On occasion, memory fails.
Apparently, this incapacity comes along with the passport you get once you venture into Old Man’s Land.
To make this long story a bit shorter, suffice it to say that I am on my way to that place.
And as I enter, I am finding it harder and harder to remember some things. Take for example this fact: I have decided for whatever reason that I would talk less to some people, say less about what is on my mind, do what I can and thereafter say my prayers.
And believe you me, this has worked out just fine. But here the question you might reasonably raise has to do with what any of this has to do with age and failing memory.
Indeed, Time flies.
And as it has come and gone, I know and feel it in my old bones that the struggle between Good and Evil continues/as it must.
And so, as this struggle continues, God truly knows that this is a cruel, bloody, nasty place.
It is also true that these islands, rocks and cays are also home to some of God’s elect – that precious remnant that knows that the way of the cross still leads home.
But cruel or not, the view that I now hold is one that – quite literally speaking – this view of today’s Bahamas [paradoxically] is owned by a handful of now-old Bahamians who can remember that there was –once upon a time – a Bahamas where murder was the exception.
My children’s Bahamas is a place where murder, mayhem and violation are the stuff of which reality is itself made.
For now, I have my memories of a time that once was.
As I now recall, whenever someone or the other happened to be on the receiving end of a neighbor’s wrath, little more than bile and spittle were exchanged over a shared fence.
As I recall, some of the spewed invective could be graphically descriptive/ right down to some of the gorier details of this or that person’s anatomy.
And – of course – there was always the instance when all else seemed to fail where the warriors across the fence would decide to get the jump on each other/ and here they would drop the colour bomb/ this one with the revelation that the other was little more than a Black ass.
At that, all hell would break loose/ and some one or the other would then call on the Almighty to put an end to their enemy’s horrid existence. At that sound of that name – Church out/ argument ended/ with the warring parties agreed that the other was set to go to burning Hell on a one-way ticket.
Alas! Things have changed so dramatically in a now funky Bahamas that such a row between two angry Bahamians is today sufficient to get you charged with making threats of death and on conviction, obliged to serve a period of your life in a place that I thought was reserved for people who killed people and for people who work in banks who stole people’s money.
Alas! You can now have your wonderful life interrupted by the police and some other pumped up ones for doing what your parents and others did in the long ago years/ years when the sight and smell of blood did not so excite them.
So, instead of chopping each other up, they decided to cuss them out – and sometimes royally so.
We now have a generation of Bahamians who could care less about how things were in the old days/ indeed, these people could care less about anyone other than themselves/ and so the shootings/ and so the rapes and so the myriad of thefts that provide the texture for life in this now-horrid place.
Mercifully, there is another dimension to this story.
Here take note that, when I was a boy in the long-ago years, I would be told and taught time in and time out that –in life- you had to take the bitter with the sweet.
I internalized that lesson/ and so, to this very moment/ I take it as fact that, life is itself all about how you take the bitter with the sweet.
And for sure, if you are blessed enough in your loins that you come to sire a brood of babies, you come to understand – that with the birth of each child – the bitter will come with the sweet.
When the bitter comes, you suck it up – the dregs and all/ and you thank God.
Similarly, when the sweet finds itself your way/you exult in God’s grace and mercy/understanding that you are called to give thanks in and for all things.
And so, I have determined to live and think and act and work as I make my pilgrim’s journey forward and ever forward.
So it is today – on this blessed Thursday – I mix the bitter with the sweet in the handful of dusty words that follow.
In this, I have no guide but memory.
And as I have previously written about times past, there were occasions – quite often on Monday mornings – when this or that woman would be seen sporting dark sun glasses. At that sight, some of her friends and neighbors would take to calling her ‘American gal’.
This was apparently in cruel identification of this brutalized black woman with the truly glamorous presentation of her alter-ego, the tourist-white woman, who also sported her own ‘darkers’.
Sadly, there the sweet comparison ended.
While the tourist-white woman was concerned with glamour and ultra-violet rays, her black Bahamian counterpart wore her ‘darkers’ for the same reason Sonny Liston did after his brutal encounter with Muhammad Ali some time ago in those long ago years.
These Black women were all bruised and battered.
Sometimes they were kicked and at other times they were punched in the face – thus they were often left with their eyes tightly shut, thanks to the tender mercy of bruised blood.
On occasion/ they were just stomped.
Even now, I remember the bitter as I recall the times when this or that woman was hurt.
Tragically, the hurt continues as this or that monster-man tries to show how [notwithstanding the fact that he is a monster-man] he should be charged with rape if this is what he does to his wife.
But enough of monster-men and rape for the moment.
I now share some sweet news.
Just the other day, I had an epiphany moment/ in that wonderful instant, I experienced a rare glow/ I was gifted with insight that only comes if you live long enough/ live well enough and if you happen to have most of your senses intact.
The wonderful moment came my way as I chatted with a former student of mine – Marcus Laing, now an architect/ and as I always do, I inquired about his life and career/ and as we chatted under the almond tree on COB’s campus/ one of my teachers [Keva Bethel] turned up and there we all were in the wonder of the moment- teachers, students, citizens and nation-builders.
And we talked about this nation that is ours and we talked about why we know that there is a future for the Bahamas/ and I chatted with Keva B. about some of the days that used to be when she taught me some of the things I know.
And I shared with her the good news concerning one of my daughters [this one Zakita Nyami Safi Bethel] who is on her way forward and onward, educationally/ in a sense just as I was forty years ago, when I was on my way/thanks to work done by the likes of Keva Bethel.
And so, the struggle continues.
