Sometimes you just need a friend

By Erika Norris

Truly, sometimes you just need a friend who insists that you must go on a cruise, who persists for several years (thanks, Brenda!) And sometimes you just need a friend-spouse who says, you really ought to just go (thanks, honey!)

And it's always good to read about where you are going, and reflect how nothing has changed under the sun, and that we should learn from the past to avoid being condemned to repeat it, like some Sysiphonian nightmare. (A phrase borrowed from the following author...)

I was looking for a well written piece of historical fiction that might clue me in to some backstory regarding the Bahamas. I did an internet search. I was in a hurry. The book

Empire's Crossing had wonderful things said about it, so I purchased it in preparation for this cruise. It is NOT historical fiction, it is Historical History with capital H's! It is also Heavy and Humongous! The author is a person with a PhD from Oxford who knows more about the Caribbean than any human really ought to know. Kudos to Carrie Gibson, I learned so much, and left the book on the "Freedom of the Seas" ship, in the library, with a Jenta Reads bookmark in it! 😎 I hope someone else will enjoy it.

I did read the whole book, retaining possibly 1/10 of what passed through my pupils. I really appreciated the overarching principles and when we landed on New Providence I was better able to appreciate its background.

Mostly it is just very alarming how much of history is people trying to make a profit and generally killing off anyone who stands in their way. Yikes. The Taino/Lucayan people that originally lived here were wiped out by slavery and disease very quickly after Columbus popularized coming to the area.  Several European nations, who were very committed to exploration and profit, took over various islands and imported slaves from western Africa, in the absence of any other population to exploit. There were decades of trying to squeeze tobacco, then sugarcane from the soil, with black enslaved persons far outnumbering white persons. Sad to say, all these abuses were for trendy excesses that still plague us today (tobacco and sugar). Evil feeding bad habits, basically, and devastating the expendable to do it.

Then there were decades of tension as the French Revolution and new limits on slave trading percolated the early ideas of social conscience into the colonized islands, and enslaved people became restless.

And  then more decades of rebellions and independence from European nations, all fairly ugly, altho the Bahamas didn't have to fight, our tour guide made that clear! They were granted independence after other islands had bloody rebellions and colonizers began to lose interest in trying to control these lands. Even Nassau (the capital of the Bahamas, on New Providence) has a plaque to commemorate a public square where slave trading occurred, now a spot to remember a freedom act which allowed former slaves to claim a new free life on New Providence in 1834.

The population of New Providence is 89% black, meaning the vast majority of the citizens are descended from slaves. That's a hard thought. It's difficult to think they've inherited an island with no other industry than tourism, which feels a little bit like servitude as mostly white tourists flood in and out of these gorgeous islands. However, it would be worse to not visit, and to keep the only cash flow from them. Perhaps it is better to find ways to visit, such that it benefits local people more than overseas corporations, a trick I probably did not discover on this trip.

I really enjoyed our cruise, it is unusual for me to see so many shades of melanin in one place. There were really a lot of black people, people of hispanic heritage, and Asian families on the ship. A lot of mixed race families and kids. Many dads taking good care of their wives and kids.  Everybody just had a great time together in crowded spaces. The staff are also recruited from every nation on Earth as far as I can tell! The Caribbean islands are heavily represented but also Eastern Europe, the Philippines, Africa, and India. There is a great international flavor, but I found myself seeing everyone through the lens of this book.

I felt like I was looking at people in 4D, their present lovely faces most prominent, but their personal experiences just beneath the surface, and their family lineage and historic path glimmering ghostly behind them.

(Not that the European ancestry I am part of is wholesale committed to trampling others underfoot in search of profit, and the black and brown persons do not have human rights recognized, but there is no way we are not seeing some shadows from the past.)

The story of humanity is pretty ugly with occasional exceptions where people looked out for each other's interests, and are often met with martyrdom in some form. May the Lord help us to realize each person is made in his image, and help us to live accordingly, no matter the cost. And to those who are still wanting to trample and destroy, may they have many flat tires and engine trouble so they are stuck on the side of the road needing assistance from their fellow human.