Alma Peggy Barnes

My full name is Alma Peggy Barnes. I'm 71 years old, and I've lived almost all my life on Saba.

Growing up on Saba was nice. It wasn't like now — we didn't have no radios, we didn't have electricity — but we still did the handwork with the kerosene lamp. And we were happy, climbing the mountains you wanted to see and all that. I used to work in a grocery store and in a liquor store, then I ran a taxi for a few years, which was nice too. That kept me busy on the road for about two or three years.

When I was 12 years old, I could pick lace patterns and do everything my mother teached me. The history of Saba Lace … well, there was a lady named Gertrude Hauser who went to Venezuela in 1946, and she learned the Saba Lace there. Then she came back and got married to a man named Benjamin Johnson, and she teached the ladies of Saba the handwork. Also she went to school to teach it.

We'd give Saba Lace as gifts, or people would order it. We get a lot of orders from Barbados. I had a cousin who worked with the embassy in Barbados, and they would order a lot of handwork from us and we'd post it to them. Placemats and napkins, scarves, these aprons, all kinds of things.

For a long time when my daughter's growing up, she learned a little bit [of Saba Lace]. But then she went away to university and everything, and she didn't have the time. But some different children has been learning, and I'm teaching them a little bit. There’s three here today, but sometimes we have six, and if anybody like to come home, I teach them at home.

To do the Saba Lace you have to really concentrate on what you's doing. You have to be countin’ the threads and how many to leave and how many to take out. You really have to, you know, keep watching what you's doing. I can't do much at night now because I can't see so good. I could crochet at night, but most of the handwork I don't do at night anymore.

I love being a Sabian. I love to hear the history and all the different things that we do here. I love to do it. I do a lot to bakin’, too. And Saba Spice I make, that's from this island, and that's from my grandmother’s recipe. My mother teached me and she learned from her mother.