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Saturday, July 12, 2025

The resilience of the Bahamian people

by

Mark Bassant
2113 days ago
20190928

Lead Ed­i­tor of the In­ves­tiga­tive Desk Mark Bas­sant and Se­nior cam­era­man Tim­o­thy Chasteau spent a week in the Ba­hamas. Dur­ing that time, they cap­tured some com­pelling im­ages of the dev­as­ta­tion on the is­land of Aba­cos and The Grand Ba­hama.

Amongst the dev­as­ta­tion, des­per­a­tion and hope­less­ness lies the re­silience of the Ba­hami­an peo­ple.

Three weeks ago to this date, they were pum­melled by Hur­ri­cane Do­ri­an which left noth­ing but death and may­hem be­hind. Thou­sands on the is­lands of the Aba­cos and The Grand Ba­hama faced a trail of de­struc­tion in­com­pre­hen­si­ble to many.

Af­ter Prov­i­dence, Aba­cos is The Ba­hamas sec­ond-largest econ­o­my fol­lowed by the Grand Ba­hama.

Home­less and hun­gry, many were tak­en in­to makeshift shel­ters in the coun­try's cap­i­tal of Nas­sau, lo­cat­ed on the is­land of Prov­i­dence, where they still re­main. They are faced with an­oth­er chal­lenge of liv­ing con­di­tions and try­ing to pick up the pieces as they seek em­ploy­ment.

But in spite of the dev­as­ta­tion, the Ba­hami­an peo­ple show they are res­olute and op­ti­mistic.

"Aba­cos will rise again and so will Grand Ba­hama," busi­ness­man Va­do Boo­tle said as he sur­veyed the dam­age in Aba­cos's cap­i­tal of Marsh Har­bour.

His sen­ti­ment was echoed by an­oth­er man rum­mag­ing the ru­ins a short dis­tance down the road. "It will take us some time but I know we'll be back again," he said with a broad smile.

An old la­dy por­trays sto­icism as she sur­veys her flat­tened home for the first time in al­most two weeks in the vil­lage of Pel­i­can Point in Grand Ba­hama. "What can I do? I guess I'm go­ing to re­build. I have lived here for 50 years and this is the on­ly place I know as home."

In the vil­lage—High Rock in Grand Ba­hama—a fad­ed Ba­hami­an flag on a steel square is still firm­ly bolt­ed to the wall of a house with its roof blown off.

A vil­lager in High Rock ped­als his bi­cy­cle slow­ly along the road near the seafront. He is wear­ing one of the few items of cloth­ing he was able to sal­vage—a white vest with the Ba­hami­an flag plas­tered proud­ly on the front.

Most of the dam­age was not on­ly brought about by the gale-force winds and dri­ving rain but by bru­tal mi­ni-tor­na­does that tossed Sealand con­tain­ers like feath­ers more than a mile in­land from the Aba­cos sea­port.


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