"If you go to Antigua as a tourist, this is what you will see. If you come by aeroplane, you will land at the V. C. Bird International Airport. Vere Cornwall (V. C.) Bird is the Prime Minister of Antigua. You may be the sort of tourist who would wonder why a Prime Minister would want an airport named after himâ why not a school, why not a hospital, why not some great public monument? You are a tourist and you have not yet seen a school in Antigua, you have not yet seen the hospital in Antigua, you have not yet seen a public monument in Antigua. As your plane descends to land , you might say, What a beautiful island Antigua isâ more beautiful than any of the other islands you have seen, and they were very beautiful , in their way, but they were much too green, much too lush with vegetation, which indicated to you, the tourist, that they got quite a bit of rainfall, and rain is the very thing that you, just now, do not want, for you are thinking of the hard and cold and dark and long days you spent working in North America (or, worse , Europe), earning some money so that you could stay in this place (Antigua) where the sun always shines and where the climate is deliciously hot and dry for the four to ten days you are going to be staying there; and since you are on your holiday, since you are a tourist, the thought of what it might be like for someone who had to live day in, day out in a place that suffers constantly from drought , and so has to watch carefully every drop of fresh water used (while at the same time surrounded by a sea and an oceanâ the Caribbean Sea on one side, the Atlantic Ocean on the other), must never cross your mind." Jamaica Kincaid. A Small Place. // This book must easily be one of the sharpest most heart-wrenching meditations on tourism and colonialism. I return to it often. (at V.C Bird International Airport)
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