All posts by Natalie Willis

By Dr Ian Bethell-Bennett, The University of The Bahamas. Exuma blue recedes into Ragged Island sargasso and green.  Sole inhabitant of Buena Vista Cay, Edward Lockhart, a reminder of Hemingway’s Old Man and The Sea (1952) has pulled up alongside and tied his boat to the MV Captain C and now stands with the others on the deck.  Sun pounds down as the heat of living in the tropics feels much hotter than it has in forever. Art is always somewhat less strange than life, as stories come and go and fight to retain their place in a global village quickly being overtaken by overwriting of colour-blindness and leadership that throws women and minorities and their voices under the bus.  Ironically, there is this romantic notion about “going back to the island”, it will all be better there, by and by.  The irony is that hidden in this discourse of nostalgia for the island, is an erasure of the same island we long for.

By Ethan Knowles: Summer Intern for Expo2020 for the upcoming Double Dutch, “Hot Water”.  It took three days before Aunty Mary decided to stay. To stay, not merely till the next mailboat, but for the next month. This revelation came as a great shock not just to the enduring community, all of whom had seen my aunty pack her bags and run off to Nassau the second Pa Elmer turned a blind eye, but to Pa Elmer himself, my grandpa and guardian, who had never known his daughter to show a sense of attachment to this tiny rock at the foot of the Great Bahama Bank in all his life.

Emma pushed the curtains back to play make believe with her friend Jessica whom she hadn’t seen all summer. She was busy playing make believe elsewhere. This elsewhere place? A theatre and performance arts camp facilitated by none other than Lynn Terez Davis-Nixon, otherwise known as Miss Daisy, a Bahamian icon, family comedian and the Cultural Affairs Officer at the Ministry of Youth, Sports and Culture (MYSC). “Youth development through the arts summer camp has been an initiative of the Ministry [of Youth, Sports and Culture] for about six years now. I’m passionate about this programme because it’s important we teach creative kids that the arts are lucrative; that you don’t have to be a doctor or lawyer to make money; that doing what you love is enough to make a living,” Davis-Nixon says with enthusiasm.

For the closing event and finissage of the exhibition “We Suffer To Remain” -Sunday, July 29th–we are left to critically, crucially, question the work of language. “I suffer to remain, Saint of a wild mad Land”. The Caribbean has transitioned from this “wild, mad land” of disease and mystery into the tropical Eden we ubiquitously see in media today. But just what makes this place what it is? Who suffers to remain, and who are the saints and sinners? Sometimes it is easy to get lost in the cacophony of voices in the history of this region. In a place suffering from the silencing of so many, it is harder still to discern what voices are speaking – be they loud, soft, deafening, or a whisper. 

By Dr Ian Bethell-Bennett. The University of The Bahamas. The savagery of hurricanes is clear as people struggle to recover and survive. This is the first of a three-part series that journeys through and to the Southern Bahamas, to Ragged Island.  It is an exploration of connectivity, innovation and cultural erasure meeting with opportunity, though not for all.  As a part of the content for The Bahamas pavilion at the Expo 2020 “Connecting Minds Creating the Future”, to be held in Dubai United Arab Emirates beginning on 20th October 2020, a group of researchers sought to collect data and stories of life in the tropics.  The focus will be revealed as the stories unfold.  With the theme of sustainability, the question becomes: can any of us be truly sustainable in a cultural reality that threatens erasure through natural and man-made situations?    

Ethan Knowles, Guest Intern for the Double Dutch 2018 Project. When I first came back home I was afraid. Though the hurricane was long over, and the news said that all the rotting carcasses had been cleared away, I was afraid nonetheless. I was afraid because I barely recognized anything. Riding around in Aunty Mary’s two-seater truck, I couldn’t spot the crowds of red mangrove that would ordinarily welcome me home after so many hours spent on the mailboat. Instead, I saw angry, misshapen skeletons tearing at the shore. I didn’t see Uncle Freddy or Ma Pat working the salt flats either. In fact, I didn’t see anyone down there – just flooded pans and brooding boundary lines. I turned away to gaze at the sea. I scanned the horizon carefully, but there wasn’t a boat in sight; and when I spun around to survey the land, I couldn’t make out a single child’s mother gathering tops in the bush.

THE POWER OF ART – Dear Editor, I was totally shocked by the recent appointment of the new Minister of Youth, Sports and Culture! Having smiled with relief when Minister Pintard was appointed, confident that his Ministry would benefit from his firsthand knowledge and appreciation for art and culture, I must now disappointedly admit that the machination of ‘politricks’ leave me speechless!