Oh Yeah? Well, Welcome to the Bahamas

by Elaine Tassy | 2008

On the beach a few blocks from my apartment in Nassau, I look at the electric-blue water and hear foamy waves lap on the sand. From my beach lounger I watch the horizon and feel filled with peace and grace. That is, until I leave the beach and try to do some shopping, get some driving directions, or run my errands. That's when I usually get loony.

Newcomers like me who've uprooted themselves for an extended stay in the Bahamas get access to a set of fascinating daily experiences – some, like the beach, the food, and the language, amazing and beyond all expectations. And others, like the customer service, transportation difficulties, and absence of modernization, so infuriating that when I first arrived for a teaching job, I had to talk about each maddening encounter with a fresh outpouring of horror. But each time I complained, incidents I considered outrageous were so commonplace to native Bahamians and seasoned expatriates that they were likely to respond, "Oh yeah? Well, welcome to the Bahamas." In other words, deal with it. And now, after nine months on the island, it seems I can. I get less annoyed with the shortcomings in conveniences around here than I do with obvious newcomers who don't know how to handle them.

* * * *

The perks of living in the Bahamas, many of them off the average tourists' radar, cannot be ignored: once I start walking down the drive to the beach nearby, almost always empty of tourists, I feel calmer. Although the sand has algae that looks like shredded paper, I lay back in it and read and sunbathe. I go into the water to cool off, swim and bob around, free from hearing an announcer at a chain resort addling drunken tourists to play bingo or get ready for the macarena.

Another perk about living here is that the Bahamians speak with a musical, playful dialect. One afternoon I overheard a man buying a hotdog from a 60+ vendor. "Do you have any relish?" he asked her.

She answered the man, who was at least 50: "No, sweet boy."

Bahamians often replace the letter v with the letter w. The say wibe for vibe, wan for van, wedding wows for wedding vows, and aloe wera for aloe vera. They call last Sunday Sunday gone and next Tuesday Tuesdcay comin' ; when I thank someone who helped me out, that person will shrug it off with "Small things," and if I ask Bahamaians how they're doing, they'll say "Right here." And instead of saying What's up, they say, Whatchu sayin'? A squeezer is someone who parks too close; a toter someone who takes home leftovers. Often my job exposes me to new terms. When I took a class on a field trip to the prison, our tour-guide told us that whenever prisoners' visitors bring pork chops, the guards yuck (yank) the bones right out of the chops before giving them to the prisoner, because family members have sharpened bones into weapons and reinserted them into the pork chop to arm their incarcerated loved ones.

Sometimes I work the Bahamianese I learn from friends into my conversation. "I'm not going to talk to his hip!" my friend Shaniqua told me about a guy she was upset with, using hip as a euphemism for ass, so a few weeks later I told her that I'd gone out with a guy I was interested in . . . and no sparks. "He can kiss my hip!" I said.

Besides digging the dialect, I'm also digging the cuisine, especially conch. Men go out to sea and gather it, now endangered part of the year, from the ocean floor to sell to local eateries. Chefs make a raw conch salad, a purported aphrodisiac, in front of diners by chopping the flesh, dousing it with lime, and blending in spices and tomatoes. On my second day here I tried conch fritters, deep-fried golf-ball sized appetizers made from a batter of conch morsels, flour and spices. The Bahamas' most amazing desserts, I think, are guava duff (a rolled loaf with guava paste spewing from inside, topped with warm sauce the consistency of melted ice cream) and coconut tarts. Tart ladies bake them in their kitchens, park their vans or cars in parking lots and sell them for $1.50 from their trunk. Shaped like bricks, mini loaves or turnovers, the tarts are made of yeast dough stuffed with grated coconut, sugar and spices. Some tart ladies add vents to the shell; others stuff the insides until they’re two or three inches high. Bakeries often chop coconut in food processors, but my favorite tart lady Miss Jessie hand-grates coconut she picks from her cousin’s yard. The grated coconut goes down faster and maintains the crust-to-filling balance, while Cuisenarted coconut lingers longer on the tongue and overstays its welcome, Miss Jessie told me one warm day when we chatted near the trunk of her car in the shade of a tree.

* * * *

I'm fascinated by the lesser-known beaches, the language, the coconut tarts. But away from all that, I have to shop, pick up packages, get gas, and go to the bank and dry cleaner's. It's in those moments that the perks of the Bahamas tend to vaporize and I feel out of control with the need to say rude things or just leave to keep my eyes from rolling so much they pop out of my head. I noticed a serious customer service problem the minute I got off the plane and got to the hotel I stayed in while looking for a place to live. I had to wait in the lobby for over an hour while the chambermaids cleaned my room, which was reserved weeks in advance. The bellhop didn’t bring my bags for another hour despite me calling repeatedly, and trying to call the front desk one time I counted 28 rings before a woman picked up with an ironic "Pleasant good morning, how can I help?"

Once I moved into an apartment, I found a dry cleaner a few blocks away, but as soon as I dropped off a blouse and a pair of pants to get the buttons replaced, the problems began. I told the woman behind the counter she didn’t need to find precise buttons to match the blouse, because the button area was covered by a column of fabric, a note she typed into her computer. When I came to pick up my clothes several days after they were supposed to be ready, she hadn't fixed the blouse because she didn't have matching buttons. And as for the pants, as far as she was concerned, there weren't any.

"Black, size 14, Nine West?" I said, implying duh with every slow blink, but no display of frustration sped her up. Asking if it would take much longer, tapping my fingernails and sighing had no impact whatsoever. After piddling around behind the counter, she located the pants, showing no regret about the inconvenience of my having to come back another time, since they hadn't been fixed either.

Things got no better at a supermarket in the same shopping center, where I made the mistake of ordering a half-pound of turkey breast. Knowing how slow things tend to move, I walked up and down about five aisles, putting various groceries into my cart. When I returned for the turkey, the counterwoman hadn't started slicing it yet, and said she forgot the amount I asked for.

It's not only the lack of quality service, but the lack of responsibility for it. I went to Wendy's for a cinnamon roll with icing one morning, but the cashier rang up a more expensive burger combo by mistake. "That's what comes up when I press the button for cinnamon rolls," the kid said.

Another kid put the cinnamon roll in a bag and when I looked inside there was none of the frosting that comes with it. I told him this after moving the napkin aside just to be sure.

"Yes, there is," he said.

When a friend and I ordered Domino's pizza, we waited well beyond their 30-minute delivery promise. To my disbelief, one hour turned to two, then three. We called to ask for the driver's cell phone number and find out where he was, since Domino's was a two-minute drive from my friend's apartment. None of this made the woman on the phone want to research the situation and she didn’t have his cell phone number, either. "He’s coming," was all she said. When he arrived, it wasn’t with an explanation, but with a cold pizza he expected us to pay for. (We told him we wanted it at no charge, plus a free bottle of Coke.)

It's a good thing some places deliver, because navigating a car around the Bahamas calls for some guts, and not just because everyone drives on the left. The driver of a car, limo, a bus or taxi-van might pass me in the same lane I'm driving in, barely clipping me in back and forcing oncoming traffic to screech to a halt on a narrow road with hairpin curves. Motorists will stop in the middle of traffic to chat with a friend as cars pile up behind them. They’ll make a right turn from the left side of my car. And here, the use of turn signals is optional.

Also, most streets don’t have signs, and many buildings don't have actual addresses. Who needs them when there's no at-home mail delivery, no such job as letter-carrier? That means I often find myself pulling over for additional directions -- most memorably on my way to a friend's going-away party a few months ago.

"Do you know how to get to Eastern Avenue from here?" I asked a guy I stopped at a convenience store who looked to be in his early 20's.

"Yes, ma'am," he said. He looked at me as if with that, our business together was complete. ("Like you're conducting a poll or something!" a guest at the party said when I repeated this.)

"Well, could you tell me how to get there, please?"

"Yes, ma'am." More silence. Finally, instead of saying, just drive to the end of this street, he said, "You drive down this road." He gestured to the one we were on, "and then you get to a building." He spent the next few minutes describing it: its general appearance, about how far back from the road. "When you get to the building, don't turn right. Don't turn left. Just keep on going."

Sometimes I don't know which direction to turn when looking for modern conveniences I thought I'd find anywhere. The bank I've been using started offering debit cards a few weeks ago, nearly a year into my stay. (Before that I spent $30 to apply for a non-account related debit card at another bank. Steps: apply, wait a month for card to arrive at bank, pick it up, wait an hour in line so a clerk can load it with cash customer supplies, use until it runs out, wait in line another hour to reload. Repeat.)

The Bahamas doesn't offer preferred shopper cards, either. Instead, cashiers give shoppers stamps they have to lick, affix to cards and turn in for a deduction off the total bill, which is usually high because most foods are imported. A bag of corn chips with 99 cents marked on the package costs $2.49, and a box of strawberries or cereal can run $6 apiece. People magazine costs about $6, Essence $7.

* * * *

Since I've become familiar with the slower, more laid-back pace of Bahamian life in recent months, I've noticed my outrage has been blunted to inconveniences that now feel ordinary. I hardly ever need to debrief someone on an encounter in a store or go home to regroup after running a few errands. When I go to fast food restaurants I check my bag for condiments instead of assuming they'll be included. When I have to drive somewhere I leave well in advance to account for the fact that I’ll probably get lost, and since it's hot all year round, I wear the kinds of clothes that don't need dry cleaning.

But this detachment takes time to acquire. I noticed a woman on the supermarket deli line ahead of me the other day, and she had to be a newcomer, because she was tapping the metal countertop and yelling at the hapless attendant that whatever amount of roast beef she already had on the scale was fine, even if it was less than she asked for, because she'd run out of patience and didn't want to wait. I knew I'd evolved because I used to do that as well.

Besides the one woman behind the deli counter serving the newcomer, I noticed that about four other employees were also standing back there. None of them tried to take my order, let alone meet my glance. As proof I've Bahamasified my patience level, I realized I didn't even care.

So now when a newcomer describes a breach of what they believe customer service is supposed to involve, I might say, "Oh yeah? Well, welcome to the Bahamas," then go take a swim at the beach across the street, float on my back and look up at the clear blue sky.

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