Well here is an old entry I had totally forgotten about. I was asked to plant a tree at a local school (clearly they couldn’t get anyone else so choose me!)
March 13 VIP tree planting at H O Nash school.
An indolent and yawning Sherry S gave me jumbled directions on the phone and said I’d be billed as a “corporately minded citizen”.
After driving around guided by her rough notes and the compass on my Ford Explorer I finally arrived at the school to find thousands of kids drifting around, all very casual and chaotic as so much of the Bahamas is (can’t actually detect any order or sense of anyone in control).
A radio broadcast was in full swing and Sherry was rushing around shouting to the kids to: “Go get the daddies, it’s daddies day we need to speak to daddies, now where that daddie I had lined up gone?”
I was met by Principle as I was putting on my make up in the car. Great. Then introduced randomly to several more suited and booted people with no sense of who anyone was or why they should be there. Introduced to Rev? (never did catch his name) – a man of about 5ft 4 ins, white shirt and clean attire but no dog collar or bible. Very remiss for Nassau. Leading me to severl huge metal pots on a makeshift stove top, he asked if I would like breakfast as they had boiled pigs feet and soused chicken with Johnny cake – I declined.
The tree (a sort of spindly bush) was right across a dirty expanse of gravel and dried mud in a corner by a fence. It was leaning badly in a hole which had old tin cans and debris in it. I was carrying a cardboard sign with its name written in felt tip (didn’t catch it but something botanical for good measure). Then without seeing who from, an enormous shovel was thrust into my hands and I was frogmarched across the playground by the radio broadcast team and an entourage of parents, preachers, teachers, councillors and kids. I reached the random hole, staggering with the shovel, in the heat in my increasingly damp best cotton trouser suit and shiny full make up. And still only 9am in the morning!
The broadcast began (we had all shaken hands so that was the end of the formalities), Rev shortman blessed the tree (live on air, what magic at drivetime), Sherry said some words (and froze and forgot all the names etc) as I huffed and puffed with the big shovel and threw in some dirt and debris around the twig. Then a parent – another small man of about 5.3 with silver hair, a moustache, white hat and striped golf shirt with badge proclaiming ‘Proud to be a parent at HO Nash’ grabbed the shovel, the Principle jumped in and snap. There was the shot for the newspaper photographers. I was told my words were wonderful and invited for lunch. I left.
Is this what the Queen has to do? As I drove away I saw two wizened old ladies walking with umbrellas in the sun and listened to a news story in which the police spokesman described the man at the centre of a double murder and suicide as someone: ‘who lack conflict resolution skills’. You don’t say.
Couldn’t wait to get back into my Island uniform of tatty denim shorts and halter neck top at home. This heat is stepping everything up a beat. The tree frogs are getting really noisy now and there are clouds of moths as big as bats. A raccoon has taken to throwing bananas from my neighbour’s tree – another hazard along with the falling coconuts (one of which fell down whilst I was unloading the Explorer and dented the open boot door – luckily not my head!).
What a Bahamian journey this is proving to be!
Back in my 'island unifom' of halter neck and shorts
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