Paradise Lost

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"The mind is its own place, and in it self
Can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven."

--- John Milton

It was abandoned decades earlier as a little roadside tire repair shop until one day a returning national saw its potential as beach house on one of the loveliest sandy streches on the west coast - Mullins Beach.  And so was created Donald's Villa (see top photo) right on the border between Mullins (actually, Bayfield) and Road View.  Both visitors and locals admired the little emerald and white gem and marveled at what some thought was a stroke of luck - a place on the beach on the Platinum Coast.  But luck has run out for Donald's Villa as indeed it has also for every single beachfront property between the Mullins Restaurant and the still unfinished condos at the controversial St. Peter's Bay project in Lower Road View.  The severe Atlantic winter storms this season have washed out all the sand behind Donald's Villa, undermined the boulders protecting it and opened  a big crack in its seawall (see arrow in bottom photo) mere feet away from the cottage itself.  If these storms continue into mid April as happened last year, Donald's Villa and several other properties in the area could be history.

By now readers of this blog know that the cause of all this ongoing destruction from the ocean in the area is Climate Change exacerbated by three groynes built to create a bigger beach for the condo owners at St. Peter's Bay.  This is not conjecture nor "pure ignorance" (the latter comment from the man who built the groynes), but the scientific conclusions of local and international coastal engineers who have looked at the problem.  It is clear that those who approved the groynes (the Coastal Zone Management Unit) knew of the likely outcomes, consequently, some have not so cynically suggested that there is an unholy private and public sector alliance to force the poor and others off the beachfront so that it can be later repaired to make room for even more beach row condos. 

Cries for help have largely fallen on deaf ears over the past four years.  Pressure from this blog and other sources have only resulted in a vague and rambling promise  to "research" the problem  which the CZMU placed in a segment of the media for public consumption late last year.  A high official in the Barbados Tourism Authority was raised in the house pictured next to Donald's Villa and one would have thought that by now that too should have counted for something given the flight tourists from the area.  We are now living the nightmare of a lost paradise.  Heaven has become Hell.