Moving to the British Virgin Islands gave Emma and Kevin Drysdale the chance to start a new life, and a new family.
Emma and Kevin Drysdale couldn’t really have chosen anywhere more different to Newcastle-Upon-Tyne when they upped sticks and moved to the British Virgin Islands in March 2006.
“We’d been living in Newcastle since we’d got married and we were both from the area,” explains Emma. “I was working as a PR consultant in the city and Kevin was working as a chartered surveyor.”
Their lives changed when Kevin was contacted by a headhunter looking to recruit a surveyor for a position in the British Virgin Islands. As it’s a British overseas territory, his qualifications are recognised there.
“We’d just bought a new house at the time,” says Emma, “and we were doing it up; it was really cold, we still had loads of work to do on it and when this opportunity came up to move to the Caribbean, it seemed really attractive.
“Then Kevin spoke to one of the directors of the company here. It was a real coincidence as it turned out that he knew Kevin’s father and soon after he was offered the job.”
The couple talked about the pros and cons of moving. Their biggest concern was having to leave their families behind, but they eventually decided that it was a once in a lifetime opportunity and that they had to go for it.
“If we hadn’t come here, we’d always be thinking ‘what if?’” says Emma. “And at the time we didn’t have any children, so it seemed a good time to give it a go.”
Kevin’s firm put the couple up for a month in a one bedroom apartment at the well-positioned Lambert Beach Resort and they also helped with the shipping, arranging Kevin’s work permit and the immigration paperwork. Immigrants need a work permit to work in the British Virgin Islands and not having a job, Emma had to come as Kevin’s dependent. But Emma says that there was so much to do when they first arrived that not working didn’t bother her.
“There was a big financial incentive for Kevin to take a job here, so financially I knew that I didn’t have to work. And it is such a massive adjustment when you first get here: there is so much to sort out that I was always busy. I had to sort out a permanent place to live, deal with the immigration bureaucracy, and even doing things like setting up a phone line or electricity account takes so much longer than it would in the UK.”
The couple sold their home in the UK, but kept on another house that they had rented out back home to give them a bit of extra security. The place they now call home is a condominium on the coast at Nanny Cay.
