Field Trip to Andros —A Vastly Different Place

by Larry Smith

NORTH ANDROS -- Rivean Gibson Riley is one of the few Bahamians who has given his name to a geological feature.

A native of Staniard Creek - "it's like a gated community except we haven't got around to putting up the gate yet" - Riley was the first of an expedition to arrive at a blue hole near Cargill Creek that the accompanying researchers promptly named after him.

That was eight years ago, when he was just a young man wielding a cutlass. But since then he has earned an ecotourism degree at Hocking College in Ohio, where he made the Dean's list and won a scholarship.

Hocking is one of many colleges that send students to the non-profit Forfar Field Station near Blanket Sound. According to its website, students can "earn certification in SCUBA or sea kayaking off the world’s third largest barrier reef, learn the basics of blue water sailing, and wind-surf around uninhabited islands in The Bahamas."

That doesn't sound like a hardship assignment. But Riley has a tough job these days convincing his fellow Androsians that they can benefit from the environment that many of them regard as simply bush to be scraped, swamp to be filled or coastline to be polluted.

Riley has been interested in nature since high school days, and he enjoyed hanging out at Fofar where he absorbed a lot of information. Eventually he was able to save enough to pay for tuition at Hocking, living at the home of a professor. And after graduation he joined the Bahamas National Trust as parks supervisor for Andros.

In fact, Riley was our guide on a field trip to North Andros this past weekend organised by the BNT. And one of the first stops on the itinerary was an inland blue hole in the Central Andros National Park, where he was able to put his ecological training to good use.

The term 'blue hole' first appeared on charts of the Bahamas in 1843, and there are thousands scattered around the islands - hundreds at Andros alone. Some are inland and some offshore, but each is a portal into an unknown world. Scientists are discovering new species and classes of animals in these unique environments deep underground, as well as ancient fossils and human artifacts and remains.

On Andros, many caves are formed along coastal stress fractures about a mile inland from the offshore wall that plunges into the Tongue of the Ocean. These 150-kilometre-long cracks can easily be seen from the air - and their flooded passages can extend for several kilometres underground.

The Lucayan word for a blue hole was "coaybay'" - or house of the dead - and they were frequently used as burial chambers. In fact, a ceremonial Lucayan canoe was found in association with human remains in the Stargate blue hole near the Bluff on South Andros in 1996 by renowned cave diver Rob Palmer.

The development process for both dry and flooded caves in the Bahamas is the same. They are essentially giant banana holes, and the ones in the ocean were formed during the ice age, when the submerged bank was above the high water mark. Good examples include Mermaid’s Lair and the Lucayan Caverns on Grand Bahama.

A diver named George Benjamin began the first explorations of these unusual cave systems in 1950. He was followed by Jaques Cousteau in the 70s and Rob Palmer in the 80s. Today, the Antiquities, Monuments and Museums Corporation has commissioned Brian Kakuk, a former US Navy hardhat diver with more than 20 years of underwater cave diving experience in the Bahamas, to survey blue holes throughout the country.

The Central Andros National Park was established six years ago and covers more than 280,000 acres - incorporating barrier reef, wetland and forest ecosystems in five distinct park areas. It contains the highest concentration of blue holes in the Bahamas.

The one we visited features observation platforms and boardwalks, as well as useful interpretive signage. From there it was back on the highway to drive through seemingly endless stands of spindly pine trees interspersed with cabbage palms all the way to the northwest tip of Andros.

Red Bays is not quite the cultural oddity that it was before the 20-mile logging road was cut from Lowe Sound in 1968, but it still represents one of the more intriguing stories of Bahamian settlement. It's a tale that lives on through the memories of the town's patriarch - Rev Bertram Newton - and matriarch - Widow Omelia Marshall, both now in their 80s but still active.

You could say that Red Bays was discovered in 1937 by an American anthropologist named John Goggin who happened to meet up with some of the inhabitants at Mastic Point. They were descended from black Seminoles - escaped African slaves from American plantations who migrated into the Florida wilderness in the mid-1700s with a variety of Indian bands that later became known as Seminoles.

Africans and Indians had a mutual interest in securing the Florida territory as a refuge from the American whites. And by the early 1820s, when Florida became a US territory, there were hundreds of former slaves living among the Seminoles, which posed a threat to the institution of slavery itself. According to Dr Rosalyn Howard's 2002 book, Black Seminoles in the Bahamas, the Africans lived independently among the Indians in Florida, paying tribute to the Seminole chiefs.

These free communities were eventually driven southward by attacks from the US Army, into the more remote and inaccessible areas of the peninsula, from where they made a last stand in the mid-1800s. A band of about 200 Indians and blacks held out in the everglades. and were the genesis of today's Seminole tribe, who claim to be the only unconquered indigenous people in the United States.

But in the face of such pressure, several groups of black Seminoles took to their canoes and left Florida for the Bahamas between 1821 and 1837 in what Howard describes as "an epic journey born of desperation, which has a modern counterpart in the Haitian and Cuban boat people." They chose to settle on the remote west coast of Andros, a land behind God's back as they say.

Over 100 of these earliest illegal immigrants were discovered by a Customs officer in 1828 who brought them to Nassau where they were detained for a year before being allowed to return to Red Bays. Rev Newton's great grandfather, Moses Newton, and Omelia Marshall's great grandfather, Scipio Bowleg, were among the names on that 1828 Customs roster.

In fact, Rev Newton, who was head teacher at Red Bays for decades, published a pamphlet in 1968 to record the settlement's oral tradition: "In ones and twos in their dugout canoes, the negro Seminoles crossed the Gulf Stream and landed along the western shore of Andros from the Joulter Cays south. Some Seminole Indians apparently also migrated as a result of theirt long struggle with Americans. These freedom-seeking people congregated in Red Bays."

Howard says the story "emphasizes the fundamental courage and tenacity of those black Seminoles whose journey originated long ago on the plantations of Georgia, South Carolina and Florida", and who recreated their identity and culture in the Bahamas, living an isolated subsistence lifestyle until well into the 20th century.

During our visit Red Bays was gearing up for the annual Snapper Fest, although it is now some three miles inland from the original settlement site along the low-lying coast. The community was forced to move after the 1899 hurricane killed more than a hundred people. A similar situation exists today at nearby Lowe Sound, where the government is encouraging residents to build on higher ground to escape the deadly storm surge that will inevitably come one day.

Just off the road to Red Bays is a unique feature known as Jungle Pond. This is a surprising pocket of mangroves growing on a 10-foot-thick mat of algae covering a 150-foot diameter blue hole. Stepping onto the swampy, overgrown surface is like entering a lost world. Giant custard apple trees compete with the largest red mangroves on Andros, and every branch drips with orchids and bromeliads. It is a remarkable oasis in the middle of a vast pine barren.

Accommodation for the dozen or so people who took part in the field trip was provided by the Pineville Motel in Nicholl's Town, an eccentric hostelry owned and operated by one Eugene Campbell, whose pet goat trots behind him everywhere like a puppy. Participants included a Customs broker, two bankers (one retired), a Junkanoo artist and photographer, a real estate agent, a physiotherapist, a graphic artist and yours truly.

It was one of a series of tours being organised by the BNT for two purposes - to educate interested persons about the flora and fauna of the Bahamas, and to show family islanders that they can generate income from the environment. The tour begins with a two-hour Bahamas Ferries voyage to Fresh Creek. Once fortified by a traditional breakfast of stewed and boiled fish at the Lighthouse Club, participants board a bus for the trip to Nicholl's Town and Red Bays.

"We know there is a pent-up demand for this sort of thing," BNT Executive Director Eric Carey told me. "People want to know about our national parks and the natural environment in general. When we organise nature walks on New Providence we can have as many as a hundred people show up. Right now we are exploring destinations and activities to get the right mix and also seeking to get the Ministry of Tourism involved. This kind of domestic tourism can provide many benefits for local communities."

As Professor Howard notes in her book, life in Nassau today is likened in a popular Bahamian song to living in "sardine cans", where all food and water is imported and where people can no longer sleep without bars on their windows. Andros is a vastly different place, and well worth the time to visit.

Comments

[C.Lowe]

Hi Larry,
my son and I stayed at Fofar Field Station on a school trip about 5 years ago from Freeport.
An oasis for sure, we saw all the sights you desribe. There was one blue hole that apparently has some thermal activity which has only partially been investigated.
It is not far by boat from Fofar.
For me, thanks for the trip down memory lane. AS for the tourism potential, I hope the Min. of TOurism will catch on, but not mess it up. Perhaps their $96 million budget could go to the Trust to be put to productive use?

[Rick]

Makes me sorry I couldn't go Larry.
Thanks,

[maureen pinder]

I do enjoy your tough call newspaper article, and just wanted to let you know that.

You, know, my saying is that when we're young enough to enjoy living we're too naive, too broke (or something) to do it, & when we do learn how to live like we want we're too old to do it !!!!!

I still want to visit all our islands, and so says many of our friends. The BNT may just have something for everyone in this regard.

[C.Lowe]

If we had inter island transportation figured out, those sorts of island hopping trips would be incredible. I just think having to "hub" through Nassau kills that potential. I'd rather be cruising a 10 knots for hours than sitting in the NAD for hours waiting.
The mailboats have had some success, and I did a lot of that in my teens with my motorbike, but it is right up there with the absence of "bed and breakfast" type resorts, that haven't really been developed as they could have been.
Larry you may be able to correct me if I am wrong but these have been somewhat frowned upon by Government right?
Is the room tax too hard to collect or something?

[larry smith]

Not that I am aware of, although there is a general preference in the government for large investments. However, I am sure that the issue you mention does exist. Hmmm, maybe that's a topic for another time?