At least there is always the beach

So what else has been happening?  Well,  we have just witnessed the most interesting election in this small country’s history.  A fiercely fought election campaign resulted in a landslide victory for the opposition, the PLP (Progressive Liberal party – don’t be misled by the name, it is a left wing, ‘party of the people’ which had ruled for 25 straight years until two terms ago when mounting corruption made the people turn against it).  Rather like New Labour it has used its time out of power to renew itself and done a cracking job at winning around the young and popular vote.  Consequently the old Government was really caught napping and went from thirty odd seats to seven.  Perhaps the London PR agency the PLP employed (don’t know who yet) also had something to do with it?

I went to one of the rallies, which has to be on a theatrical par with any large-scale event I’ve ever been to.  Imagine a hot evening and about 10,000 loud and brightly attired Bahamians, in high spirits, drinking gin out of coconut shells and eating anything that could be battered and fried whilst dancing to very loud rap music.  Booming music blasted out for a gaudy stage and every so often a wave of rash promises would come from some candidate or other who would then sling a load of mud at the opposition (libel seems a rarely used legal device).

It was a blast.

A strongly partisan affiliation with a political party is a required part of the culture here and is followed with the same fervour as some football supporters follow their chosen team back home.   On Election Day, supporters from each party camped out in force in front of the polling stations. Just about everyone wore specially printed tee shirts, badges, hats etc.  Cars sported flags and banners and bumpers stickers.  (The winning party’s supporters are still proudly displaying their flags and stickers).  On my road every single tree had one or other candidate’s picture nailed to it (not the most environmentally friendly nation unfortunately) so I feel like I know my local MP already as I’ve seen him grinning at me for weeks.

After the election we got caught up in the victory celebrations, which were loud, good humoured and  passionate.  As the motorcade of vehicles snaked across the island it was accompanied with supporters with brooms and rakes (symbolically sweeping out the old crowd) and rather large women wearing nappies and torn tee shirts (a sight to see) representing the young and unseated leader of the losing party.

My ‘cream cracker’ (white Caucasian) friends are mostly amazed at my fast level of integration and the fact that I will drive ‘over the hill’ (OK only in daylight) and have my nails done at a central salon where I am the only non-Bahamian.  What they fail to realise is that the Nu U Nail Salon is actually the source of all gossip and information in Nassau.  I was reliably informed about the landslide victory about to happen plus updated on the extradition order of the largest drugs lord here long before it was in the papers.

What I’ve learned is that Bahamians love to talk (or ‘sip sip’ as gossiping is know). They love to bear witness and eulogise which is why funerals regularly go on for four hours or more.  The words ‘fire’ (and I’m seeing daily bush and forest fires now in the heat), ‘accident’ (yep, still see daily accidents – hardly surprising when you see overtaking on blind corners by open back vans with 10 or so workmen hanging on for grim life) or ‘parade’ are rallying cries to the average Bahamian.  No one dreams of doing without TV and even small wooden hovels that have no running water invariably have a large satellite dish outside.  Bahamians are also great readers and the local scandal sheet The Punch is required daily reading.  Unlike the UK papers they happily call people liars and thieves and print their names, where they were seen with their mistresses etc. for all to sip sip about.

Equally, people aren’t afraid to tackle the newspapers.  Today’s Tribune has a front page story which reads: “Minister of Foreign Affairs, Fred Mitchell has accused The Tribune of manufacturing a ‘crises over freedom   of the press’, in a warning to the party’s political machinery to beware of the “lousy, slimy lies being told by the papers editors”.  Obviously the honeymoon between the new Govt. and the press is over.  The nation’s love of reading all about it isn’t and newspaper sellers happily emerge each morning and evening at most street corners waving the papers at cars as they slow down.  It is perfectly acceptable behaviour to stop your car, hold up all the traffic and have a chat to the vendor about what the really juicy news is as you hand over your dollars. I am now on first name terms with Lindon of the two gold front teeth and Queen Neferatiti Gold necklace fame whose patch is near my home.

I’ve been for my beach walk with the dogs. I’m slurping a huge ripe mango as I walk down the beach (I am now covered in mango stains on my top and shorts).  I can’t believe it is so utterly fantastic here. I feel too lucky and can’t start to tell people how amazing it is.

I felt quite the recluse when I went into town earlier, I can’t decide if I’m just rediscovering my true self or that really I am a recluse at heart. Weird thoughts as I ran a top London PR company and had an 8 bedroom house, nanny,driver etc.  And now, after slipping down the ‘no status’ slippery pole in Nassau (i.e. I went to dinner parties where no one asked me what I do/did/think/thought and the men talked and the women share choc cake recipes -  help me! Betty Crocker?) I start to put my ‘former life’ more and more into some contex.  

In some ways, I was totally rubbish, as I never asked for photo or autograph as I wanted to be cool (trust me when you are 24, wearing a suit that cost a month’s pay cheque and are doing Ronnie Woods Art Exhibition at Katharine Hamnett’s  gallery in Brompton Cross and Mick Jagger has just flirted with you it is weird).  And best EVER was having breakfast coffee at Daniel Day Lewis’s house before GMTV interview for London Lighthouse.  OMG.  If only I’d told him how much I love poetry etc.

Anyway – less day dreaming: back to farm life:  I suddenly thought ‘Oh no, I have no cat food.

The beach on a good day.

I’ll have to go to the shop’.  How weird is this?  Lived in London and popping into a shop (whilst making the cabbie wait) was a daily thing. Now, I actually think it through.  And actually, don’t always have any choice.  Went into Burrows today and no dog food. Great thing is that I realised that tinned Corn Beef is cheaper than Dog Food and they like it more.  I’m a convert!

At present, my world is the beach.  Seriously, the world must be full of one-legged people as there are so many odd shoes and flip-flops washed up every morning

Today I saw one black brogue, two odd trainers and two odd flip flops plus one broken flipper.

The rest of the debris was the usual glass and plastic bottles (bloody bandage is sticking by the way that makes walking difficult.  I think a) I don’t ask or demand enough info from the Cancer clinic b) I don’t want to and c)this climate is crap)

Back to the debris; it comprised: used medicine and toiletries bottles, lots of rope, bits of wood, plastic drums and containers, odd bits of plastic, several dead crabs today – one with only one leg which it moved pitifully when Tarpi sniffed it, little plastic balls from boat ropes and the polystyrene floats from boats too. Lots of light bulbs (change a bulb on a boat, throw the old one overboard obviously), the odd glass syringe (not hypodermic), small shells and lovely sand dollars.  The sea is not a dustbin people.  I shall go armed with a black bin bag next walk.

Not every day is sunnny in the Bahamas...Tippies before the hurricane

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).

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.

What a Bahamian journey this is proving to be!

Back in my 'island unifom' of halter neck and shorts

Sunset in the Bahamas

Nassau 2001……..

So here we are, six months in already.  Finally felt at home last weekend when over the bank holiday weekend it rained non stop for five days. There must be a special Bank Holiday weather curse, which works throughout the world.  Difference here is that it is still humid and in the mid 80s (which means in a clever, adjusted, sort of way it is really about 99 degs), and I am constantly getting caught out without a brolly or so much as a piece of paper to hold over my head so impersonate a drowned rat on an almost daily basis.

As I start to type this I am watching the golf course being bulldozed.  It now resembles a sort of desert oasis.  There is sand and soil everywhere, much of it in large dune-like piles and the one remaining lake in the centre of the course has had all the palm trees deposited around its edges to keep them alive before they are moved back into place.  No prizes for guessing how it has affected the mosquitoes.  The noisy frogs are also pretty unsettled.   The constant sound of diggers has followed hot on the heels of the disruption caused by the building of our new conservatory and the major renovations on the entire block we live in.  Not very conducive to writing a best seller I must say.  So….we are moving at the end of June to a fab five-bedroom house that is literally on the sea.  I kid you not.  When you look out of the lounge and back bedroom windows all you see is turquoise sea, it is like being on a boat.  When the sea is rough it splashes up onto the patio and hits the lounge windows and leaves behind a film of salt when it dries.  Needless to say it will be horrendous in a hurricane which is why our rent agreement has a clause that the landlord has six hours in which to board up the entire house once a hurricane warning is issued and we get to move out to a hotel (they do special hurricane rates here and evidently it is quite a laugh being hauled up in a Key Largo sort of way for days in the howling wind and rain). No doubt a later letter…..

When the tide is out we have our own little beach and fish and lobsters swim/crawl right up to the shore, so I’m buying a fishing spear and will be able to have fresh lobster from time to time (depending on my Survivor type skills).   The house is neglected but we are getting it for a steal.  The owners are two maiden aunts  who live in an enormous walled house in the centre of old town Nassau and run a children’s clothing shop on Bay Street (the main shopping street ).

When you go into the shop it is like stepping back into the 1950s – stacked wooden shelves behind a long glass topped counter, ladders to retrieve things, hand written receipts etc.  They are pretty legendary here and regarded as the two old dears of Nassau.  Due to some fall out they once didn’t speak to each other for five years or so whilst still working behind the counter of the shop together.  Evidently the one poor assistant they had had to communicate between the two of them.

I walked down the half mile long dirt track to the house the other day and there was an ancient Cadillac parked by the first bunch of coconut trees. I walked up and leaned in (the door was open).  Two women, voluminous in floral dresses and heaving bosoms looked at me and without any introduction one said: “our boy is getting nuts”.  With that a skinny Haitian guy emerged from the back, complete with machete and walked calmly to the first tree, put his machete in his mouth and shinned up it in about 6 fluid movements.  He chopped a couple of coconuts down, came down, picked them up and got back in the car.  No words spoken.  Surreal.

My next-door neighbour (Nassau side) throws the ‘second best’ parties on the island (his cottage has a deck which can hold about 100 people) so I’m looking forward to the 4th July when he will have a raft opposite the house with amazing fireworks.  His friend  (a sort of Swedish Peter Stringfellow living in Lyford Cay, the exclusive gated community in West Nassau) allegedly throws the best parties but you have to be on the closely guarded and even more closely scrutinized guest list.  I was recently invited  to  the opening of his amazing underground and underwater disco/private club.  However it was women guests only, to be filmed by MTV and the dress code was bikinis and stilettos and you had to agree to having your body painted upon arrival.  Ha!