Too rich to get our foreign aid? Tell that to the hurricane-hit families with no food or water
A powerful dispatch from the British dependency where survivors are growing desperate – and angry
‘The dolphins have been treated better than the poor here’
NOT FAR from the marinas on Tortola, where wealthy sailors have made the British Virgin Islands one of the biggest bases for yachting in the Caribbean, is a place where few tourists venture.
Known as Long Look — African slaves shipped here to work on sugar plantations were said to look out and wistfully face the continent of their home — this district is a world away from the brochures extolling the beauties of these islands, which are a territory of the Crown.
While British politicians have spoken about their efforts to help these islands after Hurricane Irma struck with such devastating force more than three weeks ago, the people of Long Look are growing angry. There is little food or shelter, and the situation is getting worse by the day.
At the stoop, a communal seating area in Long Look, groups of young men and women were sitting around drinking rum from a bar they had set up on a wall.
‘We don’t want it to come to violence,’ said Ricky, a well-known local character. ‘But if we don’t get food one way, we will get it another way.’
As I walked through Long Look, an irate elderly woman shouted at me from to come over to her house.
A neatly dressed grandmother, her name was Yasmine Hilton and she was not happy. ‘We haven’t got anything,’ she told me. ‘There is food being brought in, but we are not seeing anything. No water — no nothing. We don’t have stuff to eat.’
Sitting on their porch in this impoverished area, Bobby and Seeme, a cheerful couple who’ve lived here for years, told me they had seen no outside help nor deliveries of water since the hurricane hit and damaged or destroyed the majority of the houses and boats on the island.
‘There’s no water, we have got no food, there is no electricity,’ Bobby told me. ‘The British Army is doing their best to fix things. But where’s the food? The rich people are doing well and we are not even eating.’
At Rudy’s rum bar, another haunt popular with locals, a man called Grady told me his house was ‘gone’ and that he had been forced to sleep in his car since Irma swept through.
Another local, named Pet Trim, and her 11-year-old daughter Megan, told me they were forced to run from one house, which had its roof ripped off in the high winds, to another, only to see its roof fly off into the sky as well. It was, they said, utterly terrifying. In the end, they were forced to shelter in an abandoned car. They have lived in the vehicle ever since.
‘We are not looking for steak,’ Pet told me. ‘We need dried food, water, toilet paper, garbage bags and disinfectant — that’s all.’
While Hurricane Irma may have passed, along with Hurricane Maria which followed it a few days later, there are other troubles brewing on these shattered islands.
For some, gratitude that their lives have been spared is turning to anger over the uneven distribution of aid. All this is fuelling a toxic — and possibly incendiary — mood among some sectors of the population.
In turn, the shortage of aid — and people to distribute it — has led to the cynical practice of ‘gouging’, with shops trebling prices for some essentials such as water and rice.
Even the dolphins at one local sealife resort were treated better than the poorest here. The animals were flown to Jamaica by private charter three days after the hurricane. While they were being airlifted to safety, British passport holders were left to fend for themselves. One local man, born on the island to English parents, told me how it took more than two weeks to get his mother and father off Tortola, and how they — like many other Britons — were forced to club together to charter private aircraft for huge sums to get the elderly, ill and children to safety.
Indeed, whatever the politicians claim for the success of operations in the British Virgin Islands, many poor local people here do not share that enthusiasm, with some even warning of looming social unrest if more help does not come soon.
ONE problem is that, scandalously, these desperate people cannot be helped using cash from Britain’s vast foreign aid budget of £13 billion.
Why? Because the islands are, apparently, too rich to qualify for foreign aid. This is according to criteria for overseas development assistance, enshrined in UK law, which are set internationally by the Paris-based Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development.
This does not mean Britain has abandoned the islands, where the Queen is the head of state. But aid funds have had to be found from the hard-pressed coffers of the Treasury, instead of bloated overseas aid funds.
So far, £57m has been pledged to help islands including the British Overseas Territories of BVI, Anguilla, and Turks & Caicos. Nearby Dominica is getting £5million.
The fact is, though, that the gross domestic product of the BVI — the benchmark which says they are too well off for foreign aid — is falsely boosted by the presence of billionaires such as Larry Page, the founder of Google, and Richard Branson, not to mention the billions hidden in special offshore accounts with low tax rates that have made these islands a hub of global finance.
For all the rich and famous residents — film star Morgan Freeman is among those whose boat is normally moored here — there is an underclass of almost one in four who live on not much more than 100 dollars a month.
And it is these people who are paying the price for the lack of food and water, despite the heroic efforts of British soldiers, who have been welcomed as saviours by local people.
At one local bar, Elrick Collinswood, a fisherman, told me: ‘The whole island is gone — and my boat and my house have gone. We need more help — when is everyone going to come?’
At a shelter for those made homeless, young and old were sleeping side by side in an old sports hall, living off food donated by local people and businesses.
One sad old soul — a gnarled fisherman called Elweed — started weeping when I asked him about his losses. ‘My boat is gone and my house doesn’t exist any more,’ he said. ‘Will you build me a home if I can find some land?’ Others are openly angry. A young man called Christian came over and laughed bitterly
when I asked him if he was being looked after well. ‘They say we are too rich to get help,’ he said. ‘I ain’t rich. The whole thing is rubbish.’
The British Government says that it has led the way in the relief effort, delivering food, water and shelter as a matter of urgency to the islands.
A spokesman pointed out that International Development Secretary Priti Patel was in the BVI a few days ago witnessing UK aid being deployed after it was dropped off by HMS Ocean. Around 180 tonnes of UK aid, including food, water, shelter kits and buckets, has been delivered to or bought in the Caribbean. The British Virgin Islands has received much of this support, including four tonnes of food.
Certainly, this week there was aid piled in an area of wasteland near the docks, protected from the elements by a circus tent. It was being guarded by the British military, but locals complained to me that the problem is distribution, that nobody knows that’s going on, and individuals are not allowed to pick up aid from the depot.
It has to first be sent to distribution centres around the island, with complaints that some of the aid is going missing en route.
There are suspicions of pilfering — the new currency around here is stolen generators because of the lack of power — and concerns that once people’s money starts to run out, and with no jobs in sight, the most desperate will take matters into their own hands.
The reality is that the entire British operation was racing to catch up from the start. The first British troops were not mobilised until after the disaster.
What’s more, these elite Royal Marine Commandos were left to borrow weapons and ammunition from local police forces because their equipment had not been airlifted in with them. This was worrying because one of their first jobs was to help round up more than 100 prisoners — including rapists and murderers — who had escaped from the prison during the hurricane. Almost all have been recaptured. So botched were the supplies that specialist signal troops, brought into ensure the soldiers had decent communications, arrived without radios, meaning troops on the ground were initially forced to communicate using WhatsApp on their mobile phones.
Since the storm, the rest of the cleaning up operation has relied on the goodwill of local people, and the tremendous spirit of the islanders. Asked how they were, almost everyone I spoke to replied: ‘Everything’s gone — but I’m alive.’
James Tattersall, a doctor from Leeds whose mother and father live in the islands, was tracking the hurricane before it hit. ‘I made some calculations based on previous hurricanes, and it looked like it was not survivable — that everyone would die. Luckily that was wrong. But it was bad enough.
‘We had no communications for days,’ he told me at Tortola’s main hospital this week. ‘We have a shortage of dialysis machines. I am having to make decisions about who will get treatment and who won’t. We don’t see any government — we are coping ourselves.’
He is typical of so many here who are selflessly doing everything they can to help the survivors.
AL BRODERICK, a local chef and talented musician — who performed for Barack Obama when he came to stay on Richard Branson’s Necker Island — has set up free food stalls, where he cooks for hundreds of children who are unable to access aid.
Relying on donations from local people and former visitors now living abroad, he’s spent hours cooking and distributing food to those in most need.
He told me: ‘At all these food stations across the island we are handing out good, nutritious food. We are doing more than 300 meals a day, cooking it here. We are using chicken, carrots and whatever we can scavenge.’
Billionaires such as Page and Branson have also set up their own relief projects. I even met two Haitians who had flown in from that very poor country to help.
What’s unnerving everyone is that the hurricane season is not yet over on these bewitching islands. But the people here are resolute, even though at present they are simply trying to exist from day to day.
The hope now is that the British aid reaches those who need it most, and this corner of paradise can slowly but surely drag itself back to its feet.