The Tribune

By: MIA GARDNER

AS The Bahamas has reached its 50th anniversary, attention turns to what will come in our nation’s next half century.

The Tribune took to the streets to ask the question: “What do you hope the country will accomplish in the next 50 years?”

The response was mixed – with a range of concerns.

Rose Bethell, an assistant librarian, said she would like to see an improvement in the education system.

“My main concern is our education. I want them to concentrate on the [academically challenged] people because, guess what, they [are] your criminals,” Ms Bethell said.

“[They’re] not being educated, and they feel left out, and the teachers, I can be honest, they bring them down … they have to live, be clothed, they need food, they want a car to drive around in, but they don’t have [their] education.”

She added: “When they go for a job interview, [they] don’t have a high school diploma and [employers] don’t pay [them] any mind. Our main thing is for us to get our country literate.”

Destiny Josey and Garanique Adderley both agreed that the country can work on the quality of their roads, “Pot holes for sure,” Ms Josey said. “The thing I really want to see in 50 years, or right now, would be better roads because we have so [many] pot holes, so [many] tyres being ripped up. Your car shocks gone! Better roads is a necessity for everything.”

Ms Adderley added: “I think that we need better government buildings because if you go into Nassau into our main city, the buildings are really bad, especially when we’re the number one industry of tourism.”

She added: “Our buildings are dilapidated and we’re bringing in our tourists, we don’t want them seeing that because [they’re] thinking that we live in shambles already.”

Finally, Barbra Wilson said it was really important that The Bahamas begins to rely on itself.

She said: “I feel like I would like to see us become more self-sufficient. As you know we’ve been independent now for 50 years and we are still very dependent on other countries. I would like to see us get to the point where we can feed ourselves at least for the most part and provide for ourselves so we are not so dependent on other countries. We, obviously, are very dependent on other countries for tourism and we saw the issues happen because of it during COVID but we need to be able to feed ourselves.”

Ms Wilson said through the education system, schools can teach agriculture early and support and encourage self-farming to the younger generation.

She said: “We can accomplish that if we put more emphasis from childhood. Back in the old days, children went on the farms with their parents, on their yards, in their homes and planted their own crops and they ate from what they planted and they taught them that when they were young, but we don’t really have them in schools now.

“There really [aren’t] any courses that insist that we do agriculture and this kind of thing. It’s how you eat! And I think if we start from small, between agriculture, and fisheries from childhood from a young stage so that they grow up with that mentality, all we think of right now is that we grow up and work in tourism. But if the tourists don’t come, we’re screwed.”