Letter from the Bahamas, 2024 #5 – Greg Allard
Our sincerest thanks to Greg and Barbara Allard for once again sharing their thoughts and beautiful photography from their Bahamas cruises. These photos and descriptions will have you aching to follow in Meander‘s wake! For more of this excellent photography, type Allard in our Homepage search window for letters from previous cruises.
Hello Everyone – More from Eleuthera, and then the first half of a story which goes back well over a decade.
In some cemeteries in the Bahamas people are buried in a sarcophagus like this one, sometimes because there may be a low water table in the ground. In other places, including Bimini, we have seen this custom of painting or putting a permanent photograph of the deceaseds on the tombstone or a sarcophagus. A nice thing.
Bannerman Town is on the remote southeast lower corner of Eleuthera. In the mid 19th century there was a thriving town here. They had shops, homes and cobblestone streets, and a church. The remains of the Episcopalian church, shown above, are hidden in the bush and difficult to find. As best we can tell, it was built around 1850, and this is all that remains of the settlement 175 years later. The reason this much is leftof the church because it was sturdily built of local limestone; the wooden roof is long since gone. Note the exterior stone buttresses.
There is a small settlement of Bannerman nearby, but that is composed of a handful of newer buildings.
Learning about local history in remote parts of the Bahamas is difficult. Finding anything about this church took a significant amount of digging which produced scant information.
The altar at the front of the church proudly remains.
Even the smaller settlements in the Bahamas often have several churches, some of them active or others abandoned. This is St. Luke’s Anglican Church in Rock Sound, on the west coast of Eleuthera. Yes, it is literally on the main road, and a stone’s-throw from the water. I guess in Rock Sound it is difficult for people to say they didn’t go to church because they didn’t know where it was.
Da Beach.
In Waterford, at the Davis Harbour marina, we met Donovan Anderson, born and raised on Eleuthera. What a superb young man – bright, articulate and well educated. He saw we had bought some local pineapples, and he showed his exceptional knowledge of Eleutherian variety, a very special kind of pineapple. More on that in the next Letter. He also taught us how to make a bush-medicine tea for joint pain, by shaving the outer skin, boiling it, and then putting the result through a sieve.
In a small settlement in S. Eleuthera is this “Car Wash.” Not quite the automated version we see in the U.S.
Unfortunately this one is no longer in use and the building abandoned, but several years ago it was active, and the owner made good use of his bucket of water, sponge and chamois.
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Rum Cay is a small island in the remote southern Bahamas. The population when we first visited Rum in 2010 was around 69. Today it is less than 60. This photo, below, is from 2011.
There is no deepwater harbour on Rum, but there was this small gem of a marina which made you feel as if you had travelled to the far side of the world. To enter the Sumner Point marina you had to wend your way through a complex path of shallow water strewn with coral heads, some of them just a few inches below the surface – just waiting to bend your propellers or puncture a hole in your boat. A puckering experience….
It was at Rum that we first met the extraordinary, multi-talented owner of the marina, Bobby Little. He is originally from Miami, a high school graduate but better educated than a PhD. He moved to the Bahamas, and soon morphed into a Bahamian. In his youth he was an award-winning skateboarding champion. Besides being a hands-on marina operator (dredging the marina with a backhoe), he is a world class chef, a pilot, and a highly recognized artist, mostly in carving fossilized coral. He has been described as a Renaissance man.
Bobby Little in 2011
We spent many exceptional days there, with Bobby going boat-to-boat asking for ingredients he needed for the evening’s meal. There was always fresh fish, locally caught and creatively done, and most everyone pitched-in around the kitchen work table helping with the prep work. The “club house” was a a beautiful open layout stone building. There was a big bar, and those who did not wish to cook, just drank, and added each drink to the tally on the bar. No one ever failed to enter every last drink.
The bar. Not much fun happening here.
World class fishing and diving, right off shore.
Bobby in the kitchen. The rather large individual to the right of Bobby is Rasta.
Rasta. He’s a Rastafarian. A massive man; he must be almost 6’6” tall, with dreadlocks down to his waist. When he coils the dreadlocks on top of his head, it makes him almost a foot taller. Despite his size he is a kind, gentle giant.
Here’s a story which some of you may remember. Before we left Rum Cay one year, I brought Rasta one of our boat shirts as a gift, and apologized because the biggest we had was a XXL, and knew it wouldn’t fit. He said: “It dunt mattah if da shirt dunt fit; what mattah is dat you taught of Rasta.” We hear that he is either on Cat Cay or in Fort Lauderdale. Like Bobby, Rasta is an outstanding artist, who often also carves in fossilized coral. We have a number of Bobby’s and Rasta’s exceptional pieces.
Bobby and Rasta on the dock at Rum Cay.
Bobby in his ceremonial dress, likely carrying conch shells which he has made into horns, to be traditionally blown with the setting sun.
Being at Rum Cay, as described above, was an almost mystical experience, which unfortunately came to an end. That’s the second part of this story: what happened to Bobby and why the marina no longer exists. And, where is Bobby today and what is he doing?
We’ll talk about that in our next Letter.
Thanks for joining us.
Greg and Barbara
Copyright Greg Allard 2024
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