Sun of a Beach, Barbuda
Strength. Resiliency. Rebirth. Triumph. Our stories tied to hurricanes and other natural disasters generally center on positive themes like these. There is, of course, another side. A side characterized by pain, loss…resignation. All three sad emotions are entwined in the sign pictured above.
Sun of a Beach was a popular beach bar on Barbuda, the tiny (total area: 62 square miles) and oft-times reluctant sister island to Antigua.
Even if you’d never heard of Barbuda before Hurricane Irma churned across every inch of her pancake-flat landscape back in September 2017, it’s very likely you knew something about the island soon thereafter. That something, the post-storm evacuation of Barbuda’s entire population, was headline news around the world.
Now, four+ years later, the world has moved on to other things; new headlines.
Meanwhile, in Barbuda, this sign remains all that’s left of Sun of a Beach…as far as we know. It’s all that we found of the place when we visited the summer after Irma.
Who knows? Maybe the sign, like the beach bar itself, is gone now as well.
What of the rest of Barbuda? To what degree has the population returned and resumed something approaching the life they knew pre-Irma? Have schools and churches rebuilt, re-opened? What’s the hot, new beach bar hangout now?
We’re working toward answering these, and other questions about Barbuda, in the months to come. Stay tuned…