On Self-Reliance (29 April 2004)

Two weeks ago, I had the privilege and pleasure of travelling to Cherokee Sound, Abaco, for the rededication of the old schoolhouse there. For those of you who don't know the story, it's an inspiring one. Cherokee Sound is a small settlement, isolated from the rest of Abaco by the fact that until the 1990s the most efficient way to get to it was by boat. Only recently has the settlement been connected to the rest of Abaco by a road, and that, together with the changing economic fortunes of the entire Bahamas, has made it a very prosperous settlement.

In the middle of the settlement is an old building — the Old Schoolhouse, built of limestone with walls easily two feet thick, with buttresses on the side like any good church, and shutters and a roof made of wood. It was built, as near as anyone can tell, during the late 1800s, making it well over a century old. Ten years ago it was decrepit, in much the same shape as too many buildings of that age; the roof was falling in, the doors falling off, and the walls had settled so much that cracks were appearing and some of the buttresses were crumbling. The Ministry of Works marked it down for demolition.

But there was something about this schoolhouse that the Ministry of Works — that indeed most Bahamians — didn't know. For all the isolation of its community and the insignificance of the settlement, this schoolhouse — under the leadership of its mid-century schoolmaster, Mr. W. W. Sands — had turned out some of the best minds in the country, among them Mr. Patrick Bethel, educator extraordinaire.

And so several members of the community decided that they were not going to allow the schoolhouse to go the way of so much Bahamian history — demolished and forgotten. Instead, they formed the Old School Restoration Committee, and embarked on a bold programme of fundraising.

Two years ago, they began the restoration. Thereafter, they worked by faith, holding homecomings and other festivals to continue to raise money, and donating their time and energy to the project. They worked fast; by the time they had almost finished, the Ministry of Works had just got around to sending a representative to the settlement to deliver the demolition order.

Two weeks ago, finally, they rededicated the schoolhouse in the memory of W. W. Sands, and opened its doors.

The entire project cost some $120,000-odd. Of that, $33,000 was donated in kind — labour given freely by carpenters and contractors to the community. Fifteen thousand dollars or so was provided by the Bahamian government through the National Museum; the rest was raised by the people of Cherokee Sound.

I sat in the schoolhouse — air-conditioned, freshly painted, glowing with burnished wood — and thought about several things.

I thought about how rare it is these days for we Bahamians to invest our own money in old things. For some reason we seem to believe that new is better, and so we leave a trail of the half-used and the falling-down in our pursuit of fresh paint, rebar, and concrete blocks that are far skinnier than they used to be.

I thought about how seldom we Bahamians take it upon ourselves to honour our own. For some reason we seem to believe that it is the government's job to do this for us, and so we wait upon the mercies of the politicians.

And I thought about how often we Bahamians ask others — foreign investors, permanent residents, the government — to do for us what we used to do for ourselves.

The irony is there are few people on this earth who have mastered the art of self-reliance better than we Bahamians. Our country is not much more than bumps of limestone, covered with a little vegetation and hiding a little water, scattered across a beautiful but treacherous sea. The fact that we have survived for almost 400 years in this environment, and survived well, is a testament to our ability to rely on ourselves.

We often believe that the things that gave us this ability are things that belong in the past. Not so. During the 1990s, I had the good fortune of spending some time doing fieldwork on Long Island. The man who was my main contact, the multi-talented Orlando Turnquest, is simultaneously a farmer and a musician. He is a core member of the rake-n-scrape group known in Nassau as Thomas and the Boys, and he has worked in various capacities, from a Batelco technician to a taxi driver to pinch-hitting as a road engineer. And on his farm he grows every kind of food any healthy person might need, as well as plants for medicinal and cosmetic purposes. In addition to his crops, he keeps sheep for mutton and he fishes for his protein. A trip to the food store is a luxury for him, not a necessity; he, like many people in Long Island, Cat Island, Eleuthera, Abaco, Grand Bahama, Andros, and any other Family Island I could name, learned how to survive from his father and grandfather. He has the gift of self-reliance.

These are the kinds of Bahamians we used to be. Our ancestors were poor, but they were independent. We are rich, but if anything should happen to our neighbours, we will starve.

I believe that material wealth has made us lazy, has made us complacent. We have become accustomed to being handed things by governments anxious to make up for the deprivation suffered by most of us pre-1967. New generations of Bahamians who have been provided with free education, free health care, free social services, and any number of other freedoms have not learned the art of self-reliance.

The result: we run the risk of losing one of the fundamental markers of our identity: self-reliance, the ability to survive no matter what. We come from hardy stock; but privilege is making us soft.

So it's time, I think, for us to learn from the people of Cherokee Sound, who saw a need and filled it, without waiting for approval or support or anything else from the government. It's time for us to re-learn how to do what they did — how to reclaim our histories, honour our own, and make our nation into a showpiece for the world.