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<\/a>Veta Wade, left, puts her arm around Shary Barzey after a successful swim. Photo by Ryan Schuessler<\/p><\/div>\n
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In 1995, Montserrat\u2019s Soufri\u00e8re Hills volcano began to rumble, prompting the evacuation of two-thirds of Montserrat, with violent eruptions following suit. In 1997, super-heated pyroclastic flows crashed through Plymouth, Montserrat\u2019s once-bustling capital. The abandoned city burned before it was buried by ash and rock.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe saw the first big plume of steam coming out of the mountain, this noise, and eventually the mountain is changing. Then hot rocks are coming out of the sky and big eruptions are happening, and days are turning to nights,\u201d Wade recalls. \u201cDevelopment of our island stops. Life on our island stops. It\u2019s complete destruction.\u201d<\/p>\n
Two-thirds of Montserrat became uninhabitable, and its most populated areas were abandoned. Thousands crowded into makeshift shelters in schools and churches in the island\u2019s north. By the hundreds, Montserratians boarded planes and boats and left. Wade\u2019s parents sent her to London. The nation\u2019s population dropped from more than 12,000 to just 1,200.<\/p>\n
Today, most Montserratians live in the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, or other Caribbean islands. They started new lives far away from Montserrat\u2019s beaches, the blue waters that sustained their ancestors, and the way of life that had come to define what it meant to be Montserratian.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere was no place that ever made me feel like home,\u201d Wade recalled of her years in England. \u201cI never would decorate flats or anything because I always felt like it was a temporary situation.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/a>Plymouth, Montserrat\u2019s capital, was destroyed by pyroclastic flows in 1997. Since then, ash has slowly buried the once-bustling city. Photo by Ryan Schuessler<\/p><\/div>\n
Wade returned to the island in 2011. Having realized that she was losing the very things that she felt made her Montserratian and Afro-Caribbean, she threw herself into the ocean\u2014literally and figuratively. She started Aqua Montserrat, a snorkeling and adventure business, shortly after her return.<\/p>\n
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In 2015, Wade started Fish \u2019N Fins, a camp for Montserratian children. For a small fee, local children could get swimming lessons, go snorkeling, and try their hands at lionfish hunting. On moonlit nights, there\u2019s the occasional beach campout where local fishermen and elders teach children the ways Montserratians used the sea to survive.<\/p>\n
\u201cTraditionally, fishers or older men would show their children or young boys in the community how to dive, how to swim, how to spearfish, how to line fish,\u201d Wade says. Today, most are too busy \u201cwith Facebook, with life, with work.\u201d The camp is her way of working to heal the wounds the volcano inflicted on a generation of displaced Montserratians, much like herself.<\/p>\n