Bahama Pundit

More Culture Wars in the Bahamas

by Larry Smith

"Bahamian nationalism is a nebulous thing, difficult to describe...Trying to get a handle on what is Bahamian is like trying to catch a fish with one's bare hands." - Nicolette Bethel

Last week's article on Bahamian identity and cultural activity generated some comment from the cognoscenti.

Two inter-connected points emerged from that discussion. There certainly are institutions, laws and resources to support and protect Bahamian heritage, but our cultural industries are nonetheless in a perilous state of decline.

Any attempt to analyse why this is so must look at where we've come from. As College of the Bahamas lecturer Ian Strachan put it, slavery convinced black Bahamians of their inferiority while colonialism robbed all Bahamians of their confidence.

Prime Minister’s Question Time – Part 1

by Simon

•Simon is a young Bahamian with things on his mind who wishes to remain anonymous. His column 'Front Porch' is published every Tuesday in the Nassau Guardian. He can be reached at frontporchguardian@gmail.com.

The prime minister faces some of the pricklier questions of his political career beyond the routine queries posed by the Opposition in the House of Assembly during questions to ministers.

More compelling are a boil-up of questions cum crises, including what may turn out to be the worst economic downturn in an independent Bahamas, the latest “developed world” challenge to our financial services sector, and to tweak a saying, the valley of the shadow of increasing public debt.

The PM’s judgements on these questions will determine how the country responds to and emerges from this economic crisis, how the FNM fares in the next general election and, longer-term, what legacy he bequeaths to the country and his party.

Culture Wars in the Bahamas

by Larry Smith

You might not know it, but there is a fire burning among artists and intellectuals who believe we are in grave danger of losing our cultural heritage - all the things that make us Bahamian.

They say that the products of Bahamian culture - our music, theatre, literature, art, buildings and folkways - are under-rated, under-supported and under threat.

More to the point, they argue that the disintegration of our cultural attractions over the years has led to a tourism product so barren and boring that one trip up a deteriorating Bay street completes a visit.

According to architect Pat Rahming, the services that deliver a unique experience are what makes a destination successful. And in our case, those services - defined as tours, attractions and entertainment - have been allowed "to crumble, rot, or go out of business."

In other words, there is no Bahamian brand, a term which refers to how we package and market the Bahamian way of life - the things that distinguish us from other countries, and that are expressed through the cultural products mentioned above.

Who’s At the World's Table?

by Simon

•Simon is a young Bahamian with things on his mind who wishes to remain anonymous. His column 'Front Porch' is published every Tuesday in the Nassau Guardian. He can be reached at frontporchguardian@gmail.com.

The G20, which actually has more than 20 standing participants, is a mix of individual countries, regional groupings, international organizations and the European Union.

Its rapid “evolution” is a harbinger of things to come and a swan-song for an old world order -- on life support.

Growing out of the G8, the new club is becoming economically, politically and culturally more diverse.  Yet, as it evolves, its principles, structures and decisions must be agreed by a broader international consensus and greater transparency.

Reforms On The Way To Change Our Healthcare Paradigm

by Larry Smith

According to Health Minister Hubert Minnis, the government will soon propose major medical reforms that can be expected to spark a huge debate in parliament.

A centrepiece of the proposals will be a nation-wide prescription drug plan that will feature a computer database of patients, as well as an education and follow-up programme to ensure that people take their medications and make necessary lifestyle changes.

The reason is that we are facing a healthcare crunch similar to that faced by the US - costs are skyrocketing and resources are running out. The big challenge today is to find a sustainable solution, something that requires a "paradigm shift" in the healthcare industry, experts say.

In other words, we will have to change our frame of reference from over-reliance on tertiary medicine, which focuses on expensive hospital care, to lower-cost preventive medicine that is more patient-driven. What does this mean? Well, it costs $60,000 a year for the Princess Margaret Hospital to keep a patient with kidney failure alive - and there are more than 200 patients undergoing dialysis as we speak.

G20 Pomp and Circumstance

by Simon

•Simon is a young Bahamian with things on his mind who wishes to remain anonymous. His column 'Front Porch' is published every Tuesday in the Nassau Guardian. He can be reached at frontporchguardian@gmail.com.

Amidst the pomp, protests and posturing at last week’s Masters of the Universe gathering in London some may have missed the shifting world order and illusion of reality the G20 gathering represented.  But before there were 20 there were eight.

Not since the Warsaw Pact fractured after the collapse of the Berlin Wall did an international group fizzle into irrelevance almost overnight.  Panicked by a global economic meltdown, the exclusive G8 club resembled a skeleton crew struggling to redirect a supertanker away from a Category 5 hurricane.

Perhaps the G-“Eight is Enough” can dissolve into an old gentleman’s club reminiscing about simpler times when a few, mostly men, set the rules for the majority of the world, whose leaders, including India and China, with one-third of the world’s people, were not invited to the members only fraternity.

Debating the Ban on Harvesting Wild Sea Turtles in The Bahamas

by Larry Smith

The turtle is a central figure in aboriginal cultures. Many Amerindian creation myths say our world is carried through the universe on the back of a turtle - one of the most ancient and longest-lived animals on Earth.

And that's not a bad image because today we know that sea turtles navigate for thousands of miles around the oceans, apparently by sensing the direction and intensity of the Earth's magnetic field.

But it is hardly surprising that they figured so prominently in early legends. Extrapolating from historical accounts, scientists have determined that there were once more than 100 million Green and Hawksbill turtles - the most common varieties - in the wider Caribbean.

"Infinite numbers" of Green turtles were reported off the Cayman Islands in the 17th century. There were “inexhaustible supplies" off the Nicaraguan coast in 1827. And export data from the 1900s produce an estimate of a million adult Hawksbills in the Bahamas alone.

Clearly, surviving populations are only a fraction of one per cent of historical numbers.

Falling Into Racial Traps – Part 3

by Simon

•Simon is a young Bahamian with things on his mind who wishes to remain anonymous. His column 'Front Porch' is published every Tuesday in the Nassau Guardian. He can be reached at frontporchguardian@gmail.com.

One of the primary reasons we continually fall into racial traps is a purposefully induced amnesia which whitewashes and bleaches history, rendering it incomplete because of the same racist agenda which produced the transatlantic slave trade and its brutal aftermath.

A stubborn and sinister racial trap is the diminution of the underpinnings for and the historical reality of the transatlantic slave trade.  Far too many still believe that this trade was just another example of slavery similar to other forms of slavery throughout history.

Some go so far as to attempt to soothe their historical conscience and consciousness even by equating that trade with various practices of Africans who may have enslaved fellow Africans.