I met my friend Nick on the two day run up from St. Helena to Ascension Island. Tourists don’t much visit Ascension, so this was a ferry full of “Saints” like Nick, residents of St. Helena, on their way back to contract work up at Ascension. Nick has a shop in the village of Two Boats.
Nick and I sat drinking beer in the open air aboard the RMS St. Helena, out on deck behind the indoor sun lounge. We were escaping the games inside, bingo and the like, meant to entertain passengers grown weary of no sight of land for a couple of days.
Nick spoke in quick half-sentences. He’d make a point and give a knowing nod and a smile, like he’d just heard himself and agreed with what he said. An altogether agreeable, upstanding presentation. And he had some things to say:
“St. Helena got its problems, y’know? Some people makin’ a fortune. Guy goes off to the Falklands to work, lives almost like a slave. Livin’ in dormitories, cleanin’ up after the Brits. He gets free travel, now, but he makes what, five grand a year, comes home and a house gonna cost him twenty. No way to live.
And a man ought not have to go away to earn a living anyway. Here I go to Ascension, been there eleven years. Now the good thing: the way you can raise kids. It really is good. I’m bringin’ my son because I have a little shop and my wife, she teaches. No lockin’ doors, keys in the car. 900 people, maybe a thousand, right? Somebody ever takes something, eventually you find it.
Now they have these clubs, a man doesn’t need money, just sign and have a beer, pay for it on payday. He don’t pay, he can’t leave the island, they take his last paycheck or somethin’.
Sometimes I say no at my shop. A boy come in, wants a case of beer, if he can’t pay I say no. Otherwise I end up with no beer and no money to buy more. But my father taught me never say no if a man is a couple a pounds short for his kid’s shoes.
Makes him a loyal customer. I only need forty, fifty, then I can keep my family and go on one good holiday a year. No great place, South Africa on the ship. But too many people tryin’ to make too much, messin’ up everything. Makin’ a false economy.
But if you leave St. Helena and your kids behind, Grandma has to raise ‘em and she can’t keep up and they go wild like feral cats. You come back they’re a problem and the next generation bound to be worse.
Like down at Donnie’s. It’s a shame they have to play that music, black American thing, sayin’ “bitch” and all. Kids don’t have to grow up that way. Used to be different. Used to have respect. Now a kid behaves bad and you tell him, he say “that’s for my Mother to tell me.”
They don’t need all those cars. They should do a park and ride. Crazy everybody rushin’ to the middle of town. Some of them drive there in the morning leave their car there all day. They could have just walkin’ there and tables instead of cars and you could eat….
(Cars and trucks line the tiny main street in Jamestown, St. Helena Island.)Can’t make a parking lot. Can’t tear this down, can’t tear that down, cause it’s always been there. And some businesses don’t need to be there, y’know? Wholesalers oughta move out, quit cloggin’ everything up. But the idea is, I bought this car and you can’t tell me where to go. Same thinkin’ everywhere. They build an airport and you go up to the gate and whistle, your friend come over and the bag never gets on the plane. Y’know? That’s the kind of thinkin’.
Grinds people down. Some people make too much money, some people really poor, best thing they want is maybe a broken down second hand car. They just never gone anywhere, never seen anything in the world.
Now I been eleven years on Ascension. I been lucky. Time for me to go back to my business on St. Helena. My father died young. Not young, 62. My mother died in her 50’s. Lucky, my Auntie keeps my business back home. Won’t say I’ll never go back to work on Ascension. You get really big fish there, you know?”
*****
(More photos from St. Helena Island in the South Atlantic Gallery at EarthPhotos.com.)
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