In Tides of Transformation, we explore St. Eustatius from 1950 to 2000, a period of quiet but profound change. As men migrated for work, women led households, nurtured communities, and anchored culture. We reflect on intergenerational silence surrounding slavery, the resilience passed down through women, and the economic shift brought by Statia Oil Terminals. 

Through stories from elders, nurses, activists, and Governor Alida Francis, we witness the strength of matriarchal leadership. These aren’t tales from textbooks—they’re lived memories, told in the flicker of oil lamps and the rhythm of daily care.

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Produced by Simpler Media

>> : The women were actually in charge. They were left

behind, took care of the children, but they also had to

work. The women were always in my

time that I'm on this earth in Stacia, uh, were always

in leading positions.

>> Unidentified (Podcast Host): Welcome to Whispers of the Past. I'm your host,

Fitavit. And in this episode,

Tides of Transformation. We step into the

heartbeat of synthesias between

1950 and the 2000s.

This chapter isn't shaped by headlines, but by

hands. Hands that lit lanterns before

electricity, lapped grass before

lawnmowers, and passed down memory in the

quiet language of care.

From the flicker of the oil lamp to the rise of

oil terminals, we follow the steady

current of change. How

migration reshaped family life,

how women stepped into spaces left behind,

and how silence around slavery gave way

slowly, tenderly, to storytelling

and truth. We witnessed

the hush of intergenerational trauma

and the quiet courage of those who broke

it. We revisit

the blue bead, one's currency, then

toy, now symbol, and

ask what happens when a community

forgets not through apathy, but through

survival. Through these

voices, we navigate a Caribbean

crossroads, a place

where women led without title, where heritage

lived outside museum walls, and where

transformation whispers long before it was

named.

Electricity didn't arrive on stacia until

late 1950s. Before that,

lanterns hung on poles to light the streets,

and darkness was something you felt in your bones.

For many, like Mrs. Rivers, a

respected elder and lifelong nurse devoted to Karen's

service, this wasn't just an inconvenience.

It was a memory, etched not just in time,

but but in feeling.

>> : Growing up, we didn't have electricity. Not

at that time. I think it came

lately, after late in the 50s, going

to the 60s, I think. Then we

got electricity. Um, I'm not quite sure.

I think it's around those years, yeah.

>> Speaker C: Cause in those years back, we

had lanterns we used to hang out on.

>> : Stretching on the poles to see

in the night. Because the show is so dark and I don't like

it. I'm getting used to it, but I.

>> Speaker C: Still don't like it.

>> Unidentified (Podcast Host): In the glow of lanterns, before electricity

reached every home station, women kept the

island moving, raising children by

memory, guiding communities by touch, and

lighting the way with more than fire.

These were the women who built daily life out of

scarcity. But behind that steady strength,

lived histories, rarely spoken out, uh, loud.

As we turn to Mrs. M. Bennet, also a respected

elder who dedicated her life to nursing, she

reflects, Even in the 1950s and

1960s, the legacy of slavery

remained largely unspoken in

families. Silence Wrapped around the past like

a second skin. This is what some

scholars now describe as intergenerational

silence, when trauma is passed

down not through story, but through the absence of

it. What Mrs. Bennet eventually

uncovered through songs, community

practice and her own curiosity

wasn't just a personal discovery. It was

part of what researchers call transgenerational

trauma in the quiet inheritance of

pain, strength and

survival, Mechanisms that shaped by

slavery and colonialism.

And yet the inheritance wasn't

just only a wound. It was also

resilience through care networks, the kind

that forms when formal institutions

falls short and people,

especially women, take it upon themselves

to teach, protect and

remember.

There's also a term for gender

memory work,

when women often unconsciously become

the keepers of communal past through

recipes, rituals, and the

refusal to forget. So when,

uh, Mrs. Bennet speaks of learning about slavery through a

song circle in her 30s, she's not just

recalling a moment. She's embodying the

truth that many station women lived. That

healing too can be inherent.

Not all trauma screams. Some of it

whispers from generation to

generation. And sometimes

the act of remembering is its own quiet

form of resistance.

>> Speaker C: Maybe um, they talk about it.

Maybe there wasn't in that time

got to be. They never say whether the father,

uh, or mother was a slave. You know,

all I used to hear my stepmother saying about

um. She had family from the Congo,

something from Africa. But you

never say who rather than how they was treated.

And my father Bennett, he said from

here. But his father,

Karen Bennett understood his father.

His father father was a German

from Germany. And my

mother, mother was from St. Kitts.

My mother father. He had family

in Sabah. But I don't know

the title. He have have the same

title in um. Sink it to

Cranstone. I never talked

about

the time I come a part of this history

was I was

singing in a group with Shanna Mercera.

They used to keep a singing group. And

every July she will

perform. We had to put on like

African weather skirt or

so. And um, then I

realized about this slavery

business. I think I was um,

in my 30s somewhere

around there. I was working, nursing.

Sometimes they used to come on the radio, hear them

speaking and how they did buy slave

and did them very bad. You know.

I heard my grandmother came here to work in

the grown planting. But I never

heard whether by a slave master

never heard.

She was married to my grandfather, but she had

to get to make ends meet.

Whether maybe he didn't like it or not. She had to

find work somewhere. When I. I don't know when

I Know myself. I went to Aruba

when I was, um. I went

back Aruba for school when I was 15. I heard

she passed away. When? In her 30s or her

40s. I think she reached 40.

She had a bad. Catch a bad cold. I think she used

to burn cold bed, you know,

cold in the ground. She catch a

cold? She had bronchitis and

she passed away.

>> Unidentified (Podcast Host): What does it mean when a community forgets?

Not by choice, but by necessity.

As Mrs. Bennet reflects, the

past was never openly spoken of.

Slavery was not a story told in her

household, but a shadow, unmentioned

yet ever present. A

stepmother who mentioned Congo but gave no

history. A grandmother

remembering through fragments. It wasn't

that the past was lost. It was

sealed. This is what scholars

now describe as intergenerational silence, A

form of cultural amnesia born from pain

too heavy to name. In the wake

of forced migration, family

separation and. And dehumanization,

many Caribbean families adopted silence

as a form of protection.

Post enslavement syndrome. A, uh, framework used

to understand the legacy, helps us see how

trauma can be inherent not only through

blood, but through behavior, through gaps in

memory, through stories left

untold.

Sometimes this silence was survival.

Sometimes it became generational erasure,

where remembering was too dangerous

and forgetting became a kind of

care. But not all memory

vanishes. On, um,

synthesis. The past still breathes

through gardens, through landmarks, through the

efforts of those who will listen. A few

have listened. And now we turn to Mr.

Burkle, a respected elder and local

historian who has spent decades preserving

stacia, folklore, family legacies, and

untold truths. His father never spoke

of, uh, slavery. But what he didn't say,

Mr. Burkle has sought to understand.

Now we turn to his voice.

>> Speaker C: To be honest with you, my father never

talk. His ancestors

came out of slavery. His

grandmother, you know, and he

never talk about slavery with us. He

never talk about it. My father, you know, after he

became a Seventh day Adventist, he

tried to avoid, you

know, like, creating

malice and feelings. So whatever

happened there, uh, he never

explained. He would say it

was a rough time, what people went

through and things like that. But to go

into depth, he never did

that. And we never hang around the bears

and stuff like that. So in places

where web the men and the women

in assembly and talk about it.

>> Unidentified (Podcast Host): What'S remembered and what's withheld

tells us just as much as what was said.

Mr. Burkle's father, like many elders across

the Caribbean, avoided the raw details of

slavery, not because they weren't known,

but because they carried emotional weight.

Religious restraint and generational

pain.

That silence became part of the legacy

itself. Scholars call it

adaptive forgetting, a way to move

forward without reopening wounds too deep to

heal in public.

But while certain histories remained

unspoken, others were passed down through

ritual, role models and rhythm.

If slavery was a trauma never fully

named, then girlhood was often where

community stepped in with rules,

guidance, and quiet codes of

protection. In the absence

of formal sex education and emotional

language, young girls learned through

examples, warnings, and whispered

advices. It

wasn't always clear, but it was consistent.

And so we move from silence to

guidance, from a raised past to the

small rituals of becoming a woman.

Mrs. Bennet picks up the thread not through

history books, but through lived memory

in church basements and neighborhood

circles. She recalls a different kind of

education, one that came stitched in

cloth, spoken in caution, and held

in the hands of women who knew how to care

even when they couldn't explain why.

>> Speaker C: In 1965, I had a cousin

used to work in Puerto Rican the post

office. Her name was Louise

Walpatin. And, um,

she was living around there. They got a rotunda

circle there by the guest house,

living there on the right side, not far from the

library. Well, they was in the Methodist

church, she and the lady that took care

of her, huh, Ms. El Ree Leslie.

They had a sculpt

like, uh, they call it girls brigade. And so,

um, every week we will go there by the Methodist

church. What they call it, Elma

was a wooden building. They sing

about God. And so.

And they gave a little handicraft

and little teaching about.

Invite the doctor to teach the

girls about the period. And so

I think, I don't know if it was so all the time, but the

lady, this Ms. Warm Putin, had invited the

education, the teacher,

how it go, uh, how it comes every

month. There is so much time in a

month will come.

Well, um, my stepmother

had. When I told I could get it when I was

13 years and I didn't know she had

everything prepared. We had the ready made, um,

napkin. Otherwise, I think before time the women

used to use like old cloth

but diaper. And so the cloth

diaper. But how I know because when I went

to Aruba, 19, um,

70, I saw my mother with these

things on the line. Then I said, oh, maybe,

um, using them for a period.

And some girls wouldn't talk because at that time everything

used to be secretly. The parents maybe tell them,

well, don't say so. So. So but when I got

there the first time, and my stepmother dressed

me up with this thing she had an elastic

belt. And then she turned and she said, don't play

with boys. Just like that.

I get bigger now. I said, she should have explained

me. Well, don't go in a bed with a boy or

something. Nothing like that. All she said, don't play

with boys. One time a guy

next door neighbor had a

nephew there. And one morning he

was, uh, three years older than me. And one

morning I was going down to school

and, um, he came with a bicycle

riding next to me. And he said.

He said, good morning. And I said, go from

here. My stepmother told me I must not play

with boys. Maybe the poor boy feel

so embarrassed.

My father and they were very shrek. I couldn't get

out because I.

>> Unidentified (Podcast Host): As M the 1960s unfolded,

Synthastacia stood on the threshold of quiet

transformation. In homes like Mrs.

Bennet's, traditions were still whispered more than

spoken, where advice came dressed in

silence, and puberty was managed with

dignity, not detail. It was

a time when girls learned about womanhood from what was folded

in drawers, hung on clothesline, and passed down

in glances, not words.

Across the island, the wind of change were blowing

gently but persistently. The late 60s

and early 70s brought electricity to

more neighborhoods, slowly glimmering the

glow of lanterns of the community poles.

Regional developments picked up pace as well,

with other islands like Aruba and

Curacao drawing away more men for oil and

construction work and women, as

always, holding the center of daily life

back home.

These years also marked a period of

environmental vulnerability across the

Caribbean. While Sint Eustachius

was spared the brunt of major hurricanes

like Ines in 1966 and

Edith in 1971, their

near misses were a reminder of the island's

exposure of lives shaped by

weather as much as by memory.

And amid this shifting landscape, new

voices began to rise. Women who had come

of age in quiet households began to lead

in churches, clinics and schools,

planting the seeds for the generation to

follow. It is in this

setting that we meet the young Governor Francis.

The year is 1965. And in the streets of

Oranjestad, another story of girlhood is

beginning to unfold.

>> : I was born and raised on St. Eustatius in

1965. Actually,

I was born on Fort Oranye street that is

bordering on the south side of Oranistad. I always divide

Oranistad in the north part and. And the

south. I, uh, learned late in life that I was born

at home. And my sister told me

that, um, she awoke one morning and I

was screaming, making a whole lot of noise

and at seven years old, we relocated to

Paramiraweh. So

most of my recollection of growing up is in

Paramira Weh. I

remember being, uh, called a tomboy because

I played with the boys. And the

location that we know now as the sunny Cranston,

um, born, that was my playground.

There was a gentleman there by the name of Pepi, and

he had a large, um,

field of yams, tanyas and sweet

potatoes. And as children we would go into the

ground and we would, of course, take some of his sweet

potatoes and we would roast them on the

fire. The main part I remember is playing in the

streets with my friends on Paramira

Wech. One of the main roads that we played on

was the road that would joined, uh, my house and

Duggins supermarket. Of course, in

those days, Duggins supermarket was not there at the

time, but there was a Duggins store where the

hardware is now. And we played on that road.

We climbed trees, we picked fruits

from the neighbors, welcomed and unwelcomed.

But in the streets, the games that we played were mainly games that were

called jola. And also

what we did on the streets, we played marbles and

chestnuts. Most people talk about marbles. You will

create a ring, and the marbles would be in the

ring. They were small marbles, big marbles, but they were

also cashew nuts. You know, the

cashew trees grew a lot on the island back then.

The cashew nuts were part of the game,

and you would pitch and the nut had a lower value,

for instance, than the smaller marbles. And

then you had the giant sized marbles. So it

usually was a boys game, but there was

a leader playing, um with the

boys. Yes,

it was a wonderful time growing up in Stacia.

Yes.

>> Unidentified (Podcast Host): What echoes in Governor France's memories is not

just the innocence of games, but the

texture of place in the rustling of

trees of Parmi revech, in the roasted

sweet potatoes, in the thump of cashew

nuts against the streets on Stacia.

And yet, some of the most cherished objects of the

island's past were never taught to her in school or passed

down with meaning. Like the blue

bead. What was once used

as currency, once worn as

adornment, once bound to the legacy of

trade, survival and enslavement.

By the time Governor Frances and her friends

were drawing circles in the road, that history

had grown quiet.

Because by then, the blue bead was another

marble. And in that silence, we

begin to understand how memory can

fade. Not from forgetfulness,

but from the way stories are swallowed by

time. Now we

Turn again to Mr. Burko, who remembers

when the blue bead was simply a

bead.

>> Speaker C: I don't know much about this blue

beads in our day,

the blue bead.

>> : We used to pitch marbles with the blue

bead.

>> Speaker C: No one explained nothing about the bead. The

blue bead had no value in those days. Where

I'm concerned for you

find them and it's just

a bead.

>> Unidentified (Podcast Host): What is value? Sometimes

it's placed in the things. Beads,

bones, coins. But more often

it lives in the stories we wrap around them.

For Mr. Burkle's generation, the blue bead

was just another marble, scattered,

pitched, pocketed. Not sacred, not

symbolic. It was just glass.

But time has a way of polishing the past,

turning the ordinary into relic.

What was once tossed in play became a symbol

of survival, A, uh, trace of trade,

a whisper of the enslaved.

By the time Governor Francis was growing up, the

beat speeding was already fading. Its

worth was unspoken in classrooms. Its

past was unmentioned in homes. And she

remembers hearing about it, but not really holding the weight of

it.

And so we're reminded heritage is

fragile. Its value not in the object, but

in the care we give to it. And

if we don't pass the story, we risk losing the

meaning.

>> : I personally did not, uh, play marbles

with blue beads, but in my younger years, my brothers

were part of the young people who

would go to Crookes Castle. And they did indeed have

skillets of beads and the round ones. I

was told I never personally played with it, but I know of the story.

Indeed, we did not know the value of the blue

bead back then. Unfortunately.

>> Unidentified (Podcast Host): In the quiet whisper held by the bluebead, there

are things we forget to see.

We forget that in the Caribbean, the most powerful

inheritance were not written in wills, but passed through

hands, through labor, through lineage,

through women. Governor Frances

reflects on this not as a theory, but as a

memory. Her childhood shaped not by kings

or captains, but by single mothers who held

families together while

fathers were pulled away to different islands

like Aruba and Curacao,

to the oil fields of Lago and Shell.

This was not a coincidence. It was part of

a larger pattern scholars now recognize as the

gender legacy of colonial labor systems.

Post emancipation, economies pulled men

outwards and upwards, while women remained

behind, anchoring homes, community and

care. What

emerged was a familiar pattern across the

Caribbean. Women not only surviving, but

leading. And in Stacia, there were

shopkeepers, land workers,

nurses and night shift caretakers.

They shared jobs so they all could eat.

They raised children while lapping Grass and

stacking provisions. They organized

on church steps and in parade

grounds and inside wooden holes that smelled

of starch and stories.

This too is a facet of post enslavement

syndrome, the structural afterlife of

a system that fractured families and

redistributed agency

station. Women, like those across the region,

responded not with passivity, but with. But with

presence. They filled in the absence

left by migration and memory. And in

doing so, they built something more than survival.

They built continuality.

Governor France's reflections reminds us

matriarchal strength is not a romantic

ideal. It's the historical reality,

one forged in hardship, adapted through

necessity, and carried forward in everyday

acts of leadership. From the

beat to the breadline, from the

market to the Carnival stage, this is where

Caribbean womanhood has always

lived.

>> : I grew up in an area where there were a lot of, um,

mothers who were single mothers. My

mother was a single mother because she was

married at one time, and then she got divorced and

she raised her six children on her own. But when I

look within my neighborhood, there was a similar story

of women, all women who were not married

but had children. And sometimes they had a partner.

But in our history, we also

know the situation that still exists today,

where there were men who had multiple

families. Um, what I do remember

is that in the 60s and 70s,

most of the men migrated to Aruba and

Curacao to work in the oil

industry, Lago and Shell. And so

when I try to reflect back on those days,

the women were actually in charge. They were left

behind, took care of the children, but they also had to

work. I interviewed Angelica

Ridan. She told me about,

um, working at the airport.

Back then, employment was so

low on the island and what the government did

back then, instead of giving one person a full

eight hours, they were divided up and everybody

could eat. So you would work four hours, and I would work four

hours. And when it came to the airport, she told

me the story of lapping grass. We now have

land mowers. Back then, they had to

lap the land, the grass with,

um, cutlass.

And so those were the women herself,

Hilda Lenz. She spoke about Valerie Timber.

They were women actually doing manual work just

to be able to support their families along

with what their spouses would send back from

Aruba or Curacao to support the family.

And also in those days, women played a prominent role in

agriculture. I remember then we had the Dutch

farmers that would come to St. Eustatius

and the road that we know now as Concordia, uh,

road on which the Carnival,

um, um village is Located.

If you would look at all those homes, they were generally the same

types of homes. Those were the homes that were built

by the farmers. That is why the

property over which Wayne and

all other aircrafts land here on St.

Eustatius, that area is called the farm because it

was the, uh, farm ground of the

farmers. There's still partially a structure

there. And that used to be the farmer's shop.

Yeah, that is where, um, they sold the

crops that they harvested.

But also on the cottage road, there was also a

building called, um, the farmer's stor.

Women always played as far back as I

know myself, I'm 59 years old now. In my

growing up years, women played a very

prominent role. They were the shopkeepers.

Rose Warner, Ms. Duggins,

uh, Ms. M. Emmy, Mrs. Uh, M.

Henricus, um, Ms. Dunkerque. We

are Esperanza stories now. Ms. Laura Rouse,

Ms. King. The women were always

in my time that I'm on this earth. Instead

were always in leading positions. And I

associated with the men, uh,

migrating to seek a better income for their

families elsewhere within the Netherlands. And.

>> Unidentified (Podcast Host): By the 1960s and 70s, as

men left to chase wages across the sea, it

was the women of Sint Eustatia who stayed behind,

anchoring the island not only in memory, but in

motion. They kept the economy breathing

through shared labor. They raised children in clusters

of care. And they held the rhythms of daily lives

in the hands already worn from generation of

tending. But even as

women stepped forward into visible leadership, something

else was unfolding quietly across

thresholds and dinner tables. The island was

becoming a tapestry of arrivals.

For centuries, into Statius has been at a

crossroad, a place where people from many

nations passed through or stayed behind.

But from 1950 onwards, it began to

attract a different kind of visitor. Not just

traders or transient, but seekers.

Artists, archaeologists, environmentalists and

dreamers, many of them from the west,

drawn not by wealth, but by

wondering. In those years, the

community opened its door without suspicion.

Newcomers were folded into potlucks and

politics into carnival troops and committee

meetings. People didn't just live on the island,

they belonged to it. And it's

from within this spirit of integration and kinship we now

hear from Mrs. Tsutakao, a long term resident

and one of the founders of Syntastatia Archaeological and

Historical center, whose arrival in

1978 marked not just a chapter in her

life, but a new era for the island itself.

>> Ms. Sutekau: When I arrived here in 78, women were already

involved in politics on the island.

They were holding positions of authority.

Back then, the major

political person

on the island was Vincent Astor Lopes, but

other people were involved in it. We

were, um, in

78 state terminals was being

built, and it was being

built after Claude

Wattie and other people had involvement of running

the property where station terminals is

located, to the group that formed statue

terminal, which was a private group that

consisted of the Chicago ridge and iron people

and other, um,

men by the name of Mr. M. Baralova and other

people. They contracted, uh, to get the

property here and start station terminals.

>> Unidentified (Podcast Host): To understand the rise of Stacia terminals

in the late 1970s is to witness

history rhyming with itself.

Nearly two centuries after Sintostatius

earned the nickname the golden rock as the bustling note

of trade, its geography once

again called ships to shore,

not with sugar or with the enslaved, but

with oil, reviving the island's role as a

strategic port. This

industrial arrival didn't just transform its

economy. It stirred something deeper, a

quiet return of its people.

>> Ms. Sutekau: But station terminals had not opened at that point

of time when, during that

process, many stations

who had lived, um, off Griffin for

most of their lives came back home to be involved in that

building. By the time station terminals

opened, many of the workers that had been at

Lago and Aruba started coming

back home to work at space terminal.

And the population began to grow.

I can't remember what the population was if I

knew what it was in 1978, because I

was only here for one day. By

1985, when I came here and bought the

property, the population was around 8 or

900. That had grown

by the time I moved here in

1989, 1990

to around 12,

1400. And it continued to grow

as statia terminals grew

in the 1978, when I came here,

there were only one or two grocery stores. You

could still go in and buy a piece of chicken that they

would cut off and give it to you. Power

was on only during the

days it was cut off at night.

But stacia was actually

in better shape than many islands around

it because there was

enough industry and commerce going on to

protect itself. We were still dependent

on boats bringing in supplies from St.

Martin. And also, I believe we

were even getting some of our supplies from St. Kitt. I'm not sure

about that, but I know that we were not training with

St. Kitt like we would later on when

station really got to be booming. During the

station terminal era.

>> Unidentified (Podcast Host): This period of transformation was more than

economic. It carried the imprint of women

who had long anchored station life,

not just in kitchens or care work, but

in council Chambers and cultural

revival. Caribbean feminist

scholars described as a subaltern

agency where women shaped society not

in spite of patriarchy, but in the spaces

left behind by it. The same migration

that emptied the island of men empowered

women to lead without asking

permission. In the Wider region.

The 1980s were marked by cultural awakening and

political flux. From the independence of Antigua

and Barbuda, uh, in 1981, to

hurricanes like Hugo in

1989. Testing both resilience

and leadership, Stacia stood firm,

quietly, steadily held

together by the same hands that have always

carried it.

>> Ms. Sutekau: When I actually moved here in

1985,

there were women in government, they were

commissioners and they were island council

members. And, um, their voices were

well received and well heard. There were

also women on station who did

phenomenal, such as

Inez Daw, who took the

government to task in Hilly's

for the fact that women were making

different salaries than the men. And she

brought this forward and she pushed that

agenda. There were women such as Miriam

Schmidt, involved in the historical foundation,

involved in the national park, who were

really pushing very hard for

stations that began to recognize their own heritage,

their own culture. She was one of the main

driving forces in seeing that

Emancipation Day was a national holiday.

And one of the things I regret most is that she

didn't live long enough to see that accompli.

>> Unidentified (Podcast Host): The women on Stacia are not just footnotes

in civic records. They are the architects

of modern Stacia cultural consciousness.

From pushing pay equality to making

emancipation more than a memory, these women

embodied a vision of justice rooted in

remembrance. Their activism was

not reactive, it was reparative.

>> Ms. Sutekau: There were also many other

women. Unfortunately, I didn't get to know

a lot of those. They died about the

time that I came here that were like

Christine Flanders, who were so

instrumental in the cultural heritage of Stacia and

in the auxiliary and the treatment of

our older people. Stacia's

women were who I remember

as being the leaders of the

community, and they're

activists. They were the activists

for the community.

>> Unidentified (Podcast Host): Across the Caribbean, migration has

never been just about movement. It's

about meaning. When those raised by island

winds and community hands

leave to study, to work,

to dream, it's not just a simple

departure. It's an echo of something

way older. The fracture of colonial

legacy, the search for opportunity

where opportunity rarely roots.

Scholars call it brain drain, a global

phenomenon. But in small islands, it

feels personal. It is a teacher

who never returned. It's a nurse

who stayed abroad, the child

who left and became a stranger to their

own shoreline. And

yet the ties of cultural

identity, of memory,

language and ancestry do not

break so easily. For many,

the longing to serve home from afar becomes

a quiet promise, a belief that

even if they leave, they carry the island within

them. That one day return may not just be

a choice, but a restoration.

Because to leave is not always to abandon.

And to come back is not just to return.

It is to reroute, to reclaim,

to rebuild. Governor

Francis continues.

>> : But also throughout my growing up. I left the

island at 13 years old. Back then we

could not continue your education on the island, pass

elementary in the sixth grade, you had to,

um, travel abroad, whether to St. Martin, Curacao,

Aruba, and you would stay with family

members that you have never met or with

complete strangers so that you could pursue

secondary education. So,

um, returning to Stacia each

year during the summer, of course, as a

young, um, girl teenager,

you get involved in Carnaval. So that's how my

involvement in Carnival began, with Student Night. Now

it's known as Youth Night. Megadee would keep it and

now we see that Shahida Fleming is organizing it.

But back then it started with the students returning

home. We would be the models, we would be the singers, we

would do everything on stage and it would be a fabulous night. But

that is how my involvement started,

um, in um, Kusaki

in life of volunteering on stage. And it

became natural. And um,

it created the platform for me to

get to know my island better, get to use my

talents, my skills and my knowledge.

And um, when I completed my studies in the

Netherlands, there was no opportunity on Station back

then. You can imagine my

disappointments not being able to come home and work

here and serve. I had a

bachelor's in communications, was not

able to work here, and so I had no choice but

to live and work on St. Martin. I am

also very grateful for that opportunity because it prepared

me for everything that came afterwards

and coming back home in

92. So in short, no,

never had the ambition to be

Island Governor. But I do recall

some years ago I was approached

by one of the former senators about, uh,

the possibility of my name being nominated

for Island Governor. That was in the period of the former Netherlands

and Thilly. So it was quite different than it is now

and different people on the island saying to me,

you would make a very good candidate.

But it was not an ambition of my own. Um,

whether I would become the governor or not.

My contributions to Stacia would be the same

as they are right now.

>> Unidentified (Podcast Host): In this episode, we've heard how Station women

carried history. Not only through archives and

activism, but through kitchens, council

chambers and carnival stages,

we followed stories passed in silence,

resilience formed in absence and a blue

bead, once forgotten, now reclaimed.

And as we leave the 20th century, standing at the

threshold of what comes next, we have to

what does it mean to remember?

To return? To root

oneself in a place shaped by loss but still carrying

the echoes of legacy?

Stacia, like many Caribbean islands, have

weathered centuries of leaving and returning,

silence and speaking, shadow

and light. And through it all, its

people, especially women, have not

only carried the past but carved the future from

it. Before we close, we leave you

with questions to carry what

part of your past lives in

silence? What stories

have you inherited, not in words,

but in gesture?

And what would it mean to return not just

to a place, but to the truth?

In our next and final episode, we

travel full circle into the 21st

century. From 2000 to

2025, we explore how

Stacia continues to evolve, reckon

and rise. And what does modern

identity look like on an island with such deep

roots? And how does the past still whisper

into the present? Until

then, keep listening.