Moving to The Bahamas

I had a stressful job in London – (Who doesn’t hey?). It was in a wonderful organization. An old one. Everyone ate up my stories, asked for gossip at dinner parties, gave their two cents.

I’d have a couple of lines to refer to. And then blamed the Official Secrets Act, before running to the loo and circling back to a different cluster.

But I got burnt out. Long hours. Bad pay. London is tough. Morale lowers with each dip into your overdraft.

“It was yesterday’s Flat White,” I reasoned to my mum on the phone – bought en route to work, a reward for walking the 2.7 Miles each day to avoid the tube.A creative, I had to rely on my parents when I waded too deep into my overdraft. I had a slice of space in my London Flat - where winter clothes, odd socks and receipts overlapped.

I don’t want to bash London. It’s my home. From a green fresher at Queen Mary, University of London, discovering Shoreditch and Brick Lane (when I think about it too much it begins to hurt, right in the middle.)

Falling in Love on the Overground. He lived way over West, while I was happy in my discovering De Beauvoir.

Nights making friends on the bus. Walking down the South Bank on a Sunday. Watching the sun dip away at White City.

Finding treasures in Portobello.

Juicebaby.

Walking around the Serpentine. Brunch at Clifton Nurseries. Meeting my mum from the 36 Bus. The V and A.

But last March, when I was offered the chance to live and work in the Caribbean, something inside me yelled go. I’m not quite sure what it was. But I suppose an adventurer is somewhere underneath the layers of city-mapping, uber hopping and leaving the pub early to walk back home alone. Meandering with my podcast on, in my own little world in Little Venice. A girl who wants to be free-er than the confides of the mulit-coloured tube lines.

So I moved to Nassau, in the Bahamas six weeks ago as everyone started to put on their Autumnal clothes.

Part of my relocation package includes a brand new flat, with dark oak tables and squishy cream chairs.

Observations so far:

1) My work just gave me a huge SUV and I haven’t taken any sort of driving test. The speed signs aren’t that visible and I’m not 100% how the insurance works. Its enormous – as are the colossal number of potholes on the road, which one has to weave in and out of en route to work.

2) There is no slow lane

3) Nor fast lane

4) Everyone drives everywhere. Sometimes the traffic lights are broken. Its everyman for themselves. The island is full of cars because apparently there was a low tariff on Japanese cars a few years ago. The traffic is particularly bad in the morning into Nassau City Centre – as there is one scenic road to work. It’s the only road I know.

5) There is a lovely freedom to the lunging of cars and dissonance of traffic laws – it makes you feel like a road pirate (yes, I have watched the Pirates of the Caribbean films on Netflix since getting here. Yes, all but the first make no sense).

Equally however, I feel largely unsafe in my car most of the time. And I long to be able to walk down a stretch of pavement, but there are no pavements here. And no one walks. Apart from a track that clings to the roundabouts at Bahamar, a new hotel complex built in 2017. It is a 1,000 acre resort complex owned by a Hong Kong enterprise and hailed to revitalize Cable Beach. It lights up the sky even more so when….

6) The electricity goes off three times a week in the summer.

Apparently, the “electricity factory” is missing an important part “but its coming soon.” It’s great to have a societal-induced digital detox, but not so great when everything in the fridge turns to sludge and you use up your decorative Jo Malone Candles you lugged from London.

7) Everyday there will be sun. Which of course is incredible. I have a balcony in my apartment (I barely had my own bedroom in London) and there is nothing more incredible than watching the sun dip between the palm trees and out of view – with a Kallik – a Bahamian beer. Then the sky turns purple and red and pink all at once, with such vibrancy. The sky is really something.

8) And the sea. There is nothing I have ever seen like Bahamian blue green water. People sit bobbing in it for hours, in the shallows. Each corner of the island it turns a different shade.

9) You realise you’re really, really English. When talking to people here, you make jokes about the English rain.

Bahamians are mostly incredibly friendly. The Bahamas is still part of the Commonwealth, The Queen is technically still Queen. Her infamous uncle lived in Nassau with the new Duchess of Windsor, Wallace Simpson for five years as he took up the role of Royal Governor.

They drive on the left and there’s plenty of Royal nods and names – including a Highbury Park which unearths a little smile – as you race by.

10)You realise how incredibly lucky we are in the UK to have the NHS, pavements, working traffic lights and electricity. This sinks in especially in the three-hour queue for your National Insurance Card.”Keep it on you at all times” – I’m told. The police will do random car searches and if you’re papers aren’t on you, you’ll be taken straight to the aiport – no questions asked.

A month after I moved to the Bahamas, Hurricane Dorian hit the islands of Abaco and Grand Bahamas cruelly taking the lives of many, demolishing whole communities and displacing over 70,000 Bahamians.

In the days that followed, Nassau (itself shaken by the unprecedented force of this hurricane) felt incredibly sad. An angry, heartbroken sky buckled from the oppressive grey that had loomed for the last week or so and there was a sunset like I’d never seen.

A country, who can’t even maintain the roads in the capital, is now faced with the enormous task of rebuilding itself. Finding homes for the homeless and traumatized. The work I do here (running the social channels for a chain of hotels and resorts) feels more so trivial. And then, a day or so afterwards, I am called into my Boss’ office who reminds me that the message has to be “Visit the Bahamas – it’s the best way to support us.”

I’ve seen every business in Nassau, big or small, work to support the Aid Relief. Hotel Managers, personally delivering water bottles to Abaco on small speed boats leaving Nassau Harbour.

Colleagues who knew people on those islands, worked quietly in their office, patiently waiting for phones to finally turn and to be told all was ok.

Would Nassau be able to stand after such an enormous hit like Dorian? It’s a question that even the most defiant Bahamians fumble over.

A week later, I flew back from a meeting in Miami with a cluster of Royal Marines.

“Are you in the Navy?” I asked meekly from overhearing their banter, and seeing their burgundy passports poking out of their back pockets.

“No, we’re marines” the shortest one replied.

I apologized.

They told me they were on their way with Team Rubicon to assist in rescue missions at Abaco.

“What are you doing here?” he asked. I said I worked and lived here. His eyes widened and he grimaced.

“It’s not that bad,” I replied. And sped ahead, clutching at my car keys.

I had to get home.