The Tribune

By DIANE PHILLIPS

If you live on the eastern side of the island you see them every day – men and women in light blue shirts and khaki pants holding tin cans in the shape of a church. They wait patiently for donations, a few hundred dollars a day coming from regulars who know the work these extraordinary men and women do. They are the members of Ambassador Chorale and the money they raise helps to house, feed, clothe and teach those who have fallen through the cracks or whose drug-sodden parents are incapable of caring for them.

Ambassador Chorale is a living rescue mission, taking on board those handed over by authorities, other times finding the forgotten who pray for dry weather so they can keep a window cracked in the abandoned truck they are sleeping in.

Through the night while you and I are sound asleep with a solid roof over our heads and the golden promise of tomorrow, Rev. Michael Bullard and Mario McPhee and Mr. Hall and Mr. Taylor are risking their lives to save others who can hardly remember how they got through today. Bullard and his team travel through a sad and sorry world filled with bodies slumped in doorways and alleys populated by the dysfunctional.

They are motivated by a spirit that is as undeniably genuine as it is hard to comprehend.

But it is their story that is the most remarkable, beginning with how they came to be called Ambassador Chorale. It began in the 1980s with Bullard who holds a number of degrees including two master’s, one in music, the other in religious ethics. A choir director who later became a choir master with 31 choirs under his direction by the 1990s, he started with a choir that grew to 95 young males originally called the Boys Chorale. A few young women wanted to sing and Ambassador Chorale performed its first concert under its new name at Carnival’s Crystal Palace. The date: October 1, 1994. Twenty-four years later to the day, October 1, 2018 the Crystal Palace Hotel was imploded.

Many years later, on September 11, 2001 they were scheduled to perform at another venue – the revolving restaurant at the top of the World Trade Centre. The director and another singer were too ill to travel and two days before they were scheduled to perform, they had to break the news that they were forced to postpone the appearance. There were 65 due to travel, 65 Bahamians who would have been in the World Trade Centre on 9/11.

If there is such a thing as using up all your luck, Ambassador Chorale did it that day and life for the troupe of singing rescuers has been anything but easy since.

They have moved from place to place, first building homes on Marshall Road on property that had been donated to them. They repaired two rundown buildings, added places for people to stay, all for free, became the charity of choice for KFC worldwide.

Funds raised through performances locally and around the world helped foot the growing bills. As long as they could sing and dance and Bullard could teach them to sing in many languages – Gaellic, Swahili, Latin, Japanese and Italian among them – they could feed the hungry, house the homeless, teach the children. They stayed on the Marshall Road property for 11 years until a family land dispute forced them off.

From there they purchased nine acres of land at $136,000 an acre off Prince Charles. They paid monthly to a private individual for years, moved tons of trash and debris by hand to avoid bulldozers destroying trees and to protect flora and fauna that they discovered as they cleared the site. There, their numbers grew to 76 and schooling was done on site with approval by Ministry of Education. During performances outside The Bahamas, teachers were assigned to travel with them.

Fifteen years after they moved to Prince Charles, new legal troubles began and they fought a legal battle that went back and forth and in the end was resolved by a bulldozer that ripped through everything they’d built, the gardens, wells, trailers turned into houses, the beautiful low stone walls and archways built by the hands of children. Animals were killed. A little four-year-old boy nearly lost his life chasing after a puppy that was running from the bulldozer when the equipment headed full-speed for child and dog.

On January 21, 2016, all the homes were demolished and Ambassador Chorale was displaced. The rescuers became like those they had rescued, living in vehicles, on park benches and under trees and by the compassion of friends, finding a few weeks’ stay in private homes.

What happened to Ambassador Chorale in The Bahamas is a crime of the worst order – pretending that evil did not strike those who were just trying to do good. They have now purchased a new home and just for the record, the little choir that started with a few voices in the Kemp Road area has sparked an international movement. Today there are 45 Ambassador Chorales around the world.

“There is a very large Ambassador Chorale in Spartanburg, South Carolina. They put us to shame,” says Rev. Bullard.

We, the Bahamian people, should be ashamed. Reverend Bullard and Mario and Mr. Taylor and Mr. Hall, and all your wives and children and the forgotten whom you look after, you should be very proud. Very proud, indeed.