Though it is not part of the all-inclusive Lighthouse Bay resort on Barbuda, Codrington, the island's only town, is a must-visit location if you're a guest at the resort. It's a short boat ride across a massive lagoon that separates the town from the resort, and Lighthouse Bay personnel are happy to give you a lift there and back, particularly at times when staffers are going to and from work.
This tiny village is home to roughly 1,100 of the friendliest folks you'll find in the Caribbean. Ann Marie was a waitress at the resort, and happened to be on the ferry with us, and the young mother of four -- then quite pregnant with her fifth -- was more than happy to walk us around the tiny town, proudly pointing out the sights.
Madison Square is the village's main gathering spot, a collection of truly tiny shops (mostly staples, don't go looking for souvenirs), and young men drinking $2 Guinnesses who get a kick out of Americans taking their photos. Anne Marie showed us a ramshackle building that had been the island's only maternity hospital, ravaged several years ago by a hurricane. She was going to have her baby in Antigua, which is Barbuda's nearby sister island.
Anne Marie stopped to hug a shopkeeper (her aunt; here, pretty much everyone is related) and took us by the island's only school, the robin's-egg blue police station, a daycare center wonderfully named "Toddlers Paradise," and a tiny tourism office. Everywhere, children played, running, riding bikes, laughing. We walked down a narrow road past a trio of island residents sitting in a tiny yard selling an elixir made by boiling sea moss and adding liquids and flavors until it tastes remarkably like a creamy chai tea; it is said to be a cure for ... well, everything, laughed Eudlyn, one of the ladies, up to and including impotence.
"Men take it," she roared in a booming voice, "and women get it back!"
I opted for a bottle, five bucks well spent. Didn't do a thing for me but gave me the satisfaction of helping out the island economy. Nearby, we saw another family member of Ann Marie's with her husband's catch of the day, including a sea louse that looked disturbingly like the creature in the "Predator" films. They are edible, we were told.
We ran into Arthur, an affable fellow more than eager to pose for photos. Later, back at the resort, I chatted him up to Orlando, a Lighthouse Bay bartender and Codrington resident, who told me that Arthur is the island's strongest man, capable of benching over 300 pounds. Never know it to look at him, but then again, I guess you should never discount the power of Guinness.
We walked past abandoned, storm-ravaged buildings, humble homes most often framed by gorgeous island flowers, and goats in one overgrown lot milling about an old boat, and then wandered back to the ferry landing on this overcast, chilly day, where laughing little boys clad in their underwear dove off the chipped concrete wharf, shivering upon exiting the ocean and eager to leap back into its warming embrace.
Looking around an island like this, it is far too easy, with well-intended but classic bias, to feel badly for people living in what we sympathetically proclaim as poverty. But to residents of Codrington, what they have is simply their way of life, they live what they know, happy for what they have. You will never see anything as genuine as the smiles on their faces and proud eagerness to show visitors their town.
Barbuda is an island of singular beauty with places of true luxury, like Lighthouse Bay Resort. And Codrington is a nothing-fancy little town that is the island's heart and immense soul.