Life took me to Statia and Statia took over my life on a Friday afternoon in 1996 while I was standing at the counter of a bank in an area that looked like the edge of town. Quiet, narrow streets where goats and cows and chickens roamed. Car wrecks secretly rusting away beneath pink blossoming vines in the empty lots between small wooden houses. People sitting and chatting at street corners. Where is the city center, I asked the teller. Here, she said, waving her hand around. I looked at this hamlet called town, I looked at the people around me, wondering how they felt living on such a tiny dot of 11 sq/m in the wide Caribbean waters. I was perplexed, enchanted, as if the teller's waving hand had caught me in a magic circle.
I walked out into the street and into island life. Most of the then two thousand inhabitants belonged to the old families living in Statia since ages, in and around Oranjestad, all of them united in an intricate pattern of relationships. "We all one family," one big family where everybody grew up together, a close withness to the lives of others. The family kindly wrapped me into its fold, they taught me to sing and play music, they made me a member of the traditional stringband and of the group of women singing hymns with mourning families in the wake before a funeral. They took me into their homes and shared their lives, their past and their stories with me.
Their past is a history of glory and horror. Of horrible ages of slavery and cruelty. A past not so very far behind us; in 1996 some elderly people still could remember how they listened to stories told in hushed voices by relatives born before abolition. And it's only since the last decade that the descendants of the legendary African forefather, Congo Sam, feel proud to call themselves Congos. History is not easy to handle for those whom it treated brutally. But there also is a glorious past of the 18th century, when Statia was the Golden Rock where merchants from colonial Europe piled up their goods and gold, and from where the famous first-ever salute was fired to the flag of the young American states at war for independence. This is Statia's official history, proudly related at public events and in the anthem resounding three times a day from radio and tv.
Today history is shaking Statia again, now that constitutional changes have turned the island into a municipality of The Netherlands, bringing much needed funding and facilities, but also taxes and regulations that are strongly protested. And now that within two decades the huge influx of foreigners has nearly doubled the population and reduced Statia's family to a numerical minority on their own island. The old Statia is dissolving rapidly. Yet, hidden behind the façades if modern times traditional life goes on still, and Statia's big family is trying hard to save what is left of their traditions, celebrations and rituals of mourning, and to redefine their identity.
In 2016 Statia Song has been published as a book with 83 images - it is my song for them.
The book was publised by Uitgeverij In de Knipscheer and is still available.
