The Tribune

“Culture” is not just defined as the celebration of festivals like Junkanoo. “Culture” is also the vexing reality that we cannot start Junkanoo on time or run the parades without long gaps between groups.

Culture writ large is about habits and mind-sets that influence behaviours and actions in a given society, community, or institution.

To ensure that Lynden Pindling International Airport (LPIA) would be well-run and as free of political interference as possible, for example, a Canadian management team was contracted to run the complex. At one Bahamas Business Outlook, a representative of the company announced that they had received numerous complaints about the poor state of the bathrooms at the previous airport. He pledged that the new management was committed to keeping the bathrooms in the new facilities well-maintained and clean.

He was met with rapturous applause. For grinding years, Bahamians and visitors had to endure smelly, rundown, unkempt bathrooms, and surly janitorial staff. Why did it take a foreign company to keep the bathrooms clean at our major international airport?

Short answer: because of our political and social culture.

Because of bureaucratic dysfunction, excessive patronage, reluctance to discipline staff, and indifference to basic maintenance, the Bahamas Government could not even keep bathrooms clean. This was exacerbated by a Bahamian culture satisfied with slackness, piled up garbage, disorder, and uncleanliness.

How embarrassing is it that we need external agents such as hotels, cruise lines, and others to provide cleanliness and order?

For years, the buildings that house the Ministry of Works, and Health, were eyesores, only fairly recently refurbished. The building that houses the Ministry of Tourism is another dysfunctional facility.

Contrast our decrepitude with an example making headlines during the World Cup: Japanese fans cleaning stadiums where their team was competing, a cultural tradition started in 1998. It evokes patriotism and is a sign of self-respect and respect for others.

In The Bahamas, our filthy habits represent our culture and lack of respect for ourselves, fellow citizens, and guests. We flock to Bay Street and other venues to beat our chests, don national colours, and eat and drink, boasting of Pride Day and national pride. Much of this is empty posturing.

We’re still to learn the difference between showing off and genuine pride that is demonstrated in civility and cleanliness. Japan has its own cultural problems and poor habits. Still, it can teach us lessons in civic responsibility. Prime Asia News observed:

“In Japan, the vast majority of public schools do not have cleaning staff. Every day, children, from the age of six or seven, clean the classrooms, the corridors, the bathrooms, the stairs. This is called...’cleaning time,’ and is part of what the Japanese Ministry of Education calls...’special activity’, which serves to form character, civic sense and collective responsibility.

“Thus, cleaning stadiums at the end of the game is seen as a basic behaviour that is taught in school; for most Japanese, this is atarimae, i.e. ‘obvious, ‘natural’, ‘as it ought to be’. For a Japanese fan, picking up trash before going out is simply what you do.”

In our classless—irony intended—logic, we are too good to pick up garbage or clean our schools. Worse, we do not mind throwing garbage on the road for others to clean.

Yet, generations of Japanese children in one of the most advanced countries in the world, committed to excellence in education, are engaged in a civic compact that we are too proud to adopt in our shoddy social culture and public school system, which continues to fail on many levels.

Japan is producing students who can keep their schools clean and master a variety of subjects, while we have scores of students who cannot earn a high school diploma or be taught to keep their schools and country clean.

This is an indictment of our culture.

Scott North is a professor of sociology at Osaka University. He told the BBC in 2018: “Cleaning up after football matches is an extension of basic behaviours that are taught in school...With constant reminders throughout childhood, these behaviours become habits for much of the population...

“In addition to their heightened consciousness of the need to be clean and to recycle, cleaning up at events like the World Cup is a way Japanese fans demonstrate pride in their way of life and share it with the rest of us.”

Within this context, successive Bahamian governments come to office with glossy ideas, including improving our tourism product and transforming Bay Street. Minister of Tourism, Glenys Hanna Martin, the first female to serve in the post, is a welcome relief from her predecessor, Chester Cooper, whose nauseating trumpeting of cruise passenger numbers was a blatant deflection from the slow growth in the more lucrative stopover visitors.

Hanna Martin understands the imperative of significantly increasing stopover visitors, improving tourism services and experiences, and boosting Bahamian ownership of tourism. She must not be entranced or captured by cruise lines, which are purposefully cannibalising our stopover business in a new form of colonialism.

In her first budget presentation, she promised a new direction and purpose. She outlined plans to revitalize downtown Nassau: “We will empower the Tourism Development Corporation to acquire and assemble under-utilized land downtown for strategic redevelopment with Bahamian ownership prioritised.

“We will continue the systematic demolition of derelict structures, converting the cleared sites into green spaces, pocket parks, and public plazas. We will introduce a downtown street-scape programme to upgrade lighting, paving, signage and landscaping along Bay Street...”

Sounds wonderful.

We have, however, heard much of this from a succession of tourism ministers. Progress has been made on the redevelopment of downtown under previous administrations, ranging from the Nassau Cruise Port to Margaritaville, and the relocation of the main port from downtown. Still, downtown is nowhere close to being transformed.

A friend recalled a trip to Disney with his kids. The theme park and subsequent cruise to The Bahamas were a marvel of visitor experiences. Then they disembarked and experienced a drab and grimy Nassau. Another friend described disembarking at Oranjestad, the capital of Aruba. She remarked how attractive and significantly better maintained was the city centre.

Many years ago after his visit to Vancouver, Canada, the late Jackson Burnside enthused how well the city was, with flowering plants and pots beautifying the environs. He bemoaned that when The Bahamas introduced more plants downtown, many were stolen or not well-kept.

Why? Because of the deficiencies in our political and public service bureaucracies cum culture. And because Bahamians fail to grasp that tourism is all of our business, not just the Ministry of Tourism’s.

As Hanna Martine proceeds, she will have to tackle much more than the inner working of her ministry and relations with various domestic and international stakeholders.

Just as critically, she will have to address nettlesome cultural and political problems that are barriers to progress in numerous areas including education, healthcare – and tourism.

At this stage in her public career and amidst our limping national development, does she want to be a plodder or a transformer?  More, next week.