New face
The newest Beaconite is Zarrin Tasnim Ahmed, a Bangladeshi American coming from Connecticut. She grew up in the state and earned a bachelor’s degree in English and journalism from the University of Connecticut, where she was a huge fan of women’s basketball. She has worked as a reporter and photographer near Cape Cod in Massachusetts. Her passion for journalism and her love of natural beauty brought her to the Virgin Islands, where she intends to stay for at least two years. Besides journalism, she enjoys poetry, photography, basketball and other sports, yoga, cooking, swimming, hiking, music, dancing, arts and culture festivals, and setting up her hammock anywhere she can. You’ll probably notice her by her untameable hair, with a camera in her hand, or looking at the stars.
Taxi safety
Every morning as a Beaconite drives down Joes Hill, she has a front row seat to the caravan of safari bus drivers and their cargo going in the opposite direction towards Cane Garden Bay. While it’s great to see visitors exploring the island — especially because a year ago there were far fewer of them — the Beaconite is always very wary of these taxis, especially because they seem to speed around corners and take up most of the road. Both proper maintenance of taxis and careful driving should be top priorities now that cruise ship passengers are returning to the territory. After the tragedy in 2015 when two visitors were killed in a tourist bus accident, as well as the bus that caught on fire last month, taxi operators should be more vigilant than ever.
Affordable housing
A Beaconite has found the dearth of affordable housing on Tortola to be disheartening. In scanning social media and real estate websites there are few apartment options with reasonable prices for those who made the poor decision not to go into law or financial services. She hopes the campaign promises of subsidising agriculture, homebuilding, and public transportation will materialise in the coming months and years to make the VI a more comfortable place to live for broke journalist expats and locals alike.
Irma stories
More than a year after Hurricane Irma left some residents fleeing the territory as fast as they could, the Virgin Islands has apparently become a desirable place to move to again. New faces are everywhere. Every time a Beaconite goes out to socialise, she seems to need to ask someone, “Where are you from?” as banal as that question is after hearing it often enough herself from long-time residents who don’t realise that she is no longer a newbie. She tries to be friendly toward these newcomers, wide-eyed and naive as they may be. She was once one herself. But for those who did stay through Irma, it’s tempting to feel a bit of resentment toward those fair-weather friends who are only pouring in now that the bars have reopened and the beaches are cleaned up. They don’t know what those who remained went through, and never really will. On the other hand, it’s hard to stay standoffish for long toward those who are willing to pack up and leave everything behind and share in the daily adventure that is living in the VI. They are part of what makes this place special, and that hasn’t changed. As long as they are willing to listen to her and her friends’ Irma stories until the end of time (or at least until they move away), they’ll fit in just fine.