Rumble: Different Reading: Life Stories of the Less Lucky
The Internally Displacement Monitoring Center published a number of life stories from Columbian IDPs.
"IDP" is an acronym for Internally Displaced People, people "who have been forced to flee or to leave their homes, due to armed conflict violence, violations of human rights or disasters, but have not crossed an internationally recognised state border."
Call them "refugees within their own country".
Have a read. Should make most of us realize how lucky we are. Do we appreciate it enough?
Picture courtesy of IDPvoices.org
Back to St.Kitts: Volcanic, so not much in terms of white beaches, but loads and loads of fertile land, so the island is very dense green, with forest and sugarcane. The government owned and controlled all the sugarcane plantations, until 1995, when it was determined market prices would never make sugarcane profitable (again). Since then, the sugarcane has not been harvested, and grows wild amongst dozens of plantation ruins, which make very interesting sights by themselves. Gradually pieces of land are donated to residents for agriculture, but as we drove around the island, still, on most of the "cultivated" land, you see sugarcane. Ten year old sugarcane.
It is a lovely island. Rather poor, but clean, well maintained. A bit of tourism with a few massive (American) resorts (Four Seasons and Marriott, if I remember well), and cruise ship facilities. But tourism is still being developed. The towns still have much of their former shapes and houses, and not too much of the modern malls and cheap mass tourism facilities have creeped in. 
Oh, there is a well known fish restaurant on the outskirts of Basseterre, the capital, called the Fishman's Warf. To be avoided. The lemon daiquiris were terrible, the fish was grilled dry, and the crab was simply off. The latter smelled like pure ammonium. When I returned it to the kitchen, even the cook could not stand smelling it for more than a few seconds...
Once more, we enjoyed the views and the beaches. The girls gave kayaking a try, while Tine and I thought the sunchairs were just fine... :-)
It was a lovely anchorage, with locals racing their boats on weekends. The beach was clean, for a main port that is, and offered lovely sunsets.
There were only a few boats in the main port, typical for Anguilla, which seems to be off the beaten track for most tourists. I can not imagine why. The beaches were amongst the most beautiful we had ever seen in the Caribbean.
We drove around the island for a day, to get a taste of the atmosphere. People were laid back and friendly. A really enjoyable island, without the mass tourism of St.Martin.
We did two trips with the boat: to Sandy Island (you can see our boat anchored in a distance) and to the cliffs in Little Bay, which made good snorkeling. 
The weather was nice, about 27 dgr C in the shade. The water was 29 dgrs C. It was hard to imagine that just 10 days before, we were sailing in Belgium, in foul weather gear (see 
Much to our surprise, while the flowers and trees were blooming, the grass was brown. "It had hardly rained the last month", the gardener said.
The hotel was well taken care off, with friendly staff, unlike most of the rest of the island, certainly the Dutch side. Once you go off the beaten track, you could see a lot of poverty, loads of dirt and scrap everywhere. A pity they did not take care of the island. It reminded us a bit of Oahu in Hawaii, once you get out of Waikiki... And people were not particularly warm or friendly neither, no matter how hard we tried. Probably "tourist fatigue".
Peter. Flemish, European, aid worker, expeditioner, sailor, traveller, husband, father, friend, nutcase. Not necessarily in that order.
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