These days, when Nicki Pompey calls her toddler daughter in St. Vincent and the Grenadines, it’s not an easy conversation.
“She pretty much ignores me, [just saying] hi when she feels like,” said the mother of two from Kingstown, SVG, who has lived in the Virgin Islands for eight years and is waiting for her work permit to be renewed.
After Hurricane Irma, Ms. Pompey sent her children, ages 5 and 2, back to St. Vincent to live with their aunt.
“My place wasn’t damaged — just water came in — but it was too hard without the electricity and water,” she said. “And the baby’s skin was breaking out.”
She tries to keep in touch as much as possible, but it’s often painful.
“It hurt me so much when I left them behind,” she said. “It’s super hard. Just this morning I was crying. I want to see them so bad, but financially I can’t.”
Her 5-year-old could have been enrolled in a public school in St. Vincent, but she chose to send him to a private school closer to her sister’s workplace. Luckily, according to the mother, the girl is a “people person” and started making friends immediately.
“Plus, she loves Grandpa, and Grandpa is there,” she explained.
She said she still relives the children’s traumatic hurricane experience.
“The 1-year-old didn’t understand what was going on,” she said. “The 5-year-old was very brave. We just got water, but the windows had look like they wanted to pop. … Thank God they didn’t.”
Now, though, “The 5-year-old asks whenever it rains or the wind blows hard if the storm [is] coming again.”
Ms. Pompey said she knows of a few other parents — all with SVG ties — who have either returned with their children or sent them back to live with relatives. In September, the SVG government offered to accommodate VI students who would be sitting the Caribbean Examination Council exams in a few months. At the time, they encouraged, but did not require, the children to have Vincentian ties.
On Oct. 16 officials from the St. Vincent Department of Education arrived in the territory to help relocate children “of Vincentian parentage.”
She also said one coworker’s 11-year-old daughter went to St. Vincent to live with extended family, and another coworker sent her three high-school-aged children, one of whom, a 16-year-old boy, is preparing for the CXC next year.
“They love it there, though it’s a bit different,” she said. “Overall, they think it was the right decision.”
The tasks ahead
Claudia Davis Reshetiloff and her husband, VI residents for the past five years, live at Nanny Cay, where they knew they would play a role in rebuilding.
Ms. Reshetiloff’s husband is a manager at Tradewinds Yachting Services. After Irma, he took charge of security at the marina and later ran the boatyard while Ms. Reshetiloff helped where she could.
But there was also the question of their children, a 12-year-old daughter and 14-year-old son, who before Irma attended Ebenezer Thomas Primary School and St. George’s Secondary School, respectively.
“We knew the tasks that were ahead of us and what the challenges were going to be,” Ms. Reshetiloff said. “It also wasn’t physically safe for them to be here. I don’t mean violence-wise: just trash and glass everywhere.”
Soon after Irma, though, Ms. Reshetiloff’s in-laws in Annapolis, Maryland e-mailed, offering to take the children and enroll them in school.
“Literally, within 24 hours of making that decision, I was on a flight out of here with the kids,” she said.
Although leaving was hard, she said the children received a lot of support in the United States after what they had been through.
“The county schools were unbelievably helpful,” she said. “Within a week, they were enrolled.”
Warm welcome
Her daughter went back to her former private school and her son went to the local public high school, which welcomed him with open arms.
“He was given free school supplies, free breakfasts, everything,” she said. “It was really amazing.”
Their mother said they have adjusted as well as can be expected, considering the culture shock involved.
“My son went from small St. George’s to a school with over 2,000 students,” she said. “The teaching style is certainly different; [there’s] much more use of technology. He doesn’t have any textbooks. Everything is online.”
At first, the parents had no timeline for bringing the children back.
“We weren’t sure what was going to happen with the schools down here,” she said.
St. George’s Secondary opened Oct. 2, and Ms. Reshetiloff said there was “a strong possibility” that they will bring her daughter back to the VI for good in January.
For now, she’s visiting for Christmas.
“She’s enjoying it at Nanny Cay. She has freedom. In the neighbourhoods where she’s living [in the US], her girlfriends aren’t there,” she explained. “All of a sudden you can’t just go out and ride your bike. It doesn’t work like that anymore.”
She said her daughter will attend either St. George’s or Cedar International School.
Overall, though her daughter may return sooner than expected, Ms. Reshetiloff does not regret her decision.
“It’s allowed my husband and I to focus on the energies of rebuilding down here,” she said.
JVD outlook
Jemilla Callwood, a mother of four from Jost Van Dyke, lost nearly everything she owned in the hurricane. She initially sent her eldest two sons to New Jersey to live with her sister-in-law, planning to stay behind and homeschool her youngest two until the JVD school opened.
“The psychological stress of the coping with Irma’s aftermath was too much for me,” she admitted.
Eventually, she packed up her youngest two sons and moved in with her brother-in-law in Missouri, where the family finally reunited for Christmas this week. On JVD, she wasn’t alone in leaving.
“I believe between half and a third of the kids left, owing to better educational opportunities elsewhere and a decreased opportunity for their parents’ employment,” she said.
She added that it was easy to enroll the boys in public school in New Jersey because they had US citizenship through her father. Her 11-year-old son Naya said school in the US was more difficult, with “less recess and more worksheets” than in JVD.
He also agreed that many children in the US lack some of the freedom of their VI counterparts.
“When it comes to friends, you get to hang out more in the BVI, where here in the States you have to rely on Snapchat unless you have an adult willing to drive you to a playdate,” he said. “I feel that I adjusted well, but I miss going swimming with my friends back home.”
For now, Ms. Callwood is keeping an eye out for housing opportunities as JVD rebuilds. “Until then, I’m planning on acquiring as much information as I can on how this country works and applying that knowledge to the BVI when I do make it back home,” she said.
She added that so many children relocating away from the VI may benefit the territory in the long run.
“The knowledge and awareness they will bring back upon their return has the potential to open minds and broaden perspectives,” she said.