Shahree Vyaas's Blog, page 23

Fish chasing a pelican in the Bay of Utila

The Island of Utila has a quality that forces the attentive observer sometimes to reconsider the natural order of things.

It might sound a little blasé, but wealth and education don’t carry here the same weight as it does in most other places. It’s an island that, apart from his tropical climate and beautiful nature, has little natural resources. Hence its historical population consisted mostly of fishermen and commercial sailors.

Once a week a boat was bringing provisions from the mainland and people used to live simple lives. Till tourism discovered the underwater beauty of this island. The first wave of tourists consisted, as it almost always does, out of backpackers and a couple of outcasts. This would have been nice if they would have managed to keep their social media boasting in check about their newly discovered paradise.

Very soon the first TV crews appeared, which launched Utila’s booming tourism industry. Before this, most islanders either aspired to emigrate to the US or “to work on the boats”. At that time, the traditional clans on the Island, the Coopers, the Howells, the Bushes, the Morgans, etc… used to have partitioned all the land of the island among themselves. They considered it of little value, till a US developer came around who bought all the land of a clan that emigrated to the US for 300 K.

Since the land was not cared for by its owners, the municipality had turned into a garbage belt. The new owner put a stop to this practice, cleared the property, divided it into lots of 1/3 acre, and sold them for 100 K each to eager middleclass North Americans.

Now, that caused a massive wake up call for the local landowners, and very soon you saw the first disputes flaring up to whom grandfather had bequeathed what land. Another weird concept was that the local tradition was cutting female heirs out of their parent´s heritage (they got a brides chest instead), but this averred to be not in line with Honduran law who doesn’t discriminate among male or female descendants.

Hence, a man whose father originated from a clan on Roatan (and thus didn’t have any land on Utila), managed to get hold of the biggest chunk of the island´s land by claiming his mother’s legal share when his maternal grandfather died. To his credit it must be said that he contributed generously to the islands environmental conscience. He made generous contributions to the community by donating land for a new city Hall, a new community clinic, a new airport, etc… He died last year and left to all his workers a piece of land whereupon they can build their own house.

Then some others who were gloating about the fact that they had managed to get hold of the fertile farm land in the middle of the island saw to their dismay that those who got the “worthless” and arid beachfront land could get a 10 fold more for their land from some giddy foreigner who wanted to build a house with a sea view then whatever they can ever aspire to ask for if they would subdivide their land and sell parcels to some “tourists” . That’s how the islanders design everybody who hasn’t been born here or at least has not some strong local family ties. It’s a label that you never can get rid off: even when you live here for more then 30 years.

Utila is still an island where flashing your dollars or education will not impress very much the aboriginals. Unless you can put said money and skills at use to improve the community as a whole. And they don’t want you to tell them what to do, but will expect you to do it while being attentive for local sensibilities. Remember that here some fish are hunting the fisher.

Utila’s Galactic Nomads

Utila is a travel destination that lies a little of the beaten path. Hence it’s inhabited and visited by a very eclectic crowd of pirates, outlaws, artists, digital nomads, and a couple of aliens who shipwrecked and just washed up here.

Party cave on Utila

La Cueva is a little drinking hole on Utila that is popular among the young backpackers because it’s situated right at the ferry dock in the middle of town, stays open till late night, their pricing is among the most affordable on the Island, and their music and bohemian ambiance is much loved by the artsy and eccentric crowd that is attracted to this place.

Nocturne

Featuring the work of 32 artists from all over the globe, “Nocturne” explores the theme of darkness from a variety of perspectives–the darkness of night, the dark night of the soul, and nocturnal landscapes both real and imaginary.

CLICK HERE TO VIEW THE EXHIBITION

Epiphany at Utila’s Pumpkin Hill Beach

An Epiphany is a sudden, intuitive perception of or insight into the reality or essential meaning of something, usually initiated by some simple, homely, or commonplace occurrence or experience.

This post’s illustration features a beach that, from the position of our house, is located at the other side of the Island. Which is of course a very relative distance when you consider that the whole island is about 15 km long and 6 km wide. The island’s highest point is marked by the crest of Pumpkin Hill that you can detect in the background of the illustration that accompanies this post. I am not sure how this 75 m high landmark got its name: was it because of its bulky shape and rounded top or because there used to grow pumpkins in that area?

At the time I´ve made this painting, pumpkin hill beach was a rather deserted part of the island, but since electricity and internet were made available to this sparsely habited area, the site became the subject of an intensifying development wave. We came here first in 2002 and then on the whole island the lights went out from 10 pm till 6 am and for water you had to have a rainwater collector. There were about twenty landlines on the island and internet was only available in two internet cafés. Cell phone service was non existent and the main atmosphere breathed backpackers feel.

Not anymore: this lost backyard has been discovered by the North American middleclass as the last resort to get a foothold into the Caribbean. While land prices and building prices are skyrocketing, said people are scrambling to acquire their piece of the “Caribbean Dream”. Even when it comes at the cost of turning it into an airconditioned nightmare. That was my epiphany when I heard about the planned extension of the utility grid.

Utila’s Bandu Beach at Sunset

Bandu beach is just a two minutes walk away from our house and is our preferable spot to watch sunset. Like everywhere in the tropics, sunset is proceeding fast: between dusk and the moment the sun disappears behind the horizon there lies an approximative 30 minutes timespan. That is however compensated by the fact that it’s a spectacular view.

Every Thursday night they have a burrito night and thus one of the multiple weekly occasions when Utila’s expat community is congregating. It’s also one of the few places where they serve imported German wheat beer, which is my preferable European poison, narrowly followed by the merlot wine. Both come here at triple price of what I’m used to pay in Europe. The local alcoholic drinks consist of two locally mass produced pilsner brands (Salva Vida and Imperial) or some mixers with a nicaraguan rum called Flor de Caña. There is also some British guy who started a micro brewery with its own beer garden, but he opens only once a week and his weekly produce is sold out about two hours after opening time.

Dusk and dawn are also the moments that trigger a feeding frenzy among Utila’s sand fleas. The most common and least dangerous of all the organisms that people call “sand fleas” are actually crustaceans. So, they aren’t fleas or even insects. They’re in the same family as crabs and lobsters. People only call them “fleas” because they hop and jump. You might also hear them referred to as sand hoppers, beach fleas or beach hoppers. These creatures might cause red, itchy bumps on your skin, but the irritation usually goes away in a couple of days. The effect looks like this:

I personally recommend

Using insect repellants on your skin. You can use products that contain DEET, or natural products such as coconut oil or certain essential oils. Washing your feet thoroughly after going barefoot. Wearing closed-toed shoes, socks, and shirts with long sleeves, especially when going out at sunset.

Most expats are so used to it that the histamine level of their body adapted. They get bitten as much as everyone else, but their skin doesn’t display the heavy reaction to the irritation that most newcomers to the island experience. They got used to it as long they’re not submitted to a massive attack of a swarm of those critters. The only remedy against that is to run.

As a final remark about Bandu Beach I might add that the sand fleas aren’t that virulent at this location because its owner is raking the sand everyday. When you regularly rake a beach, you expose the eggs of the sand fleas to the sun and that somehow destroys them. It’s also the best maintained beach of the Island and the only one that charges a 2 $ entrance fee, but you can recoup that fee when you order something at the beach bar.

Welcome to Utila

This post is the first in a series of 13 impressions of my winter residency Utila.

You can find the Island of Utila in the Caribbean. It consists of a small coral reef that has roughly about 5,000 inhabitants, of which about half of them are expatriates. It forms part of the Bay Islands, an archipelago that belongs to Honduras. Contrary to the mainland, most of its habitants are made up from descendants of British pirates and Africans who escaped enslavement. English is the most common language spoken on the Bay Islands, but the developing tourism industry has lately caused a big influx of Spanish speaking labor force of the mainland, due to the better economical conditions and better education opportunities for their children. Local politics used to be a power game between some local clans, but the introduction of the latino workforce from the mainland into the political equation has changed that. While said clans still dominate the socio-economical scene, no local politician can anymore get elected who doesn’t take the latino vote into consideration.

And then you have the expat community who has nothing to say into the ways the locals manage the island. They’re more or less into the position of the customer of a big enterprise who also has little influence upon the ways the shareholders and management are running the company. When they complain, they’re told that if they don’t like this or that, they’re free to spend their money elsewhere. Most grudgingly comply, others leave. Also here the local community is dancing on a tightrope, since the expat community and tourism provide the economical lifeblood of the island. It’s mostly a diver’s destination and, not astonishingly, local politicians got very concerned when the first reports of dying coral reefs started to circulate among the dive shops.

The island still has a long way to go in order to become an ecofriendly tourist destination, but efforts are made. There is an organization that saved the Swamper (that is a lizard breed that only exists here) and the giant sea turtles from eaten into extinction by the locals by creating awareness of their potential touristic en ecological value.

And then of course you have the benign climate and easy access to booze and drugs. No paradise without a snake and the island has a tendency to swallow those who can’t deal with its temptations. Welcome to Utila: home of the wanted and unwanted, where recovery is not an option.

Stop digging when the location is wrong

How has a failure, or apparent failure, set you up for later success?

During my long career as a professional soldier I’ve learned the hard way that it’s no use to make a hole deeper when it’s located at the wrong place. It equals to digging your own grave. That lesson can be expanded to many facets of decision making. Like: don´t throw good money after bad, don´t chase a lover that doesn’t want to be caught, don’t build air-castles because you will fall on your face when you try to live into them, …

Totalism triumphs where democracy has failed.

The first group of 2,000 suspected gang members in El Salvador have been moved to a huge new prison, the centrepiece of President Nayib Bukele’s self-declared war on crime.

Tens of thousands of suspected gangsters have been rounded up in the country under a state of emergency following a spike in murders and other violent crime. Pictures show the first massive group of inmates – tattooed and barefoot – being led led to the facility.

Despite that the fact that the war against the gangs has led to controversial emergency measures as they limit some constitutional rights, such as allowing the security forces to arrest suspects without a warrant, 90 % of the Salvadorians endorse their president in his campaign.

Not astonishingly, foreign human right groups protest. They always do, when a government suspends some constitutional human rights. They also did when the Ukrainian president declared the state of emergency and curbed some constitutional rights in his struggle with the Russian invasion. Human rights groups have a blind spot when they have to concern themselves with the bigger picture of a society’s needs.

Democracies can come under internal pressure when some criminal or subversive organizations abuse and corrupt the mechanisms of its judicial and political processes. In such cases most regimes switch to “emergency room” operations. Which in general is seen as a last resort to keep a failing democracy on life-support. From thereon two alternatives present themselves: either the patient (democracy) dies or he recovers after some long convalescence.

Alas, history has taught us that many benevolent dictators with good intentions cling to the plush seats of power long after the conditions of the state of emergency have been resolved.

Water

What is your favorite drink?

Water is an inorganic compound with the chemical formula H2O. It is a transparent, tasteless, odorless, and nearly colorless chemical substance, which is the main constituent of Earth’s hydrosphere and the fluids of all known living organisms (in which it acts as a solvent). It is vital for all known forms of life, despite not providing food, energy or organic micronutrients. Its chemical formula, H2O, indicates that each of its molecules contains one oxygen and two hydrogen atoms, connected by covalent bonds. The hydrogen atoms are attached to the oxygen atom at an angle of 104.45°. “Water” is also the name of the liquid state of H2O at standard temperature and pressure.

The climate crisis poses many threats to global security, but among the most urgent is access to a life-sustaining resource: water. From the Great Ethiopian Renaissance Dam dispute to border skirmishes between India and China, famine in Afghanistan, and political unrest in the United States, Latin America, and North Africa, it is clear that water-related competition only escalates in scale and intensity as climate change further restricts access to this ever-vital resource.