The pink building on Bay Street across from George Street looks like a normal little museum from the outside, but it might be the single most emotionally loaded piece of real estate in downtown Nassau.

The building itself was once called Vendue House, thought to date back to the 1740s, making it one of the oldest structures in the city. Back then it was known as the Bourse, and it functioned as the main auction house for the whole colony. Cattle, imported goods, and enslaved human beings were all sold there side by side, right where tourists now snap photos of the pink walls and Corinthian columns.

They may look up at the purple stamp design near the top of the building and think it's pretty. It's not just decoration. It's a cross section of the hull of a slave ship, showing how enslaved people were packed in head to toe, body against body, with almost no space between them like sardines. It's sitting in plain sight on the exterior of the building and most visitors never clock what they're actually looking at.

The name Pompey doesn't refer to a curator or a donor either. Pompey was an enslaved man on the Rolle Plantation at Steventon, Exuma. In 1830, he led a group of enslaved people who refused orders to be moved off the island, partly driven by rumors that freedom was coming. It was an act of open defiance at a time when that could easily get someone killed, and the museum is named for him specifically to keep his resistance part of the story instead of letting it disappear.

After slavery ended, the building didn't get any less busy. It later became the Port Office, then got remodeled in 1913 to house the electric light plant, then the Telegraph and Telephone Departments moved into a newly added second floor, and eventually the Bahamas Electricity Corporation's accounts section worked out of the same walls.

A building that started as a place where people were sold ended up running the city's lights and phone lines.

It became the Pompey Museum of Slavery and Emancipation in 1992.

Since then the building has survived two major fires, one in 2001 and another in 2011, both of which gutted it.

About 90 percent of the collection was saved both times, including rare books, slave shackles, and artifacts brought over from West Africa, and a 1.7 million dollar restoration brought it back in 2014.

Inside, the exhibits walk through the transatlantic slave trade specific to this part of the Caribbean, daily life under slavery in the Bahamas, the road to the 1834 Emancipation Act, and what freedom actually looked like in the decades after, since legal freedom and real equality took a long time to line up. There's also a section connecting that history to how forms of slavery still exist in parts of the world today.

So next time you walk past that pink building with the columns out front, look up before you look in. There's a detail on the outside of that building telling you exactly what happened on the inside of it, centuries ago.

​

Most people who pass through downtown Nassau stop to photograph it.

The Gothic limestone facade on George Street is hard to miss, and the stained glass windows pull people inside. But most visitors who do walk in are just chasing the light through the glass, not realizing what else is in there with them.

Christ Church Cathedral houses two of only three grand pipe organs in the entire Caribbean region, and the largest one sits directly above your head in the steeple the moment you step through the entrance. When someone is playing it and you're standing inside, you don't just hear the music. You feel it move through you.

The story of how this building got here is worth knowing too.

The first church on this site was built in 1670, making it the first church constructed in the Bahamas. It didn't last long though. The original building was destroyed by the Spaniards in 1684, a second building was completed in 1695 and destroyed by the Spaniards again in 1703. So they built a third one in 1724, made of wood, which survived the Spaniards but eventually got replaced simply because wood doesn't last forever in a tropical climate.

A fourth Gothic-style building made of locally quarried cut stone went up in 1754, and then a fifth building, the one standing today, was opened for services in 1841. The building you're looking at right now is the fifth attempt to put a church on that exact spot.

Here's the detail that tends to stop people. The Gothic limestone walls are held together primarily by the size of the blocks and the weight of gravity rather than by cement. That building has been standing since 1841 essentially through sheer mass and engineering precision very similar to the Egyptian pyramids.

In 1861, Christ Parish Church became a Cathedral, and it was also in 1861 that Nassau officially became a city. The two things happened together, which means the Cathedral and the city share a birthday.

Walk inside and along the walls you will find tablets tracing the trials Nassau citizens endured over 150 years ago, everything from colonial officials to army officers to families and their losses, an entire compressed history of the island carved into stone and mounted on the walls of a working church.

Then there's the detail almost nobody catches. At the back of the sanctuary, carved into the baptismal font, is a tiny church mouse, the hallmark of the British carpenter who made it. It's been sitting there since the 1800s and most people who have attended services for years have never noticed it.

The Cathedral still holds services daily and has since its congregation first formed over 350 years ago, making it one of the oldest continuously active congregations in the Caribbean.

Five buildings, three Spanish attacks, two of the rarest organs in the region, and a hidden mouse carved into the wood. Most people got the photo and kept walking.

​

That pink colonial mansion on West Hill Street across from Government House has one of the most layered histories of any building in Nassau, and most people walking past it have no idea.

The land itself goes back further than the current building. The original site housed a church, but in 1703 Spanish raids led to a fire that heavily damaged it.

A pirate then built his home on top of the ruins. The mansion was originally built in 1740 by Captain John Howard Graysmith, who commanded the notorious schooner Graywolf and plundered treasure ships along the Spanish Main, and the name Graycliff comes directly from him.

So the building you're looking at today is essentially sitting on the bones of Nassau's first Anglican church, with a pirate mansion built over it.

It didn't stop there.

In 1776, when Nassau was captured by the American Navy, Graycliff became their headquarters and garrison, which is why the wine cellar still has bars on its windows. That same wine cellar was reportedly used as a dungeon where prisoners were held, and it now contains over 275,000 bottles, one of the largest private wine collections in the world.

By 1844, Graycliff became Nassau's first inn, and during the Civil War it was commandeered again, this time as an officer's mess for the West Indian Regiment while Nassau was running cotton and guns between the Confederacy and Britain.

Then the 1960s happened. Lord and Lady Dudley, Third Earl of Staffordshire, purchased Graycliff, and during their ownership the mansion hosted the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, Lord Mountbatten, Sir Winston Churchill, Aristotle Onassis, and the Beatles. Churchill actually slept in what is now the Pool Cottage, and the Duke of Windsor was literally next door at Government House serving as wartime Governor of the Bahamas.

In 1973, Enrico and Anna Maria Garzaroli purchased the property and turned it into the elegant hotel and restaurant it is today, the first five-star property in the Caribbean.

The celebrity traffic never stopped either.

The wine cellar's private dining room is reportedly Mariah Carey's favorite table in Nassau, and it's also the room where Beyoncé and Jay-Z are rumored to have gotten engaged. Beyoncé has deep ties to the Bahamas through her father's Bahamian roots, and the couple own two private islands here.

The guest list over the years also includes Nicholas Cage, Michael Jordan, Paul Newman, Bill Clinton, and Billy Joel, who once finished dinner and played an impromptu hour and a half piano set in the dining room.

So when people say Nassau doesn't have history, point them to The GrayCliff that has been a pirate's mansion, an American military garrison, a pirate dungeon, the Caribbean's first five star restaurant, a Civil War officer's mess, a British aristocrats' playground, and the site of one of the most famous rumored celebrity proposals in the world, all on the same plot of land, in that order.

​

That pink octagonal building on Parliament Square, the one most people just think of as a quirky old library, used to be a jail.

It was built between 1797 and 1800 as the Nassau Gaol, and it's actually the first building constructed on what's now Parliament Square, which means the whole government square grew up around a prison.

The octagon shape wasn't just for looks either, it was practical. Octagonal buildings were a bit fashionable in the 18th century, inspired by the Tower of the Winds in Athens, but for a jail the shape was mostly functional, letting a small number of guards stationed in the center see straight down every corridor to every cell.

The second floor held the actual cells, the third floor was the infirmary and admin space, and the cupola on top wasn't decorative either, it gave ventilation in the heat and let guards watch the harbor for incoming ships.

The jail held people for nearly eighty years until a new prison opened in 1866, and the old building sat there until the government made the call to turn it into something else entirely. It was converted into a library in 1873, and the old cells where prisoners once sat now hold colonial documents, newspapers, books, charts, and Arawak artifacts.

If you've ever stood in one of those little alcoves with the thick stone walls and narrow windows, you were standing in an actual cell.

For years this was one of the most photographed stops in Old Town, a regular spot on walking tours where people could wander through, look at the old cells, snap photos of the architecture. That's changed though.

As of 2024, the building has gone back to functioning purely as a working library. No more tours, no more interior photography, no more treating it as a stop on the sightseeing circuit. If you want to see it now, you're seeing the outside, or you're going in to actually use it as a library the way it's meant to be used.

​

The Royal Victoria is one of those Nassau landmarks everybody's seen the ruins of and almost nobody knows the full story behind, even though it's basically the building that built modern Nassau tourism.

The government put it up in 1861, right as the American Civil War was kicking off and Nassau was turning into the transfer point for Confederate cotton and British weapons. Officials saw blockade runners and wealthy southerners flooding into town and realized there was nowhere decent to put them up, so they built the colony's first true luxury hotel to cash in.

It cost the government about twenty thousand pounds, a four story limestone building with 121 rooms, soaring ceilings, room for 200 guests, and sweeping views over the city, the harbor, and the islets beyond it. Out front there was a daily bazaar where local vendors sold baskets, sponges, seashells, and fruit to the guests.

It became the social center of the whole Great Carnival era, where blockade runners, Confederate agents, and Union spies all ended up drinking in the same rooms. But the boom didn't last. Once the war ended the money dried up fast, and the hotel struggled so badly the government put it up for public auction in 1878, practically begging for a buyer.

Henry Flagler, the American railroad and oil tycoon, eventually picked it up and started running steamship routes from Florida to bring tourists in.

From there it just kept getting reinvented. It rode out a Prohibition era boom as rum runners and wealthy Americans used it as a base, survived the Depression, and got used by British and American airmen as a place to unwind during World War II, where the resident musician was the legendary Bahamian folk and blues guitarist Blind Blake.

In 1949 an American investor named Royal Little bought the property and poured a million dollars into it, adding air conditioning, sixteen luxury garden apartments, a new pool, and the Blockade Runner's Bar, leaning hard into the Civil War nostalgia for marketing.

The hotel finally closed for good in 1971, and the building sat empty for years until a fire gutted it in the 1990s.

What's left now is that strange, beautiful ruin most of us have walked past on Shirley Street, gardens and bare stone arches, with part of the old site now used by the Ministry of Health and the rest sitting as a parking lot.

It's wild to think a parking lot downtown used to be the place where the entire Confederate war effort got its supplies.

​

Ulrich Alexander "Rick" Fox is a Bahamian-Canadian former basketball player, three-time NBA champion, actor, businessman and politician. He played in the National Basketball Association for both the Boston Celtics and Los Angeles Lakers

Baha Men are a Bahamian junkanoo band formed in New Providence, Bahamas, in 1977. They are best known for their Grammy Award–winning hit song "Who Let the Dogs Out".

Aisha Bowe is the first Bahamian woman to travel to space. An aerospace engineer and former NASA rocket scientist, she launched into space aboard Blue Origin's New Shepard rocket on April 14, 2025.

Leonard Albert Kravitz “Lenny Kravitz" is a singer, musician, songwriter, record producer, and actor. His mother, the actress Roxie Roker (best known for her role on The Jeffersons), was of Bahamian and African-American heritage. His maternal grandfather, Albert Roker, was originally from Andros Island in The Bahamas.

Sir Sidney Poitier: The celebrated actor and director became the first Black man to win the Academy Award for Best Actor in 1964 for Lilies of the Field. He grew up in The Bahamas and served as the Bahamian ambassador to Japan.

Dr. Myles Munroe: An internationally renowned author, speaker, and the founder of Bahamas Faith Ministries International.

Buddy Hield: One of the most prolific three-point shooters in the NBA, hailing from Eight Mile Rock, Grand Bahama.

Shaunae Miller-Uibo: A celebrated track-and-field star who won Olympic Gold in the 400m at both the 2016 Rio and 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games. She has 7 global medals.

Tia and Tamera Mowry are of Afro-Bahamian descent on their mother's side. Their mother, Darlene Mowry (née Flowers), traces her family roots back to the Bahamas. Specifically, their great-great-grandmother, Cecilia Campbell, was raised on the Bahamian island of Eleuthera.

Klay Alexander Thompson is a professional basketball player for the Dallas Mavericks and is widely regarded as one of the best three-point shooters of all time. His father is Mychal Thompson, a two-time NBA champion with the "Showtime" Lakers, born and raised in Nassau and became the first Bahamian drafted No. 1 overall in the NBA.

​

KINDWalk is a walking tour of Nassau designed for people who want the real city.

The history that doesn't make it onto cruise ship itineraries, the corners that locals take for granted and visitors walk right past.

No bus. No headset. No herd.

Just Nassau, on foot, with someone who actually lives here.

If you've got friends visiting this summer or you're finally doing the thing you've been putting off, this is a good place to start.

📍 Nassau, Bahamas

🔗 riseliftingothers.com/kindwalk

Drop your questions below 👇🏽 I'm happy to answer anything about the tour or the city.

​

There’s regular heat…

…and then there’s that very specific Nassau heat where even your thoughts feel sweaty.

People always ask what season it is here like we have some dramatic rotation.

We really only have two:

Summer

and

summmeeerrr.

That’s it.

It just shifts from hot… to hotter and somehow even more humid.

There’s the manageable version where you tell yourself, this isn’t so bad.

And then there’s the version where stepping outside feels like opening a dishwasher mid-cycle and immediately reconsidering every life decision that led you there.

By August, even the breeze feels tired.

Visitors always say,

“Wow, it’s beautiful.”

Give it twenty minutes.

That beauty starts feeling personal.

​

How did this become one of the most iconic Bahamas tourist experiences? 😂

No judgment.

I really want to understand what makes people look at a pig in the ocean and think:

“Yes. This is absolutely a worthy experience.”

​

People slow down…

tilt their heads slightly…

and then drift toward the buildings like they’re about to walk into a scene.

Because something about it doesn’t feel real.

Maybe it’s the color.

That soft pink—too perfect, too uniform—like it was painted for a camera, not for time.

Maybe it’s the openness.

No gates.

No aggressive security presence.

No tension in the air telling you to stay back.

Just space.

Buildings that look like they’re waiting for direction.

So people do what people do when something feels staged—

They try the doors.

Gently at first.

Then with a little more confidence.

Half expecting someone to yell,

“Cut.”

But no one does.

Because this isn’t a set.

Inside those buildings, decisions are being made.

Meetings are happening.

People are working.

It just doesn’t look like what power is supposed to look like.

And that’s what confuses people.

We’ve been taught that importance should feel guarded.

Distant.

Unapproachable.

But here?

It’s sitting in the open.

Painted pink.

Functioning quietly…

while people outside wonder if it’s even real.

- - -

If you ever find yourself in Nassau, you don’t have to just pass through it.

Some people walk it differently.

— KINDWalk Nassau

​

💬Hadgo? / Haitgo?

“How’s it going?”

💬Wass gern on?

“What’s going on?”

💬Vell Muddaa sick

Can be positive, negative, disbelief, frustration, amazement, or a soft swear word depending entirely on tone and facial expression 😂

💬Vell monkey foot

Expression of disbelief, frustration, or mild swearing.

💬Whachu sayin bey?

“How you doing?” / “What’s up?”

💬I een sayin nuttin

“Nothing much going on with me.”

💬So das ha it is aye?

Rhetorical disbelief. Usually said after somebody disappoints you or reveals foolishness.

💬Bey / Bui / Bei

Universal Bahamian noun. Can refer to literally anybody depending on context.

💬Cuteye

Rolling your eyes disrespectfully.

💬Cut hip

Ranges anywhere from a regular spanking to a full on WWE Smackdown.

💬Yuckin up my vexation

“You are making me VERY angry right now.”

💬You mussy kno

Means “exactly”, “you already know.” or we are in agreement.

Can also become mildly threatening depending on delivery 😂

💬Hog know where to rub dey skin

People know exactly who to try foolishness with and who to avoid.

💬If you play wit puppies dey does lick ya mout

If you tolerate foolishness, expect consequences.

💬Das ya business

You’re on your own now. I have emotionally released you to the Lord.

💬You get swing

You got taken advantage of emotionally, financially, or otherwise… but with your eyes fully open.

💬Mawnin, mawnin, MAWNIN

“Good morning” but with feeling.

​

We have become experts at the art of being ghosts.

In the modern city, we tend to fall into a comfortable trance the moment we hand over a credit card.

It is the Consumer Script: a silent agreement that in exchange for our money, we are granted the right to be invisible. We pay for the privilege of the "spectator seat," assuming that as long as we have paid the fee, nothing more will be required of us than our passive presence.

We walk through museums, markets, and streets in a kind of "walking coma," eyes glazed, waiting to be "fed" information or entertainment like birds in a nest.

For the generation currently navigating their late 20s and mid-30s, the "transactional life" is the default setting. We order food through apps to avoid the friction of a phone call. We "check in" to experiences via QR codes. We have been conditioned to believe that a successful interaction is one with zero friction and zero eye contact.

We carry this armor into the world. When we join a crowd—be it at a concert or a historical walking tour—we don’t show up as ourselves. We show up as "The Customer." The Customer is a protected status. The Customer is allowed to be bored, to be distracted, and most importantly, to be anonymous.

But there is a specific kind of violence—a necessary, comedic violence—that occurs when a stranger refuses to let you stay a ghost.

I recently stood on a street corner, surrounded by a group of these "ghosts," discussing the heavy architecture of history. Specifically, the history of family units—how, in this specific corner of the world, families were often allowed to remain whole while the rest of the world was being torn apart.

It was a weighty, solemn moment. The group had their "serious faces" on—that polite, slightly distant mask we wear when we think we are being educated.

Then, I looked at a man standing toward the back. He was there with a young boy. He was in full "Tourist Mode": shoulders slumped, eyes fixed on a point somewhere behind my left ear, safely tucked away in his mental spectator seat.

I stopped mid-sentence. "Is this your only child," I asked, "or just your favorite?"

The silence that followed was the sound of a script being shredded.

The man didn't just look up; he woke up.

You could see the gears of his identity grinding as they shifted from "Consumer" back to "Human Being." For a few seconds, he was utterly stumped. He looked at the group, then at his son, then back at me. He had realized, with a shock of hilarious terror, that something was being required of him. He was no longer a faceless money bag in the back of the class. He was a father, a man, and—for the moment—the center of a very public stage.

The "Consumer Script" dictates that the guide talks and the tourist listens. By asking a question that had nothing to do with the "data" of history and everything to do with the "truth" of his life, the fourth wall didn't just crack—it vanished.

"Oh my God," I continued, "this one doesn't even belong to you? Where did you pick him up? Kid, if you need help, blink twice!"

The boy’s eyes went wide—refusing to blink, leaning into the joke with the kind of instant, un-scripted playfulness that adults usually spend years in therapy trying to reclaim. The crowd erupted. The tension of the "heavy history" didn't disappear; it transformed. It became shared.

Why do we laugh so hard in those moments?

Because being "blindsided" by humanity is the only thing that actually cures the loneliness of the digital age.

The father was no longer "Tourist #4." He was a person being looked at, teased, and recognized by a complete stranger. It was a moment of radical visibility.

We spend so much of our 20s and 30s trying to "optimize" our lives and avoid awkwardness, but we forget that the "walking coma" of the consumer is a form of sensory deprivation.

The death of the consumer script is a gift.

It reminds us that we are not just spectators in the cities we visit or the lives we lead.

We are participants.

We are liable to be called upon.

We are visible.

When that father finally snapped out of his trance and started laughing, he wasn't just enjoying a tour anymore. He was finally, fully, in the room.

He had paid for a culture and history lesson, but what he actually got was an exorcism of his own invisibility.

And that, in 2026, is the only experience worth the price of admission.

— The Eccentric Vox

If you want to read more about the strange little performances of modern life—the masks, the scripts, the moments people accidentally become human again—read more on my Beehiiv.

And if you want to experience the “consumer script” breaking in real time, come walk through Nassau with me on the KINDWalk.

These are some genuinely interesting coconut facts that most people don’t realize. Especially if you grew up around them and start taking them for granted.

Coconuts are basically nature’s prepackaged tropical survival kits.

One of the strangest facts is that the coconut meat actually starts out as coconut water.

A very young coconut is mostly liquid inside. Then as it matures, the inside walls slowly begin forming a soft jelly layer that thickens into the white flesh we eat. So over time the coconut is literally turning its drink into food.

If you want to get "sciency": the coconut water is technically the endosperm — the nutrient solution meant to feed the developing seed. The meat is the “solid endosperm.” So both the water and flesh are basically different physical states of the same food reserve for the future palm.

🥥The coconut is technically not a nut.

Botanically, it is a fibrous one-seeded drupe — more closely related in structure to peaches and olives than true nuts.

🌴A single coconut palm can produce coconuts for 60–80 years under good conditions.

Some especially healthy trees continue even longer, though peak production usually happens earlier.

🌴Coconut palms flower continuously in tropical climates, so different coconuts on the same tree are at different ages simultaneously. In warm regions, a tree can produce new harvestable drinking coconuts every few weeks because flowering cycles overlap.

🥥Young green coconuts and mature brown coconuts are the same fruit at different stages.

The green one is harvested early for water.

The brown one is older, drier, and focused more on meat/oil.

🥥During World War II, coconut water was reportedly used in emergencies as a temporary IV hydration fluid when medical saline was unavailable.

It wasn’t ideal or standard practice, but in extreme conditions it was sterile enough inside unopened coconuts to help save lives.

🌴Coconut palms are basically coastal survival specialists.

They tolerate:

salty air

sandy soil

hurricanes

intense sun

poor nutrients

which is why they dominate tropical shorelines.

🥥Coconuts can float across oceans for months and still germinate.

The husk acts like a life jacket and the shell protects the seed inside. That is one reason coconut palms spread naturally across islands.

🌴A coconut palm is technically more like a giant grass than a traditional hardwood tree.

It belongs to the palm family, which is evolutionarily very different from oak, pine, etc. It has no true bark rings like regular trees.

🌴Every part of the coconut tree is useful. In many tropical cultures it’s called the “Tree of Life.”

Examples:

water → drink

flesh → food/oil/milk

husk → rope/mats/fuel

shell → bowls/charcoal/crafts

leaves → roofing/baskets

trunk → lumber/furniture

🥥The “three holes” on a coconut are called germination pores.

Usually only one is functional enough for the sprout to emerge.

🌴The curved shape of palm trees near beaches is often caused by light competition and prevailing wind over years — not because they are “leaning toward the ocean.”

🥥Falling coconuts genuinely injure people every year.

Mature coconuts can weigh several pounds and fall from heights over 50 feet. A coconut palm is beautiful until it starts throwing cannonballs.

And most of us in Nassau walk past them every day without thinking about how weird but incredible they actually are.

​

The sun in Nassau is not a polite guest; it is a grand inquisitor. By 10:00 AM, it has begun its work, stripping away the cooling-system delusions of the thousand-room floating cities docked at the pier.

As a guide, I stand at the threshold of the air-conditioned dream and the limestone reality, waiting to meet "The Pack."

They arrive in a flurry of white linen and tactical sun hats, carrying the heavy, invisible luggage of a "Perfect Family Vacation." But I have lived without makeup for twenty years; I have a practiced eye for what lies beneath a surface that hasn't been curated.

Usually, there is the Director. Often a father or a high-achieving mother, they walk five paces ahead, jaw set against the humidity, checking a smartwatch as if they can outrun the Caribbean rotation. To them, the tour is a series of checkpoints to be conquered. If they see the Queen’s Staircase, they have won.

Then there is the Ghost. This is the teenager, a masterpiece of modern detachment. They move with an embodied grace that belongs to martial arts or deep mourning—shoulders slumped, eyes shielded by five-hundred-dollar acetate, physically traversing the colonial history of the Bahamas while spiritually inhabiting a Discord server three thousand miles away.

In the middle is the Glue. This is the person—usually the one who booked me—who is constantly looking backward and forward, trying to suture the Director’s frantic pace to the Ghost’s rhythmic dragging. They are the ones who smile at me with a desperate, luminous intensity, silently pleading: Please, make them like this. Make this a Memory.

The most fascinating "human series" moment happens at the photo op. It is the moment the vacation mask is most tightly fastened, and the moment it most violently slips.

"Stand by the bougainvillea," the Director commands.

The Pack assembles. The Ghost sighs but assumes a position. For three seconds, they are the brochure. Teeth flash, shoulders touch, a simulation of cohesive joy is broadcast to a digital cloud.

The shutter clicks.

In the micro-second that follows, the light leaves their eyes. The smile doesn't fade; it drops like a guillotine. A hiss about a water bottle, a sharp elbow to a sibling, a grievance about the heat that has been simmering since the breakfast buffet.

As the invisible stranger at the front of the line, I am the only one who see the transition from the souvenir to the reality. I see the mess. I see the cringe-worthy accountability of people who have spent thousands of dollars to be happy, only to find they brought themselves with them.

People think a walking tour is about the Queen’s Staircase or the moonshine samples. For me, it is a study in individual accountability.

By midpoint we are such Stranger Friends that they reveal who is kind when they are tired, who withdraws into silence, who turns sharp, who is selfish when they are thirsty, and who is still capable of wonder even when reconsidering every decision that led them into direct contact with me.

I watch a mother realize that her "mini-human versions" are not props in her life story, but complicated, sweating individuals with their own agendas. I watch a father realize that leadership cannot be bought with an excursion ticket.

In the end, the tour is just a walk through heat and history. But for those who are willing to look, it is a mirror. When I say goodbye at the end, I am not just handing back a group of tourists. I am handing back a family that has been seen—authentically, bluntly, without the filter and loved—by a woman who stopped wearing a mask a long time ago.

— The Eccentric Vox

If you want to see the "messy" side of history and the human heart, read more of the Human Series on my Substack. If you want to walk through the reality with me in Nassau, you know where to find the [KINDWalk].

I have no idea why we call it switcha and where it originated but it's the Bahamain version of lemonade or more accurately limeade as we use limes and not lemons.

Classic mixture — limes, water and sugar.

If you want to get fancy you use key limes specifically and add a squeeze of sour orange.

What is Sour Orange?

Exactly what it sounds like. A hybridized version of a key lime and an orange.

Very interesting fruit. It retains the size of an orange but usually has the color of the lime, although I have seen versions where the fruit is more orange when ripe.

It is not as acidic as a lime but also not as sweet as an orange. So if you have issues with the acidity of some fruits maybe give this a try.

This is one of the most refreshing and rejuvenating things you can drink in The Bahamas.

Only thing I’d put above it is fresh coconut water straight from the coconut.

And even then… it’s close.

​

I was about 12 when I was introduced to the American version of baked macaroni and cheese.

Maybe “introduced” doesn't quite capture the experience …..it was more like punk’d by the American version of baked macaroni and cheese.

I sat at a table. A large dish was placed not far from me. I immediately recognized the melty, crispy, gooeyness of baked cheese.

I got excited.

Like almost dancing in my seat excited.

You see, in primary and even high school, baked macaroni and cheese kept me alive many days. If you couldn't afford a full meal the lunch lady would sell you a large slab of it for about $1 or sometimes $2. It is so dense it can be described as “stick to your ribs” food. It stayed with me the entire school day and sometimes beyond.

I was shook when I tasted boiled potatoes slathered in mayo with a dash of chives and they told me this was potato salad.

But this was weeks before. Surely that was the end of it.

This…this beautiful yellow orange crispy melty pan of heaven in front of me…I know what this is. We are old friends.

A giant spoon materialized from somewhere.

As it entered the pan of macaroni my eyebrows decided to be my hairline instead in this moment.

It was scooped. Yes, Bahamians I said “scooped” not sliced with a knife…scooped!

As I looked at and inspected this blob on my plate, one eye squinted while the other twitched.

That crispy meltyness was just a layer sitting on top tricking me into thinking it had structure?

I did manage to taste it and it didn't taste bad….just wrong. It wasn't as filling and satisfying as I had anticipated.

We Bahamians stacking layers of macaroni and cheese like lasagna until it becomes an edible brick and the Americans out here making casseroles and calling it the same thing.

Bahamian men have two modes of interacting with each other.

Highly respectful with honorable/honor-rebel and Yes King!

And the second is highly aggressive ….almost fight mode.

There is rarely an in between.

I was walking with guests one time and up ahead of us there were two men having a conversation.

Of course I thought nothing of it and kept walking. But then I felt a massive void behind me and when I spun around, everyone behind me was frozen in place.

It took me a second to understand that they were reacting to what seemed like a confrontation ahead of us. And rightly so. The men were gesturing and their voices were very aggressive.

And then I couldn't stop laughing.

Through my tears and body shakes I was finally able to tell them “I promise you that is a positive conversation and they are friends”.

Of course no one believed me.

A second later the men embraced each other and started laughing.

It was hilarious to see the group collectively release their held breath and finally start moving again.

​

I’ve noticed something over time.

People come to Nassau expecting culture to be visible. Easy to find. Something they can walk into or schedule.

And when they don’t see that, they start to feel like something is missing.

They’ll say there’s not much to do, or that the culture isn’t as strong as they expected.

But that’s not really what’s happening.

The culture here just isn’t presented the same way.

Outside of Junkanoo, which only happens a few times a year, there aren’t constant performances or festivals waiting for visitors. There’s no daily show you can drop into to “experience” it.

So if you’re comparing it to places like Mexico, Japan, China or Thailand where culture is more outward, more structured, more on display, then yes, Nassau can feel quiet in that sense.

But the culture isn’t gone.

It’s just not packaged.

Here, it lives in people.

It’s in the way people speak, the way they joke, the way stories come out mid-conversation without warning. It’s in tone and rhythm and expression. It shows up in small moments, not scheduled ones.

Which means you don’t really watch it from a distance.

You experience it by being part of it, even briefly.

And that asks something different of you.

Not money. Not a full itinerary.

Just a willingness to pay attention. To talk. To listen. To let things unfold a little instead of trying to move from one thing to the next.

If you stay at a distance, it’s easy to walk away thinking there wasn’t much there.

But if you engage, even a little, you start to realize the culture was present the whole time.

It just wasn’t performing for you.

1. Tuna & Grits OR Corned Beef & Grits

2. Peas n Rice OR Peas n Grits

3. Cole Slaw OR Potato Salad

4. Baked Mac n Cheese OR Fried Plantains

5. Switcha OR Sky Juice

6. Corned Beef & Rice (fire engine) OR Steamed Tuna & Rice

7. Steamed Tuna OR Tuna Salad

8. White Rice OR Peas n Rice

9. Baked Chicken OR Fried Fish

10. Conch Salad OR Conch Fritters

11. Chicken Souse OR Sheep Tongue Souse

12. Johnny Cake OR Banana Bread OR Potato Bread

​

The national flower of The Bahamas is the Yellow Elder 🌼

We have a whole community named after it. A School named after it. It’s taught, repeated, and recognized.

But here’s the twist…

A lot of the yellow-flowering trees you see lining highways and even in places like Yellow Elder Gardens?

Not Yellow Elder.

They’re actually Caribbean (Silver) Trumpet Trees 🌳

How you can tell:

Yellow Elder → smaller flowers, more leaves, and long “string bean” seed pods

(the children on my tour says it smells like popcorn or butter so to me it is also the butter flower)

Trumpet Tree → bigger flowers, large clusters, often almost no leaves when flowering, usually no visible pods and barely any fragrance at all

Now here’s the part I’m still side-eyeing a little…

I don’t know if this was intentional or just how things evolved over time, but the trumpet trees are definitely more eye-catching when they bloom.

So maybe they were chosen on purpose…

or maybe somewhere along the way, yellow just became yellow......and nobody questioned it.

Either way,

we named a place after the national flower…

and then filled it with something else 😅

***

If you’re from The Bahamas, look closely next time you pass one.

You might realize you’ve been calling the wrong tree by the right name your whole life.