Eric Wilfred Cornet

My name is Eric Wilfred Cornet. I've lived on Saba from the time I was born in 1942. In those days, when I was younger, I had to work with my mother to get something to eat. Because in those days Saba was not as bright as it is now. Going to school on Saba, you had to walk. And those days, our parents weren't much wealthy to give us shoes. So you were bare-footed. You go to school with bare feet, and you had more stubbed toes than you needed, because you didn't have no foot protection. Going to school was also a delight. Because you make good friends with the students there. And then they used to feed you, used to give you something to eat. It was pretty hard, pretty tough, but it was good.

As a child, I had some neighbors living around me and we used to play together. Then when we get tired of that, we go in the fruit trees picking some fruits — mangoes, soursops, cherries. And we have a brown fruit, a tamarind. It's long like a cord, and you can eat the seeds or you can make juice from them. Mother Nature taught us. So when we see a bird pick a soursop, an apple, nothing happens to him. So well, let's say if nothing happens to him, I can use it too. So that's how we come to know the fruits were good.

When I left school, my teacher told me these words: He said, "Eric." I said "Yes, meneer?" — the word meneer in English means "sir.” He says, "You know, here you were taken care of, but now you have to go to put what you’ve learned on the street." So I went to work for the government. I worked amongst older men that knew a little bit more than us, and they taught us how to handle ourselves, but it was very rough at times. We worked on the roads. Those days, you couldn't get to many parts of the island. You had to carry things on your head. All the roads that you see now were built by hand and the tools that we used: a sledge, a big 20-pound hammer, a shovel, a wheelbarrow, and a great piece of iron in your hand that we called a drill. You'd be mixing concrete here and the mason is down there, you have to carry the stuff to him and it was very rough doing that, but you had to do it for a living. And the wages were not that high neither. When you worked for the government, you got 21 guilders a week and you had to make do. Now, the island is so built up. Because I did this, tractors, jeeps, or trucks can bring this stuff to you. We did community work. So I come and I help you, and then you help me.

After that, I went to sea out sailing with some old Saba captains, Mr. Matthew Levenston, now deceased, and Randall Duncan. Some days were good. Some days it was bad, because when the sea get angry, it was angry. But when she started laughing at you, she smiled and then you had it good. I sailed on the open boats also. Now, on the open boats you had it more difficult because when you see squalls and rain and wind, you had to be particular about what you're doing, because one mistake, and you are gone. When you're working on the sea, you have to get acquainted with it. Because that was your living. And sometimes you had to time out, because she gets angry with you. But I caught on and I enjoyed it well. You see places that you have never seen.

It was hard in those days to get through life, but we fought the good fight and we make it do. We survived — we survived the Saba landing, so to speak. I feel like I'm lively. I'm nearly 81, but I feel like I can still jiggle, sure. Wherever I go, I make home. Wherever I go, well, I make it my own. I can still do the work.

Now I'm on retirement from the government. I'm a senior citizen at the Life Center where I enjoys very much with my colleagues and the ladies who are taking care of us. And I feel happy. I'm organist of our two churches here, the one down there next to Sea Saba, and the one in The Bottom. That's the first building you meet when you going down the road, the Episcopal Church. There's where I'm organist of. I learned music in '69, then I started playing from then ’til this morning.