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.
Shaharee Vyaas 