The Conscious Traveler: The Bahamas
This writing is taken from an email I sent over a year and a half ago. Although edited to fit the necessities of an article, many things have been left unchanged. I ,James, the writer hope you enjoy this article and the many more to come.
For the past year and a half, I have traveled through the Caribbean and Central America documenting my experiences and my observations of the people (Natives and Travelers). I plan on continuing this journey until I make my way around the globe. Here, on my Substack, I will be sharing my past documented travels, my present, and hopefully future travels as well. This Substack is dedicated to what I truly feel and believe is an accurate analysis on what I have seen and experienced through the friendships I have made on the way, the places I have lived and visited, and the things I have seen with my own eyes. I have taken a somewhat concrete route while traveling. By concrete I mean that I know what countries I want to go to, when I want to go to them and for the amount of time I want to spend in each country (relatively a month in each). Beyond this planning, my travels are fluid and I often don't even know what region of the country I will be staying in until I get over the border and feet on the ground. For my first piece of writing, I have to start from the beginning: the Bahamas.
My feelings about my time in The Bahamas are in a way different now than how I felt during my time there. I have seen parallels in other countries that painted a clearer picture of what I was seeing and also shed light on the subconscious reason I chose this as my first destination. In the simplest of terms, I chose The Bahamas because it was an English speaking country and I wanted my first stop abroad to be as simple as possible to ease my way into this long journey. The Bahamas is known for its American tourist traffic and its 1-1 ratio on currency made it my most expensive stop on this journey. I came to realize the nuances of tourism in a clearer way - all of the good and the bad. I guess the simplest way to bring you, the reader, in on my experience is to share both the good and the bad that I witnessed and experienced.
The first thing I will say about The Bahamas is that it has beautiful beaches. Personally, I loved that the area of the Caribbean that The Bahamas is in. Far east enough and far north enough where the water is still a bit wilder as compared to other countries in the Caribbean. Secondly, the people are very kind. I normally have no problem getting along with people and finding space with like minded individuals in the US and I worried about that while traveling, but I was able to find some “semi” radical progressives there. I also opened my ears to more conservative viewpoints and ideas as well while traveling.
An amazing thing happens while traveling alone and staying in a place for a few weeks. People will slowly start to approach you and start to tell you their story and their ideas. It is almost like being a walking confessional pit. You are there long enough for them to build trust, but not there long enough for them to worry about having a face in the community judging them. I have heard countless stories from countless people. I befriended an elder of the neighborhood I was staying in, his name was Ed. Ed would tell me stories of how he had it all while living in the U.S., but a not so healthy lifestyle led him to be broke, jobless, and divorced, forcing him to move back to The Bahamas. I know it sounds like a sob story with a sad ending, but Ed is a local celebrity in his old age and also a very positive man. One of the most positive I have ever seen. He spends his day working at the double decker bus turned restaurant, where I met him. At first I frequented the place for the food, but after a while I was going really to talk to my buddy Ed. The food just also happened to be good.
A value I have during my travels is to spend time with the local people. To see how they lived, how they partied, how they lived day to day. Most of my time is spent doing the day to day things I would still be doing in the US. I can slow down and do the fun things in a much more spread out way because I am in these countries for so long.
The Night life in The Bahamas is HEAVILY influenced by New York, Atlanta and Florida. I think the reason for this is because of the abundance of cruise ships and people from these three places that arrive in the Bahamas. But, what cant be underestimated is the larger than life influence black American culture has on not only the black countries in the Caribbean AND Africa, but also on the rest of the world.
On a typical night out, I would go to the places the locals would go to. The music was sometimes calypso depending on where you went but mostly it was some form of American hiphop (with a sprinkle of reggae if I go to a place with an older crowd). I would say the places were calm. Even the most jumping place was chill compared to the places I would go to in New York or even California. This, I think, is due to a very relaxed lifestyle in the Caribbean or honestly every country I have been to outside of the US.
The Bahamas, along with the other countries I have been to, is very chill. There is never a rush to do things. People wake up late and don’t feel guilty about it. It was like taking a well needed stretch from the grind set coffin I was naturally in as an American (coming from a guy that knew all this shit was a lie from the second grade). Definitely a place to chill and be in a quiet space if you are okay with deviating from the tourist spots and hang out with the locals.
Outside of the quiet places you can go on a typical night out there are some places you can go that are the contrary. A friend I had made named Bambi invited me out with her friends to a club called “Mecca” and although it was not the typical club I was used to going to it was one I was familiar with. Like I said earlier the American influence is prominent. This club Mecca was jumping with rap and the newest trap hits straight from Atlanta. Every guy in there was dressed like Yo Gotti, every girl like Cashdoll.
When we arrived Bambi and crew went straight to the back to play dominos and pool. I saw some of the best pool shooting and passionate domino games I have ever seen in my life while in the Bahamas. I played a few games myself, but most of my night was spent talking to people about things I cant remember all that much. Like any good night out, the fun must end. Only thing is this fun ended when Bambi beat a girl in dominos and the girl who was obviously drunk got mad and tossed her drink at me while I was turned away. I was so confused to what happened that it was only after I found out that this girl was already mad because she felt the friend group I was with thought they were hot shit for coming into the club with me, an American. So in her drunken and from what I am told jealous rage she threw her drink at me. The bouncers there cleared the whole situation up and kicked everyone out before anything escalated past name calling though.
A negative I witnessed in The Bahamas is a Caribbean hiarcle system set in place. I think this comes from the Bahamian dollar being 1-1 with the U.S. mixed with the large amount of Americans that A. Visit there & B. Live there. Bahamians have a much closer proximity to white people and whiteness as opposed to other Caribbean people. Many well off Bahamians have bought into the things that come with whiteness such as capitalism and classism. Often times, Bahamians would tell me how much they are above the Haitians or the Jamaican population that lives there. Many times referring to them as ghetto for the neighborhoods they live in or the fact that they are associated with not having possessions such as a car or motorcycle. It is a common thing to look down on those who ride public transportation in The Bahamas.
I also found “semi radical” people, and I say semi because, although the progressive people I met were all for sexual liberation and racial equality and things of that nature, they had the absolute highest praises for capitalism. I became friends with a queer woman who is in a polyamorous relationship with another woman. She had some of the most freeing things to say about love all while saying some of the most vile things about poverty in the next sentence. I got the sense that maybe some of her ideas had come from pseudo radical talking points that neglect or lie about the dangers of capitalism that she had read or heard about from the states. Needless to say her motto was “ I feel the only way someone can gauge how successful their life is, is by how much money they have made before they die”.
Capitalism there to them, like in most places, is the key. It is the answer to life’s problems. The over-cost of things and the apparent black bourgeoisie there have very much separated the majority black community, at least on the islands I went to. The large casino and resorts that drape the coasts of the islands are grand and beautiful, but I really had no idea what I was looking at until I went to Belize and I was able to mentally connect the dots (you will just have to wait till I get to that at a later date). I want to iterate, that even as a leftist, progressive, radical, whatever you want to call it, I can understand there is a distinction between a person wanting things for themselves and getting them under capitalism and a person using others to make even more money with capitalism. To many in the Bahamas, you either aspire to be wealthy with all of the white casino and resort owners, or, you are a Haitian or Jamaican.
The next thing I want to touch on is what I'll call the Chinese take over. As I write this, the amount of capital and land China has in The Bahamas is insane and it does not even compare to the levels in countries like Jamaica. The Bahamas, like many other Caribbean countries, have put their land up for sale and Chinese businesses are buying it in droves. The politicians there do not care what this means for the people living there in the future. Only what it does for their pockets. This is the common thing internationally. It is not an unheard of story that politicians are in business for the gain and benefit of themselves.
Because of all of these capitalistic factors coming into play in the country and the contrast of where the successful come from and where the impoverished come from, many Bahamians have praise for the capitalistic practices of their oppressors. They know that the capitalistic practices have hurt them (most famously with FTX setting up shop there and then completely going bankrupt for inducing what we will call for lack of a better term “crypto scams”),but they also see how and where the people without capital live, Jamaicans and Haitians in the ghettos.
So because of this contrast I think many Bahamians think to themselves that they can do much more for themselves and much more for their people if they play into the “white mans” game. Now, many Bahamians have found success in doing this, real estate and the rental economy are two areas Bahamians have thrived in, but many more have not and like any other place the people that can not keep up with the capitalistic pressures are left behind. On one hand its good to make these tourists and expats pay for being on the land, but at the same time they don’t seem to understand how the raising of rents and the changing of homes and apartments to rental units and Air BnBs plays into upholding the ghettos. Not only making rents unaffordable, but also creating newer ghettos down the road.
Lastly, I come to the problem of skin bleaching. Which is a very nuanced thing. It is simply cosmetic and it does no harm to anyone but the person doing it, but only a dense person could see it for only that. In reality it is a physical and life changing sign that you are not comfortable in your blackness. I bring this up because out of every country I’ve gone to (including the U.S.) skin bleaching is at its highest I have seen in The Bahamas. This could simply be through what I have seen, but I think it also has to do with the Bahamas being a hotspot for white travelers and the sight of white people mixed with the fact that whiteness is the beauty standard internationally it leads to black people, mainly women, to try and obtain that standard by any means.
Overview- Being in the Bahamas was my first step in the light at seeing how much more laid back many countries are compared to the U.S., but also a step in the dark and seeing how not only America but heavily, VERY HEAVILY, Europe still has a hold on its former colonies. I very much did enjoy my time in The Bahamas. It was mostly a test run for what I would see, How I should operate and most importantly how I should respect the following countries I would go to. I was able to swim with pigs and go to the beach every day and eat fresh fish straight out of the water. I trained with a great coach who trained in Thailand and brought back his knowledge and helped me along my martial arts journey (I have been a Muay Thai kickboxer for years). I met some great honest and heart warming people.
This also was my first of many steps into understanding what it means to be a traveler instead of a tourist. This is a conscious thing more than a black and white, right and wrong thing. Where I go in these countries, what and where I spend my money and how I interact with the local community all play into if I am a conscious ethical traveler or not.
And that's it for my time in The Bahamas. I am using this platform to better my writing and hopefully this helps. Next post will be about the Dominican Republic... and I got a few things to say about DR.
Edited by Sarena Balzer
@serena.balzer (instagram)