Couple’s Idyllic Island Life in the Caribbean Has Downside

GUIANA ISLAND, Antigua — It sounds idyllic--living alone on a tranquil tropical isle.

But there are a few harsh realities: water shortages, no telephone, kerosene lamps for reading and threats by developers to turn the island wildlife sanctuary into a resort.

Cyril Thomas “Taffy” Bufton and his wife, Lona Eleen “Bonny” Bufton, know all about the realities, both harsh and magical, of living alone on a Caribbean island.

For 32 years they have been the sole residents of Guiana Island, a 300-acre speck just off the coast of Antigua, a former British colony in the eastern Caribbean.

When they first arrived in the 1960s, the couple farmed the island for a London lawyer who owned it.

Over the years, cotton farming gave way to tending a herd of 500 sheep, then to overseeing Guiana Island as a nature sanctuary for the rare West Indian whistling duck and the European fallow deer, which was introduced in the 1600s and is the national animal of Antigua.

Two major worries--one short-term and one long-term--cloud the Welsh couple’s island life.

The immediate fear is a lack of water.

“It’s the problem with the water that bothers us the most,” said Bufton, 70. “I don’t think we can bear to live on the island and watch the animals die.”

Hurricane Luis in 1995 damaged their rain-collection system.

“It’s worrying us to death,” Bufton said. “You see, at this time of the year we usually get short of water, but the good Lord has always taken compassion and sent rain.

“We catch it on the roofs of all the buildings, and one inch on the roofs is six inches in our cisterns. Although we go right down to zero, we always manage, but this year there is no guttering and there are no roofs.”

The other fear can’t be solved by some rain and new gutters. The former owner of the island died in 1972 and the Buftons are seeking ownership in the courts. But a Malaysian businessman has proposed changing the island from a deer sanctuary to a resort with 1,000 hotel rooms.

In 1988, Antigua’s government recognized the Buftons’ work as caretakers of the island sanctuary and awarded them a $700 monthly stipend. “Antiguans have been very good to us,” Bufton said.

But he doesn’t know if a sanctuary, even for the national animal, can be maintained against the pressure to build a glitzy resort.

“I wish Antiguans would make sufficient protest so that Guiana Island is not destroyed,” Bufton said. “It’s their heritage.”

The Buftons plan to stay with their island life as long as possible.

“All we are going to do is stick it out,” her husband said. “But I don’t know for how much longer.”