Listin And Rita

The Green Boley Bar, named after a vegetable that is used to make bowls, is owned by Listin and Rita. Most afternoons I eat my lunch there, sitting on stools made from PVC piping topped with yachting cushions, I order a Roti and a Bitter Lemon. The bar is painted bright green, almost a neon electrified color. Fully open to the outside the walls are made from bamboo stalks that have been split in half and nailed to planks of wood. The bar sits 5 feet above the water, behind but level with the top of a retaining wall. A retaining wall that serves two purposes to keep the land from sliding to the sea, and to prevent rising water from sinking the bar. As Rita will tell you the water has been rising since she can remember. She says, "My mother told me to go look just beyond that dock (pointing down the beach) in the water you will find a foundation where a toilet used to sit. When we built this bar they drove a truck down the beach to deliver supplies." This foundation now sits under about 15 feet of water, and the beach that the truck drove down, well there were people swimming in that same spot this morning. I asked her what she thought might happen forty years from now, she said "There is no telling, but there will never be a beach there again (she laughs)" I fear that in forty years the Green Boley might not exist, along with all the other bars, houses, shops, and restaurants that line the harbor.

Yet some people say that global warming is a myth.