“Sprinkled along the waste of years. Full many a soft green isle appears: Pause where we may upon the desert road, Some shelter is in sight, some sacred safe abode.”
John Keble

There’s lots of information on this website about visiting St Helena, but what about moving here to live permanently? Is it what you want? Are you up to the challenge? Think so? Read on…

Home?

Go to: Do you want… • Can you cope with… • How to live here • What to bring (and what to leave behind) • Thoughts on bringing a vehicle • Read More

Do you want…

A more relaxed lifestyle. One where you can leave your car unlocked and come back and find not just the car but all the contents too? Where people smile at you when you pass them in the street, and are always happy to stop for a chat? Where kids can play outside, unattended, and you won’t worry if they don’t come home until they’re hungry? Where you won’t get mugged or robbed in the street and there are no ‘no-go’ areas. Where great scenery is just a few minutes drive away, or even on your doorstep. Where you can drive the entire island and not see a single traffic light, and you can park all day in Jamestown without paying a penny? Where work stops at going home time and the rest of the day is yours to do with as you please? Where the weather is warm, the air is fresh and the night-time skies dark?

If these things appeal to you, then St Helena may be a good place for you to live. But what are the catches? Can any place be so perfect? Well, yes, there are some issues about living here. Some are just matters of acclimatisation and others can remain a problem, possibly forever.

St Helena is good if you like an outdoor life. It’s good if you have small children, where the safety and security mean you can give them far more freedom to roam than most anywhere else and the schools follow the UK curriculum so they won’t miss out on their education. And it’s great if you like being with people. Be open and friendly with the locals and they will be open and friendly back. People-people get on well here.

But…

Can you cope with…

Can you cope with:

The laid-back attitude. St Helena is relaxed, but is it too relaxed? Some find the lack of pace disturbing. If you’re used to a world where everyone rushes to meet your needs then you may find the laid-back attitude of local people hard to adjust to. If someone says they’ll meet you at 10am, they will probably turn up somewhere between 10 and half-past; or maybe not at all. This goes for tradespersons too (plummers; carpenters; etc.). Think mañana, then add a bit. If that is going to stress you, this is not a good place to live. The flip-side is, of course, that nobody will mind if you’re a little bit late yourself. Read more about timekeeping on our Time page.

Shortages. These, especially of food, can be an issue. You go into a shop and they say they don’t have any potatoes. Neither do any of the other shops. There may be a few in tins, if you can ferret them out. And if you get agitated about it the shop assistants look puzzled, or even pitying. Running out of things is part of life here. Much of what is needed for everyday life is imported and, with limited cash flow, keeping enough stock to meet an unexpected jump in demand is just not possible. This is especially the case in February and early March; the retailers spend all their money in September/October buying Christmas stock, but until this is sold (in December) they have no funds for ordering food until January, so once the Christmas food runs out there is a shortage of just-about everything. So shortages will occur, and there is no point in getting excited about it because there is nothing you can do. Your request will be declined politely, maybe even with a fatalistic smile, but that’s it - it isn’t on the island so you can’t have it until the next ship arrives - or maybe the one after that. Here you don’t find a recipe then set out to buy the ingredients; you see what you can buy and then look up (or make up) a recipe to use them. One thing is interesting, however: there never seem to be shortages of beer or cigarettes. And on the plus side, once you get integrated into the local culture people will pass on tips about what’s available where. You also need to be aware that many of the goods sold here are ‘seconds’, i.e. devices with known defects that could not be sold at full price in the UK, though they are sold without discount here.

Paperwork. You’d think on a small island where everybody pretty-much knows everybody else paperwork would not be a problem. But, sadly, St Helena was colonised by the British, and both paperwork and administration can be a nightmare. Take a simple example: a chap buys a drill in a shop, intending to do some DIY, and also buys some drill bits. When he gets home he finds that the bits do not fit the drill. So he goes back to the shop, and they agree with him that the bits do not fit the drill (maybe they could have pointed that out at the counter…). It then transpires that they do not have any bits to fit this drill. Neither do they have any drills that take the bits he has bought. So he asks for a refund, expecting a simple hand-back-the-goods/collect-the-cash process. Ah, no. They write him out a slip of paper. He has to take this piece of paper across the road to the offices there. After a brief wait the person behind the desk examines the piece of paper, then stamps it and gives it back to him. He can then take it back across the road to collect his refund. Is this piece of administration necessary for the proper running of the business? Probably not, but that was their way. So don’t imagine you will be leaving paperwork and administration behind you when you get off the ship.

Being cut-off. If you want to live in a connected world, this is certainly not the place for you. The Internet is slow and expensive. Compare the prices and options here with what’s available where you live. Mobile ‘phones are available but with limited coverage. Some satellite ‘phones work here but they can’t be bought locally and neither can operating contracts. (Please see our Communications page for more.) So if you live your life in the connected world, St Helena could be a big disappointment. But then who needs the Internet anyway, when you can hear everything you need to know (and all the gossip too) just by chatting to people outside the market?

Teenager issues. If you have small children they will do well here, but you may encounter a few issues when they reach teenage. Education is not a problem unless your child is determined to do obscure ‘A’-levels that aren’t available through Distance Learning. There just isn’t much for teenagers under 18 to do outside school. New Horizons is a youth centre for under 18s but the emphasis is on sporting activities. There are Scouts and Guides if that is your thing. That’s about it. The Internet is costly and limited, so you can’t live online. Games consoles, iPods, laptops and all the other paraphernalia teenagers seem to need today are expensive, and if they go wrong there is nobody who can fix them. St Helena is not an ideal place to bring teenagers unless they are of the more sporty persuasion.

Health. If you are not relativly fit and healthy, and particular if you suffer from any significant chronic complaints, you might want to contact the Government of St Helena to check that your condition can be managed here. You should also ask about the cost - Non-Saints pay the full cost of medical treatment. The local medical services are excellent for most general complaints but anything more complex requires a trip to Cape Town (at your expense). Diabetes is, however, well managed here because about 15% of the population are diabetic. High blood pressure is also common{1}.

Similarly if you are disabled you need to be aware that there are no laws requiring businesses to provide disabled access and no protection against discrimination on the grounds of a disability. Some buildings in Jamestown have limited wheelchair access but most are reached by steps from the street. Even the hospital has only limited wheelchair access! People will be delighted to help you overcome any obstacles but you cannot expect to be truly independent unless you are fully able-bodied{2}.

Scrapped Asphalt Plant

Scrapped Bailey Bridge

Things that don’t work…often for no obvious reason. We’re not sure what the problem is, but it happens a lot. In recent years we’ve had the “Bailey Bridge”: supposed to be a pontoon to help with offloading cruise ships, which didn’t work because the sea doesn’t just go up and down, it also goes from left to right; The Asphalt Plant: purchased at great expense to improve the island’s roads, but supplied with parts missing and never made to work; even the Airport: built at a cost of £285million and only when it was built was it discovered that the wind would make it difficult for planes to land{3}. Some say Napoleon cursed St Helena for all time, but actually it goes back much further than Napoleon. This from the Records{4} for over 100 years earlier (1697):

Two of the Company’s ships lying at anchor were cut off in the roadstead by French boats, which came in under Dutch colours in broad daylight. When their nationality was discovered, orders were issued by the Governor that they should be fired upon, but the powder was not at hand, and the sponges did not fit the guns, so the French ships were soon out of sight.

If you can’t laugh, you probably shouldn’t try to live here.

And finally, feeling abandoned. Some people describe a near-panic that descends upon them the day the ship that brought them sails away, leaving them no way off the island until the ship returns, maybe three weeks later. For most this is a passing moment. Just a few find the isolation distressing.

How to live here

Coming here as a visitor is quite simple. Coming here to live is a bit more complicated. You will need to sort out somewhere to live and you will need a job (unless you have a personal fortune to rely on).

Please note: the following is our understanding of the applicable laws, but we are not legal advisors and anyway the regulations change periodically. Please check your facts with the Government of St Helena before making any decisions.

See also our visitors’ Tips and tricks when here.

A job on St Helena

If you need to work to support yourself please see our Jobs on St Helena page for more on finding work here.

Can you earn enough to live here, or afford to live here without working? You need to be able to spend a minimum of £10,000 per person per annum to survive here; more if you want to live in style, and that doesn’t include any trips overseas.

A home on the island

To find out more about housing go to our Houses page. Properties are for sale here, and are also available to rent.

Even if you don’t have Saint Status you can buy a property with up to 2 acres of land without impediment; larger than that and you need an Immigrant Landholding Licence. This Licence is specific to an individual property, so if you want to sell your acres and buy something else you will need a new Licence.

Similarly, as a non-Saint you can rent a property for up to 1 year before needing a Licence{5}. There are no rental agencies actually on St Helena so there is no central place on the island to contact to arrange a rental. You could try Huxtable St Helena Ltd., St Helena Property Finder or the Tourist Office may be able to help.

Approaching St Helena on the southbound RMS

What to bring (and what to leave behind)

When you announce you are coming to St Helena to live (even if only for a year or two) you will be flooded with advice about what to bring and what not to. Much of this is well meaning but wildly inaccurate, even when issued by official sources! In an attempt to provide some useful information we present (below) our list of things to bring and things not to bring. Please note that this is our ‘best effort’ and we’d appreciate suggestions - please contact us

Thoughts on bringing a vehicle

A reader sent us the following comment on our suggestion above about bringing a vehicle:

The reality of it is that either a 200TDI or a 300TDI Land Rover in either the 90 or 110 variant is perhaps the better vehicle to bring to the island for visitors who intend stay for a bit or those that intend coming to live here for a while. Government staff being sent here have often commented that FCO have advised them to bring their car and when it comes here it can’t be fixed when there’s a fault. FCO obviously have little to no idea what is and what isn’t needed here. The few that have brought Land Rovers have expressed delight in having brought along a suitable vehicle that enables them to see much further ahead on roads such as Ladder Hill & Side Path and are more than capable in handling the atrocious road surfaces that ruin the suspension on ordinary cars.

TD5 and the Ford Puma Land Rovers are slowing becoming popular but be aware - these two vehicles are computer controlled and so aren’t always easy to fix when a fault develops.

There are a good many 300TDI Land Rovers here and parts are readily available from a few vendors. These vehicles have the refinement of cars and best of all can be fixed by almost anyone with a little mechanical know-how.

Bruce Salt, ZD7VC, 13^th August 2016{11}

Read More

Go to: Sources • Article: “Shopping a daily puzzle on remote St Helena”

Sources

Before you make a decision we recommend you read the book Curious Little World - A Self-Imposed Exile on St Helena Island, by Rex Bartlett. It tells how Rex and his partner Cynthia bought a property here (with no electricity, water or sewage system) and set about doing it up. As Rex writes, “You’ll laugh. You’ll cry. You’ll be glad it’s not you. And you’ll wish it was.”

You could also read the blog Notes From St Helena{12}, a personal view of life here written by John Turner (Director of the Moonbeams Shop) during his first nine months on St Helena in 2005.

Many other blogs{12} are also available, mostly written by “ex-pats” - that’s people, usually from the UK, who come here to work for a few years before returning home. They are useful for reading about how St Helena differs from the UK and what seems strange to a new arrival, but the authors are never intending to stay long-term so they lack detail in this respect. Search for them on Google™ - “saint helena blog” would be good keywords.

You should also download each week’s newspaper to find out what goes on here.

Article: “Shopping a daily puzzle on remote St Helena”

Bangkok Post, 16^th April 2015{11}

JAMESTOWN - If you think grocery shopping is a chore, spare a moment for those on the tiny island of Saint Helena who never know what will be on the shelves from one day to the next.

The 4,200 inhabitants of Saint Helena have resigned themselves to the reality that choice is a luxury in a place where supplies come only every three weeks on a ship from Cape Town

“This is like living under Soviet rule,” jokes Francois Haffner, a French tourist determined to eat well on the remote South Atlantic island, famous as the place the French military leader Napoleon was exiled until his death in 1821. “In the first store there is butter, in another there are lemons, and in the third you can find some cream. There are no greens, and eggs aren’t there every day,” said an exasperated Haffner. “The fish comes at 1:00 pm, the bread after 11:00 am -- but no later than 12 noon -- and all the shops close at 5:00 pm.” The shopping schedule requires that hungry tourists and residents dedicate a good chunk of time to planning how to fill their stomachs. “There are no stores where you can find everything, and shopping takes some time,” said Haffner. Still, he is determined never to visit the frozen food section, which was stocked with last year’s Christmas pudding in March.

- Choice is a luxury -

In contrast with Haffner, the 4,200 inhabitants of the British island are more relaxed about the grocery situation, having resigned themselves to the reality that choice is a luxury in a place where supplies come only every three weeks on a ship from Cape Town. As a result, shopping in the island’s capital, Jamestown, requires some flexibility and a close knowledge of the ship’s schedule.

“Of course, you do not want to starve, but it is better not to look for something specific,” says David Pryce, a native of England who studies insects on the island. “A successful islander has to balance patience with spontaneity”, he says. “You have to make the rounds of stores every day. And if you see something, you have to buy it.”

However, sometimes excitement over new items causes problems, says Tara Thomas, whose family owns four convenience stores. “When bottled water hits the shop, people bulk buy. They panic buy, and they create another shortage,” she says. “If people had a normal consumer behaviour, we wouldn’t have so many problems.”

- Little local produce -

Most produce on the island comes from Britain or South Africa. Little is made domestically. There are cows, for example, but no fresh milk. “We have farmers, but they do not produce enough,” moans Thomas. What little local produce exists is often bartered between islanders or snapped up by hotels and restaurants before reaching the shelves.

Still, some are hoping to capitalise on the scarcity. Mirroring the fashion overseas for self-sufficiency, entrepreneurs have started small-scale farming. Joshua Martin{13}, 39, has set up a business delivering tomatoes and cucumbers that he produces in polytunnels. While his venture is a success, Martin complains there is little coordination between the producers. “Everyone produces the same,” he says.

Then there is the issue of reliability. “The problem is that we are not regular,” says Aaron Legg, a 30-year-old guide who grows bananas. “Retailers cannot rely on us and they have to import.” It’s not for lack of want, says Legg, who plans to start growing onions. “The island imports 70 tonnes of onions a year from South Africa,” he says incredulously. “If there were onions every day on the shelves people would buy more. There is a huge market.”

Shop owners worry that with such short supply they will not be able to accommodate an influx of tourists when weekly flights start between the island and Johannesburg in February next year. With the monthly ship service set to end after the introduction of the flights, retailers worry their produce options will decrease. Now they’re in a quandary. “It is not profitable for a ship to come more often,” says Nick Thorpe, one of the leading importers on the island. “I have the feeling that if they want the ship to come more often, they will have to subsidise it,” he says.

Whether or not that will happen is another story.

Footnotes:

{1} A relaxed lifestyle and cases of high blood pressure? The explanation is genetic. Most Saints are descended from Africans, whose biology makes them susceptible to high blood pressure. That and a taste for salted food and sugar explain both the high blood pressure and also the diabetes

{2} The editor of this website suffered a stroke a few years ago and walks witrh some difficulty. There are plenty of parts of Jamestown that he simply cannot access.

{3} It later emerged that the wind problem had been predicted, but the prediction was ignored…

{4} The St Helena Records is a collection of documents dating back to the earliest days of St Helena, held in the Government of St Helena Archives. The Archives can be accessed in person or via email - see our Family And Friends page for more. See also our Titbits from the records page.

{5} This rule is easily side-stepped - rent for a year then renew the contract for another year, etc. However there is no rent legislation, so your landlord can freely increase your rent at each renewal

{6} As long as your TV can accept SCART or Composite video (but not HDMI) you should be OK

{7} Saint FM Community Radio, S.A.M.S. Radio 1, S.A.M.S. Radio 2 and S.A.M.S. Pure Gold.

{8} Our only AM station, Radio St Helena closed in 2012.

{9} We, the Turner Family, moved here in 2005

{10} Perhaps the authors of the document thought we still cooked over an open fire and hung meat in trees?

{11} Reproduced for educational non-commercial use only; all copyrights are acknowledged

{12} See more blogs.

{13} Actually he’s Martin Joshua

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