The Tribune

By AVA TURNQUEST

Tribune Chief Reporter

aturnquest@tribunemedia.net

MORE than a testament to her life’s work, former Deputy Prime Minister Cynthia “Mother” Pratt wants her foundation and memoirs to live on as a permanent fixture of empowerment and hope for inner-city communities.

As she prepares for a launch on October 21, the woman that shattered several political ceilings said she was filled with gratitude to witness the fruition of her wildest dreams.

She hinted that there was a possible film adaptation in the works.

“The same woman that came out the heart of the inner-city, the same can happen for them, that is my dream, that is my request, that is my desire, that the many years I sat in certain positions I lived right here,” she said.

“All of the firsts that God has allowed me to experience, I lived right on Sixth Street, Coconut Grove. You can’t sell it, you can’t erase it. When I sat in the chair as acting Prime Minister I lived right here, with the police in their boot right in the inner-city. When I presented the National Budget, the first woman to do so, I was living right here.

Published by Scholar Books with author Albert Cox, Mother Pratt’s book titled “An Ordinary Woman from the Heart of the Inner City: A Commentary on My Life in Perspective” promises to be a tell-all account of her journey from the “pit to the palace”.

Growing up in a household with more than 16 people, being severely malnourished and rummaging through garbage cans at graveyards and other public places to eat are experiences that Mother Pratt said inspired her to want more out of life.

“It’s about inspiring those who believe there is no hope for them,” she said.

“I’m so grateful and so thankful to God that God has chosen me at this time to be an inspiration when everything seems to be so negative. There is a positive and this positive is about women, women of colour who have come from the gutter can now say there is some good and some worth in them.

Mother Pratt continued: “My life has been about giving and bringing hope to those who believe that they’re nobody, that’s my life.”

Mother Pratt said she has advised her children of her posthumous intent to have her home transformed into a museum after her death.

She noted that taxi drivers often bring tourists to her home to take photographs.

“Life is a chance,” she continued, “if we notice crime has no limit, no constituency, no community because just about all of them have been touched, only some more often than the others. Nassau East didn’t just start somewhere, or Lyford Cay, its residents are the ones to make something out of it. These communities all started out as bushes, it’s the people that brought the change.

“That’s my message,” she said, “it’s us that must change it, and that’s the reason why the history must live on.

“The famous Bahamian artist Amos Ferguson, he died an icon, how many children of the inner city know that he lived right around the corner (in the inner-city). The community itself at large don’t know it or simply don’t appreciate it.

“Mother Pratt is just around the corner but there have been more before me. Many of the others who have achieved have moved out, but my story has only been don’t move, improve.

She added: “If we take that kind of mentality, we can do a lot to bring change and cut out the politics.”