The Tribune

The photo would have been easy to overlook. It was one of the many I get daily from BIS (Bahamas Information Services) which churns out non-stop information about Cabinet ministerial activities from sunup to sundown and beyond, bless their souls.

Something about this set of photos caught my eye and I tried to figure out why. There was the Deputy Prime Minister Chester Cooper, who also happens to be Minister of Tourism, Aviation and Investments, along with the Minister of State for Education Zane Lightbourne and the President of Bahamas Technical Vocational Institue (BTVI) Dr Linda Davis. They were all at Sandals in Exuma, celebrating the graduation of newly trained nail technicians.

Was it just me or have we come full circle, once again appreciating that in any economy, and in particular a tourism-driven economy, the service industry is as essential to success as food is to human survival. That a group of newly-minted nail techs got the attention of the local MP who is also the Deputy Prime Minister and two high-ranking education leaders was a gigantic leap forward from a half century of honouring those who passed a CPA or Bar exam and hardly casting a glance at those who graduated with a degree in massage – an achievement, if you ask any athlete, that deserves equal credit.

Did we, as a young nation trying to find its identity, finally graduate from the school of thinking the power suit was the dress of success?

Did we really remember to appreciate what we had forgotten to acknowledge over recent decades – that on a ladder, every rung is equally important.

So thank you, Sandals, a trendsetter built on romance, sand, sea and service, for hosting the event.

Thank you, DPM and Zane Lightbourne for standing up publicly for those who are as excited to graduate with a new career ahead of them as the proud student who survived Statistics and Physics and just completed her undergrad program to earn a Bachelor of Science degree.

Thank you, Dr Davis, for using your great energy to grasp the reins of BTVI and make things happen.

Thank you to all who turned a page and put behind you the age when we were asked to believe that the only meaningful and important work is performed by doctors and lawyers and accountants and such. Welcome to the new old world of honouring an honest day’s work and rewarding it with an honest day’s living. There are only so many things that can operate on self-serve and this graduation exercise at Sandals was a reminder that for every lawyer or doctor or accountant, there is a cashier ringing up your groceries, an attendant filling your tank, a plumber or electrician keeping your home or business or settlement running and a nail tech somewhere waiting to make you feel a little bit better about your own beauty.

Independence is broader than we give it credit for being. It’s also about how we think about life for ourselves and not how others think we should think. And when we follow our own instincts as in cases like this, we will land in a very good place, indeed.

HOW PAINFUL IS A STINGRAY BARB?

OUCH – the warning you didn’t see coming, sting ray bite nearly takes man’s life

A friend who is just as much at home in the waters of Exuma as he is in the finer dining establishments of Nassau had the shock of his life a few months ago. It is a story he kept close to the chest, and now has agreed to share as a warning to others.

We’ll call him Tough Guy, obviously not his real name.

Tough Guy was in the clear turquoise waters of Exuma, preparing to take a last dip before heading to the airport, his business venture ending just early enough to let him enjoy the moment. One minute he was standing in shallow water not even up his knees, chatting with friends, the next minute he stood on something that stung him like an electric shock, instant agony so intense for the moment before he blacked out, he thought he had been shot. Excruciating pain, unable to move, his paralysis was so complete and the pain so severe that he barely remembers being loaded on to a stretcher, taken by ambulance and airlifted to Nassau where he underwent four hours of surgery by a leading surgeon to whom he is extremely grateful today.

Tough Guy had been stung by a sting ray, the normally docile sea creature that can, on rare occasion, if feeling threatened, release its venom. Most often, it happens in shallow water where it is least visible, blending in with the sand, and in a place where the human who accidentally steps on it is least expecting the encounter that can be deadly.

“You think it is the barb that gets you,” he says, “but the venom that I was injected with actually comes from secretory cells near the base of the body before the tail. The sting ray ... has perfected its defences. It has not had to evolve in all those centuries. If it stings you, it can be deadly because its venom is so poisonous.”

You may recall that one of the toughest guys on TV, crocodile hunter Steve Irwin, who took insane chances with crocs and stampedes of elephants wasn’t taken down by any of those wild animal stunts or adventures. He died in 2006 of a sting ray encounter. I am thinking I probably don’t need to share that with Tough Guy in case it slipped his mind. He already has enough to worry about. Although the surgery went well, Tough Guy was still unable to walk for the next two weeks. There was more recovery time after that and only now, months later, is he beginning to feel like his old self again. He knows that his chance of survival would have been far slimmer if the sting ray had stung closer to the heart.

Today, along with daily doses of gratitude, he is trying to find a way to educate the public so an innocent moment in the sea does not turn into a nightmare and an air ambulance ride to try to save a life.