Society meeting with the members of the Bay IslandsHistorical and Cultural Preservation Society

We had a meeting with the Bay Islands Historical and Cultural Preservation Society, and while I’ll share more soon about the project we’re currently working on, I wanted to take a moment to talk about something special from that meeting.

Each of us received a copy of A Piece of the Puzzle, written by Keila Rochelle Thompson Gough, our society’s vice president. I started reading it tonight, and right from the introduction, it’s clear how powerful this book is.

There’s a line that stood out to me in the introduction:

“We live in a Spanish country, yet we speak English, which has a Middle English accent. We have English, Scottish, Welsh, and Irish last names, and we love country and reggae music.”

That one sentence says so much about who we are as islanders. And only we, know how deeply true that is.

Reading it brought back memories of the late ‘90s and early 2000s (I know, I’m young), when you’d hear country and reggae at almost every event, from family gatherings and the old Shrimp Festival to weekend hangouts at Camp Bay Beach, West Bay, and West End. It was a different time, but one that still lives in us.

I’m so excited to dive into the rest of the book, but I couldn’t wait to share this small piece of it. Thank you, Keila, for putting into words who we are and sharing it with the world.