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This Land: A Trust From God: The Environment and Related Topics: Essays
The book calls us to give thanks for every good steward who gathers the everyday we senselessly toss aside, the stewards who know its history, its character and its value; stewards who cherish The Presence in its ordinariness; those like the long-memoried woman" who re-collect all its many pieces, and re-present them beautifully back to us in good trust for the safekeeping of these islands, their children, and their legacy.
228 pages, Paperback
First published April 3, 2014
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
May 30, 2021
Those that help themselves.
Finding a literary work from the British Virgin Islands proved to be more challenging than I would have believed. As a member of the British Commonwealth for over 350 years with an educated populace and an above average standard of living, not to mention a playground for the super-wealthy Caribbean hopping yachting set, it seems that, despite the extreme amounts of money which pours into the island chain, very little trickles down to the indigenous populace which should benefit from that largesse. Though the islands boast a good number of public schools and a literate populace, there seems to have been very little effort to inspire the local populace to pursue literary endeavors.
Author Verna Penn Moll has been a long time advocate for cultural enrichment in the British Virgin Islands. Having lived, been educated and worked in the Caribbean as a bibliographer, archivist and research consultant, her book is a collection of essays centered on life in the BVI. Deeply enamored and immersed in her culture and religion, her greatest passion is arguing for the preservation of the environment and natural beauty of the island nation. While appreciative of the technological advances that makes the islands more liveable and the standard of living more advanced, Moll opines how the reliance on technology and an economy almost exclusively tethered to tourism and offshore banking disincentivizes Virgin Islanders from tapping into the cultural legacies of both the Carib Indian minority and the involuntarily introduced African majority.
The Virgin Islands were first spotted by Columbus in 1493 and claimed by Spain but never settled by them. The native Arawaks were displaced by the Carib population who, in turn, was decimated by waves of settlers from the Netherlands, France, Denmark and England. The British ultimately claimed the four islands that make up the British Virgin Islands in 1680 who introduced the African slave population to mill sugar for Europe and it's colonies. Pirates found refuge in the less accessible reaches where sugar yielded rum. The end of slavery, vulnerability to hurricanes and changes in sugar production caused the decline of the islands in the mid-Nineteenth Century where the islands fell under the broader administration of the British Leeward Islands from St. John's on Antigua. After a hundred years of neglect, the British Virgin Islands received colonial autonomous status in 1967, hoping a shift from agriculture to tourism and banking would bring economic prosperity to the islands.
As Moll points outs, while great wealth can be found in the top flight resorts that crowd the beaches, magnificent mansions that top the hillsides and megayachts rides for months at anchor in their harbors, so little of that wealth spills over to the people who do all the work and had to sacrifice lands and coastline to an ever expanding tourism population. While the national education system has created a literate workforce, it has done little to cultivate a literary or professional community to contribute to the artistic and economic expansion one would expect in such a rich country.
As a religiously devout nation, one senses in Moll's writing that there was an expectation of an economic and environmental miracle to come with outgrowth of tourism and banking. Instead, it has contributed to crowded and noisy beaches, congested, underdeveloped roads and infrastructure outside of the resort areas and more tonnage of trash and human waste from those who visit by land and sea.
What the British Virgin Islanders are slowly discovering is that divine intervention won't solve the problems being made by becoming a discovered destination. And, though proud members of the British Commonwealth, any prayer of intervention by Her Majesty is wasted breath. It is going to require an educated, verbose and activistic citizenry that forces their representatives to respond to the needs of the people. Ms
Mill and her fellow BVI citizens been given a Paradise in which to live. It's up to them to keep it liveable.
Finding a literary work from the British Virgin Islands proved to be more challenging than I would have believed. As a member of the British Commonwealth for over 350 years with an educated populace and an above average standard of living, not to mention a playground for the super-wealthy Caribbean hopping yachting set, it seems that, despite the extreme amounts of money which pours into the island chain, very little trickles down to the indigenous populace which should benefit from that largesse. Though the islands boast a good number of public schools and a literate populace, there seems to have been very little effort to inspire the local populace to pursue literary endeavors.
Author Verna Penn Moll has been a long time advocate for cultural enrichment in the British Virgin Islands. Having lived, been educated and worked in the Caribbean as a bibliographer, archivist and research consultant, her book is a collection of essays centered on life in the BVI. Deeply enamored and immersed in her culture and religion, her greatest passion is arguing for the preservation of the environment and natural beauty of the island nation. While appreciative of the technological advances that makes the islands more liveable and the standard of living more advanced, Moll opines how the reliance on technology and an economy almost exclusively tethered to tourism and offshore banking disincentivizes Virgin Islanders from tapping into the cultural legacies of both the Carib Indian minority and the involuntarily introduced African majority.
The Virgin Islands were first spotted by Columbus in 1493 and claimed by Spain but never settled by them. The native Arawaks were displaced by the Carib population who, in turn, was decimated by waves of settlers from the Netherlands, France, Denmark and England. The British ultimately claimed the four islands that make up the British Virgin Islands in 1680 who introduced the African slave population to mill sugar for Europe and it's colonies. Pirates found refuge in the less accessible reaches where sugar yielded rum. The end of slavery, vulnerability to hurricanes and changes in sugar production caused the decline of the islands in the mid-Nineteenth Century where the islands fell under the broader administration of the British Leeward Islands from St. John's on Antigua. After a hundred years of neglect, the British Virgin Islands received colonial autonomous status in 1967, hoping a shift from agriculture to tourism and banking would bring economic prosperity to the islands.
As Moll points outs, while great wealth can be found in the top flight resorts that crowd the beaches, magnificent mansions that top the hillsides and megayachts rides for months at anchor in their harbors, so little of that wealth spills over to the people who do all the work and had to sacrifice lands and coastline to an ever expanding tourism population. While the national education system has created a literate workforce, it has done little to cultivate a literary or professional community to contribute to the artistic and economic expansion one would expect in such a rich country.
As a religiously devout nation, one senses in Moll's writing that there was an expectation of an economic and environmental miracle to come with outgrowth of tourism and banking. Instead, it has contributed to crowded and noisy beaches, congested, underdeveloped roads and infrastructure outside of the resort areas and more tonnage of trash and human waste from those who visit by land and sea.
What the British Virgin Islanders are slowly discovering is that divine intervention won't solve the problems being made by becoming a discovered destination. And, though proud members of the British Commonwealth, any prayer of intervention by Her Majesty is wasted breath. It is going to require an educated, verbose and activistic citizenry that forces their representatives to respond to the needs of the people. Ms
Mill and her fellow BVI citizens been given a Paradise in which to live. It's up to them to keep it liveable.
July 14, 2022
Informative.
Draws the reader into the value system and culture of the British Virgin Islands.
Draws the reader into the value system and culture of the British Virgin Islands.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews