Reflections from the Retreat August 2025

Although the closest beach is Bathway, I usually prefer to go for a walk to the quieter beach of Levera. I am often the only person around apart from the security men, George who sells jewellery and the occasional fishermen. There are no shops or restaurants here – just the beauty of nature and the wild sea looking over to nearby Sugar Loaf Island and beyond to Carriacou.

This is the Northeast of the island and as you can see from the map above, it is where the Atlantic Ocean meets the Caribbean Sea. I often feel this as I am swimming there, because there are two temperatures of water in this area with the warmer Caribbean water and the cooler Atlantic currents. I can sometimes feel the calmer Caribbean Sea that looks more aqua as I look out towards the Grenadines and then there can be a strong pull of the Atlantic currents that can be quite forceful and strong. It sometimes reminds me of being in the bath as a child and feeling the hot and cold water running into the bath together.

It seems to be quite appropriate to be swimming in a ‘mixed heritage’ sea when I come from a ‘mixed heritage’ family. I am quite aware that, unless people knew my husband or have met my children, I am seen as just another’ White British ex-pat’ and yet I am proud to call myself a Grenadian citizen and value the life changing impact my Grenadian husband has had on me, not least for bringing me to this beautiful island and giving me our beautiful children. My children tease me when I say that I feel ‘mixed heritage’ even though I know that I am ‘White British’, but my outlook on life has changed since marrying into a Grenadian family.

When my husband and I first got together, we were both living in Spitalfields, East London which is also known as Bangla town. So, in that context we were both an ethnic minority in that predominantly Bangladeshi area. When we had our children, I remember reading that mixed race people were the UK’s fastest-growing minority group. This is still the case, and it is estimated that by the end of the century, roughly one in three of the population will be mixed heritage, with this figure rising to 75% by 2150. However, when my children were growing up, they still had to deal with various racist remarks and sadly for my son and his friends, some physical racist attacks.

When we first moved out to Essex, we considered our mixed ethnicity in choosing where to live and not moving out too far into the suburbs. My daughter commented on how white her new primary school was, having been used to a class of about nine different cultures in East London. By the time they reached secondary school there tended to be the ‘black’ groups and the ‘white’ groups of children. By this age my children had both ‘white’ and ‘black’ friends as well as a few of dual heritage. So rather than feeling isolated or different they tended to move between the black groups and the white groups. As they look back on this time now, they remember feeling ‘more white’ when they were amongst black kids and feeling ‘more black’ amongst the white kids.

Appropriately, our family dog was also of mixed heritage, being a labradoodle (a Labrador and poodle). I like to think my children have also inherited the best of both cultures and they value their dual heritage and the opportunities this offers.

I remember when I was pregnant with our first child, my grandmother asked what colour the baby might be. We didn’t see this as racist but just curious, and looking back now, her granddaughter might have been the first mixed race person she had encountered.

The last Christmas that my husband and I shared before he died, we gave each other Ancestry DNA tests to discover our heritage. Hosten was so pleased to discover that he was 89% African with the highest percentage being Nigerian but also that his heritage was from five other areas in Africa. He was also excited to find that his love of Scotland might be because he was 7% Scottish and we discovered that he also had Spanish, Icelandic, indigenous Porta Rican and English heritage. I was pleased to discover that I was more Celtic than English and this seems to fit with my interest in Celtic spirituality and my love of nature and wild landscapes. I would recommend doing this test if you are interested in learning more about your own heritage. Looking at our DNA we can see that we are quite a mixture and that even though a person may look ‘black’ or ‘white’ beneath this exterior, there is a rich mixture of genes and cultures that infuse to create a unique individual.

I have found that I have a better understanding of who I am, having researched my family tree. I found my Scottish roots in a village near Inverness where my ancestors were blacksmiths, and I sense a strong connection with the wild ruggedness of the Scottish Highlands and coastline.  So, when we first got together, it was interesting to discover that my husband was born in a Scottish family home, where his mother worked and he loved the bagpipes and all things Scottish! Since moving to this part of Grenada, I have also discovered that as well as the area where Hosten was born in Carriacou, this area of St Patricks was a popular place for Scottish people to settle and some of my neighbours have Scottish surnames.

Whenever we start looking into the past and exploring our heritage, we cannot ignore the atrocities of the past with the transatlantic slave trade and the brutality that some of my ancestors inflicted on the ancestors of my husband. Even as I write this I need to get up and take a break from the screen, the thought of it can be too painful and yet it is there in our shared histories. It is something that as a family we have explored at different points over the years. There is the sense of loss that unlike my family history research, it is almost impossible to trace Hosten’s family roots and that sadly we don't know our true family name. I know someone who is considering changing their surname because, like most Grenadians, their surname is the name of the slave owner that enslaved their past relatives. This was why Malcom Little, who's mother was from the neighbouring parish, changed his name to Malcom X, highlighting that his true surname was unknown.

An interesting study was done this year on mixed race identity (The social identity and psychology of mixed-race individuals: An international study by Mark Cleveland). The author suggested that mixed race children were more likely to form a healthier mixed-race identity if the ‘racialised-minority parent’ maintained their culture in some way. This makes logical sense, and I am grateful that my children grew up enjoying their Dad’s cooking and stories of Grenada and, when our finances could stretch, experiencing a few holidays here.

It is important that we know where we come from and we can be grounded in knowing our heritage. For those of us who do not have enslavement in our history, we can take this for granted and yet for the majority of Afro-Caribbeans, this has been taken away. In a culture where it is important to honour the ancestors, it is a painful reality that many cannot directly trace their ancestors, and their adopted surnames can be a reminder of a traumatic history.  

As I write this, my daughter is staying here for the Summer holiday and her boyfriend has recently joined us for his first visit to Grenada. Interestingly he is from Nigerian heritage and remembers his early childhood days in Nigeria. It is interesting to see him connecting with Grenadians who share his heritage. They arrived at the most lively time of the year-carnival time. So, his first taste of this usual tranquil island was the lively and colourful Fancy Mas. This is the final day of carnival where the bands show off their exotic costumes. Hayley and I also went to the Children's Mas which was a wonderful show of costumes, dancing and high quality steel pan drums. The elaborate carnival costumes are one of the many strands of Grenada culture that links it to its African roots with the bright colours and exotic decorations and feathers and so it is an important celebration to link with the past.

So as I swim in the 'mixed heritage' sea I reflect on the enslaved people brought across the Atlantic to the Caribbean. They lost their surnames and their freedom but they hold on to their African strengths and traditions which have also crossed the sea to create the celebration of carnival today.