happiest for wearing flip-flops 24/7
3. I never have to make time for washing my hair…blow driers totally unnecessary
4. it’s daylight at 6 in the morning…so I never have to wake/get up when it’s dark
5. the island is duty-free, often with $1= €1
6. the supermarkets are full of American, Dutch and French products so pindakaas, hoemoes, president milk, koolaid all are found under 1 rooftop
7. lush green hills that make me think this is what Ireland must be like on a sunny day
8. horses, goats, sheep roaming happily on these hills
9. swimming in the sea all year round
10. butterflies everywhere, in all colour

If I were to do SXM from scratch I’d

1. make music other than Caribbean compulsory on the radio
2. disallow religious invasion and occupation of all radio programmes, sticking preaching stickers on cars, etc.
3. fine the authorities for allowing spontaneous garbage dumps, ca. every 25 metres
4. remove onion soup and caesar salad from 50% of restaurant menus (trust me I love both dishes…but why does EVERYONE serve it…? and how can you enjoy greasy and spicy onion soups in this heat?)
5. have them install extractors in all kitchens…I really don’t like knowing what everyone is frying…and they fry as early as 6 am…
6. introduce smiling courses in schools…no one of the locals smiles
7. do something about the stray dogs everywhere, as well as the very unclean pigs, and noisy roosters…
8. build more roads+side walks, introduce a proper public transport infrastructure and get rid of the current you-have-to-drive-wherever-you-need-to-go

In addition to all of this, I am under the constant feeling that the XIX and XXI centuries cross paths at all time. On one hand side everyone drives brand new SUVs (surprisingly for my understanding of the island’s GDP and average income), but then the roads and houses often look like they were built 90 years ago and never repaired.
Plus the, otherwise contradicting, French and American cultures both exercise here an extremely strong influence. I don’t know where else on the planet you can find so many French license plates on Chryslers. Here the two cultures seem to be fighting for dominance, yet in away they almost manage to merge…as heretical as that sounds;) ….their influence is just as strong on the island’s gastronomy.
There are contrasts everywhere you look and they’re hard to get accustomed to. The most obvious ones are of course the rags and riches. We have never seen so many Hummers, as here, but when you see a rooster and/or a goat strolling in front of them, there’s a sense of dissonance difficult to shake. The diamond shops right next to falling apart huts (yes, huts, they may be more sophisticated that the ones on Lost, but they are still far away from houses/buildings),…These jewellery shops are just meters away from shops were locals buy, which are just difficult to describe with words, in general, they look like badly lit warehouses; even tiendas de Chinos looked classier in Spain. Lastly, all the locals eating at the plentiful KFCs, McDonalds, Burger Kings…you can see these places at their tops even at 22h! families with small kids…really hurts to observe. While the foreigners of the cruise boats, (on average 3 daily) dine and spend like locos…

So for a few days I was unable to write, because of all these emotions. I was waiting for them to cool, and to come back fresh and happy to write about something optimistic.
Today is Thanksgiving, and although neither to the Polish nor to the Italian culture, this holiday means anything; our hotel is under siege of American tourists who are celebrating tonight at our hotel’s restaurant. They lifted my spirits in a way, arriving cheery and dressed up, ready for a big festivity, often as big families:) We’re also about to go down and have our dinner, right next to all these happy people…see how they celebrate it, in the tropics:)