San Nicolaas, where "the streets are quiet and the walls are loud"

This city, on the "sunrise" side of the island, is worlds away from the glitzy tourist bubble. In the past, it held an oil refinery (and the red-light district that serviced it) and a major source of wealth. But the refinery closed, the red-light district remained, and the place became synonymous with decay, local and authentic but quite rough around the edges; gray walls and peeling paint. Though, surrounded with gorgeous beaches and turquoise water like the rest of the island.

Around 8 years ago, they got the idea to turn it into a local arts scene. Those sad, gray walls are now bursting with color and energy; concrete benches (think bus stop) are tiled with mosaics representing local fauna and flora. Two new art galleries have opened downtown, restaurants and pubs are serving food and drink and reggae music is heard on the streets. There's still a long way to go but the turnaround energy is palpable. We had seen the murals before as we wandered (though new ones are added every year!) but they were simply "pretty pictures" and we had no way to guess the meanings behind them. So we signed up for a walking tour with Tito Bolivar, the guy whose passion started it all. 

Here's a photo dump containing about a tenth of the insights we received. But if you're on island, really, take the tour. So many stories, and they're adding new art every year.

Random benches. There are many more, including some that weren't made by artists but were a project done by at-risk kids. (Sorry, my pix of that one didn't really come out well. Wanna see it? Take. The. Tour.)

I have literally hundreds of pictures of the murals on the walls. Here's a generous sampling of the ones that I found most compelling. Every one of them has a story. I was told all the stories. I wrote them down as our guide Tito was speaking. I still can't convey the richness of culture we saw, that morning.

"My promise to the island" contains pictures of the wildlife, and in the background, images of the decoration motifs found on traditional houses. There's so much pressure here from overdevelopment.

The other half of the same mural, too long to fit in one shot. The background colors of yellow, orange, and purple represent sunrise; San Nicolaas, on the eastern tip of the island, is nicknamed the sunrise city.

Her name is Alicia von (Romont??? sp??) and she's an artist who has painted some of the murals in town. Tito said that all the murals of people we'd see on the tour represent living people, so that they'd know while they're still alive, how much they were respected by the citizens.

"Please recycle"

(the other end of the recycling mural)

His name is Atto Niro (sp?) and he's a rapper. The artist who painted this, Rashid Lowe, was 16 when he made this mural.

"Dushi Bida" means, "sweet life."

The rest of "dushi bida." Again with the yellow-orange-purple.

The public library is probably my favorite story. Painted by Alicia whose mural I've already shown, at its heart this mural is a protest or a wake-up call. Only 3000 people visited the library the year this mural was conceived. The information within was "chained up," held hostage to the lure of the cellphone. 

more library ... 

... and more ...

Nanzi or Anansi, the spider is a west African folklore character. Like our Native American Coyote, he's a trickster, achieving his goals by cunning, creativity, and wit. He's also associated with storytelling. He used his cleverness to get the stories originally owned by the sky god Nyame, but later dropped the container that held the stories and they spilled out available to all. (Read the full tale in the wikipedia linked here.)

The goddess Nyame, original holder of the story wisdom in the Nanzi stories

So many murals, so many stories, I'm going to break this post into two.