Mayreau - or Maiero?

Special Grenadine Island

While visiting my favored place in the Grenadines, the Canouan Beach Hotel (see page Canouan!) with my Psychiatrist Dr. Dooley, who came all the way from Vancouver with his wonderful wife Lise and his capricious daughter Natasha (5) and his scissor wielding son Peter (2) (with the latter preventing any progress in my condition because of temporary nonacceptance on his part and he periodically hitting me over the head from behind) I escaped from supervision for one day, sailing with Captain Philip on the CBH catamaran the 30-40 min across to the island of Mayreau.

Mayreau is a private island, because somehow in the wayback past the English forgot to take the place away from the French, leaving a French ruler to continue ruling it, probably assuming that the small place was not worth the length of its name. And so this French guy retained legal title and passed it on, the island now ending up in the hands of a dozen or so heirs assuring that no decisions on anything could be made efficiently. Lack of any coordinated development means that the place is largely unspoiled - but also that some specific forms of spoiling, such as general garbage dumping (because the dozen heirs do not permit digging a hole for it) are proceeding unchecked. With its French history, the island also is essential a catholic one, a unique feature in the Grenadines where otherwise catholicism only includes some 10 % of the population.

(Actually, the Eustace family also owned the Tobago Cays but sold those to some US interests some time ago - and only this spring of 1999 SVG managed to obtain legal title for the sum of some 1-2 Mio dollars, so that the Tobago Cays Marine Park now can become a reality and all the laws passed to protect and establish it are coming into effect!)

(1) Father Mark, inspecting his new community building which already has one of the most beautiful natural pictures on the wall: a view towards the Tobago Cays. (2) The Tobago Cays with Canouan in the background; Father Mark's picture window would be looking at these from the left, outside this view.

Mayreau has at least two features of interest to tourists: a beautiful, clean reddish sand beach (Saline Bay), the longest in the Grenadines, as well as an anchorage at its northend, Saltwhistle Bay, the most dreamlike in the Grenadines, which looks to me like a lagoon filling an ancient volcanic crater. Next to Saltwhistle Bay there is a resort of stone buildings run by a German lady with the arch-Germanic name of Undine, charging some of the higher rates in the Grenadines and thus generating exclusivity (never saw a guest, come to think of it).

(1) A Yannis catamaran at Saline bay. (2) Sailing into Saltwhistle Bay

At Saline Bay you will find hundreds of lawnchairs tied up by chains under the poisonous, red-ring-labeled Manchineel trees (giving you a poison ivy type rash. The chairs are owned by Club Med whose tourboat routinely sets anchor in the bay during its Grenadines tours. Club Med undoubtedly has to pay some fees to the owner family for this privilege - and I always am wondering how much of these anchoring and beach user fees end up supporting the community. Not much, if any, I suspect. The tourists don't even need to eat at local restaurants - the boat crew organizes a Clubmed beach barbeque. The only benefit to the community that is evident is some vendoring by the locals, selling some minor crafts and of T-shirts - and I must say that these shirts are the best and least costly around the islands).

The community of Mayreau consists of a few dozen simple houses, accommodating some 300 inhabitants, a few restaurants owned by locals and beautifully decorated in colorful ways, as well as a guesthouse. You have to hike up a steep road to the village from Saline Bay, or a nice bush path from Saltwhistle Bay, and you are then rewarded with a breathtaking view across Saline Bay, looking at Union Island 20-30 min of sailing away, while sipping a drink of Hairoun Bitter Lemon or St. Vincent-brewed German beer.

This time I went all the way to the top of the hill to a beautiful little church, the doors invitingly open. From here the view is exceptional in all directions: across the azure blue, patterned flats of two or so miles of reef-studded ocean waters to the Tobago Cays, and south to St. Vincent's southern islands of Palm Island and Petit St. Vincent and Union Island as well as Petit Martinique and Carriacou belonging to the Republic of Grenada. Towards the north there is Canouan nearby, and behind it one often can spot Bequia as well as the more massive bulk of St. Vincent itself.

While I was trying to extricate my reading glasses from my packsack preparing to read some of the posted information inside the little church, a black-bearded gentleman in casual cloths stepped out of a side door and introduced himself as the local priest, Reverend Father Mark da Silva. He was most pleasant and told me lots of stories about "his" little island where he had been working now for some 13 years!

The islanders are not rich. Tourism does not bring in that much business, agriculture is not really possible, mainly for lack of water. He told me about a community group that had organized most exemplary activities, in a self help fashion, but of course often depending on outside development funding sources. With only some 100 or so voting villagers, the government is not really making any big leaps to invest and assist in Mayreax - and the private ownership of the lands may be another barrier for this.

He told me about the overpopulation by donkeys and how villagers had to smuggle in two vets from South America to assist them with neutering and euthanizing some of these inedible animals, and how they also tried to deal with the dog overpopulation - the new, still uninaugurated and unused medical clinic facility (1999) serving as the operating center for this campaign (just killing animals is not the style of the locals; they will rather let manged and diseased dogs and cats run loose and suffer then terminate them...).

Other community activities included the building of a basket ball court, setting up a generator for the school, helping some families with provision of water tanks (for rain water collection), setting up a community billboard, cleaning up beaches and sponsoring art classes for handicraft work. Clearly, this community seemed to be more tight-knit and cooperative than any other I knew of in this region - a wonderful model for self help and survival.

Father Mark pointed out that the restaurants in town were all owned by local people, and somehow that accounted for their special charm... These restaurants are never full or busy, you will always find a table and seat. Now, just be prepared that the first thing you order from the menue may just not be available today, so make sure you have a fallback selection. Supplies are always "scarce", you will be told. It also may be that the cook happend to be out boating or fishing - that's what happened to me later that day, and so I had to move on to the next place.

Maybe times will become a bit rosier for the local community because the political representative for the region now is the Minister of Works in the current government of SVG who hopefully is inclined to throw his weight behind projects and developments in the Southern Grenadines in general and Mayreau specifically. I had the pleasure of meeting him recently, and he promised he would! As well: as an updated in Sept 99, Father Mark told me just now that a EC$500,000 grant for environmental development from some outside source ahs been approved!!

At least twice a week the Barracuda Ferryboat stops at Saline Bay and discharges goods and passengers to the fishing boats.

Now father Mark wanted to do some more record keeping on the island and asked whether I knew where to maybe find some used weather recording equipment such as a rain gauge or whatever.

ANYONE OUT THERE HAS ANY IDEAS WHERE TO FIND SUCH ITEMS?

Then please write to me: baerhans@caribsurf.com

And then Father Mark asked me a loaded question: Do I know, or am I interested in, history? Well now: This happened to me my weakest subject in school, teatering at the brink of getting a D or F, pulling it up to a final C because of a spectacular performance in the oral finals in 1957 with a discourse on the Russian Revolution. All I know, or suspect, now about this is that this revolution must have taken place in Russia...does this make sense?

Welllll, I said, yeees and of course I would always be interested to hear about historic things and so on. He then told me excitedly that he and his community group were just launching, in four days in St. Vincent, a historic brochure based on the tranlation of recently discovered diary by Father Breton, a Jesuit priest who lived in St. Vincent in the 17^th century and had recorded many of the historic tales and facts of life of the Caribs. These people lived in this region when the Europeans came and were decimated by them in due course, leaving only remnants living still in the north of St. Vincent and elsewhere such as in Belize where they had been exported by the British centuries ago. The manuscript had been discovered by Father Divonne, Father Mark's predecessor on Maureaux, via a contact in France. Father Divonne had it translated, and Father Mark had recognized the unique nature of this historic document. Now it was being published and made publicly available. I must say, I was really honored when he kindly gave me a copy, out of the 1000 print first edition, and I promised I would attend the opening (which I did and where I bought another 10 autographed copies...and at the time of finishing this writeup I managed to convince my Medical College administrators to buy another 100 as gifts etc. for our visiting dignitaries.).

And if you want to hear something about the Caribs and what Father Breton had to say about them - then you have to click on Caribs right here and read for yourself! (Wait: This link is not quite ready as yet...). His writeup does not contain any recipes on missionary stew and the like - instead it should serve to correct some of these wrong notions about these people wrongly said to have been fierce, man-eating "savages"!

So, thanks Father Mark, but by now I had to beat it back to the beach and my boat. I promised to see him three days later at St. Vincent for the ceremony. It had been a wonderful, highly informative visit, and I will definitely be back, which won't be difficult: Captain Yannis's catamarans regularly anchor either at Saline Bay or Saltwhistle Bay, and the Barracuda ferryboat stops in the bay and discharges passengers and goods via tranferring to small local boats at least twice a week.

(1) Actually, travelling on the ferry boat can be fun - never mind Mayreau! (2) A Captain Yannis catamaran anchored at Saltwhistle Bay!

So, next time you visit Mayreaux, don't forget the little church on top of the hill with the million dollar view, and if you are lucky, friendly Father Mark will be more then pleased to chat with you. You could call him in his office in Canouan to see whether or when he is there! Leave a nice donation at the church - it definitely will be put to good use in this special community!

End of this story - but, don't forget to read up about the Caribs as well as the other peoples now mainly known though one of their major legacies by going to this site: BEER ( the on eon the Caribs still being in the making).