By: Christiana Best-Giacomini, Ph.D.
October 27, 2026
By my fifth morning on Carriacou, a small island in the West Indies, I had someone to look for at the beach.
I had come to the island for a month to conduct oral history interviews as part of my sabbatical research. I would also be living alone for the first time in my life. After years of sharing a home with parents, husbands, and my son, I wanted to discover what it felt like to move through a day on my own. Yet within days of arriving, my mornings had begun to include Virginia.
We met on my second day. I had gone out for a walk through Hillsborough without knowing exactly where I was heading. When I reached the beach, I noticed a small group standing in a close circle in the water. I considered approaching them, but something about their gathering seemed closed. Perhaps they were praying. Perhaps it was a support group. I could not tell, and I did not want to interrupt.
I had felt that hesitation before. On visits to Grand Anse Beach in Grenada, I had watched people swimming and congregating in groups that clearly knew one another. They appeared to meet regularly in the same place. They were cordial, but their greetings did not always open into conversation. I could exchange a good morning and still remain outside the circle.
Nearby, a woman sat by herself on a chair in the water, occasionally exchanging words with a young man who was fishing. She seemed easier to approach, although I was conscious that I might be inserting myself into her morning.
“Good morning,” I said.
It was a familiar beginning. In Grenada, Carriacou, and Petite Martinique, greeting someone as you pass is part of everyday life. Still, a greeting can end as quickly as it begins. This one did not.
Virginia smiled and began speaking to me. Her response was warm and accommodating. Perhaps it helped that she was alone. Whatever the reason, I did not feel that I had to work hard to keep the conversation going.
We stayed in the water talking for about two hours.
She was from Bogles in Carriacou, a retired nurse who lived in Brooklyn. I was born in Grenada and had spent most of my life in the United States. As we talked, I recognized an intelligence informed by education and by experience. Her racial consciousness also mattered to me. I felt comfortable speaking about issues that concerned us both.
When I told her about my oral history project, our conversation turned to the tendency of people to enter communities, collect what they need, and leave. We spoke about extraction and the importance of giving something back. It was a subject closely connected to the work I had come to do, and I appreciated being able to discuss it so naturally with someone I had just met.
Virginia began suggesting people I might interview. She also told me that she planned to organize a band for the following year’s Carnival, which caught my attention. From community projects, we moved easily to our adult children. One subject led to another without either of us having to announce a change.
We talked, too, about the benefits of a sea bath and the beliefs we had grown up hearing—hers in Carriacou, mine in Grenada. Those exchanges brought familiar parts of childhood into the water with us. There was pleasure in recognizing something we shared and curiosity about the differences.
Perhaps that helped explain why the first conversation lasted so long. There was always another connection to make.
Before I left that morning, I decided I would return. I also decided I was going to become friends with Virginia from Bogles.
It was a confident decision to make about someone I had only just met. But something in her welcome made it seem possible.
On subsequent mornings, seeing her at the beach made me feel good. In a place where I was still learning my way around, she had become a familiar face. I could enter the water and pick up a conversation from the day before.
We began referring to each other as “beach friends.”
The name suited the ease of our arrangement. We met in the mornings, talked, and allowed the conversation to find its own direction. There was humor, encouragement, and the pleasure of having someone with whom to share whatever was on my mind.
Virginia was often smiling. I enjoyed her positive outlook, especially when I arrived carrying some small frustration from the night before.
If I told her I had not slept well and that my poor sleep had delayed me, she would say, “You’re here now, so enjoy it.”
I liked that response. I had made it to the beach. The morning was still available to me. There was no reason to spend all of it explaining why I had arrived later than I intended.
Being in the water seemed to make talking easier. We had begun with the sea itself: its benefits, our childhood beliefs, the experience of taking a sea bath. We could look around us as we spoke, notice the fishermen returning, and let the conversation pause when something caught our attention.
By the time we began going to Lorraine’s for breakfast, we already had that ease between us.
One morning, a heavy downpour interrupted our time in the sea. After a couple of minutes, I decided to get out. My head was uncovered, and the rain showed no sign of stopping.
Virginia had come prepared. She wore a shower cap over her scarf and was content to remain where she was.
“This is the best time to be in the water,” she told me, “when the rain is falling.”
I could not remember having that experience. I wrapped myself in a towel and headed to Lorraine’s, where I changed into my shorts and T-shirt and ordered breakfast. Virginia said she would join me in half an hour. She arrived much later.
The scene made me smile: the two of us sharing a morning, each with her own idea of when it was time to leave the water.
Our friendship was also beginning to reach beyond the beach. One evening, Virginia called to ask whether I would accompany her in a procession bringing her sister-in-law’s body from the port to the funeral home. Her sister-in-law had died in England, and her body was being brought home to Carriacou.
I went with her.
As we traveled around the island behind the hearse, hymns playing and headlights illuminating the road, I thought about funerals I had attended with my grandmother in Grenada. I thought, too, about my mother’s recent burial. Through Virginia’s invitation, I had entered a gathering that brought together a family’s grief, the island’s customs, and memories of my own.
Only a few days earlier, I had hesitated at the edge of a group on the beach, uncertain whether I could approach. Now I was accompanying a new friend as her family welcomed someone home for the last time.
I am still getting to know Virginia. Our friendship is young, measured so far in mornings and conversations. But her presence has already changed my experience of being here.
If I arrived at the beach and did not find her, I would be disappointed. I suspect I would not stay nearly as long. I would miss her smile, the conversation we had left unfinished, and her reminder to enjoy the morning I had managed to reach.
I came to Carriacou curious about what it would mean to be on my own. Now, when I leave the guest house and walk toward the sea, I look forward to seeing my beach friend.
(Dr Christiana Best is an Associate Professor at the University of Saint Joseph, Connecticut)
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