On Immigration

Much has been said of late about immigrants, especially illegal ones. By "illegal immigrants", by the way, we really mean people who come here on boats, not jets, people who sail here from the south, not the north, and people who speak a different language and who worship a different way from us.

In other words, we mean Haitians. Or Jamaicans, if we're feeling really expansive.

Send them home, we say. Even those who were here all their lives. Even those who were born here. If they illegal, they gattie go. We're a small country, after all. No space. No resources, not like our neighbours to the north. We are not the USA and Canada, with all that money up there ready to give away to the poor and tired of the world. After all, they pay no taxes, and they crowd up all our services. We cannot afford to be magnanimous. Suffering is not our business; send them home.

Well, fine. No problem. Only — why should we stop at the Haitians and the Jamaicans? Why don't we send all the immigrants — especially the illegal ones — back to where they came from?

Sure. Let's send back all those people whose names we don't recognize. Petit? What kind of a name is that? Eve? Cherenfant? Amertil? Send 'em back. Don't forget Justilien or Paul, now. And why stop at the names we don't know? There are plenty of immigrants pretending to be Bahamians, who have passports and everything. Let's round 'em all up, shall we? Charter a boat (why worry with a plane?) and send 'em back off to Haiti where they all came from. Let's start with the Poitiers, the Moncurs, the Benebys, the Bonabys, the Bonamys, the Godets, the Symonettes, the Dillets, the Darvilles, the Deveaux, the Deleveaux, the Demerittes, the Delamores. Why leave out the Morees, the Romers, the Virgils, the Sargents, or the Scavellas? They trace their roots to Haiti too. And let's not be fooled by innocent-sounding names like Armbrister or Solomon or Bain or Benjamin or Fountain — they'll be found in a Haitian phone book if we look hard enough. The Isaacs may not be as innocent as they sound, and who knows what bloodline lurks behind a Williams or a Foulkes? When you think about it, Francis and Frazier sound kind of French, and Martin and Levarity, Seymour and Larramore are definitely suspect. And who can forget the Duvaliers?

In fact, when we start looking, we're gonna find that more than half the people who come from the southern Bahamas, from Cat and Long and Crooked and Ragged Islands, from Acklins and Inagua and Mayaguana and Exuma, are gonna have some connection with, to, or in Haiti. Why don't we just play it safe and send them all home? After all, there was a time not so long ago when Port-au-Prince was closer and fancier than Nassau to them, and many of their ancestors spent good time down there. We can't trust them at all. Let's send them all back, just to be safe.

And then there are the West Indians, not to mention the Cubans and the Dominicans. So let's see. We can start with the Gomezes, if they manage to escape the sweep of the southern islands. Never mind that they've produced archbishops and doctors and senators; they're immigrants, and as we can't be sure of their legality, let's just be safe and send 'em on home. Cuba or Dominican Republic? Let's not be picky, let's just get on with it. And then the Palaciouses. The Fernanders. The Gonzalezes and the Fondas and the Cancinos. Treco? Who cares, sounds kind of Latin, let's get on with it. DeGregory, D'Aguilar, Ferrera, Ferreira, Laroda — all gone. The Pindlings, the Mitchells and the Dumonts who didn't get sent back to Haiti, the Maynards, the Worrells, the Fieldses, the Alleynes, the Baileys, the Outtens, the Cookes, the Conliffes, the Bosfields, the Edwards, and at least half of the Clarkes.

But why stop there? Why deport just those people with the familiar faces and the funny names? Let's deal with all immigrants. The Bahamas for Bahamians, okay? So we'll send back all the Greeks, the Chinese, the Syrians and the Lebanese; there go the Galanises and the Meicholases and the Maillises and the Klonarises and the Moskos and the Alexious. There go the Cheas, the Wongs, and the Lees, the Bakers and the Ageebs and the Solomons and the Isaacs who didn't get on the boat to Haiti. Bye-bye, Esfakises. So long, Tsavoussises. Armourys, see ya.

But wait. Illegal immigrants, did we say? Well, hell, that has got to include all the Africans who came here as slaves. Did they have papers? We don't think so. Maybe their masters did, but who can tell? And while we're at it, who gave those masters these islands anyway? The Crown? What crown? Who gave England the Bahamas, when it was a sailor named Columbus who found us, and Columbus came from Spain? Surely all the English (and the Scottish and the Welsh and the Irish) settlers are illegal too — all the Christies and the Pinders and the Thompsons and the Russells and the Bethel(l)s and the Griffins and the Culmers and the Forbeses and the Fords and the Mac-whatevers and the Millers and the Smiths. Wilchecombes. Duncombes. Adderleys. Burnsides. Carters. Gibsons. Glintons. Saunderses. Malones. Currys. Foxes. Knowleses. Hannas. Robertses. Fergusons. Farquharsons. Cartwrights. Nottages. Searses. Griffithses. Strachans. Mosses. Careys. Wilsons. And Rolles. Especially those Rolles, with their so-called rights to the land. Who gave them rights anyway, when people were here before them?

In fact, let's get rid of everybody who isn't a Lucayan — a true-true-true Bahamian — anybody who isn't descended from one of the people who discovered Columbus in his lostness, when he claimed these islands, illegally, for Spain. I suppose Seminoles could stay, though they're immigrants too; they came here when America got Florida, back in the 1700s.

Or maybe they should go too. Immigration, after all, is the great evil of the age. We can't ever be too careful in stamping it out, now can we?

You tell me.

On What We're Good At

I was taught never to end a sentence with a preposition. To end anything, for that matter, with a preposition. Instead of saying "This is something I'm not going to put up with", I was taught to say "This is something up with which I will not put". Ends on a verb, see. Much better.

I was taught to make an effort to be good at the stuff I did — stuff that included the speaking of English. And being a good child, I tried. Even if it made me sound like a pedant.

What I wasn't taught, not consciously anyway, was what we're good at. Be good at stuff, I was lectured; but not so much, look, you're good at this already; make it better. By "we", of course, I mean the collectivity of Bahamians. No. I went to a "good" school, where I received most of my teaching. Received, and soaked it up; like any Bahamian with broughtupcy, I made a very good sponge. The Andros Mud had nothing on me.

Fundamental to what I learned was this: we (read Bahamians) aren't good at anything at all.

I have since learned better. It's seeped into my consciousness without my realizing it: the fact that we can do some things very well, and others the best in the world. And in this climate of fear-of-the-immigrant, resistance-to-the-expatriate, this fight for protection of our own mediocrity (because of course, foreigners — black or white — do it better), I never hear anyone discussing what it is we can teach other people.

No. In fact, we're busily working to destroy what we're good at.

Now just what do I mean by this? Well, OK, let's look at what The Bahamas has given the world. (What is she talking about? I hear you saying. What in the world has The Bahamas given the world? Just wait and see.)

One: Joseph Spence and the Androsian guitar.
Two: Rhyming, in spirituals and other songs.
Three: The goatskin drum carried over the shoulder and beaten with one main hand.
Four: The Bahamian style of house, in wood or in stone.
Five: The Bahamian workboat, in every size, shape and fashion.

So where are we now? Well, first, how many young people know the name of Joseph Spence, much less know that he's one of the greatest folk artists in the entire world? Beyond that, how many young Bahamians are making music on guitars tuned to the six notes that Spence tuned his guitar? How many young Bahamians can play a single guitar and sound like a whole band? How many young Bahamians — and not so young too — even know how to hold a guitar these days, much less play it?

Second, how many young Bahamians know that rap and even dub are variations of the African-style chanting that occurs throughout the diaspora, and which has its own style here in The Bahamas? How many young Bahamians can rhyme with the subtlety and sophistication of a Spence or a McQueen, or produce a story in rhyme without shrugging on the accents of street Brooklyn or Trench Town? How many of them (us) even recognize the rhythms of the old Bahamian rhyme, much less welcome them?

Three: Where have all the goatskin drums gone? I know the challenges inherent in making them: the people who know how are aging, tom-toms are easy to find, goats are few and far between, skins have to come in from Jamaica — but these are weak excuses, not reasons to abandon a skill our ancestors recreated from the ashes of slavery.

Four: The houses that are uniquely ours, as opposed to those whose facades and spaces we see in magazines and on screens, are in imminent danger of disappearing forever. These buildings — of wood some of them, built often by master shipbuilders and held together by pegs and engineering designed to withstand waves, and of concrete or stone others, made to be cool without air conditioning and stout against storms — are being bulldozed with surprising rapidity, falling before machines made far away and unlamented by men who value expediency over Bahamian skill. And at the same time, American architects in the South are copying the Bahamian style.

Five: Where are the boatbuilders who know how to bend wood? Have we moved entirely over to fibreglass? Is the tradition of Bahamian boatbuilding — so world-renowned that the richest men once had their yachts built in Abaco (the word hadn't got out about Long Island and Ragged Island and Crooked Island and Exuma) — in danger of dying because of our own ignorance?

Now, lest it seem to people that I'm drowning in nostalgia, that I'm romanticizing stuff, that I'm being impractical and unrealistic and too passionate to make sense, consider this.

We live in a world where ideas, original ideas, are the things that generate cold, hard cash. It's a world that's looking for fresh things, new things, for things that work. The world created by people who are "progressive", unromantic, practical and realistic and devoid of any passion, is a world that falls down in big winds, sinks at the slightest provocation, stops running five years after its purchase (if you're lucky), and issues out of machines. It's also a world whose profits all go to the same places: to the Sonys and Microsofts of this earth.

And what sells is stuff that's unique, that works, that lasts, that's special, that's true.

Every choice we make to leave what is ours behind, to abandon what we're good at for the stuff that's easy or cheap is not a choice simply to give up a little piece of our souls. It's a choice also to give up a little piece of our wealth. For in this Sonysoft world of ours, our wealth will come from our souls. If we keep it, they will come.