Bahama Pundit

The 1958 General Strike and the Making of the Modern Bahamas

by Larry Smith

Last Friday marked the 54th anniversary of the 1958 general strike, one of the seminal events of the modern Bahamas. On January 13 of that year hundreds of public and private sector workers walked off their jobs, shutting down New Providence for almost three weeks and forcing some much-needed social and political change.

The key labour leaders of the time are no longer with us, but both have left behind a rich legacy in the form of their personal memoirs. Those leaders were Sir Clifford Darling, who died last month at the age of 89, and Sir Randol Fawkes, who died in 2000 at the age of 76.

Sir Randol's 1977 book, The Faith that Moved the Mountain, gives his personal (and what historian Michael Craton described as "somewhat self-serving") perspective as a leader of the Bahamas Federation of Labour, the umbrella union which called the strike. A memorial edition is available online at http://sirrandolfawkes.com.

Sir Clifford's 2002 book, A Bahamian Life Story, provides much of the background necessary to form an appreciation of this unique event. In addition to his personal perspective as leader of the Taxi Cab Union, which instigated the strike, his account includes secret communiques from the colonial authorities, as well as contemporary newspaper reports.

Sir Durward Knowles -- Driven by the Stars

by Simon

There is still at 94 both an irrepressible humour and twinkle in the eyes of Sir Durward Knowles.  They are permanent features of his exuberant spirit and dedication to squeezing out of life every measure of joy.

The title of Sir Durward’s biography is Driven by the Stars.  He has been driven by a constellation of lodestars and virtues, among them extraordinary generosity, sportsmanship and a passion for national unity.  In turn, he has become a guiding star for others.

Quite a bit has been written about Sir Durward’s contribution to sports and his exemplary philanthropy particularly in the areas of physical and mental disability.  Athletic prowess and disability may seem incongruent, but not to Sir Durward.

In both areas the champion athlete and champion of the disabled has sought to empower others, no matter their physical or mental capacity or disability, to be driven by their own stars, overcoming limits to achieve more than one ever dared imagine.

Running Hot on Culture

by Larry Smith

We Bahamians are considered such philistines around the region. They laugh at us for stooping so low as to blow up our own culture, and that's not a joke - it actually happened in 1987, when the government demolished Jumbey Village with explosives.

The village was an offshoot of a community festival launched in 1969 by musician and parliamentarian Ed Moxey. An earlier and more 'cultural' version of the fish fry, it featured music and dance performances as well as displays of arts and crafts, and produce, and was aimed at locals as well as tourists.

In 1971 Moxey persuaded the Pindling government to let the festival take over a former dump site on Blue Hill Road and build a permanent facility. In the period leading up to independence in 1973, there was a lot of buzz about a popular enterprise promoting Bahamian creative arts.

"We put the homestead site up and in '73 we had a meeting with all the teachers. And they agreed right there that all the teachers in the system would donate a half day's pay and every school would have a function...and we came up with $100,000 in the space of three months," Moxey recalled.

"We put up a special cabinet paper, cabinet agreed, and when I pick up the budget, everything was cut out. Everything." Moxey told University of Pennsylvania researcher Tim Rommen in 2007. "That was a little bit too much. Village lingered, lingered...just kept on deteriorating until they came up with this grandiose scheme to put National Insurance there. And when they ready, they blow the whole thing down."

A Bahamian Vacation Reading List

by Larry Smith

Freeport Notebook by Peter Barratt
Barratt is the English-born architect who planned the city of Freeport back in the 1960s, and one of the few remaining people who knew legendary Freeport founder Wallace Groves personally. In fact, he designed the mausoleum near Mary Star of the Sea where Groves and his wife Georgette are buried.

Barratt published the first and only substantive history of Grand Bahama in 1972. Although now a Bahamian citizen, his work permit was refused twice over the years and he now spends much of his time in Florida, but clearly Freeport is still very much on his mind.

It is an untidy mind, he admits, despite his role as a town planner. In this 175-page volume he has thrown together "personal subjective musings that I thought the reader might find interesting...(highlighting) some events in the early period of the Freeport story." The subtitle says it all: "Pines, Port, Politics, Poems and Prose."

Those musings include letters to local newspapers, poetry and doggerel, news clippings, historical photos, observations and recollections. It provides interesting and easy-to-read background to the current condition of Freeport, Grand Bahama - one of the greatest enigmas of the modern Bahamas.

The San Salvador Museum and A Dictionary of Bahamian English

by Larry Smith

COCKBURN TOWN, San Salvador - This is an island of monuments, although none are particularly grandiose and some are positively insignificant and difficult to find. There are at least five markers commemorating the landfall of Columbus, for example.

The locals don't pay much attention to them, but the 400 visitors who stay at Club Med each week certainly do. This is the most historic place in the Bahamas because it was the site of that momentous first encounter between the Old and New Worlds in 1492.

In fact, it was yours truly who broke the story that confirmed San Salvador as the landfall island in 1983 - via the Reuters and Inter Press Service news wires. That's when archaeologist Charles Hoffman excavated Spanish trade goods dated to the contact period at the very site of the Lucayan village adjacent to the Long Bay beach where Columbus was believed to have come ashore.

Why We Overeat and How to End it

by Larry Smith

As Chrissy Love said recently on the ZNS call-in show Immediate Response, "Chile I been on more diet than Oprah".

Her point was that diets don't work - at least not in the long-term. As we all know, it's hard to stick to any diet, and sooner or later we give up and rejoin the world of uncontrolled eating, usually gaining back the few pounds we lost plus a little more.

Most of us simply shrug our shoulders and move on. But a groundbreaking new book by the former head of the US Food and Drug Administration reveals that food is now a top public health issue, and he tries to explain how we can scientifically address our compulsive urge to overeat.

The unfortunate fact is, says Dr David Kessler in The End of Overeating, that we have all become addicts - hooked by overstimulated brain chemicals on huge portions of food layered and loaded with sugar, fat and salt, and offering little or no nutritional value.

Three Books—Pieces of Eight, Conch Pearls and the Walk of a Bahamian Doctor

by Larry Smith

Three interesting books landed on my desk this past week—two recently published, the other a reprint that is also available online as a free download.

Pieces of Eight was familiar to many Bahamians in the first half of the 20th century. It was written by Richard Le Gallienne - an English "man of letters" who died in 1947 at the age of 80. A minor romantic writer who lived in London, New York and Paris, Le Gallienne dabbled in journalism and publishing.

Published in 1918, Pieces of Eight is a work of fiction that purports to be "the authentic narrative of a treasure discovered in the Bahama Islands in 1903." According to one early reviewer, it is "A polite treasure hunt which, compared to R L Stevenson's handling of the same plot lacks the thrills of real buccaneering, but which is romantic and beautifully descriptive of the tropic Bahamas."

The book became a hot political issue under the old UBP regime (when it was a prescribed schooltext) for its generally disdainful references to black Bahamians and use of racially insulting language. However, it features some interesting descriptions of contemporary Bahamian life, and is perhaps best known today for one of the earliest references to that great Bahamian folk song, the John B Sails.

Actually, Le Gallienne made an even earlier reference to this famous song in an article he wrote for Harper's Magazine in 1916. This was an account of a visit to the Bahamas when he spent a week on a schooner sailing from Nassau to the Exuma Cays and Harbour Island - his journalistic cruise leading to production of the romantic novel.

On Print and Power

by Nicolette Bethel

There's an email making the rounds (I received it several months ago) entitled "Blacks Don't Read". Being Black, I read it. The general message of the email is simple and thought-provoking: one of the reasons African-Americans are still second-class citizens in their country is that they don't read.

The email isn't talking about illiteracy. It's talking about choosing not to read when one could choose to do so. And it's arguing that the consequences of making such a choice are, fundamentally, political.

In 2000, I sat down to watch a special episode of A&E's Biography on the 100 most influential people of the millennium: politicians, inventors, writers, artists, composers, religious leaders, soldiers. One by one the people I considered likely to be at the top of the list were eliminated, until at last I was stumped: who would be named the most influential person of the last thousand years? The answer: Johannes Gutenberg, inventor of the printing press.

On Self-Publication (a Meditation)

by Nicolette Bethel

I’m pleased to announce that I’m working preparing Essays on Life for publication in a series of books. The first one, featuring the first fifty essays published, is almost ready to go to print. In a week or so, I hope, if all goes well, it’ll be available online. Within the month, again if all goes well, I’m hoping it can be available in local bookstores.

Sound too good to be true? Well it is, sort of. The process of publication never used to be so quick and easy in the past. And easy doesn't always mean good. But here's the raw truth. After plenty of thought (and some trepidation), and after considering things like time and cost and bulk and other stuff, I decided to self-publish. And I've chosen an online service that will print and bind and ship the book for me.

The Aromas of Christmas - in Guyana and the Bahamas

by Larry Smith

My house reeks of garlic and vinegar.

It always does at this time of year. That's because the wife has an almost religious compulsion to make Carne de Vinagre e Alhos, a traditional Portuguese Christmas dish.

Not that she's Portuguese, I hasten to add. Actually she's from Guyana - and mostly Amerindian, with admixtures of African, Dutch and Welsh.

In Guyana, Carne de Vinagre e Alhos is better known as garlic pork. It involves pickling for several days a few pounds of chops in vinegar spiced with salt, hot peppers, garlic and thyme, and then frying the meat on Christmas morning. Served with pink gin it's better than bacon, I have to say.