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F E A T U R E S
Come Home with Me
Riding High
D E P A R T M E N T S The Surreal Gourmet
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Readers' Tips and Tales
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L A S T + W E E K Tuesday April 29 Uzbek low tech
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B a h a m i a n s a r e g o i n g BY DON GEORGE | "i'll just pull into this market for a second," Colin Hanna said, easing his mid-1980s Japanese car into the parking lot. "We've got some cousins coming over tonight and I have to get a few things." My two traveling companions and I followed Colin into a large modern supermarket not so different from my neighborhood Safeway -- except that my Safeway isn't surrounded by palm trees and located an easy jog from a succulent white sand beach on the western tip of New Providence island, in the Bahamas. We had arrived that morning on a cruise ship out of Miami, and having one full day on New Providence (better -- but incorrectly -- known as Nassau, the name of the capital city), we had decided to try a terrific sounding program developed by the Bahamian government called People-to-People. "People-to-People was begun some two decades ago as a way for the government to underscore the importance of tourism to the Bahamas and as a way to give visitors a genuine experience of the country," the director general of the Bahamas Ministry of Tourism had said in a press briefing earlier that day. "We know tourism is vital to our economy -- in fact, it accounts for 60 percent of our GNP -- but it doesn't have to undermine our traditional culture. People-to-People is a way of marrying the two -- giving visitors a great experience in our country and preserving our traditional ways." Tourism is so important, the director general said, that the government has gone to extraordinary measures to encourage it, instituting a tourism education program in the school system beginning in the first grade. I asked what's taught in the program. "Well, we begin by stressing the importance of tourism to the Bahamas, but essentially what we try to teach is how to behave toward tourists, how to welcome them." "Does everyone agree with this idea?" I asked.
Colin echoed this sentiment in the car as he was describing his own involvement in the People-to-People program. He told us he is a mid-level manager at the Xerox office in Nassau ("I was trained as an engineer, but these days I just push papers," he offered with a smile), then said, "Tourism is good for me. Xerox has photocopiers in all the hotels, so indirectly we make money from tourism." People-to-People is a wonderful program for visitors as well. Take that supermarket for example. Visiting a supermarket is not normally at the top of my list of things to do when I'm traveling somewhere, but it was very enlightening -- and more importantly, it gave me a real feeling for the day-to-day life of the people. While Colin was buying Coca-Cola and Canada Dry ginger ale and Frito's corn chips and Lay's potato chips, I was eavesdropping on other shoppers' conversations -- talk about a new sailing route to some of the outer Bahamian islands, an upcoming school festival and a summer trip home to England -- and appraising papayas, hefting coconuts and checking out the prices on everything from chicken breasts (cheaper than in the Bay Area) to corn flakes (a little more expensive). Then we tumbled back into the car and drove to Colin's trim, one-story house, set behind a newly mowed lawn that was about twice the size of his car and lavishly bordered with yellow, crimson and magenta blossoms and lush plants. Colin's wife, Suzette, welcomed us into their house, where we admired their antiques -- an ornate grandfather clock, an elaborate desk such as my New England ancestors must have used and an intricately designed silver serving tray for warming dishes -- and the gleaming new wooden settee Colin himself had made. Then we wandered into the back yard, where their two radiant daughters -- Gail, 8, and Gillian, 5 -- were playing. Gail brought us cold glasses of delicious coconut juice and Gillian showed me all her backyard treasures: her swing, the bees they keep to make honey, the tree whose fruit her mama uses to make jam. At one point Gillian excitedly grabbed my hand and brought me over to an improvised chicken coop, where a few chickens and a big white turkey were happily clucking and strutting. "Oh, him," Colin said, wandering over. "We bought him a few years ago for Thanksgiving, but somehow we never got around to eating him. Now he's like part of the family." "Do you know what I like?" the 5-year-old suddenly asked me, her eyes flashing. "No, what do you like?" "I like coconut meat!" she said and ran off to the house. Minutes later she reappeared bearing neatly cut slices of coconut. She watched every move as I put it into my mouth and chewed slowly. "Do you like it?" she said. "I love it!" I said, and a smile as big as a Bahamian sunrise spread across her face. We chatted about politics and culture and travels and learned the kinds of things the guidebooks don't tell you: Colin makes $38,000 a year and takes home about $37,000 -- in the Bahamas, there's no income tax, no sales tax and no property tax for properties worth less than $125,000. Young couples who want to build a house often finance it themselves rather than through banks; they build the house room by room over a period of five or six years. In the past five years people have begun to move back to the outer islands because of problems with crime and crowding. In the case of Abaco, for example, three or four families a week are returning. After another half hour, we got back into Colin's car and he drove us to the port where our cruise ship awaited. Nothing extraordinary had happened -- and in many ways, that's just the point. The People-to-People program brings visitors into the ordinary life of the Bahamas, illuminating everyday events and interactions. And that's a priceless gift for the traveler: an opportunity to walk through the doorway of the culture, right into its hearth and heart.
"This is how friendships are made, how lasting relationships begin," Colin
said. "I've been doing this for 20 years, and I still correspond with some of our visitors. Many have come back
for repeat visits. They've become friends."
For more information on the islands of the Bahamas, check out the Bahamas Web site. Join the discussions on meeting people overseas and the joys of foreign supermarkets in Salon's Table Talk. - - - - - - - - - - - - Don George is the
Editor of Wanderlust. You can e-mail him at dgeorge@salonmagazine.com.
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Salon Wanderlust is published every Monday evening at 6 p.m. PDT in Salon. Send all reader mail to wanderlust@salonmagazine.com. To receive a colorful weekly update on what's happening in Wanderlust, sign up here. Published articles are housed in the Wanderlust archives.
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"Oh no," he said with a smile, "but we can't deny or ignore the importance of
tourism to our economy, and so we figure the best thing we can do is try to
make tourism work for us: to create a way for us to preserve our traditions
and also to educate people about the Bahamas. Tourism is the best road for
the diversification of our economy: Food, fish, handicrafts -- virtually
everything we do here is influenced by tourism. If tourism is strong, then
everyone profits."
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