Elca Charles-Simmons

My name is Elca Charles-Simmons. I’ve lived in Saba practically all my life.

On the weekends, my father would always take us hiking on the Mount Scenery. And then when we came back down, he would take us swimming. And that's how we learned to swim. If you look at some of the pictures of the past, you will see that there was no pier or anything, so it was just rocks. And days where we would learn to swim, my dad would take us out and then when he thought that we were strong enough to swim, he would take us out farther. There was a rock out in the sea and he would put us there and say, “Well okay, now swim back.”

And then the trips on Mount Scenery, of course, were a lot of fun because you could swing on the ropes, and then sometimes also in the evening, we went by our aunt in St. John's. And there we had a lot of fun, especially during the vacation time. She would take us to her mother's house. We had picnics, cooking on the rocks instead of the stove, big pots of soup — cooking chicken and eating a lot of food.

You went out in the trees and you picked your food. It's not like now where you go to the store, you buy fruit — our snack was going and eating fruit from the trees: canapes, cherries, mangoes, bananas. Sometimes, we would go and then the person would call, “Oh, no, no, no, you're stealin' my bananas, you can't go with my bananas,” you know, like that. But it was a lot of fun, a lot of fun.

We had dollies, but we also were taught how to make our own dollies out of bottles and rope. So you had to loosen up the rope, and then put a cork or wrapped brown paper into the bottle, stick it in — and then that would become the hair, and then you could comb it. Of course, it was a beer bottle without eyes. And then you found the Clorox bottles, which were plastic, then you make dolls from that. And as you grow older, you found out that the Clorox bottle could become maybe … a plant holder. So you cut it off, and you put plants in it.

If you think back on the past, everything was made from what you had on the island. You used to get flour bags, and those flour bags then were saved, sewed together, and then you would make a mattress out of that. And what you would put in the mattress were the banana leaves, because those were the softest part of the tree. People also used to keep fowls, hens and chickens, and they kept the feathers — and the feathers became the stuffing for pillows. For basket-making you used to go out in the bush, get this special type of vine, and you had to strip it, leave it dry, and then you would make your baskets. Everything was more or less reused from the island. A lot of stuff was made of the island.

By the age of 7, 8, I was already learning how to crochet, how to make the baskets, all those things were taught to us then at a very young age, but then it changed. And now it's very difficult to get the young people really interested in these things.

I love art. At a very young age, I always would find myself somewhere in the corner making something, and then my dad would always say no, no, no, no, don't waste up my paint, so I would take ground cherries — we had cherries here that were sticky — and make a drawing. I remember my second-grade teacher. He loved to make things to teach with. And I always was enthused with that, that things can teach you what the teacher wanted you to understand. So I think I gradually started loving teaching. And because I was constantly with children, and I was the second in my family of nine, I think that encouraged me to continue on and really go for teaching. And I just love it.

My mom opened the Saba Girls and Boys Sports Society — an organization for children. But then under that umbrella, we opened the after-school care, because we saw that a lot of children needed the help in the afternoon. So I am very active with that. While I was teaching, I was the director. However, my daughter then took it over and now she's the director. So I just go and assist, give ideas as a teacher, advice to the leaders, and be with the children, because they still look forward to “Teacher Elca, Teacher Elca!”

Saba is my home. Saba is a treasure. I don't really know how to bring it out but it is ... special. Very, very special.