Eighty members of the US Congress and top business professionals enjoyed a day in Anguilla on Sunday, November 10. They were part of a group of some three hundred members of the ‘Black Caucus’ and private sector representatives who were attending a Carib News conference in nearby St. Maarten.
Chief Minister and Minister of Tourism, Osbourne Fleming, told The Anguillian that the opportunity was taken to invite them to Anguilla. “We thought it would have been nice to invite them to Anguilla and we are happy to have about eighty here,” he said. “These are Congressmen, Congresswomen – Black Caucus people – and entrepreneurs. We feel that they can do a lot for us in our tourism plant

They were welcomed and entertained at the Rendezvous Bay Hotel and were addressed by the Chief Minister Fleming and Minister of Finance and Economic Development, Victor Banks, and personnel from the Anguilla Tourist Board. Local musicians, including Dumpa on the steel pan, were also on hand to provide entertainment for them. The visitors were treated to some of the finest West Indian dishes along with locally grown produce decorating the tables.

The majority of the visitors toured some of the island’s large hotels to get an appreciation of the level of tourism accommodation facilities and services available.
Among the visitors were Dr. Carl Rodney and his wife, Faye, publishers of the New York Carib News, a weekly Caribbean newspaper that has been publishing in the United States for the past twenty years.

Dr. Rodney spoke to The Anguillian as follows: “The Caribbean, as you know, is a unit almost; so what we try to have people get a flavour of the Caribbean. We were in St. Maarten for four days and Anguilla is right next door and so we felt it would be good to get a flavour of Anguilla. Of course it is such a delightful country and your Chief Minister was insistent that if we are so near we need to come to Anguilla and so our elected officials, members of Congress, felt that they wanted to expand their knowledge of the Caribbean and come to Anguilla.”
Anguilla’s grand old man, owner of Rendezvous Bay Hotel and former ‘Ambassador-at-Large’ in the early years of the island’s revolution, Jeremiah Gumbs, expressed delight with the visit to Anguilla and was grateful that the visitors were hosted at his property.

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