The Wall

[rowyn]

telnar and I went to the Bahamas last weekend. I thought it was the first time I'd been to a foreign country that required a passport -- but I don't think the Bahamas actually required a passport, either. Still, it was handy having one.

We went having done very little research, and with little idea of what the country was like. Until I stepped off the plane, I didn't even know what the dominant language was. Once we were inside the airport, however, it was obvious that it was English. Not just because all the signs and advertising were available in English -- but because they weren't posted in any other language.

The island we visited, Nassau, is the most heavily populated of the many islands that make up the Bahamas. It felt, in many ways, like being in any heavily-touristed area in the US. There were lots of tourists -- tourists do not outnumber the locals on any given weekend, but it rather looked as though they did. And casinos and attractions and shops and restaurants and beaches catering to tourists.

But the most interesting part of the trip was talking to the cabdrivers. We'd discussed, after getting off the plane, whether it'd be better to rent a car or to take taxis. One airport worker recommended a rental, but we decided to use taxis anyway. As it turned out, this was the best decision of the trip, and not only because we didn't know, until we were on the road, that people drive on the left in the Bahamas.

It was one of the cabbies who told us about the wall.

His name was Quentin, and he grew up in a small house right next to it. He was born in 1974, one year after the Bahamas gained independence.

Until this trip, I hadn't known that the Bahamas were still an English colony until 1973. England still has a couple of tiny colonies, here and there.

The push for independence in the Bahamas came, according to Quentin, as a result of segregation. On Nassau, there was a wall that divided the island into two parts. On one side, all the white people lived. On the other, all the blacks. There were a few controlled openings between the two sides, and if you were black, you could not enter the white side without documentation proving you were a domestic servant or had a similar reason to enter.

The wall is still there, a plain, ugly and worn thing of concrete, topped with barbed wire in places. There are many openings in it now, and no restriction on movement through it. But it's still standing; unlike Berlin's wall, the people did not rubble it when the reason for it ended.

The difference between the buildings on both sides of the wall is still evident; the house Quentin grew up in is not as pretty or large as the houses on the other side of the wall.

He said, "A lot of people didn't think we could make it, a black country going it alone. But we did."

That hadn't occured to me until that moment. I'd noticed that the locals were overwhelmingly black. All the people we came in contact with who were clearly locals -- the dealers, bellhops, cab drivers, shop keepers, policeman, parade participants, etc. -- were black. We saw one white man who was watering a lawn; he's the only white person we saw who didn't look like a tourist.

But it hadn't seemed strange to me -- it hadn't seemed peculiar at all -- that this free and pleasant country, which I could easily have mistaken for the US or Canada -- was predominantly black. It hadn't occured to me that, just thirty years ago, many people would have thought it impossible that a nation of black people could be successful.

Later, Quentin said, "I don't understand people who long for the 'good ol' days'. I wouldn't want to live back then for anything."

Yeah. Me neither.

This is progress.

Comments

[sandratayler.livejournal.com]

Sounds like a fascinating experience. I accompanied Howard on a business trip to South Africa in 1999 and had a similar experience with tour guides. Talking to the guides about their lives taught me much more about the country that I could have gotten from any anthropology text. These were people who had lived through apartied and their first free election. Supposedly all is equal there now, but at both hotels I stayed with, the white folk were the managers and black folks cleaned the rooms even though the country is more than 80% black skinned.

I wonder how the bahaman natives feel about the huge influx of white American tourists. The African man on the street corner selling whisks seemed a bit resentful.

[kelloggs2066.livejournal.com]

"The hyphen is a thing that's small
It can be a bridge or be a wall.
A bridge can save you lots of time,
A wall you always have to climb"

I'm not a big fan of walls: ;)
http://www.livejournal.com/users/kelloggs2066/342596.html

Actually, I gather that a good deal of their economy (60%) is dependant upon Tourist Trade, so I doubt that they resent tourists too much. :)

Anyway, glad you had a good time! Travel always broadens the mind! :)

It's better in the Bahamas

[rowyn]

I did't notice any resentment among the natives, even when we were being more obnoxiously touristy (like asking a police officer what was being set up in front of the government buildings on Sunday. It was their Remberance Day ceremony.)

I also didn't notice the kind of management/servant dichotomy you saw in South Africa (and that's often evident even in the US.) That may be because it's the upper-upper management that's white, and we just never saw them. However, we did see casino hosts, concierges, and pit bosses, policemen, and a restuarant manager, which are all positions of morderate authority -- and those were all black people. According to one website I checked afterward, the population is 85% black, 12% white, and 3% other, but I didn't really see the 12% that's white at all. The one white guy I saw who looked local was watering the lawn in an empty lot. Not exactly a position of obvious power. :) It wouldn't surprise me if some fraction of the white population were retired permanent residents who'd come from the US. It's not a great place to retire to -- prices are very steep -- but not a bad one, either.

As Scott Kellogg pointed out below, the island's economy depends on tourists; something like 70% of the population works in tourist industries. So it may be that working with tourists on a daily basis and knowing that they support your lifestyle may ameliorate resentment towards them.

[rowyn]

I thought of you when we were looking at Nassau's wall. :)

And the locals were quite friendly, as a rule; I didn't get the impression that they resented us. Even when we wandered off the tourist paths and into residential neighborhoods. :)

[koogrr.livejournal.com]

Well, Barbados is mostly black, similar percentages I believe, and they've been going quite well.

[batratblue.livejournal.com]

The idea of visiting any location without thoroughly researching it makes me boggle, but I'm an info-freak, the kind of guy who keeps a subscription to Jane's and Strategic Forecasting and references the CIA World Factbook twice a week...And this is all when I'm not going anywhere.

Almost all of the Caribbean was somebody-or-other's colony at some point. As for the belief that they wouldn't manage their own nation, well...It takes people a long time to learn lessons they don't want to learn. If you really want to see some astounding stuff, study Haiti's liberation and the creation of their first flag. Reputedly, in 1803 Dessalines took the French flag and symbolically tore out the white center before having it resewn. The original constitution of Haiti contains the phrases '...Any argument about skin colors among children of the same family should immediately stop...' and 'From now on, all Haitian people will be known as Blacks.' The idea of an all-black nation being 'unable to make it' back then was nearly a given.

I will say that in my experience (which is Floridian in nature) tourist economies do breed resentment. We love your money, thank you! Smile! Now go home.

It's like working at Disneyland. No matter what you think of the little brat who just puked all over the roller coaster, you're being paid to smile and nod. It and its family can afford to come here for a lark. If you work there, you probably can't afford to go wherever they came from for a vacation of your own.

[rowyn]

It and its family can afford to come here for a lark. If you work there, you probably can't afford to go wherever they came from for a vacation of your own.

Actually, they could. One taxi driver we spoke with said that he usually took his vacations in Florida. He went there to shop.

I was only there for two days, so I may just be wrong in thinking that they were generally good-natured about it. But there are logical reasons why locals in Nassau would look on tourism differently from locals in Florida. Even though Florida sees a lot of tourists, most of the people who live there don't work at Disneyland, or in other tourist industries. They get a direct view of the nuisances of tourists, but no direct view of the benefits of them. Nassau residents mostly work in tourist industries. While I'm sure they still don't appreciate puking children or people who were actually obnoxious, they do have a more direct view of the benefits of the garden-variety clueless-but-moderately-well-behaved tourist.

[narile.livejournal.com]

Is the islands only McDonalds still on the US Base? I remember when Mom went there a couple of times and the Cabbies always were on the look out for a person in uniform so they could get on base to stock up on BigMacs. :)

Re: It's better in the Bahamas

[krud42.livejournal.com]

It sounds like the Bahamas might be doing better than Jamaica... though I have little information to back that observation. ':P