Position: N 23 21.521 W 075 08.506
Our trip to the bank and museum were delayed for various reasons, none of which was very important – it’s just difficult to get much done sometimes with our hectic social schedule.
Yesterday we finally hitch hiked down to the bank and the museum in Buckley, about 10 miles south of Salt Pond with our friends Carl and Debbie from Diva.
We paid our $3 non-resident entrance fees and toured the local museum. It’s wonderful, and well worth the price. One of the displays featured various seeds from some of the agricultural products that provided island residents with their livelihoods some time ago. Mark noticed a display of “sapodilla seeds” and asked the museum lady to tell him about sapodillas – what they look like, how they were used, etc. She is an interesting and friendly woman whose husband is the principal at the nearby school.
“Oh,” she says, “I’ve got one right here in my lunch. I’ll show you.” This she proceeded to do. She then divided it up into four parts and gave us each one to try.
We told her we couldn’t bring ourselves to eat part of her lunch to which she said “Oh, it’s okay – I’ve got a whole tree full of them at home and, if I really want one for lunch, I’ll just go pick one from Mr. Knowles’ tree right next door.”
So we let her talk us into eating it – skin and all, the only part not eaten is the seeds. We all agreed that it was delicious – sweet and a bit musky.
We spent an hour or so at the museum, then left to start our trip back to the boats. As we passed the sapodilla tree next door, this little old man walked out toward us and said “I ain’t got no ripe bananas out here, but I got some out back.” We explained that we were looking at his sapodilla tree. He said “Come on over to this here dilly tree! I’ll get you some ripe dillys to eat.”
He then proceeded to climb up into the tree and shake the branches, causing ripe fruit to fall to the ground at our feet. We were afraid he was so fragile that he might come tumbling down with all the fruit. “You just pick them up and come with me.” he said as he climbed back down to the ground.
He herded us all up and took us back into his garden - rows and rows of banana trees, papayas, corn, melons, etc. All of which were growing in little dirt areas that he had been scrabbled out of the rock. It was amazing, and obvious that he'd spent a long time doing a lot of hard work.
He told Debbie, who is petite, that she looked about nine years old. Later, just as we were leaving, he said she looked like she was fourteen. I said "Then she aged pretty quickly, since you just said she was nine" to which he said "Well, time flies when you're having fun."
We learned a bit more Bahamian along the way. He told us that “dem some” means “they’re no relation or friend of mine”. It’s used like “Them boys with knives in Nassau who robs people – (shake head “no”, slowly) dem some.” We also learned about “trans”, as in “I need to get me some trans to get the bananas out to the road so I can sell them.” Trans meaning transportation, of course.
Gentlemen like Mr. Robert Knowles, ladies like the museum lady (maddeningly, none of us can remember her name), and all the other friendly, gracious, and kind people we’ve met on these out islands of the Bahamas set wonderful examples for all of us and remind us to keep it simple and honest.
Humbled once again.
