Mustique As I See It

“Rub shoulders with the rich and famous on a Caribbean island that blends elegance and luxury with natural white sands, palm trees and blue seas”

That’s what the worldwide web has said about Mustique. It is also said that “Mustique offers guests that rare combination of elegance and informality. This, combined with its natural beauty, warm trade winds, rolling landscape and deserted beaches bring together the necessary elements to ensure complete privacy and tranquillity”.

To many visitors to the island, Mustique is the essence of a true international retreat. To relatives and friends of Mustique employees, it is that land of opportunity or that place that destroyed their dreams. However, to me, Mustique symbolizes more. I am about to tell you how I see Mustique. Then you’ll understand why Mustique is not a symbol of money or the land of the rich and famous to me.

As if somewhere in heaven’s divine plan, God intended my family to create a legacy on Mustique. I learnt that long before I was born, Dad worked as a heavy equipment operator on Mustique. When I was fifteen, my older sister left home for Mustique and when I was eighteen, Mum followed the path. Since then, all of my brothers have worked in Mustique, all of my sisters work in Mustique, and for the most part, all of my brothers’ wives and sisters’ husbands have also worked in Mustique.

However, whilst mum and siblings’ leaving for Mustique brought endless opportunities to acquire, explore and pursue, it robbed us of time to bond, to share, to lean on, to learn from, to support, to guide, to counsel. It rushed me out of adolescence into adulthood; whilst still a student; I mothered my two younger sisters, stood up to my disobedient older brother, managed the home and its finances and counselled and supported myself through the best of times and the worst of times.

As destiny would have it, in May of 1998, it was my turn to travel to Mustique. I had answered an Ad a couple weeks before and was on my way to pick up my position and continue my family’s legacy. With only months into my marriage, I was unsure of so many things, but I was certain I was not leaving my husband behind. Two days after my arrival on Mustique my husband joined me. Our lives were about to take off and take shape, together, I had hoped.

As a student, I had visited Mustique several times and one saying remained constant; “Mustique is a college, if you don’t learn here you won’t learn anywhere”. I never really understood what that meant until I took up residency. It quickly became obvious that everything came in double, and the scale tilted a bit more on one side than the other. The desire to be stagnant pulled stronger than the current to move forward; the waves of temptation raged more powerful that those to resist; the energy to cheat was felt more forceful than that to be honest and the lamp of change flickered dimmer than the beaming light of accepting the past and the present as the future; and so it was, that which was hoped for was swept away in a series of great, thunderous, frightening, raging, dangerous storms.

I had learnt that hard work brought great success, but in Mustique, I learnt that it took more than mere hard work to succeed. I was taught always to consider people’s feelings, but there I learnt that no one put the other first. Back home speaking up was complimented, here, having a voice was criticized. It was the first place I felt small but where I learnt that I had the power to control how I am perceived, treated and felt in the end.

Many have strolled Mustique’s path, so many lessons taught and yet so many defeated. Lives lost, dreams shattered, relationships broken and many voyages pre-maturely ended. I concluded that it took extraordinary people to conquer Mustique; to walk that thin line between sanity and insanity, to have just enough heart to be considered human and to live in the complex maze of the haves and have-nots.

To me, Mustique is a jar of fortunes and misfortunes, a coin with a good and a bad side, a terrain with hills and valleys. To most, Mustique signifies money but to me, Mustique symbolizes discipline and strength. In spite of it all, I have overcome Mustique! I have graduated with honours from that distinguished college. I am a tutor now. I have lost little and gained so much. It’s where I found my balance, myself, my place and validated my worth. I pay tribute to Mustique for making me the unconquerable woman that I am.

It does not matter the path you take, you can control the outcome!!!!!!