Bec & Lleyton’s Bahamian Adventure

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.

Lights, camera, action!  A twenty-something Australian princess bride scarcely known to the majority of the natives -- sorry, “locals” -- accompanies her celebrity husband to an idealized Caribbean stage set.  As in any good fairy tale or public relations exercise, the drama quickly unfolds.  After all, there are magazines to sell, careers to promote and prejudices to be exploited in the interest of both. 

Soon after moving to The Bahamas, the transplants realize that “just 25 minutes drive away” from their conveniently adopted paradise home cum tax haven and “gilded cage” the “locals live in abject poverty in the slums of Nassau”.

Welcome to Home and Away Bahamas, a pilot concept for an Australian soap opera intended for a tabloid and celebrity obsessed demographic.  It stars transplants from Down Under in a tropical adventure, battling false expectations and the threat of fearsome natives outside their Old Fort garrison, fortified by barbed wire and the hope that the social scene may soon pick up.

At least this would be the conceit for such a plot, if the producers used material from an article written by Annette Witheridge for the August 31st edition of the Australian Woman’s Day magazine, emblazoned with a typically tabloid and screeching headline: “BEC’S BAHAMAS NIGHTMARE”, purporting to follow the travails of professional tennis player Lleyton Hewitt and his actress wife, Bec, who is reported to be lonely, fearful and disappointed in her new Bahamian home.

Time for a commercial break to acknowledge the quality of the venerable magazine in question: It recently listed the Top 5 True Confessions, including, “He doesn’t know I was nearly a 40 year-old virgin” and “My daughter may be dating her brother”.  Now back to the programme.

Unfortunately, there might be a problem with the source material for Home and Away Bahamas.  The husband of the starlet at the heart of the Bahamian drama, and not far from the “Heart of Darkness” that apparently is the rest of New Providence, trashed the article as “absolute rubbish”.  Incidentally, Home and Away just happens to be the title of an Australian soap opera once featuring Bec.
According to Associated Press, Lleyton Hewitt defended his “adopted Bahamian home”, enthusing that “he and his family have had nothing but "fantastic experiences" in the nearly nine months they have lived in a gated community on New Providence Island.” “We've made great friends over here, everyone's been so friendly and we feel so safe... For us it's a fantastic place to raise a young family."
Which account should we believe?  How much access did Ms. Witheridge have to Bec Hewitt and her family?  Has Ms. Hewitt written articles for the Australian Woman’s Day before?  What is her current relationship with ACP Magazines and ninemsn, both of whom are financially connected to Woman’s Day? Has she been paid by either entity to write columns and for photographic access to the couple?

Besides the aforementioned general rebuttal by Mr. Hewitt, will the couple deny some of the specific claims in the article?  That Ms. Hewitt is fearful of leaving Old Fort?  That Bec wants out of the islands? That one of the reasons she’s lonely, is the fact that while Lleyton is instantly recognised by the sports crazy locals, no-one has any idea who the former Home And Away star Bec is.”? 

The Hewitts are doubly fortunate.  Most of the locals are not into stargazing at the many well known celebrities who usually travel around New Providence and the country untroubled.  As lesser and almost unknown celebrities, the couple should remain scarcely unrecognized by most Bahamians.  

While Mr. Hewitt has described the Bahamas as “fantastic”, it’s too bad that it isn’t one of his wife’s five favourite countries, which are, according to their gauzy website: Australia, the USA, Japan, France and Fiji.  Perhaps The Bahamas is number six or will soon make it into the top five.

Still, since we have been given no reason to doubt Mr. Hewitt, we should take him at his word, and afford him and his wife a hearty and belated welcome to The Bahamas, as the friendly people Mr. Hewitt has observed us to be.  As a reciprocal gesture, perhaps the couple will quickly respond to some of the prior questions.

But, what are we to make of Ms. Witheridge’s intrepid reporting around New Providence, or in her superficial telling, a tale of two cities, one an enclave of super wealth, and the other a squalid cesspool?  Sadly, there is no middle ground and no middle class in this slapdash reporting masquerading as journalism. 

To illustrate the farce, the magazine offers highly selective snapshots which supposedly typify how the barbarians live outside the gated community of Old Fort and beyond.  There is a photo labelled “typical housing”, which is demonstrably not typical for Bahamians, as well as one titled, “unkempt street”, also untypical.

One photo entitled, “impoverished locals” is of a homeless man, again, not typical of how the vast majority of Bahamians live, but typical of urban centres such as those found in Australia, with a homeless population of approximately 100,000 on a given night, and according to the last national census 10 percent of that number being under the age of 12. 

We have seen this type of racist, hackneyed and self-serving genre before in classic literature, letters from the colonies to the mother country, and hit-and-run articles, by tabloid shills, with the literary merit and integrity.

No matter the literary quality, such reportage is often belched out by shallow observers, who, upon arrival in a new destination, attempt to type-cast their unfamiliar settings in the image and likeness of their fantasies and fairy-tales, prejudices and presumptions.

A celluloid version can be found in an old Pan Am movie reel promoting travel from the U.S. to the hot new destination of Nassau.  One of the clips is of a poor black family outside their Adelaide home with the narrator boasting how happy the locals seem, in this case with the natives living in paradise, with not a care in the world, and without the basic resources of those rejoicing in their unspoilt nature.

For many, that Bahamian Eden was spoiled once the “happy” natives in the movie reel got new housing, jobs, electricity, and the right to govern themselves, even though Ms. Witheridge failed to realize that such amenities are now enjoyed by the natives, including some who live in Old Fort and Lyford Cay.

Sadly, hit and run observers, like Ms. Witheridge  also seem not to have noticed that the natives have escaped their postcards, tourist brochures and colonialism, and are, for the most part, successfully running a developing country, not without growing pains and social problems, but also with notable success and considerable promise.  Some of the natives even live in Old Fort and Lyford Cay.

The Bahamas is not the earthly paradise of Dante’s Divine Comedy, but, nor is it the inferno of social pathology and economic despair described in Ms. Witheridge’s sloppy, misinformed and sometimes factually incorrect “reportage”, botoxed by the usual tabloid injections of sensationalism and distortions.

The article resembles much of Ms. Witheridge’s other journalistic masterpieces, including:  “Michael Jackson: Why it's better that he died, says Rupert Everett as he also dishes dirt on Katie Price and the US” and “Mickey Rourke: ‘He was a shy mummy's boy... fame drove him to drink, drugs & too much plastic surgery. But now he's back on top’ ”.  Surely, a Pulitzer can’t be far behind?

By the way, had Ms. Witheridge bothered to check more facts, she would have known that the population of New Providence is not 330,000, as she reported. That 
number is considered to be the population of the entire Bahamas at the last census. 

Perhaps, Woman’s Day should fly Ms. Witheridge out to Australia to do some real reporting on the centuries of racism against the aboriginal people which has left scores of them in the type of abject poverty and social despair that is less commonplace in The Bahamas.  Of course, there is also white poverty in Oz.

Or, she might do a story on the thousands of asylum seekers and their children the previous Australian government of John Howard detained for years on foreign soil in special centres, a plan often labelled as the “Pacific Solution”.

Or, she might investigate why Australia produces citizens who commit brutal crimes such as the robbery and murder of a disabled taxi driver in Sydney by two 14-year old girls or the vicious beating of a young man, who eventually died, by seven youths weekend before last near Melbourne. 

Such crimes are a global and typically urban phenomena, frustrating citizens in cities from Nassau to Adelaide (Australian city of over one million) to New York City.  Of course we have too much crime in New Providence and quite a number of social problems.  But they are not the sum total of our national life as some would have you believe either out of journalistic malfeasance or lazy reporting or both.

The Bahamas is not a stage set for other people’s unrealistic self-absorbed fairy tales.  Nor are we the on-site location for the filming of a modern remake of some of Grimm’s Fairy Tales.  But, enough of Ms. Witheridge and Woman’s Day, and back to the Hewitts. 

Perhaps the best way the under 30 couple can help to rebut some of the more outrageous claims in the article is to lend their celebrity and resources to showcasing the best of The Bahamas while helping to combat some of the social ills that are a fact of modern life no matter where one sets up home. 

Considering their Old Fort location, the Clifton Heritage National Park and the Lyford Cay Foundation would welcome their support. The Hewitt’s may even get around to providing The Bahamas with some positive publicity on their official website which, as of this writing barely mentions their new Bahamian home, which Mr. Hewitt describes as a “fantastic place to raise a young family.”

 

Comments

[Sarah]

If you'd done some research yourself about this particular magazine you'd know that they print rubbush. They have complaints from the Aussie celebrities they run 'exclusive'(invented) stories on often and even get sued from time to time. They are trash and no one in Oz ever believes a word they print. Instead you choose to start attacking Australia with off the cuff comments that infer Australians in general are racist, and against their own people. You make throw-away comments about a sensitive issue you're clearly done no research of your own into. You're answer to your own country being attacked by one reporter from an unreputable magazine is to attack a whole country in response yourself. Woman's Day write rubbish, their circulation numbers have been steadily decreasing here in Australia for the last few years - another fact you could have used to refute this story. Their stories barely warrant a response,a nd if you choose to don't lump the rest of Oz in with this stupid magazine.

[Bahamas Community]

Maybe Mr Hewitt publicly retracted his wife's statements because he doesn't want to end up like Hywell Jones, who was shot dead for thinking about speaking out against crime and corruption the Bahamas. And maybe you will be man enough to leave comments from people who do not agree with your opinion, instead of deleting them.

[robyn]

I found this article satisfying as it conveyed all that I have wanted to say in response to the Women's Day magazine article. I was outraged when I read the exaggerated article about my country.
Particularly the picture of the 'foodstore' boy...probably putting a tip from Bec in his pocket but with no picture caption and with it being positioned near a paragraph describing the 'gun wielding youths on every street corner', suggested that perhaps he was about to pull a gun on Bec!

In response to the two comments posted, I understand where they are coming from but just as they have taken offense to the truths listed in the article by simon - and responded accordingly - so two did we as Bahamians.

I have spent the last year travelling around Australia and have loved it but after having read this article (while travelling around Australia) the rest of my trip was tainted as I began looking at the homeless, the barred windows, the barbed wire - that do in fact exist in many towns around Australia and feeling frustrated that my country was painted as a horrible place for the existence of such things while they two are a fact of life in many places within Australia.

It is fair to say that Women's Day is a trashy magazine but that does not mean that the 'trash' reported in it should not be refuted. I think the authors of the above comments have responded in the same manner as did Simon and as such have done exactly what they suggested Simon should not have done. I'm not saying they shouldn't have, because obviously they feel the need to defend their country...as did Simon.
A well written article, thank you Simon!