The Tribune

BRITISH High Commissioner Sarah Dickson celebrated Commonwealth Day with food and nutrition for students at RM Bailey Senior High School yesterday.

This year’s Commonwealth Day theme is “Delivering a Common Future: Connecting, Innovating, Transforming”.

Ms Dickson said “the idea is that member states work together creatively, to deliver the initiatives that will change the lives of Commonwealth citizens”.

“This includes working with young people,” she said yesterday. “The Commonwealth offers regular scholarship opportunities and other competitions.”

At the school, there was a guava duff cooking demonstration.

“We are here today cooking duff and that is because it has a Commonwealth connection,” Ms Dickson said. “Having duff as a popular dessert is a tradition that The Bahamas shares with many seafaring nations. According to a report in the Manchester Times in 1869 the name ‘duff’ comes from a sailor on the Cutty Sark who, believing the word ‘dough’ to be pronounced the same as the word ‘rough’ invented the ‘duff’. It was intended as a replacement for Christmas pudding and is still seen as a celebratory desert. That is why a duff recipe will appear in the Queen’s jubilee cookbook. To celebrate her 70 years as our joint Head of State.”

Education Minister Glenys Hanna Martin and Minister of State for Education Zane Lightbourne attended yesterday’s event.