It sounds like such a cliché, but the Bahamian people we have met are just so nice! They are pleasant, happy, seemingly content, genuinely seem to want to help with anything you ask about, and are amazingly polite and unruffled even when ugly Americans make demands. We are often offered rides by people when they see us walking down the road. When Erin left her passport in the Nassau airport and realized it halfway to the marina to meet us, her taxi driver was very accommodating and took her back to find it. It was past midnight. He then stopped at a convenience store to try to add minutes to his phone so Erin could use his phone to call us to let us know where she was since she was an hour later than expected. One of the marina workers offered to come and pick me up from the grocery store in his car when we ran out of time with the 2 hour courtesy car. People have gone out of their ways to help us find parts and stores when we had all of our equipment problems early on.
Handmade boat that is raced in local regattas.
We have not observed any racial tension at all with blacks and whites socializing, and chatting everywhere and many mixed marriages. The Bahamas history includes a period in the late 1700’s in which Loyalists fled the American Revolution and came here to try to recreate the plantation life including bringing slave labor. There don’t seem to be any hard feelings about this past though.
We see lots of kids and young adults here. When asked about the economy, Bahamians acknowledge that there is a shortage of jobs and the cost of living is high, mainly due to high food prices. But no one seems all that worried about it and apparently the young adults stay around for the quality of life. Some go to Nassau, the big city, to find job opportunities, but there is a lot of crime there unlike in the rest of the islands. Similar to what we saw in Mexico, you do see a lot of half-finished projects awaiting more money so more materials can be purchased, but somehow it doesn’t look as poor here.
DJ, our wonderful waiter at Scoprios restaurant in Black Point settlement.
Almost all of the food, except seafood, is imported, most of it from the states. Food costs are 2-3 times what we would pay at home. This has definitely influenced our food choices in the grocery stores. David and I have a love affair with whipped cream (don’t go there!). I found it for $9 a can at one store, but just couldn’t put it in my cart.
In the settlements (small towns), everyone seems to know each other, waving to everyone as they drive by in their golf carts (very few cars on many of the islands). If a kid got into mischief, everyone in the whole town would know it! It kind of reminds me of small Midwest towns.
The children typically go to elementary school on their own island through 6th grade and then take ferries to bigger islands for middle and high school. I asked what they do if it’s bad weather and was told they go anyway! It’s very unusual for them to cancel school. All the children wear very neat uniforms including jackets and ties for the boys and skirts for the girls. The teacher to student ratio is much higher than in the states – something like only 10 students per teacher.
School's out
No one is in a hurry here and store hours are really just suggestions. Stores all tend to close for the lunch hour. On one island, Spanish Wells, we were desperate to do a bit of laundry. There was one place in the whole town with a washer and dryer-literally ONE washer and ONE dryer. They were located around back behind a “grocery store”. We arrived at 12:15, noticed an OPEN sign, but the door was locked. We inquired next door at a daycare place and they said the owner was probably just at lunch. We went to get lunch and came back at 1:30. Still closed. Since there was no other place to do laundry and we were leaving the next morning, we decided to sit on the store porch with our giant bag of dirty clothes and wait. It was hot and we were tired of lugging it around. I had switched into my frustrated “this is not an efficient way to run a business” mode and “it’s ridiculous to only have one washer and dryer to do laundry on this whole island” while we waited. The store owner finally arrived at 2:30. She had been running around the island paying her bills all morning. I had a lesson to learn…we ended up chatting with the store owner while we waited for our laundry to finish. She was delightful and told us a lot about life on the island. If she had been open when we came by initially, we would have hurried on to do our grocery shopping and errands and only returned to pick up our laundry, never pausing to sit and chat.
Gentleman who created "Garden of Eden" in his yard with driftwood and rocks. He gave us a personal tour.
We have visited other Caribbean islands where tourism is the main driver for the economy similar to here, but there is just a different feel here. You get the feeling that people are genuinely glad to have you visit and don’t resent the fact that you are gobbling up their limited resources and leaving your trash behind. You never have the feeling that they are trying to take advantage of the rich tourist.
Rooster and his hens strolling on beach at Black Point.
It really is Better in the Bahamas!