There a lot going on in my head these days. As co-founder of Island Temptations Magazine I am involved in the closing of our winter edition, 2004, which means final photo shoots and wrap up writing for the glossy life-style publications. It’s going to be a good one. In October at the upcoming 27th annual Caribbean Tourism Organizations, CTC 27, the magazine will be recognized for its contributions to tourism in the region. I also visit the hospital as much as I can to support a good friend – how else would you refer to a former husband - who was assigned by the gods the task of stretching his resources, fiercely fighting back where he can while accepting what he cannot change. Spiritually, he is in formidable shape, a true fighter and a man of great courage which I admire. In between sat the storm, Ivan, and the emotional toll it took on the island in general and on each of us personally. We fought fiercely back with pumps, brooms and mops and got spared the brunt of the disaster by a miracle. Aruba, said CNN has an angel employed in heaven full time.
While each of us was affected in some small way, over 700 families on the island lost most of their worldly belongings. The Red Cross Aruba organized a Telethon last weekend in conjunction with the local media – the fund raising drive will continue all month - in an effort to raise cash. The local government has also pledged resources to help put people back on their feet. “Some of our employees, perhaps 6 or 7, suffered great losses,” says Trudy Rautio, vice president of Carlson Hotels Worldwide, owners and operators of the Radisson Aruba Resort & Casino, “we are family, we will help.”
In view of the pictures in the newspapers and the radio reports, I find it hard to complain about being phone less for a few days. And yesterday afternoon my ADSL line got restored by a friendly Setar computer expert. He came to the house and worked about 2 hours to put me back in contact with the world. Wednesday afternoon when I realized my internet line was still down - remember, I write for a living - I called Setar for the umpteen time to help restore communications. “Please help,” I said, “I am a grown woman and I feel like breaking down and crying on the phone.”
The weatherman, that bespectacled toothy young man who went on and on, on the radio and on TV, Aruba’s one and only master of false prediction, is a joke. Yea, I know, we’re living on an island and cannot take the weather too seriously, but for the record, rarely has just one individual exposed himself as such as total imbecile.
“We suffered a lot of damage at RE/MAX,” says my friend Kenneth Fausten. “Physically we are OK, but our office suffered a lot of water damage. We had about 6 inches of water in our office. Even though we did prepare and disconnected all electrical appliances and removed most of our bottom drawers from the file cabinet's we still were shocked to have experience such a terrible storm. On Thursday afternoon since the sun was shining I thought I better remove all the protection we had placed at our office since everything seemed OK and were informed by Drs Mark Oduber of the weather department that we should not expect any heavy rain any more. Well, what a terrible misjudgment! To say the least. The whole of Saturday and Sunday we spent cleaning our office which is still a mess.” Yes, the weatherman. He called it SCATTERED SHOWERS and completely disarmed and distracted a nation. Then when 200 millilitters of water were dumped from the sky, we were left with our collective jaws hanging. The outer bands of hurricane Ivan drenched the island and caught our dear weatherman by surprise. What do you think is the punishment for totally and completely misreading the charts?
It’s so funny, I can actually laugh now, but when the skies opened Friday night to deliver the deluge my friend Sergio had to swim out into his backyard to save his two Boxers, my friend Monique woke up when her mattress got soaking wet under her, and my friend Peter with no electricity to boot a pump into action, resorted to buckets at 4 in the morning, baling, the old fashioned way.
So no wonder we were a bit raw, emotionally speaking, when the Manchebo Beach Resort hosted an informal cocktail party on Monday. Owner Ike Cohen and General Manager Edgar Roelofs invited some of the property’s friends as well as a handful of the Aruba Tourism Authority executives for a casual get-together overlooking the beach, on the deck of the new spa. It was a sparkling late afternoon, perfect weather, two days post-Ivan. Spa del Sol – A Sanctuary by the Sea - entered the intimate European resort into a new era, shared Roelofs. During the party, in his welcome notes, Roelofs also reported he once went for a spa treatment at the now defunct Cosmos Spa in Savaneta. It was apparently a life-changing experience which propelled him to invited Fred Abspoel to design a spa for Manchebo. Abspoel came through beautifully. He has exquisite taste and the new spa, complete with Zen Garden and a juice bar, a wet treatment room, a sauna, and a menu to sooth the most harassed and fatally tired, is very charming and attractive, set in a tropical garden. The Minister of Tourism Edison Briesen also dropped in to congratulate all involved in the creation of the refuge, a body and soul recharger.
On Wednesday, the Aruba Hotel & Tourism Association hosted a highly-charged party for the departing Adwina Arends, a tourism executive, a woman who helped shape the industry here, the way we know it today. I met Adwina in the late seventies. She was the General Manager of the Carib, the famed Aruba Caribbean Hotel, and I was a tour rep. We would regularly line up in front of her cubbyhole office begging for more rooms – head office liked to overbook - and Adwina shuffled and reshuffled to accommodate the confusion - in the era prior to the computer revolution. She met both the needs of her clients and catered to the bottom line while nurturing personal friendships with guests. What she did for the island, I think I know what it is, she helped facilitate and establish this emotional bond that many of our visitors have with Aruba. She got personally involved in a 24/7 mission to create vacation memories for guests on one hand and to flame their desire to come back on the other. It sounds conflicting but during her years of influence here Aruba moved from a niche market to mass tourism while still offering old Caribbean magic and the possibility of getting personally involved with the destination. It was an Adwina-engineered concept and it performed miracles for the island’s economy.
The party at the Hyatt Regency brought together Adwina’s local family members, her colleagues from La Cabana All Suite Beach Resort and her friends from the Aruba Hotel Association and the Tourism Authority. It was an insiders’ bash. Musician Francis Jacob who entertained the party on keyboard reported he was hired at the tender age of seven to play at the Carib. The boss, Adwina Arends.
Adwina was a bit emotional while addressing her friends. She has left the island after many decades to live in the USA, closer to children and grandchildren. She came to Aruba as a young bride and is leaving as a grandma. While she looks truly fabulous, her sapphire-blue eyes sparkling, we cannot ignore the fact that she is retiring. She might pick up some business opportunities in the USA but otherwise, her professional career as a marketing and sales diva has just concluded. There is a sad aspect to that if you look at it from a narrow point of view. On a more comprehensive level the role of parents is to get their kids to a point where they are no longer needed, and while Adwina’s direct involvement is over, she will I hope remain connected as a consultant, or advisor, an inspiration, a parent whose role wrapped up successfully. I felt that way the day my son graduated college.
