Tracy Zagers-Johnson

My name is Tracy Elizabeth Zagers-Johnson, and I've lived here my whole life. Well, minus five years I was at school, but otherwise, I've been here my whole life.

Growing up on Saba was very fun and free. I grew up in the village of Hell's Gate. And I was actually one of the few girls in the village. At that time, there was mostly a lot of boys. So I played a lot with boys after school, kind of like a tomboy growing up. And I also had three brothers. And I grew up close to my grandparents as well. My grandmother lives right next door to us, I spent a lot of time with her. And I would also go and visit my other grandmother a lot. So they were a big part of my life growing up here.

We would have some teachers from Saba, but also teachers who came from abroad, to teach us. I distinctly remember one of my teachers from grade four. She was an amazing teacher, Irene Pittman was her name. She went on to work at the University of North Carolina. And she turned us all on to reading. I think, if you ask any of my classmates they'll all say the same thing, like they really, really, really started to love reading even more because of her, because she would read us stories a lot of times at the end of the day, and she would leave off, keeping you in suspense that you were dying to find out what happened. And then she was like, “See you tomorrow!” And so we all really started to love to read even more when we had her. We had a small class, we were all very closely knit. And we had a very successful class.

It was pretty difficult for me to decide what I wanted to study. I started off with my major as math education. And then I got word back from the college that they had discontinued that major and I didn't really know what I wanted to do then. So I took six months after high school, I stayed and I worked. And then I decided I was going to major in accounting and business with a minor in Spanish. And I did some summer jobs, et cetera. In accounting, I found it a little bit boring, just kind of by myself, you know, doing the bookkeeping. I am a person who likes to interact with people and work with others. So my advisor at the time, she said, Why don't you try out some education classes? And maybe you can combine it with your Spanish and see how that goes. So that's how the Spanish teacher was born.

Being Saban means that we come from very strong, hard working determined people. We come from an island where, up until a couple of decades ago, there was no airport, no roads, no harbor. And we made those things happen. Even though we were told, for example, there could never be a road built here, we built a road. So for me, being Saban means being strong, being determined, being resilient. And I feel like I've carried that through in my life as well.