Mi bre­dren Vanus has re­cent­ly drawn to my at­ten­tion that Cas­tara is on the up and up where its tourism prod­uct is con­cerned, and I de­cid­ed that I would do an ex­posé in this col­umn of what the vil­lage is do­ing tourism wise. It fea­tures its own brand of tourism, the Cas­tara Mod­el, which is an in­te­grat­ed tourism prod­uct fo­cused on com­mu­ni­ty de­vel­op­ment with a strong link to its fish, ground pro­vi­sion, healthy liv­ing, co­coa, and bush tea val­ue chains, among oth­er val­ue chains. The ideas come from Vanus but I strong­ly sup­port them.

But first, a lit­tle so­cio­geo­graph­ic in­for­ma­tion, es­pe­cial­ly for those who may not know where the vil­lage is lo­cat­ed. It is a green, hilly par­adise sit­ting with un­per­turbed majesty on To­ba­go’s Caribbean north coast at the foot of Mt Dil­lon. Its most fa­mous and most dec­o­rat­ed son is the late ANR Robin­son: Min­is­ter, Chair­man of the De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Ac­tion Con­gress, Chair­man of the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly, Prime Min­is­ter, Pres­i­dent, the Cas­tara Kid.

Nes­tled on To­ba­go’s Caribbean coast, at the foot of Mt Dil­lon Hill, Cas­tara first be­came fa­mous for giv­ing us the Cas­tara Kid ANR Robin­son, for­mer prime min­is­ter, pres­i­dent and co-recre­ator of the THA.

The Cas­tara Mod­el of com­mu­ni­ty de­vel­op­ment is very in­ter­est­ing–for two rea­sons. One is that it of­fers a com­pelling blue­print for tourism de­vel­op­ment and eco­nom­ic di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion that can be re­fined here at home and ex­port­ed across the Caribbean, es­pe­cial­ly in­to the East­ern Caribbean economies. Out of ne­ces­si­ty, Cas­tara seems to have in­vent­ed an amaz­ing, holis­tic so­lu­tion to the prob­lem of de­vel­op­ment that has con­front­ed To­ba­go for 140 years.

The oth­er rea­son is that it pro­vides im­por­tant lessons about how To­ba­go, the coun­try, and the Caribbean should un­der­stand the link be­tween eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment, com­mu­ni­ty de­vel­op­ment, and con­sti­tu­tion­al re­form.

Cas­tara is de­vel­op­ing what can be brand­ed as a ‘safe and healthy com­mu­ni­ty’ mod­el in which the com­mu­ni­ty pro­vides a cosy and pro­tect­ed healthy space for its guests and in­te­grates tourism in­to the com­mu­ni­ty’s out­put val­ue chains.

Vil­lagers var­i­ous­ly es­cort guests want­i­ng to walk the com­mu­ni­ty, vis­it com­mu­ni­ty at­trac­tions at the foot of the rain­for­est, jog, and gen­er­al­ly prac­tise the rudi­ments of a healthy lifestyle dur­ing their vis­its–all in a com­mu­ni­ty pro­tect­ed space. Guests are pro­vid­ed with an ex­pe­ri­ence that en­com­pass­es the Cas­tara cul­tur­al ex­pe­ri­ences, its con­sumer prod­ucts, and its mu­si­cal en­ter­tain­ment, tinged with a beach-in­ten­sive flavour; one may even call it “mu­sic on the beach.”

They get ac­cess to the full range of Cas­tara cui­sine, whether co­coa or ground pro­vi­sions (in­clud­ing yams, ba­nanas, plan­tains and sweet pota­to), lo­cal bush sea­son­ing, vir­gin co­conut oil, a wide range of bush teas from gin­ger, cin­na­mon, pi­men­to, noni, moringa, sor­rel, sour­sop, gua­va bush, and the like. Guests al­so have ready ac­cess to sea­son­al av­o­ca­do, man­go, and lo­cal fruits. Ba­nanas are avail­able all year round.

Cru­cial­ly, fresh­ly har­vest­ed fish is sold di­rect­ly to all in­ter­est­ed, in­clud­ing tourists, right there on the beach. But en­tre­pre­neurs in cui­sine and ac­com­mo­da­tion al­so add val­ue by prepar­ing lo­cal healthy dish­es for their guests ac­cord­ing to their tastes.

So, Cas­tara is es­sen­tial­ly op­er­at­ing as a one stop shop for a safe and healthy lifestyle–a dif­fer­ent brand of tourism, you might say. This is just its own in­no­v­a­tive ver­sion of what has be­come fa­mous as the Lo­ma Lin­da lifestyle, and it does not in­volve a high de­gree of re­liance on im­ports.

It should be clear then, that in the Cas­tara mod­el, the com­mu­ni­ty plays a vi­tal role, along­side the pri­vate sec­tor, lo­cal, di­as­poric, or for­eign, and com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers think that they are all ben­e­fit­ing from the re­sults to date. It pro­vides the kind of warmth and com­pan­ion­ship that make vis­i­tors feel wel­come and safe. This kind of tourism al­so cares for the mind, ban­ish­ing lone­li­ness and iso­la­tion, de­pres­sion and anx­i­ety, and cre­at­ing a sense of be­long­ing. That is why so many of the vis­i­tors spend long pe­ri­ods in Cas­tara and re­turn from year to year.

There is one im­por­tant dif­fer­ence be­tween what Cas­tara is do­ing and what Lo­ma Lin­da is do­ing. Lo­ma Lin­da’s of­fer­ings are en­joyed main­ly by lo­cal res­i­dents. Cas­tara of­fers its healthy lifestyles to lo­cal res­i­dents and guests alike, but with spe­cial at­ten­tion paid to its guests. In oth­er words, Cas­tara of­fers a spe­cial brand of in­dus­tri­alised tourism.

Where is all this head­ing? The Cas­tara cul­ture of eat­ing lo­cal meets the stan­dard med­ical rec­om­men­da­tion of a di­et con­sist­ing heav­i­ly of or­gan­ic whole grains, legumes, fruits, and veg­eta­bles, com­bined with fish as the main source of meat pro­tein. The Cas­tara cul­ture of friend­li­ness pro­vides its vis­i­tors with a strong sense of par­tic­i­pa­tion in a close-knit com­mu­ni­ty and for­ma­tion of deep and long-last­ing re­la­tion­ships, and these at­ti­tudes and be­hav­iours can be fur­ther re­fined un­der the guid­ance of skilled med­ical ex­perts.

The en­tre­pre­neurs in Cas­tara tell Vanus that they know what they are do­ing and can do a lot more if they have their own bud­get, suit­able fi­nanc­ing, and the pow­er to in­vest col­lec­tive­ly as a com­mu­ni­ty.

With those char­ac­ter­is­tics and abil­i­ties, they can sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly add a com­pre­hen­sive range of sup­port sys­tems to build an over­all prof­itable ecosys­tem for man­age­ment of many chron­ic lifestyle dis­eases that plague the mod­ern world. Such an ecosys­tem en­com­pass­es spas, green spaces, and cli­mate mit­i­gat­ing sys­tems for phys­i­cal ac­tiv­i­ty, in­clud­ing walk­ing, jog­ging, cy­cling, mod­est weightlift­ing, etc. If the com­mu­ni­ty is guid­ed by suit­ably skilled medics and al­lied pro­fes­sion­als, they can in­clude up­grad­ed hous­ing de­signs and com­mu­ni­ty fa­cil­i­ties for short or long-stay vis­i­tors who can ac­cess high-qual­i­ty health care pro­vi­sions in their to­tal­i­ty right there in Cas­tara–clin­ics, phar­ma­cies, and imag­ing and oth­er tech­nolo­gies that can bet­ter in­form and guide up­dat­ing of the mod­ern healthy lifestyle of­fered.

The vi­sion is of a Cas­tara that is a one-stop shop for mod­ern safe and healthy lifestyles that could at­tract for­eign en­tre­pre­neurs and skilled re­mote work­ers alike, whether as res­i­dents or long-term vis­i­tors.

Giv­en the his­tor­i­cal ne­glect of com­mu­ni­ty de­vel­op­ment in To­ba­go, Cas­tara as a com­mu­ni­ty has no con­sti­tu­tion­al iden­ti­ty and so it al­so has what might be treat­ed as a weak bal­ance sheet. How­ev­er, that is ex­act­ly why, if it is prop­er­ly em­pow­ered, its safe and healthy lifestyle in­te­grat­ed tourism project could ben­e­fit great­ly from use of project fi­nance to meet its fund­ing needs rather than try­ing to raise cap­i­tal on its own or sim­ply re­ly­ing on the pub­lic purse.

This is es­pe­cial­ly true since the com­mu­ni­ty can on­ly scale up its mod­el with large-scale in­fra­struc­ture in­vest­ments via a lim­it­ed li­a­bil­i­ty com­mu­ni­ty in­vest­ment fi­nanc­ing ve­hi­cle (LL­CIV). An LL­CIV can on­ly be cred­i­ble when the flow of in­for­ma­tion is full and trans­par­ent, but that is ex­act­ly the prac­tice Cas­tara wants to adopt if prop­er­ly em­pow­ered.

This is the Cas­tara take on con­sti­tu­tion re­form.