South Eleuthera - The Bahamas’ First Settlement

After leaving Hatchet Bay, our next stop was in the first settlement of the Bahamas: Governor’s Harbour.  This sleepy little town has almost as many white people as black it would seem due mostly to people who were leaving governments and slavery laws they did not agree with.  The first night there, we stumbled into the elementary school’s variety show because I was beckoned off the boat by the smell of grilling chicken (which was not as good as the jerk chicken found in Jamaica, but still good) and the sounds of large stacks of speakers.  We were entertained by the school kids performing songs, poetry readings, and choreographed dance routines; however, I was more fascinated by all the white faces and blond hair I was seeing than by the kids whose voices were turned up to ear-splitting levels on the sound system.

Perry G. Christie, New Prime Minister

A few days later were the national elections for Prime Minister, an event that I was excited to get to witness as it only happens here every five years.  We happened to stop by the Tourist Board Office where we got some information and a small map of the area from one of the nicest ladies I have ever met.  Her thumb was died purple, prompting me to ask if it was because of the elections; she smiling held it up and said that she was excited to have voted earlier that day.  The results were announced that night: the power of the government would change hands to the opposing party (the FML was defeated by the PNP) for the first time in 15 years.  That the poll results were announced so quickly (within two hours of the polls closing) was to be the least surprising event in the election process here in the Bahamas; the most surprising part was the speed in which the new party took power. 

The following day at around 3:30 in the afternoon, I walked into a store with two employees who were intently listening to a radio program in which a man was giving a most impassioned speech.  When I asked about it, I was told that it was the new Prime Minister-elect giving his first speech as Prime Minister, having just been sworn into office and announcing that his new cabinet would be in place within four days’ time.  That’s right: the Prime Minister-elect was sworn into office less than 24 hours after being elected and there would be a complete changing of the guards in one working week!  When I told them how baffling this was to me, the shop keepers gave me a confused look until I explained the two month delay in the United States’ system of election-day-to-inauguration, a system that seemed strange – of course – to them.  Back on the boat, I told the Captain what I had heard and we discussed the intelligence of the new leader taking office immediately in order to keep strong the motivation of what got that party elected.  As President Obama’s approval ratings seemed to plummet before the ink dried on his first Bill, I could see how the United States’ commitment to CHANGE! died in the two month vacation between Presidents (because, really, what has any outgoing president accomplished in those last two months of office?) and how most people started playing the Blame Game before the new president was even able to sit in the Oval Office for the first time.

Borrowed from: http://www.bahamas4u.com/eleutheramaps.html
And, yes, it did look like this!

We stayed a week in Governor’s Harbour, though there isn’t too much to report on this quaint, quiet town.  We did hike to the other side of the island one day (which took less than an hour) to see the pink sand beach, meaning that on top of the ordinary white and grey-sand beaches, I have seen black, green and now pink beaches around the world.  Unfortunately, my dying camera had already strangled the life out of its batteries by the time we got there, so I have no pictures to show.  Later in the week, we saw an 82-year-old man who has built a replica of the Kon Tiki and sailed it from the Canary Islands with no motor taking more than a month to get to the Bahamas!  Now, there is some dedication to sailing; however, he is also doing this to raise money for a charity called WaterAid!  Read about his adventures and how you can help here.

An-Tiki, Anthony Smith's replica

After a week of snorkeling in harbor and both of us having a (different) day of not feeling so physically wonderful (the Captain with a strange back-seizing pain and myself with a mysterious there-then-gone stomach upset), we were nearing our time to set sail again.  The day before we were set to go, the alternator belt on the engine broke (no big deal: it’s an easy fix and we had two spares!), so the Captain changed it and we were set to go again…  Until he went to start the engine and realized there was a problem with a fuse which had blown.  I wrote up the problem with the engine - as this would not be the last time it plagued us – and have dedicated a page on the blog just to that and whatever random maintenance “stuff” may arise in the future; so, if you really want to know the Saga of the Blown Fuse, please go to the newest tab titled “What Happens on a 36-Year-Old Boat…”

Sail-out date came on Mother’s Day, though we made sure to let our mothers know how very much we love them before moving forward on a journey that, I’m sure, makes them wonder and worry about their offspring sometimes.  As we left the harbor and were just about to turn south around the rocks that would put us in open-waters, I noticed a dorsal fin off our port toward the bow (toward the front of the left side of the boat).  I let the Captain know that I thought there was a dolphin out about 30 feet from the boat; I was wrong.  There were FOUR dolphins!  And, after I threw the boat in neutral to ensure the propeller stopped moving for the safety of the dolphins and because I was about to let go of the steering wheel, I ran to the bow with the Captain and the cats to watch as each of them came within five feet of the boat as if to wish us well on our journey ahead!  What a nice way to begin a day of sailing!

The winds were a good speed that took us toward the southern end of the island, though they were at our back part of the trip.  Now, most people may think this is where we want the wind to come from so that it can push us forward.  I won’t go into all the mechanics of it because it is rather a boring explanation and because I am just getting a good handle on it so will not purport to be an expert, but suffice it to say that we actually want the winds coming from the side of us (mostly… again, long, tedious, and boring explanations…).  So, there was a bit of frustration on my part for a short time, a time that reminded me of why my husband is awesome and why I need to always be nice to him.  That night, we ended up throwing our anchor down in what must be the most popular mosquito breeding ground in the Bahamas, a situation that had us hauling anchor (and butt) before sun-up the next morning.

We have a boat that has a nice shallow draft meaning that we can get into places that many other boats cannot; we believed that this fact plus the name “Deep Creek” would mean that we would have no trouble getting into the next area we wanted to anchor.  It turns out “Deep Creek” is a misnomer and we ended up touching ground for the first time since buying the boat.  Thankfully, as a paranoid driver, I was going slowly and listening intently, so when I heard a bump and slight grind, the boat was in (a hard) reverse faster than the words could come out of Rob’s mouth for me to do so and we – VERY luckily - did not fully run aground or get stuck.  It took just a few moments of heavy breathing before we fully recovered and figured out another plan.

Once the boat was safely tucked away in calm, beautiful, deeper waters, the Captain and I headed into Deep Creek Settlement to find The Island School, a school which I have applied to for a teaching position because I am excited with the way the school is run and with the wonderful environmental impact the school and research center continue to have after a decade dedicated to sustainable living.  Visiting the school was actually the deciding reason the Captain and I pointed the boat toward Eleuthera, a need so strong to see the school-cum-community which has blossomed into a research facility over the years that we could not have gone through the Bahamas without seeing it!  And, we were not disappointed at all!

Fortunately (in the long run), we had come to the Bahamian branch of the school instead of the boarding school and research facility which gave us an opportunity to see the (mostly) American students interacting with the Bahamian students and to meet the principal of the Island School’s branch school, the Deep Creek Middle School.  As the students were still in class, we had the opportunity to walk around the small community and have a tasty cold treat: a frozen tamarind cup, a 12-ounce cup full of dark-colored, sweet-but-not-too-sweet fruit juice.  Once we returned to the middle school, we had time to look through the books on the shelves for the pre-teens and found a wide array of reading from around the world; while it was a small collection of books in comparison to a typical American school library, the choice of reading material was vastly varied in comparison with selections from around the world.

Borrowed from: http://islandschool.org/campus.aspx   

After a pleasant van ride with polite and inquisitive American high school students, Rob and I found ourselves walking through the research facilities where we were shown aquaponic-grown vegetables, a set up in which fresh-water tilapia were in a large holding tank where their poop was harvested in order to fertilize vegetables that were being grown on top of troughs of fresh water.  As this fresh water had been oxygenated by the veggies, it was pumped back into the holding tank for the fish to have “breathable” water, a truly symbiotic situation that results in healthy and sustainable food for the school.  The school itself: grows herbs for use in the kitchen, maintains a “farm” with chickens/ducks that provide eggs for the school and hogs who help to dispose of left over food, has every rooftop covered with either solar panels or a garden, and a rain catchment system that can keep the school in 80,000 gallons of water when the rest of the island has none due to natural disasters (such as last year’s hit by Hurricane Irene).  Furthermore, all the vehicles are fueled by biodiesel that is made at the school and the students are able to learn to make the furniture for the school in the woodworking shop with trees that are not native and are very intrusive to the island.  The extent that the Island School has gone in the name of “sustainability” is like nothing I have seen before but which I believe should be the foundation of every community around the world!

Borrowed from: http://islandschool.org/campus.aspx 

The school has 48 students each semester, though their number of applicants to be a student is close to 500 for each semester.  While there, the students learn biology through becoming SCUBA certified and jumping in the water to get a better understanding of biology at-work in the world; their math class is CelestialNavigation; their “P.E.” class is working out with the entire staff of the school twice a day, training for either a ½ marathon or 4-mile swim at the end of the semester.  The class I would be thrilled to teach (though I have yet to hear from them after applying twice for the position) is their history class, an anthropology/ethnology-based semester recording oral histories of people on the island regarding a research topic chosen by each student.  From the hands-on experience the students receive in their classes and in the kitchen to the “one person’s problem is everyone’s problem” attitude, there is not one part of the school that has missed a heart string of mine!  I just have to see if the Universe wants me there… or to possibly bring their model to another area in need of this type of training, as would be fitting with the school’s model of outreach.

Borrowed from: http://islandschool.org/campus.aspx 

While I know that both Rob and I could gush on and on about the wonderful parts of the Island School, I don’t want to bore you, Dear Reader, with the minute details…  Just know that we were talking about the details of the school for hours that night as we mentally prepared to leave one of the largest islands in the Bahamas and head to a cluster of some of the smallest islands in this area: the Exumas.  As you will read in later blogs, we were about to sail into some of the most beautiful waters on Earth (“better than any screen-saver you’ve ever seen”) though we were disappointed to leave such an amazing communal setting, one which we truly hope to return to in the future!