Mr. Josveek Huligar, a young man from South Hill, is a well-known social media enthusiast, photographer, fashion show host etc – and for years he has been promoting Anguilla as an up-market tourism destination – www.Anguillaaccess.com
His real trade, however, is a stone restoration specialist. Little of his expertise in this area is seen in Anguilla where there is limited opportunity. But he has left his mark at the World Trade Centre, in New York, where he polished the Freedom Stone, a memoriam to those who died on September 2011 in the terrorist attack. (More on that further down in this article.)
What the multi-faceted Josveek is now engaged in, is beautifying part of the roadside at South Hill thereby winning public admiration and support. “It is all about beautifying my neighbourhood and Anguilla,” he told The Anguillian newspaper. “My father’s business has always been here [around the corner above E’s Oven] as a salvage yard; but, in my opinion, it has been the biggest eyesore along the road for all these years. I cannot be a person promoting Anguilla, as a tourist destination, while the place doesn’t look up to par. We cannot have a high-end destination when our roadsides look like crap. Anywhere in the world I go the roadsides always look great but in Anguilla it is totally the opposite. If we are asking tourists to come here to spend their money, we should do something to that effect.
He continued: “I started off with my father’s garage but this was not my idea, really. It began on Facebook as a post on which a number of us were commenting. It was about whose village can look the best – that all of us should put up 200 dollars, and that when the winning village is announced the money should go to the school in that village. When that came up, I said South Hill will look the best and I will take care of my father’s corner.
“I don’t know who all took that challenge seriously, but I am a man of my word and so I started to ‘fight’ with my father about all the old cars, and everything else like junk, in his garage. We finally came up with a compromise: he was going to allow me to get rid of his old cars and he would bring in more modern cars. So I started to plant floral shrubs and other trees to make the place look beautiful, and we put up a black canvas wall to hide some of the old cars so that nobody can see them from the road. The idea is really not right. Just because we want to make the place beautiful we shouldn’t shut down a man who has been here all his life. But the fencing was not a bad compromise because the roadside now looks great. We have also finished the western part of the roadside at E’s Oven. I am now down the street by the other restaurant, and should soon have some decorative plants there soon. My intention is to go right down to the stoplight and back up to the corner. I am out here every day from 6.00 am until I remember I have something else to do.”
Josveek was asked who were the persons he constantly referred to as ‘we’. He replied: “Right here at the corner, it is just me, my brother [Jahsee] and my father [Johnny Huligar]. As I go down the road, it is going to be my brother and me. I don’t think my father will be coming down there with us.”
According to him, he purchased most of the plants from the Garden Centre at Sandy Ground but he luckily got a discount as he was working there at the time. He singled out other plants, including floral shrubs, coconut, papaya, banana, plantain and fig trees which a number of persons, in various parts of the island, donated to him in support of his beautification work. “As for the ‘pope’ trees, I stole them from Windward Point,” he admitted. “I am not ashamed. There are a lot of them up there.”
Josveek, widely known to be a very versatile and ambitious person, and for his assistance to others, including his community and Anguilla on a whole, has high praise for his mother [Bernadine Huligar] for his upbringing. “My Mamma always taught me that it’s best to keep active and that it is right to help others,” he stated. “It is not always about I or me. It is about helping someone else and in time it is going to come back. I feel privileged. I might not be a millionaire, in the sense of money, but everything that my mother has done in Anguilla to help people – I swear that what I am receiving today is because of her hard work. When my kids grow up, I want somebody to help them and open doors for them. Someone opened doors for me so why can’t I open doors for others as well?”
Aside from everything else he has done, Josveek is proud to refer to his background. “I am a Stone Restoration Specialist. That’s my background but it is too hard to get work in Anguilla doing that,” he said. “The polishing of the cornerstone, where the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center were in New York City, is my handiwork. When people go there, not to celebrate but to remember 9/11, they see that nice, big Freedom Stone. That’s the stone I polished. No one else could have gotten it done and I don’t understand why. All the large fabrication shops complained that it was too big and that they couldn’t do this and that. They looked at me as if I was stupid because I said it was easy. The stone is a couple of tons [20] but everybody was looking at it backwards. They were looking at getting it on their machine. But as a Stone Restoration person, doing floors, I was looking at how to get my machine on top of it.
“I just told them to build me a scaffold, level it with the stone, and put pieces of granite at the side of the stone to prevent my machine from falling off the edge. I put my 220-pound machine on top of it, used my water and grinded it completely flat, then I polished it. It took me about six weeks to do that, but it is done. When that job is done, nothing can ever happen to it to make it look horrible. Look it up. Google Freedom Stone. You probably will find the New York Times’ article, and I think my name is actually mentioned there as the person who polished the stone.”
While Josveek works on beautifying the roadside in his South Hill village, the other things which keep him busy include planning his regional fashion show, photography/videography, building websites and publicizing Anguilla as a tourist destination.
