The Tribune

By NICOLE BURROWS

I had to call in maintenance the other day to check my washing machine.

One of the maintenance staff is also a native of the Caribbean region. It’s a pleasure talking to him because he reminds me of home, whenever I start to feel sentimental and separated from it.

But my fellow islander did not come to my call this time around. Instead, a native son of the South came to check my appliance, and, as it happens, I enjoy talking to him just as much as my island comrade. Though he is not from the islands, he has been to The Bahamas, on at least two occasions. He told me that if he could ever live somewhere other than here, it would be in one of three island nations, which included The Bahamas.

I’ve met numerous people on this journey, many of whom have been to The Bahamas and actually know what they’re talking about when they speak about it. They’ve had rave reviews and they’ve had horrible reviews. Some say they will never return because it’s a land filled with beggars, others say they go as often as they can and would like to retire there.

So my maintenance friend of the South was no different in this regard; however, he did have another comment to add and it raised my curiosity about his experience of my country. “For a former British-ruled country, you’d think The Bahamas would be richer than it is,” he said.

And, of course, writing as I do in this space every week, constantly listening out for people’s words to analyse, I asked him “Why do you say that?” And he replied as I expected he would.

To this moment, I am still amazed that someone who had only been there a handful of times, though very recently, could have such accurate insight about something I’d lived my whole adult life in The Bahamas. I always knew that things were deteriorating quickly in my country, but I never realised how visible it was to visitors.

And I asked this visitor to explain what I already held in my own mind and heart as a truth ... that my country was once wealthier in every way, and it has degenerated to a point where even visitors can tell the difference after only a few visits. As you may imagine, this irritated me, not because he offended me as he did not, but because I already know the answers to the question posed by my new contact. And they point to the fact that, from that time of wellbeing in the history of the Bahamas, any political or economic success has been short-lived and contained amongst isolated beneficiaries.

I’m sure many will argue about what the British did or didn’t take from The Bahamas, but that’s not my point of contention. I want to discuss why it is, after being operated by one of the world’s wealthiest nations, The Bahamas is now in shambles, a shadow of its former beauty. Why was its wealth not presided over in a way that would make it the envy of all nations today? Instead of building it up in 50 years, why was it destroyed to the extent that its citizens have to escape it if they expect to have any real, honourable, financial wellbeing?

I will never celebrate Majority Rule Day in The Bahamas - or anywhere else for that matter - because Majority Rule is not equality. And Bahamians still don’t have equality in The Bahamas. I agree - why shouldn’t it be a natural thing for the people who run the country to look most like the people who live in it? But to reach for ‘independence’ at the time the country did was a premature action. Making the majority of people who run the country look like the people in it should not have been the primary reason for seeking to break out from under an organised structure. And because it was, the effort was an ultimate failure.

Majority Rule was intended to divide Bahamians on the basis of race, ethnicity, and class, in the pursuit of power. As was intended, it still does now. That balance of power intended for the majority of people, the majority of people still don’t have. The majority still don’t have opportunities. The majority still don’t have money. Money and power is held by a small group of elites who have always held it and a smaller group of newer elites who have arrested it.

You mean to tell me that, after all this time, Bahamian leaders haven’t figured out how to maximise the resources of the nation, their management of those resources and the opportunities in The Bahamas for the primary benefit of all Bahamians? The small events of ‘progress’ don’t seem to ever carry over or sustain themselves in the long term, and it is representative of the Bahamian people who also can’t sustain themselves in the long term.

Because none of the leaders have made it work, it is fair to say that they have failed in whatever they attempted to make an alternate reality for Bahamian people after British rule.

If those men and few women who fought to divest themselves of Britain were all alive today and could sit on a panel before the nation and fully evaluate their decision back then, would they have made the same decision with what we see today as the outcome? It is more than evident that the country was not ready to be independent. Forty-four years after independence, it still is not independent.

A preferred alternate reality for Bahamians would include a cast of people who genuinely care about their country, doing good and right by their people, minus the self-professed excellence, being wholly responsible for the operation of their country as people of integrity and honesty. The problem is people of honesty and integrity don’t want to stand in the gap because people of that character don’t want to be corrupted or expose themselves to the slightest element of corruption, when, in a seat of power and influence, the temptations are immense.

I was asked to run with the Democratic National Alliance (DNA). If I was in the country right now, I would do it. I would much prefer the only viable alternative to present and past governance not have to scrape the barrel bottom for candidates. I want to do good and help my people, but I can’t do it if I’m hungry. I can’t help them if I’m worried about my bills, being paid on time, if at all. With the help of a few angels who have sheltered me at various times, I am surviving far more affordably on the little I make where I am now than if I were in my own country. How is that even possible? It infuriates me. And lately it also motivates me to question whether I should just return and suck up the hard times, let the people feed me, and fight for them. It’s hard to negotiate and it’s always on my mind.

Those Bahamians in favour of Majority Rule, or those who think it had long-term success, like to compare it to the Civil Rights movement in America. But the two are not the same. Civil Rights and Martin Luther King (who is being celebrated today as I write this), fought for the equality of people of African descent with people of non-African descent. Lynden Pindling et al may have welcomed or wanted equality, but they had a very wrong idea about how to get it, and their possible reasons for making equality the thrust of their campaign for power leave a lot of questions and doubt in many minds.

You don’t get equality by making (or keeping) one group of people superior over another. But that revealed itself as what they wanted, what they did, and what they bragged about. There was nothing equal about Majority Rule, which is why many Bahamians are still unequal and cannot celebrate it. As far as I’m concerned, it’s a holiday they can easily remove from the calendar. But then again, for as unproductive a nation as The Bahamas is, evidenced by its minimum economic and educational attainment, the country could stand to benefit from a removal of most holidays, if the religious can bring themselves to part with them. I cannot comprehend how Bahamians work so hard to produce so little, and how they spend so much time celebrating achieving nothing. For Bahamians, all holidays are is more time to do less.

Yet, this past Majority Rule Day holiday, Prime Minister Christie made a leap - as usual - between Majority Rule and Bahamians having ‘a life of dignity’. Where is the dignity when it is a legitimate reality for Bahamians to have to choose which utility to keep connected ... between eating (cooking) and bathing? When you have to choose between Vienna sausage and salty sausage for dinner? Where’s the dignity in any of that? That’s what y’all fought for?

Imagine an average Bahamian youngster in the 1960s, leaving home with no money, no job, little to no education, no exposure to life beyond Nassau Street, let alone beyond the country. With a dozen brothers and sisters looking up to and depending on him, he either falls by the wayside very quickly, or he has to do things he shouldn’t just to get by, to make a few dollars and hope for an opportunity to make more money ... with no academic qualifications. The odds are obviously stacked against him. He wasn’t supposed to leave the structure that preserved him, fed him, clothed him, gave him some direction, but he did anyway.

He left because he thought he was grown enough to make it on his own. He was completely wrong. He begins to recognise that his guardians may have had a better idea about life and how to cultivate him until he became socially and financially mature. He knows he may be wrong about going on his own, but he won’t admit it because being on his own gives him the right to do anything he wants ... and he wants to be in charge of himself. Every teenager has been there. But he has charted a course for his own demise, without any of the tools he needs to survive on his own. He goes and scrapes out a life for himself until he dies a slow, agonising and unnecessary death from physical illness, overexposure and mental decay.

That’s us. That’s The Bahamas. That’s our economy. That’s our country. That’s the legacy of Majority Rule.

Every average Bahamian today, youngster or not, can feel it. But we can’t turn back the clock on it. We can only hold the pieces together, loosely, until someone gets it right for us, or we get it right for ourselves.

And hopefully someone will - maybe you? - before the buzzards circle our remains.

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