On Statia, nothing ever really gets lost. Whatever disappears will eventually turn up again — usually at the neighbour’s place. A hammer, a garden chair, sometimes even a fridge: everything gets a second, third, or fourth life.

And sometimes it goes a step further. The island is full of useful but not-quite-usable things: a rope just too short, a fishing rod missing the middle part, a drill without a charger, a battery without either… or a nearly complete fridge, but without the door. On Statia, even that isn’t waste — it’s simply “for later”.

People take these finds home with the best intentions: one day they’ll do something with them. And so, little collections appear in gardens all over the island — piles of “projects still to be developed.” Sometimes they sit there for years, sometimes they migrate to another part of Statia — where the ideas circus cheerfully starts all over again.

The word circular could have been invented here.