The Editor
The Anguillian

Dear Sir:

A LESSON FROM THE FLAMBOYANT TREE

It is good to be back in Anguilla and in print in The Anguillian after such a long absence, although I have been keeping abreast with events on the island, but very silently so, while taking advantage of fellowship studies, seeing about my family and sometimes holidaying. I am sure that some of your readers would remember me as an Anguillian descendant and have read some of my letters in the newspaper several years ago.
When I came to Anguilla in 2006, on a brief visit, I was taken aback by the massive amount of development that was then taking place on the island to the extent that the Government had embarked on a moratorium forbidding any further tourism development by foreign investors or setting time-tables for the commencement of work. The decision was said to have been taken to reduce the mass inflow of foreign workers who could not be accommodated then by reason of a lack of housing, to avoid a negative impact on the island’s social services and to give Anguillians opportunities of employment. The moratorium also provided a chance for locally-owned tourism projects to be developed but, unfortunately, a number of them eventually became victims of the global recession.
The closure of the foreign-owned Flag project which, along with the golf course, had the potential to take Anguilla to a new level in tourism, is a real disappointment and I join with many others on the island in wishing to see it back on track. Its closure is a sorry tale and one that has certainly cast much frustration and an interruption of economic life across the island. I am very saddened to see a once booming economy in shatters, a civil service suffering from a reduction in salaries in today’s high cost of living; many people unemployed; once rented apartments closed down and persons unable to meet their commitments to banks. Mind you, Anguilla is not alone in this malady, but somehow I feel especially grieved by the fact that I knew how very prosperous the island was and the double-digit GDP it boasted about in the region.
I was driving through the island meditating on this state of affairs when I came upon a road side flamboyant tree in full royal red bloom, and as I looked in the bush ahead there were other trees in similar beauty. A feeling of relief and hope struck me. Here was Anguilla in the midst of a severe and prolonged drought, yet these trees, which even in the rainy season are ugly and bare, were now, in the dry and hot season, bright and beautiful images of nature and like the skilled work of an artist’s paint brush.
This may be like a fantasy, but to me there is a lesson to learn from the flamboyant tree. Anguilla may be in a bad economic and financial state, but one day, like this tropical tree, it will boom again. In fact, that’s the way it is with the economy: sometimes it prospers for a season, then becomes stagnant and later it booms again. There is a season and a time for everything. I trust that as the global economy bounces back, so will it in Anguilla. I hope that when I come again either from Atlanta, or St. Thomas, US Virgin Islands, that life will be better in Anguilla.

Sylvia Richardson-Gumbs

| Printer-friendly page | Send this article to a friend |

World News