Maryann Rolle spent $50,000 of her own money trying to feed and house organisers, but never received a cent from them.
If you happened to watch 'Fyre' on Netflix this weekend, you're no doubt familiar with the utter shit-show that was Fyre Festival.
The level of incompetency and utter disregard for people's livelihoods is horrifying to watch, and you may even physically cringe at the level of influencer-hyped fakery, but there's a very real cost to all of this - and the people of the Exumas are paying the price to this day.
One interviewee, Maryanne Rolle, claimed that she lost $50,000 of her own money in trying to pay for staff and serving food to the organisers of Fyre Festival and the festival goers who turned up. Shortly after the festival collapsed, Rolle spoke to Tribune242 - a local Bahamian outlet - and explained why she did it.
"You’re thinking it’s real, we liaison in good faith. In the Bahamas, sometimes we tend to get careless about business and we lean more to good faith, that’s our culture. They invested a lot of money, and that was what I was looking at, the investment that went forward. It was no way they were gonna have you do all this work and not pay you and it’s not going to come off well."
Rolle explained that she was contracted to provide catering for the festival, and when the credit card was repeatedly declined, she was promised a lump sum payment by wire transfer - which, as anyone who saw the documentary knows, never happened.
Now, Maryann Rolle is trying to raise money to help save her business and stay afloat. A GoFundMe page has been set by up Maryanne Rolle and has so far raised $34,217 as of writing, with a target set of $123,000 - presumably the amount she was owed by the festival.
You can donate to the fundraising page here. 'Fyre' is currently streaming on Netflix.