Marilyn Littlejohn Manns

Marilyn was born in New Rochelle, a city of some 73,000 people (in 1977), which is in Westchester County in southeastern New York State. New Rochelle is about two miles north of the New York City boundary. She spent her working life principally in New York and North Carolina, where she worked for both of the state governments as a Clinical Psychologist for 34 years. Currently her home is on Martin Road, Luck Hill, Tortola, although she spends time each year in the Atlanta area (as well as traveling elsewhere). Several members of her family, including her parents, now live in this part of Georgia.

Marilyn has been coming to the Virgin Islands since the early 1980s. Originally she was attracted here by the presence of a cousin who had married a man from Jost Van Dyke. Then she came because she liked the islands and the people, staying in both the USVI and the BVI (on ‘Jost’). In 1998, approaching retirement, she started to build her house on Luck Hill – buying a piece of land from Mr. Clifford Martin, who is one of her cousin’s family members.

Marilyn has noticed many changes since she first came to visit her cousin on Jost Van Dyke. On Jost, for instance, there has been a lot of progress, and it is now much more built up. There are now many vehicles (her cousin had the first), many more roads, many tourist-oriented businesses (her cousin had one of the first of these), and – electricity! But it remains a relatively quiet place – at least when the tourists are gone.

These changes have been mirrored, of course on Tortola, where the number of cars and roads, and the number of people, has increased dramatically over the past three decades. Marilyn has particularly noticed the increased variety of people with many ‘white expats’ from “all over”, as well as people from a number of other Caribbean countries. Although the road system has grown, the roads are still poor. But there are more restaurants and stores to choose from which is good when her family comes to visit. You no longer have to go over to St. Thomas to get everything. Tourism has, of course, increased with more boats, more vacationers, and many more cruise ships. She has met a lot of nice people on the beaches of Tortola. There are many more houses – on Luck Hill and the rest of the island. Even the climate seems a bit different.

Despite all of these changes Marilyn feels that the BVI governments have been largely successful in their attempts to retain the islands as “Natures Little Secrets”. In particularly she and her family are pleased that the chain stores and fast food restaurants have been kept out, giving the local people a better chance of preserving their culture and avoiding becoming “like St. Thomas”. St. Thomas in the 1970s was much like it is in the BVI today, but the USVI have deteriorated over the past thirty years. Apart from the environmental changes the social changes have been great with many Americans immigrating from the mainland and running the businesses.

There is still room for improvement in the BVI. The roads need work, and the electricity power outages are very annoying (she doesn’t have a standby generator). We need better health care, both for the residents and the visitors. People may not come here if the health care is not good enough. In addition the crime rate has increased a lot in recent years (although it is not as bad as in the USVI). There are often reports of robberies, which never used to happen here. On a smaller, more local, scale, the chickens and cows are a nuisance in the Luck Hill area. Even though her house has a fence and an electronic gate they are still a problem, and can quickly destroy the work of years in your garden.

But coming to Tortola has been a good move for Marilyn and her family. She doesn’t regret it at all. She has made many friends here, both locals and immigrants, and plans to stay here. She has tried to repay the people of the BVI – for instance by helping bring the Rev. Jesse Jackson Sr. here as the keynote speaker here for the 50th BVI Festival celebrations in 2004 (the 170th anniversary of the Proclamation of Emancipation). She also tried to get her cousin, Denzel Washington, here to open UPs cinema complex, but that move didn’t work out. If Marilyn could “do things over” she would change very little with respect to her time in the Virgin Islands, but she might have built her house elsewhere (“not as far in”) as the roads on Luck Hill are still so poor, and are only maintained at their present level at the expense and effort of the people who live here.
 

Draft of February 24th, 2011 of interview of February 23rd, 2011

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