Here’s a confession of ignorance. I never had any idea of the location of the Cayman Islands until some 20 years ago when friends went to live there. I consulted an atlas and discovered that these islands were not where I had imagined them to be — somewhere in the Pacific — but were tucked away in the Caribbean, just below Cuba and not all that far from Jamaica.
I suspect that my ignorance was shared by many. But, these days, the Cayman Islands have become much better known. One of the reasons for this is last September’s disaster, when Hurricane Ivan tore across the Caribbean and flattened Grand Cayman. The images were seen all over the world.
But there have been other developments that have fixed the Cayman Islands in our consciousness. The remarkable growth of the islands as an offshore financial centre has certainly been widely noticed. Most people now know that the islands are associated with international finance. Indeed, a free- association test could prove interesting. If one said banks, I imagine that quite a number of people would say Cayman Islands just as quickly as they might say Switzerland.
So if you have a great deal of legitimately earned money and you were looking for somewhere to put it, you might find yourself in George Town, Grand Cayman, the island’s capital. And you would certainly have a good choice of banks at your disposal. Grand Cayman, which is only about 20 miles long and in some places less than a mile wide, has about 600 registered banks.
Given that the population of the islands is not much more than 40,000, that makes one bank for every 67 people — a misleading statistic, of course, as only a handful of these are high-street banks. And if you decided that you would like to live where you put your money, then you might take up residence in the islands and discover the advantages of not paying income tax, while all the time living under the protection of the Union Jacks that can be seen fluttering on the buildings of George Town.
For the Cayman Islands, after all, are a British colony, complete with a British governor, who, on appropriate occasions, puts on the gubernatorial outfit of helmet and feathers.
But the popular idea of the Cayman Islands being a remote and artificial tax haven, the preserve of wealthy tax- dodgers (not a term one uses in Cayman society if one wishes to be invited back) is a misconception. Certainly there are very wealthy people living on Grand Cayman, and some of them have a very strong aversion to paying tax, but there are many others. This is a fairly complex society, which mirrors, in some respects, the cultural complexion of the Caribbean.
There are the original Caymanians, the descendants of sailors, settlers and fishermen; there are Jamaicans in large numbers, who contribute their characteristic warmth and exuberance to the mix; there are Central Americans who have fled the difficulties of their own countries; and there are all sorts of American, British and European expatriates, some of them quite well known. There is the author Dick Francis, for example, who has lived on Seven Mile Beach for some years (Lord Lucan, however, has yet to be spotted). And at any given time there will be several thousand visitors who flock to the islands for the unparalleled diving, for the beaches and the turquoise-coloured, perfectly warm sea.
ALL OF this makes for an interesting and rather awkward fact — the native Caymanians are now close to being a minority in the islands. Caymanians are understandably sensitive about this, but it’s the price of having agreed to the transformation of their previously sleepy islands into a thriving offshore centre.
You cannot run such a centre without having imported expertise — legions of accountants, lawyers and bankers — and these people have to have somewhere to live. Somebody has to build the houses and apartments, somebody has to teach in the schools and staff the hospitals. And so the Caymanians succumbed to a process which made them prosperous and, in many cases, rich, but that could only be done by changing the nature of their society.
The story of a hard-working Jamaican couple, Jean and Wintroy Randal, is a fairly typical one. Jean came to Grand Cayman from Jamaica to take a job looking after children. She had been working in a belt factory in Kingston and wanted to make more of herself: life in Jamaica can be hard and Grand Cayman was just over the water. There she met her husband-to- be, Wintroy Randal, a talented man who has always simply been known by his surname of Randal. They met at their church — Grand Cayman is covered with churches, most of which are worth visiting for the music and singing that go on for hours every Sunday. Visitors are made to feel welcome and can join in as much as they like. You might even stand up when sinners are invited to the front of the church.
Randal had come to the island from Jamaica to work unloading cargo at the George Town harbour. There was an opening for a government rat- catcher, though, and he took the job, committing himself to the struggle against vermin. Much of Grand Cayman was then mangrove swamp and mangrove swamps are good offshore centres for rats. He worked hard and was, in due course, promoted to a more senior position in the public-health department.
They married and had children, Wayneroy and Jessica. Randal built a house with his own hands, being a man who can do anything. When Hurricane Ivan came last year and destroyed so many houses, Jean and Randal were spared. Their house suffered very minor roof damage, but was otherwise unharmed. Their church, though, became a home for numerous people whose houses had been invaded by the waves that swept across the island or simply blown away by the winds. Some houses just disappeared in a flurry of flying tin sheets and crumbling bricks.
