In Montserrat, Dreams Cannot Be Buried

Locked in a two-year race with a deadly volcano that has claimed more than two-thirds of their tiny Caribbean island, Delia Menzies and her husband, James Pan, have lost not once but twice.

Their first farm was wiped out when the Soufriere Hills volcano came back to life in 1995, releasing poison gas and ash that struck the island’s capital. Then, in June, a wave of steaming mud entombed their second home; they fled, by truck and foot, a 120-mph surge of molten rock unleashed by the volcano. It burned and buried their new farm, killing Pan’s 32-year-old son and at least a dozen other people.

But last week, the couple were challenging the volcano anew. They were picking their first harvest of cucumbers and beans on their tiny new plots in the island’s northern extremes--the final fall-back position of a society that refuses to surrender.

Menzies and Pan said they will run no farther, even if it means their deaths.

“The volcano took everything we had--twice--but I have no intention of leaving my island,” Menzies said, explaining the couple’s decision to refuse an evacuation and resettlement offer from the island’s British colonial leaders last month. “I am one of these patriotic people who has decided to stay, to help Montserrat rise again.”

Stubborn Islanders

The couple are among about 4,000 Montserratians who have declined to join more than half the island’s population, which has fled to Britain and elsewhere during the two years that the deadly flows and rock showers endangered more and more of their land. The decision by so many islanders to stay has thrust Britain into a deep dilemma in its policy toward a distant, anachronistic territory that now takes far more from its colonial owner than it returns.

Their stubbornness forced London last month to back away from a controversial plan to “voluntarily” evacuate the entire island through an offer of cash and transport, and a promise to resettle all Montserratians in Britain or neighboring Caribbean islands and subsidize their lives for six months. Resettlement would have been far less costly than rebuilding a land that has lost more than two-thirds of its 39 square miles and most of its basic institutions.

The decision of so many to stay in the shadow of a rumbling volcano that spews ash and molten rock almost daily says much about Montserratian character, the fortitude and faith of a people who would rather risk their lives in their homeland than live safely among strangers.

Indeed, the difficulty of the islanders’ decision is clear, based on how little is left of Montserrat today.

The building that housed Montserrat’s government was destroyed last month along with the new library, hospital and the capital, Plymouth. Every factory in the country has been destroyed or abandoned. American University of the Caribbean, the island’s biggest money earner and the institution that at one point provided 10% of its population, shut down more than a year ago.

On the isle, which was home to a highly educated society accustomed to a good life, commerce is nearing a standstill. The Montserrat Chamber of Commerce had 130 members two years ago; it has 40 now. There are just three groceries, one restaurant, one gas station and no hotels.

There is little left of the once verdant agriculture here. Once self-sufficient in beef, lamb, chicken, eggs and vegetables, Montserrat now imports almost all its foodstuff.

The police and fire departments were ordered evacuated three weeks ago, when authorities expanded the official “exclusion zone” farther from the volcano in the extreme south. A makeshift hospital in a school that had been the island’s only medical facility is now so understaffed and poorly equipped that the island’s only remaining doctor no longer can perform even simple surgery.

The Final Blow

Montserrat also is now often cut off from the world for days at a time. Although telephones, electricity and computer networks still function--an Internet Web site was set up here recently--getting in and out is sometimes impossible. W. H. Bramble Airport was abandoned two months ago, shut by the same lava flow that killed Pan’s son.

An emergency ferry, which travels from neighboring Antigua and which Britain subsidized in its evacuation plan, is often canceled because ocean swells prevent it from docking. A similarly erratic helicopter service to Antigua at the new “airport”--a cricket field--carries just nine passengers a trip.

For many here, the final blow came last week: The island’s few remaining schools failed to open as scheduled. Converted into makeshift evacuation shelters, along with the island’s churches, the schools were packed with an estimated 1,000 evacuees living in squalor with few options.

“It’s a very tough decision. If I had no children, I would stay,” said Veronica Christian, 34, cradling her 6-week-old baby, Venetia, in one of the few taxi vans that rumble along Montserrat’s crumbling roads. “I’ve got eight kids now, and I’m leaving in a week. I’ve got to give my kids an education.”

Gary Swantsons is still undecided. The island’s chief veterinarian, on an Agriculture Ministry staff that has dwindled to six from 28, he sent his wife and three daughters to Bermuda for the school year. After losing his home and all his possessions, now his work has begun to suffer, he said.

Rather than using his 17 years’ experience to keep the island’s livestock healthy, Swantsons is supervising their export, emergency housing and sometimes their death. Hundreds of cattle have been sold and sent abroad by those who lost their land. Starving sheep, goats and donkeys too weak to move from evacuated lands had to be shot, although hundreds of dogs rescued from the evacuated areas have been shipped to Miami for adoption.

“My professional career really has been stifled,” he said, reflecting a volcano-driven brain drain that has robbed Montserrat of many professionals. “Our society is struggling, not really functioning. I think we’re just stepping from one crisis to the next. What we need is a long-term vision.”

The local government and the British ministries that oversee it insist they now are attempting to develop just that, reversing their policy of resettlement to one of rebuilding. But now, apparently resigned to reconstruct Montserrat’s basic institutions in the northern third of the island, Britain must still decide: What is the minimum needed to restore a functioning society; how much will it cost; and how many Montserratians actually will remain? Searching for answers, British and Montserrat authorities last week started work on a “sustainable development plan,” hoping to finish it in December.

Meantime, Britain has contracted to build more than 100 houses and several large shelters for evacuees in the north. Barring the remote chance of a massive eruption that would wipe out the entire island, scientists at the Montserrat volcano observatory have concluded that the north appears safe from all but occasional ash fall.

That same scientific conclusion, though, has helped fuel the hope and determination of those staying behind, few of whom are waiting for the government’s official new vision to begin rebuilding their island and their lives.

John Watts ran the Soft Freeze ice cream factory that employed 18 people. He had a three-bedroom home in Plymouth. After his home and factory were destroyed, he was able to salvage four machines, set up shop in a 6-by-10-foot rented garage and reopen for business.

“I’m not going anywhere,” said Watts, 54, who hawks cones, yogurt and sundaes from a truck he drives himself. “I feel I have a commitment. I am a Montserratian. And living in a rented one-bedroom flat has taught me I did not need a three-bedroom, two-bathroom house I owned previously.”

‘I’ll Take the Volcano’

Venus George, a manager at the telephone company who said she is staying partly to help keep it running, said the easy life here, amid friends and family, far outweighs the volcano’s threat and inconvenience. “There is simply no crime here. If you give me the choice between living with a volcano and no crime or New York City without a volcano, I’ll take the volcano any day,” she said, as she and other Montserratians calmly watched the volcano’s eruptions from a safe vantage point.

Gregory de Gannes is staying to keep the bank open. The Grenada-born resident manager of the Bank of Montserrat, who heroically saved it by moving into a hilltop pub on the eve of Plymouth’s sudden evacuation, not only has kept the bank open but has expanded it. Its current assets of $70 million are nearly double those of two years ago, largely the result of other banks shutting down.

There are even U.S. and British businesspeople here looking to invest. One man is developing a business center that could accommodate government offices. Another has spent weeks lobbying to build a new capital city in the north.

But Delia Menzies and James Pan represent a most urgent initiative on the island now. On plots of just under an acre, they’re starting to feed their neighbors again. The couple could have left Montserrat after they were wiped out for the second time in June; Pan has a U.S. Social Security card and resident alien status from the days he farmed in St. Croix, a U.S. territory.

“You’re just gambling all the time, no matter where you are,” Pan said. “You have to have plenty of nerve and guts. But, man, this rock is my home, and this work is my hobby. I’m staying.”

Within weeks of their ruin, he and Menzies bartered for seed and two small plots and rented a one-room shack. Every day at 5 a.m., they’re tending fields that now yield about 25 pounds of vegetables a week. Pan’s goal: to regain his status as the largest produce supplier to the government, which distributes food to shelters.

“I’m a fighter,” Pan said in his small bean field. “I’m going to try to rebuild.”

“We can only hope,” Menzies added, “that the volcano does what it’s going to do and gets it over with quickly. Meantime, life is what you make it.”