The Tribune

THERE’S a long, skinny peninsula connected by an isthmus to a mainland in the Central Bahamas that by all reasonable expectations should have been wiped out long ago, swallowed by a storm surge, devastated by a hurricane, evaporated by winds and rushing waters pounding its shallow sea level. But it stands today--or rather laguishes--as it has for more than 250 years, defying everything that nature and development have thrown at it.

It’s called Cupid’s Cay. An outcropping of Governor’s Harbour, Eleuthera, it’s a snug community that falls somewhere between charmingly quaint and delightfully disheveled. And, despite an outsider’s first take to shout ‘Look at the potential!’ and desire to take shovel and broom and sweep away the past, fix up every building missing both roof and reason for being, I say, ‘Leave it right alone.’

Some places need to be left in perfect disarray -- and Cupid’s Cay is one of them.

There has to be a reason that this little stretch of land just outside downtown Governor’s (if you can call a grocery store adjacent to fuel pumps, police station, a government office and a famous souvenir-dress-toy-accessories shop that sells ice cream “downtown”), has survived hurricanes that have devastated nearly everything around it. Cupid’s Cay seems to have a strength all its own. Maybe it’s the centuries old stone in the original structures long before the years-long major dredging project of reclaimed land to create the government cargo dock that is now a bustling commercial corner.

Maybe it’s just the history of a place where supposedly the first gathering of a parliament of the Bahamas was held, though that has never been verified and the building is long gone.

Maybe it’s the spirit that lives on in what used to double as jail, where goats got locked up at night if they were getting out of hand. “I’ll never forget the first time I saw a goat climbing a tree,” said Michele Johnson, proprietor of Buccaneer Club, and whose family were among those who made Cupid’s Cay what it is today. “It probably broke out of the jail,” laughs Paul Simmons, whose story may be the real reason why Cupid’s Cay has that timeless quality.

It’s the story of people who are happy where they are, moving on would only be moving away from what makes life worth living.

Simmons is tall, fine looking, stands about 6’3”, trim, in his 60s, a customs broker by profession, everybody’s friend by habit. This woman needs windows, he says to our mutual friend, Michele, who introduced us, showing us a house where an elderly woman is struggling. “I’m working on getting some windows for her.” A minute later, he points to another building. I’m helping him get a new roof,” he says. It’s a property in urgent need of love and a lot of shingles.

Simmons is leading the tour – this used to be a theatre. Live performances? I ask. No, a real movie theatre. What? Here? Yes. And over there, the barber shop where a relative cut hair and did painting. And that was a nightclub. Joseph Spence used to perform there, he tells us. “My auntie Linda lives over here. And Auntie --- over there. My grandmother lived here. My grandfather there. And over there, that was my mother. And my father.” Every other house seems to be home to family.

You can walk Cupid’s Cay in less than 15 minutes at a slow pace, drive it in under five. But the stories take a lot longer and each one is part of the legacy of connection.

For it’s the sense of community that keeps this little mixture of partially restored, partly disintegrating piece of The Bahamas so special. It’s the people like Pauline Carty-Johnson, who came back home to Cupid’s Cay after living in Nassau and Grand Bahama and chose to come back to the place where she grew up. She now lives just a few doors away.

There was no crime, she says. When someone had too much to drink, maybe, and stumbled a little to get to a home, whoever lived there would help him find his way back home. But more importantly, it was a community who all trusted and depended on each other.

“When we were little, Patrick Bethel got a new TV and every day he’d call all the kids at 5 o’clock and we’d go to his house to watch Sesame Street. We’d all be there till it was time to go home for dinner. We all grew up together, all the kids. We all learned to ride bikes together. We all learned to swim together. Nobody goes to be hungry. If somebody went fishing and caught fish, they stop by and give you some fish.”

Everybody, she said, looked out for each other.

And maybe that’s what protects this little piece of a peninsula that storms left alone and hurricanes circumvented and time almost forgot. Its tight-knit community. The roof may need some work, but no one goes to bed hungry.