Christian Campbell is a Bahamian poet, cultural critic, professor and author of Running the Dusk. (Photo Credit: Peter Everard Smith)

“Apocalypso” was originally published in The Nassau Guardian on November 19, 2004 in my column “Behind God Back” (so you will see that some of the essay’s mad prophecies have not come to pass).   With the recent announcement of a Bahamian “Mardi Gras,” I decided to re-circulate the essay to see if the strange laughter and horror beneath the skin of the lines could continue to speak to our deep anxieties about the dilemmas of “development.”- C.C.

Kerzner International purchased the island of New Providence in 2008 and renamed it “Atlantis Island.” The Family Islands have been acquired by a constellation of multinational corporations and Hollywood stars.  The islands, all bought and sold, are no longer listed in the “For Sale” sections of The Economist and The Financial Times.  The actress Mariel Hemingway bought Bimini and the Berry Islands, drug haven-gate to America, and named them after her father, the novelist Ernest Hemingway, who lived there for a while, writing and fishing: “The Hemingway Isles.”  Grand Bahama, island of my birth, not so much an island as a project, is now called “British American Isles,” bought by the insurance company, named in honour of the island’s two rulers, one British, one American.  Abaco is called “Wcylef Jean Refuge” after its new owner, the Haitian hip-hop superstar, while white Abaconians steam in lobster-red fury at the fact that their land could now be owned by a Haitian.  Eleuthera and Briland are dubbed “Behind the Bill Gates Cays.”  Andros, great mangrove creature, has been rechristened “McDonald’s Haven.”  The Exumas glow fluorescent as “The Coca-Cola Cays.”  Cat Island, island of my roots, cultural centre of The Old Bahamas, was salvaged by the great Sir Sidney Poitier, the only island to keep its name.  

San Salvador was purchased by the actress Salma Hayek who fell in love with the island after filming After the Sunset.  She named her land “La Isla de Salma.”  Long Island was baptised “Reagan Cay,” bought by the Reagan family in honour of their patriarch, who famously ruined the 1980s for one and all.  Acklins and Crooked Island are “The Tommy Hilfiger Reefs” and the headquarters for Hilfiger’s Disney Bahamas-based clothing factory.  Mayaguana is “James Bond Bay,” so named after its new owner, Sean Connery, former Lyford Cay resident and film legend.  Inagua, the southernmost island, nearest to Haiti, our salt resource, itself, was purchased by Kentucky Fried Chicken, the salt used to exclusively season their french fries and spicy chicken. Welcome to “KFC Cay.”  

In 2009 the then Bahamian Government approved an American investor’s construction of ten islands all in the shape of the sun, to add to our already one thousand naturally formed submarine mountain isles.  They are called “The Ten Suns Chain.”   

Many Bahamians died, were poisoned, grew deformed from the pollution of a so-called environmentally safe pipeline running from Bimini to Florida, approved by the old Bahamian Government in 2006.  

Dead dolphins and whales beached daily like drowned slaves.  

The strombus alatus, commonly know as the conch, quickly became extinct.  

Many Bahamians escaped to Haiti or Cuba or Jamaica to avoid having to run all the amusement park rides for US minimum wage as well as having to work in Nike and Tommy Hilfiger factories putting the tags on the apparel we used to love and afford.  Some stayed, some got away. Some left illegally, some by boat.   

The majority of Bahamians from Grand Bahama and Bimini, closest to America, too accustomed to good things, tried to emigrate to the States and were promptly repatriated back to the pre-Disney Bahamas. 

Cuba took over as the number one tourist destination in the Caribbean exactly two weeks after Fidel Castro dropped dead from heart failure on February 25, 2009.  Eighty per cent of The Bahamas’ faithful tourists skipped off to Havana for rum-drenched salsa nights and old Spanish architecture and never looked back.   

M.B.C., the Black Family Channel, a fledgling black American network in 2004, eventually bought out the Broadcasting Corporation of The Bahamas completely, and now features the “Gospel-robics” program twice a day every day.  The University of The Bahamas, finally institutionalised in 2010 as a bad knock-off of a substandard American community college, was subject to a corporate takeover and immediately revamped as the U.S.A.V.I. (or You savvy, as ex-Bahamians punned), the University for the Study of American Values and Ideologies.   

In 2010, the bill to ratify National Heroes Day and abolish Columbus Day was finally passed and then withdrawn a year later due to pressures from the U.S. Embassy.  We recently witnessed the demolition of the greatly adored Queen Victoria Statue in Rawson Square and its replacement by an even bigger and whiter statue of George Bush I.  The bronze bust of Sir Milo Butler, first black Bahamian Governor General, was replaced by the arm and pointing finger of Martin Luther King, Jr.  History books were re-written again to affirm the fact that “Columbus discovered America” and that the pilgrims also came and ate turkey with their native friends.   

In 2011 the then Bahamian Government, satisfied that the Bahamian people had forgotten that Clifton Cay was an important site for endangered species and a sacred and historical site of our African and Amerindian ancestors, made a clandestine deal with Busch Gardens and turned Clifton Cay into a Six Flags theme park, stating that the water-centred activities of Six Flags are in keeping with the environmental and cultural integrity of the area.   

Junkanoo was abolished in 2015 under the renewed Nuisance Act of the U.S. Constitution.  A thoroughly diluted version of Junkanoo, Junkanoo Lite™, is currently serving as the official mascot of the Miami Dolphins.   

All the former Bay Street Boys and their families now work for the K-Mart/Sears and Home Depot empires. 

The Four Seasons Riots in Exuma, Pompey come back, Burma Road rebirth, took place in 2015 in which disgruntled Bahamians fought, killed and were killed by Americans.  They threw dead Yankee bodies down a blue hole and into infinity.   

Certain churches and religious organisations survived, hired by the Yankee New World Order, their headquarters based at the old Atlantis resort.  The Christian Council became an umbrella organisation for the remaining churches and is headed by his Righteous Holy Dancing Apostle of the Father God Amen, the self-anointed Bishop.   

Certain churches and religious organisations, as well as the Brooklyn-wannabe radio deejays of the early twenty-first century, were awarded the C.A.E. (Commander of the American Empire) for their development of American culture in a pre-dependent, post-independent Disney Bahamas.   

By not joining the Caribbean Single Market and Economy, we made ourselves vulnerable to the clutches of Coca-Cola, McDonalds and Disney.   

Every flag, everything aqua, gold and black has been taken down and sewn together, put away and used as tarpaulins and such during hurricanes which now come more often with the eroding ozone layer and global warming.   

In the 2018 Treaty of Disney, all 1,000 islands, cays and rocks of The Commonwealth of The Bahamas were sold to the U.S. Government and the Walt Disney Empire (which takes all complaints and compliments at disneybahamas@babylon.com) for an undisclosed amount by an undisclosed group of ex-Bahamian politicians who, thusly, forthrightly, migrated to Florida proper on their well-worn U.S. passports where they grow fatter and fatter each day.  

But somewhere, somewhere, in the Old Cat Island, an underground society known as The Blue Holes meets every full moon so as to preserve the sacred words, the obeah they spin on the Yankees, revenge storms each month.  They meet every fullness to play rake ‘n scrape in secret on an old, breakdown G.E. washing machine, vacuum cleaner, old fan, remembering the way and the way it was.   

Christian Campbell is a poet, cultural critic, professor and author of Running the Dusk (Peepal Tree, 2010).

1 First published on November 19, 2004 in The Nassau Guardian’s Weekender magazine.

Disclaimer: The views expressed here are solely those of the author in his/her private capacity and do not in any way represent the views of TheBahamasWeekly.com