Imbuia

Who knows?

Who knows? Who knows? Who knows?

I just go where the trade wind blows.

Protoje, “Who Knows”.

The year is 2020. I’m working two part-time jobs to support myself at Harvard — quite literally picking up other students’ dirty laundry to make ends meet. I’m as happy as I’ve ever been.

Now it’s 2022. I write this column from a rainforested hillside above the Caribbean. I own that hillside, as much as a person can own anything magic — a riot of green too alive to ever end, until it reaches a sea so sapphire it sings like a Tibetan bowl. I can see palm trees silhouetted on the surrounding islands of St. Thomas and St. John. Alongside my Harvard ID, my wallet holds my scuba certification license. My island teems with life, from the sea turtles who are my swimming partners to the tradewinds ruffling the mango tree growing outside my bedroom window.

How, exactly, did I get here? Let’s rewind to 2020. After being booted from campus, I had two choices: go sleep on the futon at my mom’s and wait for things to get better for me, or make things better for myself. So I talked the Emergency Flight fund folks into diverting me to Puerto Rico, where I’d work in a remote rainforest on an ecological restoration crew. I’d sleep in a tent above the forest, coqui frogs singing me to sleep. This lasted only so long before Puerto Rico’s restrictions made it illegal to be outside. The ecological restoration project was cancelled. But not before I’d met my soulmate on the island next door.

St. Croix is a U.S. Virgin Island 60 miles south of Puerto Rico. I flew in on a seaplane, a rickety little contraption smaller than a car. The Caribbean glittered azure below me, captivating my imagination the entire flight through. It was my first time ever seeing it.

I was going to stay in the empty wing of a house belonging to the man I’d been seeing — the soulmate in question, though I didn’t know that yet. It was a beautiful house atop a hill with sweeping ocean views; he was a beautiful man with vision. The ceilings were imbuia, a sleek Brazilian wood resistant to termites and environmental battering. My plan was to stay a few days, maybe a week. As it turns out, I never left.

Instead I built a life and a love. I revived a secret garden from beneath a half-century of poison vines. I dug elbows-deep into renovation projects, learning much more about basic electrical wiring and septic systems than I ever wanted to. I became scuba certified, devouring The Guide to the Caribbean Reef until I could identify every species of octopus, angelfish, and shark on sight. I gave my mom a vacation to the Caribbean. I saw my three younger siblings for the first time in more than four years and marveled at the resilient, fascinating people they’d become. I made friends twice my age and hosted parties for hundreds of strangers. I didn’t have to work — let alone at my usual minimum-wage jobs — so I wrote a novel instead.

When I returned to campus last semester, I did so with high hopes. I finally had the advantages of a “typical” Harvard student. Meaning I didn’t have to pick up anyone’s dirty laundry anymore. But financial security doesn’t equal belonging. It wasn’t long before I realized that spending two years building a life from scratch made me an alien among the swarms of eighteen year olds who’d spent the past two years living with their parents, cocooned in their childhood bedrooms. So much of my identity at Harvard had been about being someone who struggled. Now that I didn’t struggle, who was I? It took some time, but I learned that I’m someone who builds something from nothing — again and again.

I would never get my Harvard back, so I built a new one. Again, I built an intentional community from scratch, this time my own age. This community saved me — you know who you are. I cold-emailed people I admire and built relationships I’d only dreamed of during my senior year. Because if there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s this: It is never too late.

My story is far from the only one that calls for a record-scratch, freeze-frame. This column celebrates the lives that First-Generation, Low-Income students built from the ground up during a period of incomprehensible chaos. What did we build after being evicted from our dorms? How did these lives change the way we experience Harvard? What did we give up, what did we gain, what did we trade? This column reminds us that we are surrounded by builders. The name “The Trades” comes from the unexpected but powerful tradewinds that sweep the Caribbean. Through the power of storytelling, we’ll explore how our environments impact our identities. And how we shape our environments right back.

— Abby T. Forbes ’22 is a Philosophy concentrator in Adams House. Her column “The Trades” appears on alternate Fridays.