The Pagans and the Preachers

(Another Guest Blog from Lynn, still in Eleuthera at our pink cottage in Tarpum Bay, Eleuthera)

The week before Easter on Eleuthera is a an odd mixture of  paganism with large amounts of religiosity sprinkled  throughout.

Palm Sunday in Tarpum Bay began with a parade of white  garbed singers from the Anglican church singing, “The Old  Rugged Cross” and waving palm fronds. I was drinking my  coffee on the front porch, forgetting the Anglicans believe  in early worship. Too late, I realized the procession was  going right down our road. Nothing to do but wave and sing along. Several tipped their fronds my way out of deference  or annoyance, I wasn’t sure.

About ten,  Rev. Ian got the Methodists next door warmed up with  several loud hymns I thought I might recognize if only he  wasn’t singing them. Either he has no clue he is hopeless,  or has such an ego, he doesn’t care. Whichever it is,  he’s very enthusiastic.

We were trapped in by parked  cars, so we were forced to endure the entire two and a  half hour service from our living room, right across the street! At the final AMEN, the congregation, all dressed in  white, departed, appearing to be nearly as wilted as their  palm fronds.

Monday was the first day of the whist tournament which  marked the beginning of the pagan part, Rock Sound  Homecoming. I think I’ve written about this peculiar  precursor to bridge other years, so will spare you the  details of play. Here were the results: we were second the  first night when everyone was sober. The second night the  crowd was rowdier and we were fourth.  I am sorry to report that we were hopeless in the  finals and did not bring home a trophy as we did last year.  Perhaps we were not drunk enough?

We did however, bring  home fresh mahi mahi, a gift of Floyd, one of the players  who wanted to make sure “you come back next year.” How  sweet, and much better than any trophy!

An interesting aside a woman, not playing, but wanting  to, got amazingly hammered. She leaned over the railing– we  were playing under a tent surrounded by a bar/railing. She  got louder and more profane with each Absolute/Cranberry she  downed. Her playing pals ended up trying to get her keys.  In drunken anger she dashed/stumbled to her truck, jumped in  and tried to back up. Had she been successful, there would > have been several fewer whist players. She was parked  directly across from the tent. Fortunately, she didn’t  realize the emergency brake was on and all she could do was  rev the engine, much to the disgust of the men, and much to  our relief. In the end, her girlfriend did get the keys  though it took lots of shouting and F**K yous, to  accomplish.

Thursday night was revival night in the Tarpum Bay park.  Some small obscure church brings together all its followers  and singers and preachers for one grand performance. We  were a captive audience once again. Despite closing the  windows and turning up the fan to full, we heard clearly  the Hallelujahs/praise Jesus/Amens! Over and Over and > Over… Every song was long, think three “Hey Judes” and  an “American Pie”. None of the words were  intelligible,but they were loud!  They had cymbals, drums, and back up singers, (think  bad version of  The Supremes). Both men and women extolled  God/Jesus/their neighbors, friends, and relatives living and  dead. Each of the former were also thanked by each speaker.  This whole pageant of praise/song/prayer lasted late into  the night.

There were smaller groups also into the religious  thingum. We were entertained one afternoon by a shouting  woman and her troupe standing in our parking lot preaching to apparently no one. But the erstwhile troupe members  bravely clapped and tapped their tambourines as she carried  on. She ran out of energy (and audience) after only 45  minutes. She and her ensemble reassembled into her white  van, and drove off to save other souls in other villages.

Miss Brenda, meanwhile, was packing Easter baskets for  the children of her church. She bought some “stuff” for  the baskets while off island last week. The treasures her  flock will find include the usual candy, plus a plastic  cross with a meaningful message, AND an Easter Egg snow globe!

She was also writing fairly decent poetry for the women  to read in church tomorrow. Brenda has abiding faith and  practices her good works religiously. Though she did tell  Paul and me to “go beat da hell outta dem whist players”  WOW!

Once more back to Rock Sound tonight in search of either  stuffed crab or cracked conch. We wanted to see the Junkanoo  parade with its brightly costumed men playing their  whistles, drums and cow bells, but when we discovered the  parade didn’t start til MIDNIGHT (read one or two a.m.) we  took our cracked conch and guava duff and came home.

Tomorrow is Easter with yet more pageantry. Women look their best for church. Their hats are spectacular and their  heels high. The men are starched and pressed, and the  children behave for the most part. The services will be  long. We have already positioned the car for a quick exit!

At Rock Sound there will be gospel singing all day. The  pagans and  the pastors will blend into a final great AMEN.

Sweet Stuff

I came back from Tarpum Bay way too early. I imagined that it would only be a couple of weeks before my willow trees would get that yellow-green haze, and those little purple crocuses would start poking up through the leaves in my flower bed. I said to myself, “I can do anything for a couple of weeks, even endure the Michigan winter with gray days and grayer snow banks.”

“I need to get back home and see my family, and pay my taxes, and work some.”

“I can do this.”

Well, it’s been four weeks and guess what? It’s still cold, and gray, and there’s plenty of dirty snow in the woods behind my house. More coming next week, the weather report says. Fah!

I am gloomier by the day—my seasonal affective disorder seems to have wrapped itself around me like heavy wet wool. Even a trip to the mailbox seems like an awful lot of trouble.

So I was delighted when my friend Gerry emailed me to ask if I wanted to go to a pancake breakfast on the following Saturday. “I have some friends who make maple syrup,” he said, and they always throw a big breakfast during syrup season, and I always go.” And that’s how Gerry and his son and son’s family climbed into his car, picked me up, and we all headed south this morning.

“South” in this case is only 25 miles or so, just past the Michigan un-metropolis of Nessen City, a tiny town named after a Northwest Michigan lumber baron. (Nessen City has maybe, ten houses and a church and is designated officially as a “Populated Place”.)

What we did notice, though, was in the 25 miles south of my house, the snow was almost gone, and the front yards of the farm houses had a small, subtle suggestion of green. And we remarked on robins, and horses, and a couple of long-legged big brown birds out in the middle of a field.

People were out in their yards in the 30-degree sunshine, staring wonderingly at the stuff which had been buried under the snow since November and was now in full view. “Look, Pa, I found the tractor,” I could imagine someone calling.

Not long after Nessen City, another (and even smaller) Populated Place. You know, in my past life I was a township supervisor for a township not far from where we were, but I never knew there was a Pomona, Michigan. Nevertheless, there it was, and there was a sign, even!

The road to Pomona isn’t paved, but just on the other side of a crossroads was a hand-lettered cardboard sign announcing, simply, “Breakfast.”

We pulled into the parking lot of a long, oddly-shaped building and Gerry explained to me that he knows the family whose maple syrup operation this is: he works with one of the daughters of the owner. He names the owner and I say, “You don’t mean ROGER, do you?” He tells me that indeed that’s the right family, and I tell him that Roger the owner and I were on the township board together over (can it be?) thirty years ago. Funny, isn’t it?

Roger and I met a little later and both agreed that we probably wouldn’t have recognized each other—he got shorter and I became rounder. He got gray. I, of course, didn’t.

We joined the line of friends of the family waiting to get inside for the pancakes, sausage, and lovely maple syrup. It seems that every year this breakfast happens, a celebration of the syrup-making season in Northern Michigan (and very much like the cultural tradition of the ’sugar shack’ breakfast in Eastern Canada and in Vermont). The food is free and the hope is that you’ll buy syrup, of course, to take home. (Gerry doesn’t disappoint them: he buys a couple of cases of syrup and I tease him that he’s done his holiday shopping well in advance. )

I don’t know how many people are served at this event: the building is crowded and though the pancakes are wonderfully light and fluffy and the sausage crisp, we don’t want to take up too much space for too long—there will be several hundred people enjoying the occasion, it looks like.

My friends Dean and Diane boil maple sap every year, and so I’m familiar with the process. Dean and Diane started it as a hobby, and have an outdoor wood fire and a big flat pan, and a lot of buckets—and usually have friends over to drink sap tea and carry buckets. Roger’s operation is a big bigger: he’s built a huge oven, also wood-fired, and a stove for boiling down the sap. New this year are yards and yards of tubing leading down the hill to the building from the trees—no more buckets of sap being carried down the steep slope.

But it’s still hard work—it takes about 40 gallons of sap to make one gallon of syrup, and that’s a lot of buckets and boiling. There have been some innovations in the process, perhaps more accurately in the storage of the product, but the principle remains the same—boil it down.

Actually, the Native Americans probably froze it, discarded the ice, and froze it again. There are many colorful tales about how the tribes came to make the syrup: interestingly enough, a similar story crops up in several different places. In that story the Indians discovered a rich, sweet syrup which ran freely from the trees. They would lie under the trees letting the sweet stuff drip into their mouths until one day a deity came upon them and said, “You folks are getting lazy. Nothing good comes without work.” And from then on, the syrup was watered down and came out of the tree as sap which needed to be boiled down and condensed.

“Hard work? You betcha!” Roger’s partner tells us as we admire the shiny metal furnace that heats and sterilizes the sap. “We’ve been at this for three weeks solid now,” he says. He explains that this has been an unusually productive winter, due to the prolonged season of warmish days and cold nights. The secret is in the cold nights, he says. “Then when it gets warmer the next day, the sap runs.”

He tells us that prices are good this year, too, particularly since the last few harvests have been slower on the east coast. Michigan is the sixth largest syrup producing state in the US on average, but we may have climbed up a couple of percentage points because our last few seasons have been so good.

It’s a happy problem, he continues, but the partners have had to make some hard decisions. One of them is whether to sell their entire product to a large operation, who would buy every drop they could produce. “It’s a tough one,” he says. “Do we really want to be a big operation? Then there’d be more equipment to buy and care for, and more employees to manage. No, we thought, we don’t want to go there.”

He looks around the room, filled with friends in blue jeans and wool shirts, happily eating feather-light pancakes and rich syrup. “Nope,” he says. “This is where we want to be right now.”

Heading home, I think, “This is where I want to be right now, too.” The sun is out at last and the snow has melted only 25 miles south of my house. Spring is on its way.

When I get out of the car, Gerry hands me a bottle of maple syrup as a souvenir. I take it in the house and put it on the kitchen counter where I can see it, sparkling in the sunlight.

The Bells Was Ringing

Ed. Note: This blog was written by Lynn Larson, who remains in Eleuthera to enjoy the fun and excitement–and the sunshine.

The sign under the Methodist church bell which rings for all church services, has a sign under it: “To be rung for church or only in case of fire or lost”. Today at noon the bell rang and rang. The air was acrid with smoke, and the salt pond which was to have retained yesterday’s big brush fire, didn’t. It was dried up.

The pealing bell brought neighbors into the street (s). “Why didt de dig de trench las night?” “Why dint de cut de brush from de path of da fire?”"How close be it?” “Where is de new truck?” So many questions.

While the women asked, the men mobilized. “Who has a well?” “Bring de bukits” “Get da shovels.” and off they went, each on a particular mission, a few to watch and report back to the women and children who waited.

The big mystery was the whereabouts of “Beauty“, the new fire truck whose dedication Judith and I attended several weeks ago. You might remember that Beauty failed on her first mission, a fire run to a home in Cotton Bay. Once her tank was empty, her hose, stretched into the nearby sea, was plugged, and only drops dripped from her nozzle.The house, newly remodeled, burned to the ground.

Beauty is one of the two rescue vehicles in South Eleuthera, the other being the ambulance. Together they form SEEP (South Eleuthera Emergency Project), an unfortunate acronym if ever there was one. Well today’s fire was Beauty’s opportunity for redemption, as the traveling minister yells thu his microphone every night about six. Beauty was not up to the challenge. Seems Beauty had a flat tire and couldn’t be driven.

Out went the call for the trucks at Governor’s Harbour, and Wymss Bight. From my vantage point on the hill, I watched and listened as they came roaring into Tarpum Bay, sirens wailing, from north and south. A huge earth mover was toted past on a flat bed. The ambulance joined the procession. Trucks of men with shovels, buckets, loose hose, loud voices shouting instructions tore by. The women waited.

Gradually it became clear that the fire was under control. No one was hurt,no house burned, although Ann’s Take Away was almost taken away by flames.

The men returned to the waiting women smelling smokey and with tales of personal heroism. As the vechicles started their homeward journeys, Beauty limped gamely down the road. wanting badly to be part of the action, but too late to claim her place., There surely will be another opportunity…. Let’s hope Beauty will be up to her third trial by fire..

Return and Regret

Here I am, back in Northern Michigan. I’ve survived a Significant Snow Storm, two beautiful 60-ish days, a snow melt that buried my driveway bridge under about a foot of water, and the profound silence of a rooster-less morning.

I’m not passing judgment on any of these things: it’s good to be home, to see my friends, family and dog. I’m happy. But as I was sitting in a large Chamber of Commerce meeting today, I was looking at the faces of the men and women who were entering the room. They were white—pasty, unhealthy white. There were tension lines around their mouths. They were frowning.

And we listened to L. Brooks Patterson tell us about Michigan’s economy. Oh, he tried to be positive—he’s a salesman, for sure, and a wordsmith. He has a kind of gruff charm that’s appealing. But basically he said little to easy the pain that etched the faces around me: our state is hitched to the automobile, single-mindedly chained to a product which is not meeting consumer demand. Our schools are not teaching the next important world language, Mandarin Chinese. As a state, we are not working as a team to identify our economic possibilities—like medical manufacturing and health care research. And we need free broadband access in our cities.

Listening to LBP and watching the creases deepen around the mouths of my colleagues, I grew saddened. I thought about the smooth brown faces of my Bahamian friends, their ready smiles, and the economic success worries that are absent when nobody has any treasure except themselves and their loved ones. My mind wandered back to my last afternoon in Tarpum Bay when Brenda knocked on our door.

She was carrying a plastic bag filled with pedicure supplies. “You’re not going home without nice feet,” she told me, and set to work filling a bucket with warm soapy water and massaging my feet.

“Wait a minute,” Lynn whined. “Today is MY birthday, and SHE gets a pedicure?”

“Okay, Miss Lynn. You’re my friend too. You can have one next.”

Lynn, of course, then volunteered to do Miss Brenda’s toes as well, and so when it came time that evening to go out to dinner, we three women had such beautiful feet! Delighted with our gifts to each other, we celebrated Kervin and Brenda’s wedding anniversary, Lynn’s birthday, and my farewell. Our toes were magnificent! (And the conch fritters weren’t bad, either!)

Looking around me in the meeting room today, it all seemed so far away. Only two weeks ago, but such a long time and distance.

Housewarming

Miss Donna’s Housewarming Cake

It’s been a little over a year ago since Lynn came down to Tarpum Bay and helped Kervin initiate construction on our wonderful Culmer Cottage. Purchasing the land and shepherding the transaction through to closing an permitting had taken another year—really a short amount of time when you think about it—the Bahamas government is not exactly ‘user friendly’, not to mention the fact that everyone down here works on ‘island time’.

During the Year of the Transaction (taking a lesson from the Chinese, 2007 was “The Year of the Slug”), Lynn opened a Bahamas checking account which included two criminal checks in Michigan, we got our self-financing together, and initiated the permitting process. Together we obtained the required architect drawings made from our rough sketches and hired a builder (who later defaulted on the process). Then, while I was languishing in Orchard Creek and Munson medical center, Lynn came back and hired Kervin, bought some furnishings, initiated the permits, and Culmer House was under way!–the Year of the Jaguar!

Now in March 2009, we are both here in our wonderful cottage which sits pink and gleaming above the turquoise blue water of Tarpum Bay. Time to thank our friends!

We chose Monday, March 2 as a day for a party—one which would not interfere with the activities of the Methodist Church next door. It’s tough to find a night in our town where you don’t conflict with some church-related activity, and on the first Monday of the month, we unknowingly scheduled over the other crucial community event—the meeting of the Rock Sound Planning Commission. But because our party started at 6, we were still visited by several on their way to the planning commission meeting.

We planned a dessert party—cake, soft drinks, snacks, and sodas, and we invited all our friends, especially those who had been so helpful in the process of building our house. We were a little worried about whether Kervin would make it: “MizLynn!”, he said. “I gotta be in Nassau. You want me to come back here just for a PARTY?”. He looked aggrieved.

“Yes, Kervin, we do. This party is all about you and the wonderful house you built.”

“MIZLYNN! Listen to me! I got work to do! Fish to sell! I can’t be comin’ back here for no party!” But there is a pleased twinkle in his eye, and he arrives only a little late, resplendent in his new Nassau-purchased jeans and t-shirt and a clean, red ball cap.

Miss Reen

Almost everyone else we invited arrived as well. Our neighbor on the other side, the elegant Miss Nottage (or “Miss Reen”, as she is called in Tarpum Bay) stopped by around noon to offer us a housewarming gift (guessing correctly, I think) that others would not bring gifts and would be embarrassed by the omission if she brought one. She offered us our choice: a lovely table runner she had purchased in Nassau, a case of soda for the party, or Tarpum Bay Homecoming t-shirts from her store, the Hi-Way Department Store. We accepted the table runner, and bought t-shirts later as gifts for folks back home.

Miss Sheila enjoys cake

Promptly at 6 PM our effusive neighbor Matt arrived, decked out in black pants and an oversize Obama t-shirt. Matt does not have the conventional Bahamian metabolism, operating at warp speed most of the time, as evidenced by his constant flow of words—we were exhausted by the time his mother, Miss Sheila, climbed our front steps. She was followed by Miss Barbie (of Barbie’s Restaurant, home of the guava duff and other delicacies we love),Miss Nottage, Godfrey and his family, Papa George the pizza man, Kervin and Brenda, Mr. Kinky of the Shell station on Queen’s Highway, LeShan (daughter of the first builder we hired), and our three friends from Bert’s for the Best Grocery.

Others came and went throughout the evening, and it was all quite wonderful!

Power Women of Tarpum Bay

When the majority of the guest were there it was time to bless our house. All of our guests joined hands in a circle, and the venerable Miss Sheila offered up a long and extensive invocation. In it she blessed the house, the builder, our families, the families who went before us (Miss Sheila’s husband was born on our piece of land), and a wide variety of others who deserved recognition in the eyes of God.

As I listened to Miss Sheila, I was reminded of another more secular occasion when I was in the Republic of Georgia at a dinner following a three-day class I taught. The dinner seemed to last almost a long as the class, and was punctuated at increasingly frequent intervals by high-octane toasts honoring every relative any of us ever had or will have.

It seemed to me that both occasions were a reminder of the present moment, an honoring of that moment and all that has gone before it or will come after.

After Miss Sheila, doyen of Tarpum Bay, finished her rich catalog of praise, Mr. Kinky (also a minister) added his words, and the entire group broke into a hymn which unfamiliar to Lynn and I but one which our guests knew well. After a series of ‘amens’ and applause, we were hugged and welcomed and in a little while our guests began to leave, off to late night prayer meetings and Planning Commission hearings. Left behind: Miss Sheila’s gift of homemade dinner rolls and guava jam, a plastic bag filled with crumpled paper plates, and Miss Brenda who was busily washing the dishes and wiping of the tile counter tops.

Kervin, Godfrey, Matt, and George

“How did you like the party, Miss Brenda?” I asked.

“Fine,” she said. “But you shoulda asked me about the peanuts. You shoulda sprinkled ‘em with salt and toasted ‘em in the oven. They much better that way.”

“And, I forgot the red ribbon. You needs a red ribbon to put over the doorway so Kervin can cut it with scissors and let you in the house. We forgets that part.”

“Well,” I said, “That calls for another party. You bring the ribbon, and I’ll toast the peanuts.”

To SEEP, perchance to dream….

Celebrating The Fire Truck

“Wow!” my friend Sherry wrote on my Facebook page. “You can tell you are on an island. Now seriously, would you attend a fire engine dedication if you were in TC?”

Actually, no. You have to understand that Eleuthera is a sleepy island, but we did have some excitement this weekend: Lynn and I skipped the church cookout Saturday because we knew we were committed to the fire engine dedication on Sunday, and we can eat only so many conch fritters and peas and rice in one weekend.

So, today Lynn and I headed for the fire engine dedication in the heat of a sleepy Sunday afternoon. It’s an interesting thing, this acquisition of a firetruck for Tarpum Bay. The story begins in 2002, when an ambulance was donated to the community. By 2005, the vehicle was in total disrepair and a group of concerned citizens raised funds to repair and re-stock it. Riding on the back of that success, the group formed the “South Eleuthera Emergency Partners” (with the unfortunate acronym of ‘SEEP”). They were able to raise $25,000 in about 2 years, and acquired a 1975 MACK MD 400 named “Beauty”. They also raised additional funds and built a large shelter out on Queen’s Highway to house ‘Beauty’, and SEEP began a volunteer fire person training program, assisted by its US partner city of Gibsonville, North Carolina.

‘Beauty’ has been in Tarpum Bay for a few months now, but of course having the machinery is only a part of the program. Training the volunteers and purchasing the support equipment is quite another detail, and shortly after her arrival ‘Beauty’ was tested at the scene of a large grass fire in the neighboring town of Rock Sound. Again in early February, ‘Beauty’ attended another fire, this one with some serious consequences. Coincidentally, the fire was in a large seaside home owned by a friend of ours in our home town of Traverse City, Michigan. According to the newspaper, The Eleutheran, “the 750 gallon SEEP Fire Truck, filled to capacity, battled the blaze until the water supply was exhausted. As in many areas in the rural Bahamas, the Cotton Bay area has no fire hydrants, so the only option for the SEEP team was to draw water from the ocean. However, the team hit a snag when the suction for the draft pump malfunctioned and they were not able to draw in the ocean’s resource.”

Our friend’s house was a total loss.

After the Fire

However, the paper reports that the SEEP team now has additional training and equipment, and will be able to meet future challenges.

It’s an ambitious program: SEEP intends to extend its services to the most southern points of the island, and continue to train its citizens in emergency procedures as well. Today was the day that Beauty the Firetruck was turned over to the appropriate governmental units, with great pomp and circumstance.

Lynn and I arrived just as things were getting started: the police band was there, resplendent in white uniforms with red and gold braid, and the police and emergency services team were in full regalia. Women were dressed in high heels and hats, and many of the men were still in church suits and ties. It was cool inside the shelter, but several women carried large sun umbrellas and everyone seemed to be clutching bottles of water.

A Policewoman listens

In the Bahamas, church and state are one—the national anthem is often accompanied by exclamations of “Praise Jesus!” and “Thank you, Lord!”. Similarly, fire trucks and ambulances are prayed over, as are the volunteers (“wolunteers” in Bahamian) who “leave their churches and their families to help the community.” Everyone receives a plaque or a framed certificate, and fire persons were paraded in front of the entire community to a standing ovation.

Admiring the Drummer

The band played again, much to the delight of the little boys gaping in awe at the snare drummer. We left as the SEEP president, also a minister, wound up for a prolonged and thankful benediction and the ladies auxiliary began to uncover the potato salad and peas and rice.

Some are more appreciative than others....

Dining Out in Tarpum Bay

Conch Shells

Saturday evening, and dinner time. Our two guests, escapees from Michigan, Lynn and I decide to wander down to the beach for dinner at the No-Name restaurant, a little bar and food place run by Donovan and Diane. It’s just reopened, after having been raided by the health department for operating without a current liquor license (during which activity there were some suspicious ‘organic substances’ discovered by the authorities). But the restaurant is back in business now, and for Tarpum Bay it is ‘jumping’: there are two guys at the stand-up bar and some rake and scrape music playing loudly from a small radio.

No-Name restaurant is clean and pleasant inside, with two tables for four and the tiny bar. One of the men at the bar detaches himself from his drink long enough to hold the chair for me and utter a long string of works which I can’t really understand, given the fact that he seems to have been at the bar a rather long time, and has a pretty thick Bahamian patois in the best of times. Our volunteer maitre d’ is quite effusive and totally unintelligible, but he proudly points out the little black and white house next door, and I do catch it when he proudly says that he has been living in that very same house for 40 years.

He wants to know where we live, and Lynn tells him that we live in the pink house, “the one that Kervin built.” The latter identification causes him to nod vigorously: it seems that everyone recognizes Kervin’s great building job, and probably envies the fact that he had a year’s worth of work just down the road from his own house. At any rate, we are now welcomed even more warmly by our friend, who proceeds to plant a kiss on the top of my head. He then weaves a few steps back to the bar, and orders another beer.

Diane takes our order: it’s grouper fingers or conch—dipped in batter and fried, of course, with french fries and salad. And we begin the traditional wait: food here is cooked to order, and from my balcony I have often watched Donovan head out to the fish cage he keeps off shore and bring back fresh fish or conch for the evening menu.

But it takes a long time—nobody moves quickly, ever, and there are a couple of take-away orders ahead of ours. Our buddy at the bar seems to think we need entertainment, so he comes back over to our table and proceeds to kiss me on the head a few more times, and tell me that I am his mother, his girlfriend, and his sister, all rolled into one, and he respects me. Since it’s clear that we don’t share any genetic heritage, we all find this pronouncement pretty amusing, but he seems quite serious.

Then he pops the question: Do I like shells? Try asking this question after many beers: it comes out something like “Youalllikeshellsh?” and it took me a couple of tries to get it.

“Sure,” I say.

“Ibringyoushellsh, then,” he says and lurches to the door. We see him go past our window and head for the little black and white cottage, soon to return with two beautiful, perfect sea shells—a tulip shell and a perfect helmet. “These are for you,” he says, putting them in front of me. “Only for you.”

“Wow. What did I do to deserve this?” In the way of an answer, he kisses me on my head again.

Assured that we like them, he is a man with a mission: he heads back to his cottage and returns with a couple more shells, smaller, but no less perfect, cleaned and polished.

Again, we oooh and ahhh, and place them reverently in the middle of our table.

He’s in his stride now, so he lurches out the door and returns with a somewhat battered envelop from the Bahamas Electric Company. He presents it to me and directs me to open it. I am suspicious: am I supposed to pay his electric bill in return for these gifts? A kiss on the head may not be enough for this guy? I hand it back to him, but he insists that I open it.

“OK,” I say to my friends, “You are witnesses. He asked me to open this envelope.” They nod, and I unstick the flap, aware that it’s been opened several times before. I unfold the papers inside, and discover that it’s a check from BEC for $1,146. “Are you Arthur?” I ask. “You’re a lucky guy.”

“You keep it,” he says. “I ain’t got no children anymore.”

“No, Arthur.” I hand it back to him. “You get to a bank. You can live on this for, say, ten years.”

He laughs and goes back to the bar, tucking the check in his pocket, probably with great relief that his offer has been rejected. (However, we notice later that he tries to pay his bar bill with it, much to the disgust of Donovan, who can’t make change and realizes that Arthur has no other money in his pocket.)

Our meal comes at last, and it’s delicious. By now, several other customers have wandered in for snacks or take-away dinner or a Kalik beer. Donovan has had about enough of our friend Arthur (whom we later find out, has the nickname “Goatie”) and refuses to serve him any more beer, an action probably inspired by the fact that he’s discovered that his customer has no money and an uncashable check. A fairly loud discussion ensues as Donovan encourages Arthur to observe bedtime in his black and white cottage, and suggests that something severe will happen if Goatie doesn’t share the proceeds of the check-cashing operation with his next door bartender.

As we leave, Goatie emerges from the bushes for a farewell and we reinforce the necessity of his getting a good nights sleep, thank him once again for the shells, and head up the hill to the pink house that Kervin built.

Dinner at the Culmer Cottage

"Chris", a pencil sketch by Judith Lindenau

“Very nice fish, Lynn. I surely do love fresh grouper.”

“Probably would have been better if I had dredged it in a little flour before I cooked it, but when it’s only an hour out of the ocean, you can’t go wrong.’

“You know, Kervin must be arround here somewhere. I hear his ignition dinging—he’s left the key in the truck and the door open. Always a sign that he’s here.”

“Of course he’s here, Judith. It’s dinner time, isn’t it?”

“MIZLYNN! MIZJUDITH! MIZLYNN! HEY! I GOT THE THINGUM FOR THE PICTURE FRAME.”

“Come in, Kervin. You’re just in time for some grouper and some potatoes.”

“MIZLYNN! NO! I CAN’T STAY. I GOT TO GO HOME. NO!”

“Sure you can have some. Here. Sit down and eat. We have plenty.”

“OK. What’s this fish?”

“Grouper, Kervin. I just bought it off the dock.”

“MizLynn! How you know dis is grouper? How you know dat?”

“Kervin, I know it because the fisherman at the dock told me.”

“You don’t know grouper. I know grouper. I got some in my cooler. Why don’t you come to my house and get grouper? These guys at the dock, they tell you anything! I don’t know what kinda fish this is. You come to ME, MizLynn, when you want fish.”

“Well, Kervin, it must be ok. You seem to have polished it right off.”

“MizJudith, it’s a SNACK! I been fishin’ all day, nuttin since coffee this mornin’. I am gonna go home and cook boxer fish and pasta for my dinner.”

“Would you like a beer?”

“No, MizLynn. I got a little bottle of scotch, I am gonna have for this evening because Brenda, she’s in Nassau.”

“Well, before you go, Kervin, will you look at the new weed whacker? I got some gas in it, but I can’t get it started.”

“MIZLYNN! I TELL YOU NOT TO USE THAT WEEDWHACKER! DON’T! YOU PAY SOMEBODY TO USE WEEDWHACKER ON THESE ROCKS! I TELL YOU, MIZLYNN!”

“ Sure, sure, Kervin. But would you please see if it works? I couldn’t get it started yesterday.”

“MIZLYNN! SEE THIS BUTTON? YOU GOTTA HAVE IT PUSHED DOWN. IT SAY R-U-N, RUN! YOU DON’T PUSH IT DOWN, IT WON’T START. Stand back, now. I will show you.”

“Kervin! Kervin! Shut that thing down! I want to keep those little yellow flowers. Kervin! Can you hear me? Shut that down! It’s dark, and you can’t see what you are doing. Stop! The little yellow….”

“OK, OK, Mizlynn. See how easy it is? Don’t you do it. I got to go now, cook box fish.”

“Hey Kervin, before you go, could I ask you one question?”

“What, MizJudith? I tole you I gots to go now.”

“Well Kervin, why is there water under the sink? See how wet the wood is over there in the corner?”

“Yeah, and that bottom drawer is all swollen shut, too, Kervin.”

“MIZLYNN! MIZJUDITH! THIS IS NOT GOOD! WHY YOU NOT TELL ME SOONER?”

“Because, Kervin, I just noticed it yesterday, and you haven’t been around.”

“Oh, I gotta fix this. Oh, I gotta get some wood and stuff. I gotta fix this. I gotta go to Rock Sound tomorrow and get stuff and fix this. Now I go home. Goodbye.”

“Bye, Kervin. Hi, Chris.”

“Hi, MizLynn. I am back from my job in the Harbour Island for a few days. I came to see you.”

“Hi, Chris. You know Miss Judith?”

“Oh, yes, we’ve met. Hi, Miss Judith. You have a lovely house. But what’s that dripping noise I hear?”

“Oh, Chris, that’s the drip that Kervin just found.”

“Sounds more like a waterfall to me. Oh, look! There’s a huge puddle under the sink. Oh, that’s not good. Look at that! Perhaps I’d better turn off the water here until you get it fixed. You can call Mr. Tim-Bert Carey in the morning.”

“Thank you, Chris, that would be perfect. It’s so good to see you. And thank you so much for coming to visit and saving us from the waterfall. Plan on coming to our housewarming party next month. Bye.”

“Well, Lynn, at least we don’t have to do the dishes….”

“I agree. Let’s turn off the porch light and shut the door. We surely don’t need any more visitors.”

Adventuring

Glass Window, by Winslow Homer

Lynn, my partner in the Great Bahamian Home Ownership Adventure, has been here for a week. And while we’re different in many ways, and we’re good at respecting each other’s differences, we also have many adventures together. Both of us enjoy our Bahamian friends, and we’re both very much in love with this island and its culture. Lynn’s a lot more outgoing than I, so as a result our house is often full of people and I learn more about people and events because she doesn’t hesitate to jump out of the car and ask what’s going on.

Today, for instance, we set out early on our way to the Island Garden Store. Clyde, the Bahamian who owns it, welcomed us warmly: two years ago he’d rescued us from an over-heated engine car disaster, and remembered who we were immediately. (Says something about the level of excitement on Eleuthera: all we had was a steamy radiator!). Anyway, here came the Steamer Ladies, hot after the fresh-baked rolls and bread which is available on Tuesdays and Fridays at Clyde’s place. The bread is wonderful: I bought a long. crispy baguette filled with a tomato-olive paste. It was still warm from the oven, and we went happily down the road, tearing off large chunks of the fragrant, hot loaf.

Lynn wanted to visit this beautiful stretch of beach right next to a little resort: we hadn’t been back to that beach since our visit last time, and it is a breathtakingly beautiful site. But as we pulled down the lane to the pink sandy shoreline, which is usually deserted, we saw two large trucks parked right in the middle of the road. “Oh,” said Lynn, “those look like camera dollies. They are filming something!” And she hopped out of the car.

“Sure enough,” a friendly guy told her. “We’re filming commercials for a major line of cosmetics. This is their sun block commercial.” Turns out the photographer is a major-league player from Miami, and was happy to talk about filming commercials, his home in Eastern Europe, and how beautiful it was in Northern Michigan, where we live. “Did you want to drive past us down this road?” he finally asked. “I’ll be glad to move the trucks.”

No, we said. We are on our way to another beach. But the beach where we wanted to go was windy and a little cool. We read in the sun for a while, and then moved on, heading north through Governor’s Harbour, the capital of Eleuthera, past the airport, to an appliance store named “Lord Byron’s”.

Lord Byron’s Appliances and Home Improvement. God rest my MFA in literature! The store was a fairly large concrete block warehouse with a lumberyard behind it, and sat baking in the noonday sun under the blue and gold of the national flag. Three young Bahamians were inside watching TV—it was a slow morning at Lord Byron’s. Surprisingly,though, we found what we wanted, and for a good price. However, checking out was a little on the slow side—the Bahamian television show seemed too interesting to be interrupted. Suddenly, one of the tv characters screamed, “Release your inner pimp!!!”

“WHAT?” said Lynn. “Release my inner pimp? You gotta be kidding.” All five of us collapsed in laughter.

Leaving Lord Byron’s Appliances (having released our inner pimp), we continued north—passed Surfer’s Beach and Preacher’s Cave and into Gregory Town, home of Lenny Kravitz. We passed Elvina’s, where Lenny and friends jam on Tuesday night, and found a couple of shops and a take-away restaurant named Mona’s. Mona’s is just a little shack, equipped with a griddle and a deep fat fryer and a cooler full of Kalik beer—but the cheeseburgers were good (for $3.50) and the conch fritters (5 for $1) were wonderful, if artery clogging. We ate outside on the picnic table, having first discovered where Lenny lives (“Ain’t no secrets on THIS island, girl!) from Mona, and that he was indeed on the island and hanging out at Elvina’s.

Heading home, we picked up a hitch hiker, who turned out to be an interesting tour guide. He was a former banker who left his job at Chase Manhattan to come to Eleuthera where he met his wife. He’d been in over 30 countries in his banking days, and was now a construction foreman working on the Glass Window Bridge repair work. This is a highly dangerous job, he told us. And having been to the Bridge, I could imagine: the Bridge is a man-made bridge formed over a 200 yard wide strip of land where the Atlantic Ocean and the Caribbean meet underneath. The current bridge replaced the natural arch which was painted by Winslow Homer and subsequently destroyed by the waves. Still, it’s a breath-taking place, though the bridge itself is often unsafe: there are no reefs to protect it on the ocean side, and sudden rogue waves, called ‘rages’ by Eleutherans, have been known to sweep people (and vehicles) off its surface. Our passenger told us that the rages, often 100 feet high, can hit the bridge for several days at a time, and the one-lane bridge is shut down entirely during that period. The bridge is again being repaired, but as our guest told us, “it will never be safe.”

North Eleuthera was, at one time, a highly productive agricultural area as well. As we drove through the fields, we saw the remains of a dozen or so concrete silos where grain crops were stored. Pineapples, too, were a staple, until the US ceased to become a market as it developed the Hawaiian islands in the 1960’s. Add to that, our rider told us, the devastating effect of the drug trade on the Eleutheran people. Many people had lots of money, and corruption and money-laundering activities were everywhere. The Bahamian government was young and inexperienced, he said, and unable to deal with the many problems that arose. In many instances, the government over-reacted to these trends and banking became difficult, foreigners were unwelcome, and the Eleutherans themselves lost the ability to become self-sustaining because money was so abundant.

“But I wouldn’t,” he said, “ever leave Eleuthera again. I’ve traveled all over the world, and lived in Nassau and New York. This island is the best place I’ve ever found.”

Thirty miles later, we dropped him off at his immaculate bungalow not far from our own cottage, happy to have spent time with this interesting man and his wealth of information and insight about the history and culture of this island.

Glass Window from the air

Economics of Island Life

Pen drawing by Judith Lindenau

The construction work in the parish hall next door seems to have come to an end, at least the buzzing and banging and singing part. That means that traffic has slowed down on Adeline Street: all of the action attracted a lot of passers-by and “How’s it doin’” and conversations from the teen aged boys whose friends were working the job.

The town bard seems to have put other locales on his itinerary as well. He’s quite a vision around here: from early in the morning until sunset he walks the town, strumming on a gourd mandolin and chanting tunelessly. He’s usually invoking God, often at the top of his monotonal vocal cords, although when he sees me he sings something that I can faintly discern has the words ‘evil woman’ in it. I suspect that’s because I’m in shorts, or perhaps because I don’t hand him a dollar or two every time I go to Bert’s for the Best.

There’s a creche display across Queen’s Highway from Bert’s. It’s just the little shed part that’s left over from a Christmas display and a big pile of dried weeds, but that’s where he sits—in the manger, looking for handouts from the grocery store change.

That’s where he is now, sheltered from the ocean breeze, and it’s quiet across the street in the rectory. This is the first morning the four weeks that it’s been silent, and I can think some, and try to tell you a little bit about the economic realities of living here.

I am always faintly annoyed by the comment I so often heard, “You live in Traverse City, eh? Beautiful place, but how do you make a living there? I would be there in a heartbeat if I could fund the rest of my life.”

The same thing is true here, of course. It’s beautiful, but there’s not much living to be made. The Bahamian government is a parliamentary democracy, stable but poor. Of course the logistics of trying to govern 500 or more islands is difficult and expensive. Many of those islands, like Eleuthera, really don’t have a sustainable economy of their own and need the most basic of government services—accessibility infrastructures like harbors and air strips, education, medical services. So while it’s beautiful here, one of the reasons the beauty remains  is the remoteness, and that isolation which preserves also makes it difficult to earn a living.

How do the inhabitants do it? There’s some service sector economy—caretaking services for the wealthy propety owners or the few small resorts scattered about. There’s fishing, some construction, and a little farming in some spots. But by and large, the economy is based on barter and community caring, daycare services for a platter of macaroni and cheese or a fresh grouper.

What isn’t barter is cash. No checks or credit cards, and if you want to pay your electric bill you show up in person at Bahamas Electric, dollar bills in hand. Since there’s no income tax, and no property tax for most of the native landowners, there’s little reason for record keeping. The principal is simple: if you have the money, you pay for the item or the services. If you don’t have the money, you either trade something you have, someone in your family gives it to you, or you don’t get it at all.

Let’s assume you had some money: what would you spend it on? Food, of course, and perhaps electricity. If you have a phone, it would most likely be a pay-as-you-go cell phone, though if you were well-to-do you might have a telephone and a DSL hook-up for your internet. Maybe a television, though there don’t seem to be a lot of those around.

Children receive government health care  until the age of 18. After that, it’s pay as you go medicine, and fundraisers are common. Kervin’s only sister has cancer, and he hopes to be able to give her $30,000—that’s why he saves. Well, there’s Brenda too: she has some medical problems as well, and will need health care over the years. Hence, the savings accounts.

Cars are utility vehicles. The sea air doesn’t keep them running for long and certainly keeps them from being pretty—they are covered with sand and dust and salt spray. So nobody buys a classy looking car or truck as a regular thing: most buy stripped-down second hand vehicles and run them until they die. Sharing rides and hitch hiking is common: Brenda will stop and pick up women most of the time, and children.  She’s not one for giving rides to men unless I’m in the car, and even then she hums a hymn under her breath for the first mile or two with the passenger.

The same with houses–they are utilitarian.   Most of my neighbors are very clean, and their clothes—and the children’s clothes– are always washed and pressed. Brenda cleans her small house every day, and doesn’t venture out until everything has been swept, dusted, and washed. But there’s no pretense in the housing structures themselves. They are just  shelter—functional, usually neat outside as well as inside, and painted in pastel colors. Houses are  sturdy to withstand the weather, but there are no decorations and moving parts which could blow away and/or become missiles in a strong wind.

People don’t seem to visit each other’s houses much, either: parties and gathering are community wide and held in public places so again, not much house-pride or reason to build a pretentious dwelling place. There are no property taxes unless you own a highly valued property (over $250,000) which most local people don’t.

If you are old or disabled, you receive some government support—about $250 a month. Your family, your church or your neighbors contribute to the rest of your expenses.

So it goes. Kervin tells me that in a month he makes about as much as a fisherman as my weekly take-home pay when I was working. But then, he has no house payments, no taxes, no TV, no land-line phone. He has his sister and his wife to care for, and two grandchildren that he is raising for a few more years. He says he could enjoy being a contractor, and he would make more money, but he gets angry when people don’t pay him, and he has to keep enough cash on hand to pay his employees when the money doesn’t come in on time. He’s a good builder, as I’ve experienced, but fishing is a lot simpler: fish, clean, freeze, and sell. Your overhead expenses are a boat and a freezer. Some day he will complete his captain’s license requirements and further expand his business.

That’s it. That’s how you live in a place like Eleuthera, or Traverse City. In Traverse City we say, “A view of the Bay is worth half the pay (you might get in the real world).” Same thing here in the Bahamian family islands: it’s not money, it’s a state of mind. Money doesn’t buy lifestyle in either place. These are places where ‘letting go’ is the discipline of the day, and your sustainability is based on your faith in the rightness of your values.