Tourism has changed life here, but not drastically — Bonaire is still, in their own words, a quiet island, sometimes too quiet. There aren't many discos or bars. What tourism has brought is a handful of small restaurants, a fast-food place that didn't used to exist, and new training programmes, mostly aimed at jobs within tourism itself. Anyone hoping for a genuinely good career, though, still has to study abroad. Their parents say primary education has slipped since the nuns and friars stopped running it — a decline the students themselves, naturally, don't notice.
Family life has shifted more than the streets have. With parents increasingly working irregular tourism-industry hours, the kids spend more time away from home. The youngest now have after-school care; older students have a youth centre — skating, computers, basketball, and help with homework when it's needed.
Direct contact with tourists is limited, but watersports change that. A few friends who windsurf well have, more than once, out-sailed the Dutch visitors entirely — enough to catch their attention. What started as curiosity on the water turned into evenings out together, the kind of contact that shows tourists in a completely different light than a poolside interaction ever could.
With them we eventually went out in the evening too, and then you get to know them from a different side.
Sixth-graders take part in a project called Hello Tourist, spending a night in an actual hotel room — a genuine treat, by their account. But the idea runs the other way too, and they think it should: tourists spending a night in a Bonairian home instead of a hotel. There are ways to arrange it already, they say, and it would be every bit as enjoyable as a luxury room — with the added benefit that the money would go directly to the people hosting them.
“We could actually benefit from it directly,” they say — a small idea, offered with the confidence of people who've already tried the alternative.