Paradise lost: The systemic oppression no one is talking about

My three weeks in the underbelly of the American empire

The ruins of a home in St. Thomas devastated by hurricanes

The relentless campaign against systemic racism and oppression has never sat well with me. Not because I’m a fan of racism or oppression, of course; as a black woman, I’m inherently and passionately opposed to both. But it’s difficult to take social justice advocates seriously when they fixate on systemic dysfunctions that increasingly arise as much (if not more) from class as they do from race.

The cynic in me also can’t help but notice obvious blind spots in the campaign, like the fact that systemic inequities are, ironically, most glaring in cities dominated by political leadership that makes flamboyant overtures to eliminate them. New York, Chicago, and other metropolitan centers are home to millions of black and brown people mired in chronic poverty, crime, and unemployment. They don’t vote Republican; they slavishly support progressives who give lip service to problems that have devastated communities of color for decades by a thousand tiny cuts. In this context, yard signs in front of suburban homes and protests proclaiming that Black Lives Matter seem disingenuous, and even dangerous. They persuade well-intentioned people that talking about problems is somehow more important than taking meaningful action to address them.

I’ve always assumed this dynamic was confined to the destitute pockets of urban decay in the continental U.S. I’d never given much thought to if (or how) it might be playing out in its territorial possessions and protectorates scattered throughout the Caribbean and the Pacific. I’m embarrassed to admit that these corners of the world have largely been out of my sight and mind.

Until now.

Last week, I returned from a visit to the Virgin Islands where my son was attending scuba camp. I had anticipated a working vacation — a chance to occasionally relax, unplug and soak up tropical sun and surf while taking meetings on Zoom, returning emails, and reviewing agreements. Our final days in the Caribbean were derailed by the arrival of Hurricane Ernesto, but our sojourn also exposed something just as unexpected that wasn’t covered by the media: a profound despair gripping the farthest edges of the American empire. A deep-seated resentment festering among a forgotten and unheard people. A paradise once found, but now lost to misery and hopelessness.

---

I’m no stranger to the Caribbean.

When I was 16, I spent a summer as an American Field Service student in the Dominican Republic. I stayed with a family in Santo Domingo, learning more Spanish in ten weeks than I had in six semesters in high school. I developed a taste for plantains and arroz con pollo, a fondness for merengue, and the confidence to fend off leering men with a confident swagger or threatening glare (“Ay, you wanna piece of this, papi?”). The experience laid the foundation for an enduring life lesson about our shared humanity across all cultures and sparked a lifelong desire to travel to distant and exotic locales.

More than anything else, that summer I became vividly aware that people in other parts of the world not only moved through life with less, but even seemed to expect and be satisfied with less. Poverty was rampant in the D.R., the divide between the “haves” and the “have nots” a gaping chasm. I quickly learned that the American standard of living I took for granted was the global exception, not the rule.

Later, when I was a junior in college, I would spend a semester in Costa Rica, where these lessons and insights were reinforced in my mind. I remember wandering through streets littered with potholes and reeking from the stench of sewage simmering in the tropical heat, passing half-naked bodies strewn in the doorways of crumbling buildings with hands outstretched for help that would never come. And I remember thinking to myself: “How could any government allow its people to live this way? Thank God I’m an American.” That was in the late-80s, which now seems like a lifetime ago. In many ways, it was a completely different time in an alien, almost unrecognizable world.

The past several decades have bitch slapped many of us with a harsh reality that was previously unthinkable: American exceptionalism, at least as far as quality of life is concerned, is a myth — and probably always has been for a large swath of our population. We’ve now resigned ourselves to the slow motion rot that consumes ever-widening chunks of the “richest” country in the world. It’s an embarrassing admission, a humiliating defeat for a nation that was once a beacon of freedom and prosperity. But what can we really do about any of it, other than vote for people who agree with us, plant a few more yard signs protesting systemic inequities, and rally against micro-aggressions by entitled Karens? In a hopelessly disempowering landscape, virtue signaling becomes the weapon of choice.

When my family arrived in St. Thomas last month, I expected to see what’s become the norm in many predominantly black communities throughout the United States, and what I had also seen while briefly visiting the island fourteen years earlier on a Royal Caribbean cruise: people struggling with the predictable inequities in a late-stage empire. I expected some variation of the poverty, homelessness, and urban despair I’ve grown accustomed to seeing on my trips to Los Angeles and New York.

I wasn’t at all prepared for what I would encounter this time around.

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St. Thomas is the largest of three “Virgin Islands,” territories in the Caribbean that are under the “protection” of the United States, the others being St. Croix and St. John (St. John, famously an enclave of the rich and famous, is only slightly smaller than St. Thomas but holds 1/10th the population). Founded in 1657 as a trading post of the Dutch West India Company, St. Thomas is home to nearly 40,000 people, more than 70% of whom are descendants of African slaves.

Like all other U.S. Virgin Islands, the residents of St. Thomas are U.S. citizens — with a twist: they pay taxes, but they’re not entitled to representation. They vote for their local legislature, but not the U.S. president; and they elect a single non-voting delegate to Congress. A strange thing happens when you don’t have the right to vote: people with power seem to forget you exist. For all intents and purposes, the residents here are invisible. No one has bothered to send them the memo about the urgent campaign to end systemic racism and oppression.

---

As we settle into our cute little seaside villa, precariously perched high in the winding hills overlooking Lindbergh Bay, my partner, Lisa, reads a text from our Airbnb host: “Just a heads up, you won’t have power tonight for a few hours. Our feeder is scheduled to go down.”

I frown, confused. “That’s strange.” We’ve been tracking tropical storm Debi, which was due to pass over the island in a few days. But the skies are sunny and clear now. “Did she say why we won’t have power?”

“No, but it sounds like it might be maintenance or something.”

We don’t give it much thought as we tumble into bed, exhausted from our twelve-hour trip. We awaken the next morning, assuming we have missed the power disruption. Around 11 AM, however, the comforting hum of the A/C abruptly stops. Almost instantly, the air turns hot, thick and humid. We flick the light switch. No power.

I turn to Lisa, confused. “I thought this was supposed to happen last night?”

“Yeah, it was…” she replies, grabbing her phone to text our host. After a few exchanges, our host informs us that the scheduled outage has been pushed to today. “But it should only be a few hours,” Lisa tells me.

It’s not ideal, but we’re okay with it. We had planned to grab lunch, drop our son off at scuba camp, and do some sightseeing. Plus, our rental car has AC, so no big deal.

Except when we return to the house five hours later, the power is still out — and remains out for the rest of the evening. We stumble around in near-darkness, thankful for the plastic solar lantern I absently stowed in my backpack from a camping trip last summer. At first, it seems like an exciting adventure, and we try to make the most of a spontaneously romantic evening. But as the night wears on and stifling heat fills the rooms, I grow concerned. Without electricity, we can’t even use fans. Leaving the windows open isn’t an option because the air is thick with mosquitos that are already feasting on me. Sleeping under these circumstances is going to be brutal.

Lisa texts our host again for an update. We expect a politely sympathetic response along the lines of “My apologies for the inconvenience — this shouldn’t happen again.”

What we get instead is a rant: “Don’t get me started on what we deal with here. If you can believe it, we have FIFTEEN senators, and they are all absolutely useless. My friends in BVI (the adjacent British Virgin Islands) give me shit about it all the time. They don’t have these problems.”

We’re slightly taken aback by the intensity of her response, which clearly harbors frustration at a level that goes beyond St. Thomas’ fragile grid. I’m curious to learn more, but we decide it’s probably not appropriate to pursue a deeper exchange on Airbnb’s platform.

Thankfully, power is restored shortly before midnight. I’m relieved, but in the back of my mind I can’t help but wonder if this “scheduled” outage might be a more of a feature than a bug on this island. It doesn’t take long for me to get my answer.

---

The next day we wander into a cozy bookstore in Charlotte Amalie, the tourist-driven capital of St. Thomas. Yachts and catamarans drift lazily in the bay, but fewer than I recall on my trip a decade earlier. A petite black woman in her early 20s greets us with a vacant smile as we poke around.

“How you doing?” I ask, more in an effort to brighten her day than the expectation of actual conversation.

She shrugs and drawls, continues scrolling on her phone. “I can’t complain.”

“Really?” I laugh. “We lost power yesterday for most of the day, and there wasn’t even a storm. If I lived here, I think I’d be complaining.”

She immediately looks up from her phone, and her eyes light up. “Oh. My. God. The power situation here is so fucked!”

For the next fifteen minutes, she vents. She tells us yesterday’s power disruption wasn’t a one-off event; it’s a common occurrence.

“The last time the power went out, I had no power or water for two days. Two days,” she says through gritted teeth, holding up her fingers for emphasis. “And I was on my period. Do you even know what that’s like, not to have electricity or water while you’re on your period? Let me tell you, it’s nasty.”

I shake my head, trying to flush the visual from my mind as quickly as possible.

“The power goes out every other day,” she continues. “Sometimes twice a day. It’s just the way they live down here.”

They?

“So, you’re not from here?” I ask. I’d detected the absence of the distinctive Caribbean accent in her voice, but hadn’t thought much of it until now.

She rolls her eyes. “Please, I’m from Indiana. I came here last year. Biggest mistake of my life. Had no idea what I was getting myself into, and now I’m trying to save up enough to get the hell out. But I make shit money, and everything is expensive AF.” She spreads her arms wide and smiles. “So here I am, trapped in ’paradise.’”

I try to make sense of what she’s telling me, but it’s not computing. “I don’t get it. This is the United States, right? How is this happening?”

She folds her arms and cocks her head. “Girrrl, I’ve been trying to figure that out ever since I got here. This place is straight up third world. Deadass.”

For a few moments, all I can do is stare at this young woman. She’s not a Gen Z adventurer relishing the kind of culturally immersive experience I enjoyed when I was her age; she sounds more like a prisoner of war.

“But why isn’t anyone doing anything about it? If this were happening where I live, people would be up in arms.”

She leans across the counter and smirked. “Because they’re conditioned to be passive here. Their government is corrupt, and they know it. But they ignore it. And if an ‘outsider’ like me or you points it out, they’ll defend it.”

I get up early one morning to make a coffee run. While through the narrow streets of Charlotte Amalie I discover Daylight Bakery, a nondescript stucco building tucked beside an abandoned building. A middle aged black woman is busy pulling Johnny cakes and coconut drop scones out of the oven. A group of older men sit at a table nearby, chatting quickly in a dialect so thick I don’t recognize it as English at first. After I order, I notice one of the men look me over from head to toe. With my baseball cap, shorts, and sunglasses, he suspects I’m not a local.

“Ya from da States?” he asks as he stands and sidles next to me.

I nod. “Yep, just visiting.”

We banter a bit before the conversation takes an unexpected turn to a subject I strenuously avoid: politics.

“Wat you people tinking up der, gonna elect dat fool Trump?”

I pause, wondering if this is a swamp I want to wade into before my first cup of coffee.

“Well, the problem is both parties are terrible,” I explain diplomatically. “Neither one gives us candidates who do anything for us.”

The woman behind the counter spins around, wide-eyed, as if I’m brandishing a gun.

“Wat you say? You gonna vote for Trump?”

“No, no,” I tell her. “I’m just saying people feel like nothing ever seems to change, so they’re desperate enough to try anything different, even Trump.”

The old man waves his hand, annoyed, “Ah! Da Republicans ain’t gonna help no one but da rich.”

I later learn that although there are technically multiple political parties in the U.S.V.I., leadership positions are held almost exclusively by Democrats (in 2022, there was not even a Republican candidate for Governor).

“So, you always vote Democrat?” I ask him.

“Damn sure I do!” The other men join him with hearty nods.

“No one in da right mind vote for Republican!” the woman blurts.

I look around the room. “And you’re happy with the way things are going down here?”

Silence.

The woman rolls her eyes and ducks back behind the counter. The old man regards me with skepticism mixed with pity. He shakes his head.

“I pray for you,” he tells me as he turns and walks away.

---

The next day we find ourselves outside the ferry building in Charlotte Amalie, waiting for a taxi in the unbearable heat. A black woman in her 60s, who informally serves as a dispatcher, bemoans the fact that she was without power the previous night.

“It’s horrible,” she tells me, shaking her head, defeated. “So horrible. I try to keep food in my fridge, but the power goes out, it all spoils. And food is so expensive! I’m vegan, so imagine how much money I spend!”

One of the first things we notice when we arrive in St. Thomas is that groceries are even more expensive than what we’re used to in Montana, where fuel makes it costly to haul food so close to the Canadian border. Despite a year-round temperate climate and abundant rainfall, there’s no agricultural infrastructure to speak of on these islands; they’re completely reliant on goods shipped from the U.S. mainland.

The woman tells us that after losing power and a refrigerator full of food last week, she scooped the rotting remains into a plastic bag and dumped them on the steps of Water and Power Authority, the agency that provides electricity to the Virgin Islands. It’s a defiant gesture, but the only means of protest available to her.

---

If you’re not paying attention, if you’re locked in vacation mode and moving through St. Thomas the way most visitors do, you can easily miss what’s happening here. You’ll focus on the picturesque coastline flanked by crystal clear, turquoise water and beaches of fine white sand. You’ll be enraptured by cobblestoned streets and ancient buildings of brick and stone, blackened from time and adorned by colorful wooden doors and windows. If you only have a week or less to soak in paradise, why would you allow yourself to be distracted by half-destroyed homes dotting the hillsides or the businesses shuttered by hurricanes, COVID, and a sputtering global economy? If you’ve flown to this tropical getaway to escape the stress and misery of your own life, why would you be inclined to linger on someone else’s? Why spend a moment longer than you have to chatting up the people selling you trinkets or booze, or renting you fins and snorkels?

If you’re only here a few days or even a week, you may not glimpse the distress. But lingering in paradise for several weeks compels you to look deeper. And harder. Once I start looking, I can’t turn away.

Walking through the streets of Charlotte Amalie, it’s impossible not to get the sense that this island has been quietly deteriorating for decades, just as life has in many U.S. cities. The difference here is that what was once happening slowly suddenly unraveled all at once, spectacularly, in 2017. That’s when the Virgin Islands were rocked by a once-in-a-lifetime climactic event. From that point on, there was no recovery.

The vestiges of Hurricane Ernesto down the street from our VRBO

One night while we’re waiting for pizza in a restaurant, I plant myself next to a grizzled man at the bar. He’s white, could be in his 50s or 70s — the wild tangle of hair on his face makes it impossible to discern his age. He tells me he’s lived on St. Thomas all his life and claims to be a descendant of the pirate Blackbeard. He’s perched on the stool like he lives here, blissfully sauced but surprisingly coherent.

“Lemme tell you what happened,” he wheezes, leaning so close I can almost taste the rum he’s just poured down his throat. “It all went to shit back in ‘17, when we got hit back-to-back with Irma and Maria. Two Cat 5s.” He shakes his head and frowns. “Brutal.”

I vaguely recall hearing about the devastation on TV years ago, but the details are fuzzy.

“Wow. Two Cat 5s the same year?” I ask.

“No, back-to-back, the same month!” he exclaims. “It destroyed everything!”

Irma tore through the island first, bringing gale force winds that not only obliterated homes and businesses, but also decimated the vegetation, shearing leaves and fronds from the fruit trees that covered the island and were a mainstay of the local diet. Maria arrived two weeks later — not accompanied by devastating wind, but biblical rainfall. With little vegetation to hold the soil in place, everything was swept away. Many homes were either uninsured or underinsured. COVID hit a few years later, ushering in an era of supply chain shortages and inflation that sent the costs of building materials skyrocketing. Housing recovery became impossible for most.

Behind the counter, the bartender, a middle-aged white woman, pipes up. “Not surprised you didn’t hear much about it. Whenever there’s a hurricane, everybody wants to talk about Puerto Rico. That’s the only place you hear about on the news, so that’s where all the money goes.”

It’s a simmering resentment I occasionally detect, thinly veiled jealousy of the larger island a little more than one hundred miles to the west. Puerto Rico, like the V.I., is under the “protection” of the U.S., but there’s a nagging sense here that their mostly brown neighbors are favored sons, not unwanted stepchildren.

Navigating the narrow hills from one side of St. Thomas to the other takes fifteen to twenty minutes and a strong stomach. Hairpin curves dip at impossible angles, making commutes feel like gravity-defying rides on a rollercoaster. Along the way, every second or third home you pass is in some state of disrepair, painful reminders of the damage dealt by Irma and Maria seven years earlier. Many structures are crumbling and gutted, severely damaged by unrelenting rains and bitter heat. If this were a different part of the world, you’d swear they were vestiges of a battle waged and lost. But they’re not. They’re simply evidence that without money, government support, and reliable infrastructure, it’s impossible to fully recover from whatever Mother Nature sends our way.

With so much of the island’s housing uninhabitable, Lisa and I wonder where these refugees live now. Have they all left? Are they shacking up with friends and family? After a while, it occurs to us that some of these homes aren’t entirely abandoned. Occasionally, we see cars (often crying out for repair) parked in front of structures that would doubtless be designated as condemned on the mainland — missing doors and windows, and even walls and roofs. At night, the faint glow of light sometimes dances in the shadows of an otherwise darkened house.

“It looks like people are squatting in some of these homes,” Lisa muses to our taxi driver in Tortola, the largest of the British Virgin Islands (BVI), as he shuttles us to our ferry back to St. Thomas.

“Yah, some people squat,” our driver tells us. “They hope they don’t get caught. If you stay and pay utilities for a year, and the police don’t kick you out, then the house is yours. But if they catch you, it’s over.”

I shake my head. “Seems risky,” I tell him.

“Sure,” he replies, “but what do you have to lose? Look, 85% of the people rent. They can’t afford a home. And if you don’t own your home, you end up working for ever. The moment you stop working, you lose the roof over your head. It’s like a working plantation.”

I take it all in as we wind through crooked streets, past dilapidated buildings and heaps of trash in the street. Young men shoot by us on mopeds. We’ve spent the last ten days in the BVI where the population is nearly 80% black and struggling, although not as severely as in St. Thomas. Most residents of the BVI seem to be employed. The grid is far more stable (we only lost power once when Hurricane Ernesto wreaked havoc on the island a few days earlier, but it was restored in most places within 48 hours). The the economy also seems healthier (instead of KFCs, McDonalds, and other U.S. chains on street corners, the island is dominated by locally-owned restaurants and markets).

I share my observations with our driver. “You know, as bad as it is here, I get the sense that things are even worse in St. Thomas. At least you don’t lose power every day, right?”

He nods, like it’s a no-brainer. “Oh yah, it’s much better here in BVI.”

“But why is that?” I ask him.

“Because the British have less control,” he says. “Here, we don’t even consider ourselves British. So we have more power to make sure money goes where it needs to go. That’s how we keep our grid working. On the other islands, the U.S. has more control. Money doesn’t go where it’s supposed to go. The corruption is much worse.”

The lack of autonomy has implications beyond water and electricity. Our driver explains why laws made a half century ago put his brethren sixteen nautical miles away in such dire straits.

“Do you notice that most people who work here are black? You need a permit to get a job if you weren’t born here. It’s not that way in the U.S.V.I. If you’re a U.S. citizen, you can just show up and work. That’s why they have so many white people. They come from the mainland and take jobs from locals.”

It’s something I’ve noticed but haven’t paid much attention to. Restaurants and coffee shops in St. Thomas — the ones frequented by heavy-tipping tourists — are owned by white Americans and mostly staffed by white Gen Ys and Zs seeking sun and respite from the grind back home. There’s also a healthy chunk of transplants from other Caribbean islands and South America who secure work visas and send remittances to their families back home. Black locals, on the other hand, are more likely to be street vendors, taxi drivers, or wandering the streets homeless.

Suddenly, the squatting strategy begins to make a lot more sense. Without a decent-paying job, the chances of rebuilding a home devastated by hurricanes are slim to none. Under these circumstances, appropriating an abandoned house isn’t just a reasonable gamble; it could be the best hope for owning any shelter.

Before he deposits us at the ferry, our driver shares his life goal with us: a plan to build a home in Dominica that he can actually own.

“In Dominica, where I come from, life is better,” he tells us. “It’s our own country. Food is better and cheaper. For $50,000 I can build a house and work less. I’m here in the BVI just so I can make money. When I have enough, I’m leaving.”

It’s a refrain we hear over and over again: if you want a chance at a decent life, you need to leave the Virgin Islands and head for Grenada, Dominica and other island nations that aren’t under the “protection” of the U.S. or the U.K. If you want a better life, you need to get off the plantation.

A sign in a local market in St. Thomas

I don’t get the sense that black people in St. Thomas concern themselves with micro-aggressions; I doubt they’d care if they ran into an unpleasant white person on the beach or obsess over a white person who doesn’t smile while holding the door open for them. Most have never heard the term “DEI hire” and wouldn’t take offense if someone accused them of being one; they’d happily accept a well-paying job under any circumstances. They demand so little, which is probably why they get even less.

It would be easy to attribute this socio-economic catastrophe to systemic racism, were it not for the fact that the U.S. government is not solely responsible. It has willing accomplices in local government, and they aren’t white.

The current governor of the U.S. Virgin Islands, Albert Bryan Jr., is black. Every elected governor since 1970 has been black, as are its current fifteen elected senators. This means the systemic dysfunctions in this region don’t arise from racism and underrepresentation, but venality. Corruption that can penetrate the hearts and minds of any human, regardless of race or color, and especially when they near the orbits of power.

I take a break from working one afternoon and spend some time online digging into local politics. It doesn’t take me long to realize that corruption here is rampant and blatant, an open secret that some are anxious to expose and others go to great lengths to ignore. I discover that Reddit is filled with threads on the topic. I stumble upon a 2021 Op-Ed in The Virgin Island Daily News with no byline, an anonymous plea to these island communities to take a stand against the gross mismanagement of public projects, shameless misallocation of COVID-19 relief funds, coercion of public officials, and intimidation that has bred a “culture of fear.” The author reminds citizens that government corruption exists because “[w]e expect it and we allow it to hide in plain sight, seen but unseen, publicly deplored but privately tolerated.”

If this were happening in Guatemala, El Salvador or Venezuela, it would hardly be surprising; it would even be expected. What’s shocking is that this abject human tragedy unfolds in plain sight under the watchful eye of a country that’s appointed itself the global defender of democracy, whose government purports to make the elimination of systemic racism and oppression one of its top priorities.

As I walk across broken floor tiles and past stained walls in the airport on my way to return our rental car, I’m reminded of my trips decades ago through strife-ridden Latin America countries helmed by banana republics masquerading as democracies. It’s depressingly familiar, yet surreal, because this dreary space is also peppered with flags, Homeland Security advisories, and other signs of American empire.

A young woman at the Budget counter asks me if I’ve enjoyed my visit. I can’t resist. I tell her what’s really on my mind.

She smiles. “I don’t meet many people from the mainland who notice or care what’s happening down here.”

“If it makes you feel any better, it’s getting pretty rough where we live, too,” I tell her. “Ever since COVID, things have started falling apart a lot faster.”

She laughs. “Okay, okay. You pay taxes, right?”

“Of course,” I tell her. “Hard to live in America without doing that.”

“So, how long does it take for you to get your refund?”

I give this some thought. It’s been so long since I’ve gotten money back from the government that I have trouble remembering.

“Maybe a month or two?” I say.

“Check this out. I just got my first refund check the other day.” She pauses. “From 2019. It’s taken me five years to get what’s owed to me.”

As I walk away from the counter and into the moist afternoon heat, I wonder what will become of the people who live here. I don’t know what the future holds, but of this I am relatively certain: they can’t possibly survive another Cat 5 hurricane. And everyone here knows that sooner or later, one is coming.

---

I know that when I get back home I’ll be greeted by headlines decrying systemic racism and oppression in everything from climate change to physical fitness. As election season reaches a fever pitch, I know I’ll be reminded of the deep inequities in black communities: students who trail their white peers in education, college graduates who are underrepresented in corporate America, and home ownership rates that hover at 44%.

But I’m pretty sure I won’t see headlines about black communities that go without water and electricity on a weekly basis, or families forced to take shelter in uninhabitable homes. I know I’m far more likely to hear about migrants, refugees, and others who aren’t U.S. citizens, yet should be entitled to free college tuition and health care.

The American empire is dying, and we can all see it. Neighborhoods are withering; streets, bridges, and gas lines are decaying; schools are shrinking and closing. When your government is racking up $1 trillion in debt every 100 days, and an ever-increasing share of taxpayer dollars is earmarked to pay interest on that debt, there’s not a lot of money left to spend housekeeping. So the biggest and most important rooms in the house — the ones on the main floor that receive the most visitors — are attended to first.

Last in line, behind all of them, are the dark corners of the basement under the house that no one sees. Those unlucky enough to live down here pay their hard-earned money to a landlord who barely acknowledges their existence.

This is where you’ll find the lost and forgotten people of the Virgin Islands.