The More Things Change

It really never ceases to amaze me how just a few days in another place, another country, can be so chockablock full of information, experiences, and encounters. When I was first in Nevis 20 years ago the Caribbean was still so very new to me and I was finding my way about; returning now it is both new and familiar, which is a good combination. Certainly there have been many changes - LOTS more houses and hotels - but the hospitality and personal interactions are still those of a small village. Only 12,000 people live here, and if driving around with Pearline is any indication, they all know each other intimately.And nice, nice people - amazingly so.
    I arrived on the Sunday evening, and Pearline called Almena Cornelius from New Castle Pottery to see how her schedule looked. She had to go to town in the morning, so on Monday after a fabulous English breakfast (during their 42.5 years in England my hosts ran 2 hotel/pubs - not together, but 1 for each of them) Pearline elected to be my travel guide and chief research assistant. First we stopped at what was the last working sugar mill in Nevis; the steam-driven cane crushing machinery dated to the late 19th century but there were earlier mills here at the New River and Coconut Walk plantation sites dating back another couple hundred years. Nevis, like St. Kitts next door, was first settled by the English very early, in the 1620s, and once sugar was introduced about 40 years later both colonies were very profitable for a very long time. The New River Mill finally closed down for good in 1959. then we drove further down the east coast to Fothergills Estate, which is now a herittage tourism site with a very interesting focus.

There are the remains of the beautiful cut stone buildings that were the working structures for the plantation - not sure what this one was for but you can see what's left of the chimney for the boiling house in the background (round, stone, and lined with red brick), but the real intent here is to trace the evolution of local and working class housing in Nevis. They have built recreations of an Amerindian-style dwelling, a thatched bamboo early slave hut, a later tiny plain board house for slaves, and then a series of small but increasingly elaborate wooden houses built during the years following emancipation.

 The insides were fitted out with period furnishings, including (depending on the era) charcoal-heated irons and a victrola with records and a kerosene cooking stove and a few local pots and some imported blue and white china dinnerware for display and iron three-legged cooking pots and examples of the enamelware introduced in the 1920s (see chamber pot below). Very cool.

 Then it was back up to the top of the island to return to New Castle Pottery, and to see my old friend Almena. The pottery building was built in the early 80s through the efforts of a local woman named Maude Cross, who felt very strongly that in order for the local pottery tradition to continue - previously women all made pots at their homes - a central location with a workshop and retail space was needed. So she organized the project, and got it funded through USAID, Canadian grants, and local donations. The pottery sits right on the main road running around the island, is marked on all the maps, and is a popular stop for tourists and tour guides. Almena has headed up the cooperative from the beginning, and there has been a number of women, and a few men, who have come and gone through the space. They continue to do a quite regular daily business selling the work made in the shop; most of the pots are currently made by Almena and her cousin Marilyn, who has lately returned to the making of pots after retiring from other jobs and seeing her three daughters through university. Small figures, animals, and other souvenir-type clay pieces are also made by several young girls after school, and additional helpers come in and out to assist with wedging clay and grinding and applying the red iron slip to pots and sculptures.

Marilyn Evelyn on the left, Almena Cornelius at center, and Janice Mills on the right  whose daughter Chelsea comes to make animal figures at the pottery in the afternoon when she leaves school

 Almena is a wonderful woman, and throughout the afternoon on Monday and all day Wednesday she made pots and told stories and she and Marilyn patiently put up with the photos and videos and the questions and it was amazing.

 There are absolutely fascinating differences in both technique and vessel forms between Nevis and St. Lucia that have caused me to rethink several core issues in the book. While the joining and smoothing/stretching of the clay coils form the right hand into the left is the same motion and action, so many other aspects of making the pots are different that I believe it supports the idea of many different African origins, rather than a single tradition. Which should be obvious, considering that African slaves came from many different places. Here in Nevis, the pots are made with much stiffer clay, the base is pounded out and pulled up rather than coiled, and the potters work at a table, wetting the top frequently with water so that they can turn the pot around on the slick surface. I think I saw this once in a video on Central African potters at the African Art Museum in Washington; must track that down.

 The pottery forms themselves are functionally the same, but again, with interesting differences. The coal pot has no lip or front ventilation holes, the cooking pot is called a "yabba' as it is in Jamaica, the handles are solid and have a definitive upturning shape, and the cooking pot lid is concave and inset on a beveled rim, rather than the rounded, convex lids in St. Lucia. I love this stuff.

 Flower pots are as popular here as in all of the islands colonized by the garden-loving British. Here is Nevis they are made and sold in many sizes, with the characteristic crimped rim of English garden pots.

 At the end of the day Almena gave me a lift up the hill to the Ocean View, had a lovely supper of pumpkin and veggie burger stewed with onion and tomato, typed up notes, slept like a brick and on Tuesday morning Pearline and Richard dropped me into Charlestown for my museum and archive day in both Nevis and St. Kitts. I started at the Alexander Hamilton Museum (he was born here, you know that, right ?), found out some interesting things, and met the director, Evelyn Henville, who used to work in Florida and was familiar with FGCU. Cool. She sent me off across town to the archives at the Nelson Museum (Admiral Lord Nelson, he married here), and after a very warm walk complete with getting lost and then redirected by a very helpful mechanic I trudged up the final hill and brought my sweaty red face to the Nevis Historical and Conservation Society Archives. Gail Dore, the acting curator was infinitely helpful despite having to keep one eye on her not-feeling-well-enough-for-school son, and I struck researcher's gold in their highly organized collection. I had seen the postcard image above online, and they had several original copies. I have since seen this image in a few regional publications; it was clearly popular, and I found out also at the archives that there is a painting of a similar scene in the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa. Gotta get that.

 But it was these two beautiful black and white images, and the notes on the back, that really sent me over the edge. From Almena's stories I knew these were portraits of traditional potters Lena Jones on the left (her aunt) and Mary Jeffers on the right (her grandmother). Many, many children in Nevis have been raised by relatives because their parents often leave the island to work elsewhere; Nevis is small, and job opportunities are slim. Mary Jeffers thus raised Almena since she was eight months old, and Lena Jones (Mary's daughter) raised Almena's cousin Marilyn. They both grew up in the midst of the traditional pottery community, which at that time included about 20 potters all in New Castle or in neighboring villages. I don't know who took these extraordinary images, but I have an idea and will certainly try to find out. Gail was able to scan the originals in the archives and we emailed them to me successfully and now i can put them in the book. And when I showed them to Almena and Marilyn the next day they were so pleased and excited, and I'll be sending them printed copies when I get home.

 Then I hiked back into town, caught the 12:00 ferry, and made my first real foray into Basseterre, the capital of St. Kitts, where a cruise ship was in and the landing area is all fixed up with shops for the cruise ship passengers to spend their money. I found out later that this is pretty much the exact spot where the beach used to be where the Nevis potters would sell their wares (see postcard image above). The National Museum is right there on the main street by the cruise ship dock, and again, I learned lots of interesting things.

 The coalpot in their display had this double metal collar on it; I found out later that when people got a new coalpot they would often have it banded with metal before use, to help keep it from cracking so that it would last longer. Cool.

 On a display board discussing African continuity in the Caribbean, there was a small faded image of what is definitely a St. Lucian coalpot set. See those holes in the front of the coal pot ? Definitely Lucian. I do wonder how this picture made its way into the St. Kitts National Museum. But generally the information and displays were excellent, particularly on the lifestyle of the working classes both during and after slavery.

 After some excellent advice on finding potters from Hazel Brookes, an artist who works as a docent at the museum, I found my self a helpful young taxi driver named Junie and we set off to Frigate Bay to try to find two women named Arlene and Darlene who run a contemporary ceramics shop and galley called Les Mains D'Or (hands of gold, in French) but sadly they had closed for the day shortly before. So then we went to the government craft development project called sensibly The Crafthouse and lo and behold Darlene Hodge happened to be there as she is helping out with a 400 piece order for orchid pots placed by the Embassy of Taiwan - St. Kitts is one of the few Caribbean countries that has not made the political switch to formal relations with China rather than Taiwan; St. Lucia has actually gone back and forth a few times. Darlene is originally from Dutch/French St. Martin, spent a lot of time in Haiti, and settled in St. Kitts where she took a pottery course and has been hooked ever since. She is coming up to Miami in September, and I do hope we can get together.

 The last stop of the day was to an organic, vegan, "Ital" food stand just outside of Basseterre. Customers had come into the New Castle shop the day before to by a new giant soup pot, and I heard that they used them to cook soup on Fridays so I arranged to stop by and see. Rastafarians are established buyers of traditionally made clay pots across the Caribbean - it aligns with their spiritual beliefs about both food and heritage. I always pay attention to Ital food because its vegetarian - Rastas generally eat "fresh - not flesh".

Yayah and Judah Fari, owners of the organic farm and vegan food stand 'Ital Creations'

 This is their well-used soup pot from Newcastle that is the star of their Soup Fridays, they set it up to show me and Yayah is going to email me pictures of the pot in action. They can feed 30-40 people out of a pot this size. I grabbed a box lunch special to go and raced for the 4:00 ferry, greatly enjoying my lentil and sweet potato pie, green banana salad, and fresh greens and herbs with tahini dressing all the way back to Nevis under the  bright sun and puffy clouds. I do love ferries. Then I caught a local bus back to the Ocean View - $5 EC dollars, one tenth the price of a taxi - and settled in for the night.

 Wednesday it was all pottery all day with Almena and Marilyn and a lovely young woman named Kadijah Williams who was helping out and learning. Kadijah went to Monroe College in New Rochelle, New York and earned a bachelor's degree in accounting; she came back to Nevis and got a job and found that she didn't like it at all. wanting to do something more active and creative. She may have found that at the pottery.

Almena showing Kadijah how to grind the red iron for slip.

 It was a great day, filled with stories about Nevis pottery then and now, of family and work and pots and love. It was beautiful, and my notebook and camera are full of bright memories. At the end of the day Almena took me to where she has her clay dug by backhoe and delivered to the pottery by truck; two truckloads will last them about a year.

 The clay site is a mile or so away, in an area called Herbert's Beach because it is right near the ocean. Amazing that there is clay there but when I flew over the north end of the island yesterday you could easily see the way the volcanic material had been deposited in a long and broad slope from the mountain to the sea.

 At the end of the day we said our goodbyes, and I certainly intend that it will not be another 20 years before I come back to see my friend Almena.

 Pearline drove down and picked me up at 5:00 for one last jaunt - I had read about a lime kiln surviving on Nevis, and we went off to find it despite that fact that other than a point on a map we didn't know where it was or what it looked like. The blind leading those who could not see, as Pearline said. So in the fading light we drove down a bad road to an enormous abandoned and ruined plantation site (altho the stone windmill was still pristine) and then walked down to the sea where there was this weird round structure with a staircase and two arched vents at the bottom and a stone building attached, really spooky done there but it was in fact my first sight of a lime kiln; I saw another the next day in St. Kitts. They were often built by the sea to burn washed up coral to make the lime to add to the building mortar, and to use for clarifying the sugar syrup during the boiling process. Wow.

 So finally on Thursday morning Pearline and Richard drove me into to town to catch the ferry, and we talked about how Newcastle used to be the major town on the island, with lots of houses and shops and the ferries over to St. Kitts. All that was displaced with the building of what became the Vance Amory International Airport, originally constructed in the late 1950s and expanded several times since. And they also told me that the nice older man I shook hands with last night on the Ocean View porch who came to play dominoes with his wife and friends was actually Vance Amory, the Premier (political leader) of Nevis. Go figure.

 Even tho my flight to Antigua was not until 3:30pm, I jumped on the 10:30 ferry just to make sure since they had been threatening ferry cancellations all morning. I figured I would just go and work at th airport, but that was before I met taxi driver George Richards who made me a good deal to take me up island to see St. Kitts major tourist destination and UNESCO world heritage site Brimstone Hill Fortress. George once taught history at the high school here, and was a veritable fount of knowledge. And since he was the right age - maybe 65 ? - I was able to ask him all sorts of questions about the way traditional pots were used when he was a child. Absolutely fascinating. There was lots to see at Brimstone Hill - a perfectly preserved lime kiln, amazing fortifications high high up on a hill, a good museum and gift shop, and even a goofy military reenactment.

The views were beyond spectacular, and thanks to George I actually got to meet the director of the site, a Kittitian archaeologist named Cameron Gill with whom I will be corresponding over some notes in a display that referenced African pottery.

 Then it was back to town and the airport and after just an hour's delay we took off for the 20 minute flight to Antigua. My bag came off the belt first and I had a funny chat with the guys at Customs and then a lovely encounter with a very helpful woman named Monalisa at the Avis rental car desk (her father was a huge fan of Nat King Cole). Happily, they had a well used Toyota Corolla which I much preferred over the shiny new Kia I was supposed to get and off I went with excellent instructions to find Ellen Bay Cottages at the end of a dirt road right by an inner bay leading to the sea in a small village. The impossibly efficient Bernadette David was right there to greet me with the information that I had been upgraded at my $60 inclusive rate from the small studio downstairs to a positively palatial two bedroom apartment upstairs and it is spectacular, nearly as big as my house. It's fully self-catering, full kitchen and bath, laundry facilities downstairs, free wifi, and a local phone to lend. And quiet and safe, altho the next door neighbors appear to have a collection of very loud birds. No problem. So I have five days here to explore and learn and visit potters and go to the beach and write and write. I love my job.