Jamie Dias, who keeps the sprawling beach at the Mariott Hotel at the South-east Peninsular at Frigate, St Kitts, exceptionally well-raked and cleaned on a daily basis, paused on his tractor and remarked: “This is what Anguilla needs”.
The Anguillian newspaper, represented at the scene, could not but agree. Anguilla’s beaches, like those in St. Kitts, the former sister island some seventy miles to the south-east, are occasionally littered with sea moss, drifting all across the Caribbean. Left alone, the moss interferes with access to some of Anguilla’s otherwise pristine and coveted beaches. Some volunteers, as is the case at Sandy Hill Beach, oftentimes attempt to remove the invasive litter with rakes and other means, but this is usually a difficult and painstaking undertaking.
To Jamie Dias, the young man, from West Farm, a rural estate village some miles in the St. Kitts heartland, cleaning the beach is “a piece of cake”, as he casually operates and manipulates his vehicle at the Mariott Hotel’s beachfront. He gained his experience in tractor driving at West Farm where cane-harvesting was once a farming activity. With “king sugar” now dead, tractors are used for other purposes. Cleaning beaches is one such activity.
Jamie sits comfortably on his tractor with an attached big bin fitted with a broad component blade, about four feet long, and a foot wide, called a rake. He leisurely drives along the beach which he thinks is about four miles long. During his repeated travels, his equipment rakes the sea moss into the bin, watched and applauded by appreciative guests. “They like seeing the sea moss, but at the same time they like seeing it taken up and dumped,” Jamie said. “It is dumped over the hill out there. It eventually melts down, or farmers come and take it away.”
There are other beach cleaners elsewhere, but in most cases they operate with rakes and other equipment and then fill up a tractor and cart. But Jamie enjoys driving his most accommodating and comfortable equipment. He is solely responsible for cleaning the Mariott Hotel’s breach, his daily task starting at 7 am. “We had a lot of moss like from August to December, but now it is coming back,” he said. “When it is heavy, it can take all day to clean; but when it is light, like now, it takes about four hours. At times it may even take one hour, with the rest of the time being spent on levelling the beach.”
Surely, after raking and levelling – the beach, dotted for the most part by three long rows of fixed wooden umbrellas, looks magnificent with the powdery grey sand adding much to the contrast. In the background lies a rocky reef extending out from the inshore – and the Atlantic Ocean.
As Jamie surveyed his pleasing clean-up work, he cast a fleeting glance at his machinery: “This is what Anguilla wants,” he remarked.
