When my husband Spence and I moved from Wisconsin to St Croix, U.S. Virgin Islands (USVI) in September of 2019, we were looking for a change and an adventure…and a reprieve from shoveling snow and chipping ice off the windows. We have not been disappointed. It has been a big change and an awesome adventure…and sure enough…no snow.
My sister Heather and her husband Brian moved to St. Croix in May of 2017 — right before hurricanes Irma and Maria ravaged the Caribbean and destroyed much of the island’s fragile infrastructure. Heather is a critical care nurse practitioner and Brian is a retired Air Force veteran. They came to the USVI to experience island life and a different culture. Heather got a job in the emergency room at the hospital, and Brian took a position as the manager of the St. Croix Yacht Club. After the hurricanes, many people from the U.S. mainland — the “states” — left because they were only here for the atmosphere. Heather and Brian stayed because they were here to immerse themselves into the culture, and the devastation they witnessed firsthand made it clear that they were necessary.
So, when Spence and I decided to make the move, we knew what to expect — sort of. We knew that after the hurricanes, St. Croix was damaged but on the mend. Because we thrive on adventure and new experiences, Spence, a metal fabricator/welder, and I, an attorney and a life-long public servant, decided to experience a new culture and offer our assistance. We looked forward to plunging ourselves into the USVI and Crucian, people born on St. Croix, culture and having the opportunity to be part of a solution instead of the problem.
We knew that the island was about 75 percent black, 15 percent white and 10 percent other. We knew that we would experience being a minority for the first time in our very white-Wisconsin-Midwestern lives, and we looked forward to it. We learned from Heather and Brian that the Crucians are very kind and hospitable, and extremely proud and protective of their heritage and culture.
They welcome visitors and people who relocate to their island, but they are resentful and suspicious of white people who come and try to make too many changes. The Crucians want to be successful and raise strong, smart, well-educated children — as anyone does — but they want to accomplish those things according to their own beliefs and their own traditions. And they are quite successful.
Crucians say good morning, good afternoon and good night at every encounter depending on the time of day. If you don’t say it when you walk into the grocery store, post office or wherever you have just arrived or passed by another person, it becomes clear that you are an outsider. You will be treated kindly and given much leeway, but you will be assessed as an outsider and categorized accordingly. We expected that.
I got a job with Legal Services of the Virgin Islands (LSVI), and Spence started working on a concrete construction crew. We immersed ourselves in the USVI and Crucian life and hoped to slowly gain the respect and trust of the people around us. We expected it to take some time; we were in it for the long haul. We expected hot weather and bugs and giant poisonous frogs. We even expected hurricanes and crazy middle-of-the-Caribbean Sea turbulent weather.
What we didn’t expect was a global pandemic.
Since the Coronavirus outbreak, Spence and I speak daily to friends and family in Wisconsin and all over the country, and they often ask whether we have coronavirus cases on the island. When we tell them we do, they are incredulous, and they usually speculate that it can’t be that bad experiencing social isolation on a tropical island. I mean how bad could it be — staying home — where it’s 88 degrees and sunny—that doesn’t sound so horrible. Does the virus even live where it’s so hot all the time? What do you do — go to the beach and drink cocktails?
When the consensus amongst our friends and families from the states appeared to be ignorance about whether the coronavirus was affecting the Virgin Islands, Spence and I realized that it was, like most common misconceptions, due to a lack of information. The news headlines keep saying things like, “Positive Cases of The Coronavirus Have Been Reported In all 50 States,” and the maps showing the spread include only the mainland states, Hawaii and Alaska. So far, I have not heard any news source — CNN, PBS, CBS, FOX, etc. — report about what is happening in the USVI.
On some level the lack of news about the effect of the coronavirus in the USVI is understandable, I suppose. If you look at the globe, the U.S. Virgin Islands is three tiny dots, near Puerto Rico, off the northern coast of South America, closer to South America than the U.S. It is a territory, not a state, and not really in the forefront of anyone’s thoughts or concerns.
Before moving here, I didn’t know very much about the USVI except that there were beaches and sun, and rich college kids went there for spring break. I thought, generally, that the Caribbean islands were associated with fancy rum drinks and things made out of pineapple, and that they were ideal places to learn to snorkel and scuba because the ocean is like bathwater. When I got here, I realized that I was right — there are beaches and sun and rum. But what I didn’t know could have filled the ocean, and I suspect that many mainland Americans are equally ignorant about the USVI and its residents.
It is a mystery to no one — except our president — that some data and evidence is better than none, and that our best defense against ignorance and the fall-out from lack of information is education. Since moving here, I have educated myself with Google and books, and the wisdom of the people I work and live with by asking questions, listening to the answers, and adjusting my thoughts and actions accordingly. And that, my friends, is all it takes. Ask, listen, learn. Repeat.
In 1917, the United States purchased St Croix, St. Thomas and St. John from the Danish for $25,000,000. The islands officially became an unincorporated U.S. territory in 1927. Most residents were granted U.S. citizenship in 1936, after an act was passed declaring that all natives of the Virgin Islands who were residing in the continental United States, or any of its possessions or territories, at the time the act was passed, were U.S. citizens. Hawaii and Alaska became U.S. states in 1959.
The islands of the USVI share a combined population of around 106,00 inhabitants, according to the last census in 2010, and collectively occupy about 132 square miles. Cooperatively, the USVI is a community the size of two large universities scattered about three islands, where it is usually about 88 degrees and sunny.
People say things like “welcome to paradise” and time is often referred to affectionately as “island time,” because things happen slower here, and the people who live here exist with less stress, and with less anxiety than anywhere else I have ever been. But, contrary to popular belief, the people here don’t spend all their time sitting on the beach drinking rum drinks—even though Captain Morgan has its home here. Many Crucians don’t go to the beaches because they don’t like to swim, and most of them don’t drink much alcohol.
They are thoughtful and deeply spiritual. They work and play and love their children. They often live with their elderly parents because they honor family above all else, and they are some of the kindest and gentle people I have ever met. The USVI is an entire world — an entire ecosystem of plants, animals, bacteria, protists, and fungi — full of people with the same loves, hates, fears and insecurities as the rest of America.
When news of the coronavirus began circulating in early March, there was a palpable fear. The economy of the USVI depends largely on tourism, especially on St. Thomas, and the onset of the pandemic was coinciding with spring break and Carnival—times when thousands of tourists would usually flock to the islands for a little reprieve from winter. Residents wondered if tourism would be halted and if cruise ships would stop bringing travelers to the islands. Essentially, they wondered how they would be protected from this killer virus that, if it was allowed to take hold, would surely devastate their population.
I was on St. Thomas on March 12 and 13, 2020, to take the Multistate Professional Responsibility Examination (MPRE)—one of the requirements of getting admission to the Virgin Islands Bar. I had flown from St. Croix to St. Thomas on the 12th so I could take the early morning exam on the 13th and get back to St. Croix midafternoon. The coronavirus was making headlines worldwide and it seemed inevitable that travel would — or at least should — be banned soon and I didn’t want to get stuck on the wrong island.
I stayed with a friend/coworker and her son at their beautiful little bungalow on the bay. We drank wine, had dinner at a local hotel, drank wine, watched the cruise ships come and go, drank wine, and wondered how long the tourists would be allowed to invade our tiny little three-island microcosm. We discussed the fact that the hurricanes of 2017 had damaged the hospitals on the islands and rendered them ill-equipped, at best, to deal with a large viral outbreak. And by ill-equipped, I mean the hospital facilities and equipment — not the nurses and doctors and other professionals who work there.
As we watched cruise ships come and go and drank all the wine on St. Thomas, we asked ourselves things like, “When will the Governor declare a state of emergency here and close down travel? When will we stop allowing people who don’t live here to come here and bring the virus with them? What will we do if the virus runs rampant and we are trapped here in paradise with somewhat inadequate healthcare facilities?” And because the answers were troubling and out of our control, we drank more wine.
I woke up on the 13th of March with a headache, took my exam at 8:00 a.m., and emerged from the test center to learn that Governor Bryan had declared a state of emergency in the Virgin Islands just as Trump called for a national emergency in the states. I listened to his public announcement, and the warnings he gave and was relieved that he seemed to be taking the pandemic seriously. Unlike Trump—who appeared reluctant and even apologetic at having to admit a state of emergency—Governor Bryan was taking control of the situation and doing his best to mitigate the inevitable. On March 13, 2020, the USVI had one case of confirmed COVID-19. One was enough.
I was nervous about the flight back to St. Croix — which had me on a 10-seat Cessna with 10 other humans — but I was optimistic about the Governor’s swift exercise of authority. I flew back, and within a week, Governor Bryan quickly closed the restaurants and bars and ordered all hotels, motels, and bed and breakfasts—air and otherwise—to stop taking new reservations. He closed schools, all nonessential businesses, and restricted courthouse activities to emergency hearings and some criminal and other matters that could not be taken care of by phone or video.
Over the next four weeks, the community joined forces and most people did everything they could to respect each other’s personal space and stay away from each other. A local delivery service emerged and started offering an online ordering and delivery service from three grocery stores, and several restaurants. The beaches are closed, and the post office constructed plastic barriers between clerks and customers. Most retail businesses are only allowing a few people inside the store at one time, and most people are wearing masks.
We have been self-quarantining and working from home, social distancing and, with our neighbors and friends, doing everything that a group of individuals living together on a small island can do to keep each other safe and healthy. Every day we see the death tolls rise in the states and the effects of ignoring the stay-at-home advisories. The USVI Governor took this crisis seriously and required businesses and schools to close, and people to keep their distance from each other as soon as the first case was confirmed. Because the residents of the USVI have taken the Governor’s orders seriously, we have been able to slow the spread of the coronavirus in this fragile ecosystem. Today, on April 19, 2020, the USVI has seen only 53 cases of confirmed Coronavirus. I call that a victory.
Holly L Fulkerson, JD of St. Croix
