This last week has been an interesting exposure to the limitations and joys of small island living. Personally I love the fact that there is still half day Wednesday and Sunday closing here. Some may find it frustrating, but for me it gets you away from that 'everything at the tap of a button', 'available twenty four seven', and 'you don’t need to plan' mentality that has seemingly taken over everywhere else. That relentless availability doesn’t give you freedom, in a way it removes it: without it you are forced to take your life back rather than drift unthinkingly along, worrying only about things as they occur. In a similar vein, the island's dependency on the occasional boat for a lot of its fresh produce was given a positive spin by a local, originally from South Africa. His view: those constraints are a great leveller in the local society - rich or poor, if it isn't there, it isn't there. I guess a little stoicism is an important attribute in small island living.
But when it comes to tourism - and this island needs tourism - there is something lacking. This island is so much more than Napoleon and yet I - and I like to think myself relatively well informed- had no real idea of what else it offered until I did some research after I had decided to come. Is that my failing? Or is that a failing of St Helena's tourist strategy to properly raise the profile of the island?
On island, at a personal level, the people are lovely; I can not fault their helpfulness and friendliness. And yet organisationally there is need for attention. Tourist signs in many locations are often unreadable or out of date (it has been many years since Plantation House has had six tortoises, or five depending which of two adjacent notices you read). The Rupert’s Bay area, cited as 'the most significant remaining physical trace of the slave trade' seems to be on the periphery of their interest. It is mentioned in the museum but other than that there is little in the way of raising the awareness of its existence outside the island, let alone making it a focus. When I was there I had to be pointed in the right direction by a local. The one board I subsequently found indicated the existence of four others that I did not. As for the public bus timetable I got from the tourist office, it is indecipherable; no map, the few routes mostly named by a letter or the company that runs them rather than a start and a destination. The stops - with wonderful names like Ebony View, Alarm Forest, Bottom Woods and Silver Hill - are meaningless to a tourist unless they go onto Google Maps to work it all out for themselves. I didn’t.
All this may be wonderfully anarchic but it doesn’t aid the outsider. I accept money helps and money is short (although not non-existent) but it is more than that: there is a thin line between rustic charm and 'can’t be arsed' and I think they are on the wrong side of it. I am also reminded of that phrase in the film Field of Dreams: 'build it and they will come'. Yet here, despite the UK government stumping up some 285 million pounds for the airport, the mindset seems to be 'if they come we might build it’. And don’t get me wrong, it is not the average person who I think is responsible here, I can not repeat enough how lovely they are, it is whoever or whatever is meant to pull it all together.
And it is not just me with these thoughts. I have had conversations with other tourists and locals full of ideas, some seemingly obvious, some simple and others - while imaginative and not overly extravagant - probably impracticable for the numbers and the money here. That said those tourists, those locals and I have always also commented on how wonderful St Helena is: its beauty, its people, its history. That should not be forgotten.
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