I first started meeting Bahamian students in England in the late 1950s and early 1960s and began to learn a little about the country, then still a British Colony, and thought of by most Brits as an exotic, far distant holiday destination for the super rich. The era of cheap flights was yet to come and most people in the U.K., including myself, had hardly even heard of The Bahamas except as the place where the Duke of Windsor had been sent as Governor during the war to punish him for abdicating from the Throne of Great Britain!
It was not until the early 1970s that I visited The Bahamas for the first time, not as an ordinary tourist, but as the husband of a Bahamian meeting my in-laws.
I had not done a great deal of travelling at that time, and, after landing at Nassau International on a December Sunday evening, I remember the shock of walking out into the warm, humid air having left an icy, foggy London.
I was staying in the home of my then Mother-in-Law in Mason's Addition, off East Street, so I was truly "over the hill" and was thrilled to be amongst real Bahamians and not one of the tourists in a modern hotel.
Over the Hill is very different in character and appearance to the playground of the super rich that was my imagined Bahamas before I started to learn about the place all those years before, and, being the person I am, I truly loved it.
Having arrived in Mason's Addition that Sunday evening two of my first impressions were to do with sounds. As darkness fell I heard what sounded like an attack from a pack of wolves. It was, of course the island's potcake population barking their messages from one district to another, forming a background of sound that I soon accepted as normal.
The next sounds for which I needed an explanation were of human voices shouting and wailing like a hundred banshees. They came from the nearby Jumper Church.
As well as the sights, especially of what looked like very flimsy wooden houses perched all around my Mother-in-Law's more substantial home, there were other sounds which helped form my first impressions of Nassau. There was the very rural sound of a cock crowing first thing in the morning which added a homely feel to the general ambiance.
Another daily early morning sound, not so homely, was of someone outside coughing and spitting. I discovered it was an old homeless man who lived under a piece of cardboard up against a nearby wall clearing his throat as a form of morning ablutions!
The most enduring and endearing impression was of the people. I knew I would be received with love and affection by my Bahamian family, but everyone I met showed friendship of a warmth that matched the climate. I don't think people hugged as much as they do today as a greeting, but I found that when you shook hands with someone they held onto your hand for much longer than was usual in the U.K., giving a feeling that they were really pleased to meet you and were not just going through an impersonal acknowledgement.
My marriage to a Bahamian and contact with Bahamians in England had made me familiar with the names of typical Bahamian food, but I had not really had an opportunity to try it. Now I was able to eat and enjoy peas 'n rice, macaroni cheese, conch in all its forms, boil fish, stew fish, johnny cake, pig feet souse, tuna and grits, and of course lots of rum.
My consumption of rum and other forms of alcohol often took place in dark, noisy bars to which I had been taken by my brother in law and his Batelco co workers - bars which I'm sure were never visited by tourists. I failed to keep up with their drinking speed, and found it difficult to follow the shouted conversations in broad Bahamian, but I loved every minute because it was such a new experience.
After many years of close contact with the Bahamas and Bahamians I have many other impressions too numerous to list here, but these early ones will remain with me as the beginning of my discovering of The Bahamas.
