Travel-and-Leisure
Become a Bahama Mama
If you are looking for tranquil peace the Bahamas is the right option for you. Most of the Bahamian population is black at about 85% and the next largest population group are whites at 12%. Other minorities include Hispanics and Asians at 3%. Many Bahamian whites are concentrated on Harbour Island, Abaco Island, Spanish Wells, Harbour Island, Montagu bay, and the Long Islands district of New Providence. There are also a significant number of noncitizen white expatriates from Europe and the United States.
The Commonwealth of the Bahamas is an independent English-speaking nation in the West Indies. An archipelago of 700 islands and cays (which are small islands), the Bahamas is located in the Atlantic Ocean, the United States and east of Florida, north of Cuba and the Caribbean, and northwest of the British dependency of the Turks and Caicos Islands.
Documented Bahamian history begins with the words, "Baja Mar," the name the Spanish bestowed on the islands. This term is misleading, however; it means "shallow sea," but the islands are really mountain plateaus that emerged from the Atlantic hundreds of thousands of years ago. Christopher Columbus's first landfall in the New World in 1492 is believed to have been on the island of San Salvador (also called Watling's Island), in the southeastern Bahamas. He encountered Taino (also known as Lucayan) Amerindians and exchanged gifts with them.
The 294,982 people who live in The Bahamas are predominantly of West African descent. Their ancestors were slaves brought to the islands to work the cotton plantations until 1834, when Britain abolished slavery in all its territories. Most white residents of are descendants of the first English settlers, who emigrated from Bermuda in 1647 to gain religious freedom. Some are also related to the Loyalists who fled the southern United States during the American Revolution and built enormous plantations here.
Religion is an important and integral part of Bahamian life. Even the tiniest village has a church, sometimes two. The people's religious ardor and high regard for education are evidence of their Puritan heritage, derived from the Eleutheran Adventurers. Music is also very popular and is in the very bones of the people. Caribbean Calypso, African rhythms, English folk songs and the uniquely Bahamian Goombay beat echo in the air.
Weddings and funerals in The Bahamas are especially important social events. People begin celebrating a marriage weeks before the official ceremony begins, and the passing of loved ones is commemorated by parties long after they are gone.
Anyone in search of the perfect beach might very well start with the Islands of The Bahamas, whose relatively small land mass belies the sheer quantity of its beachfront. With the vast majority of the islands shaped like slivers, one imagines two gorgeous stretches of beach separated by the most perfunctory of inlands. The beaches of The Bahamas are often coupled with shallow transparent water for hundreds of yards out to sea, rising gently to sandbars before finally dropping into the depths.
Jeffrey Meier of Jam727 Enterprises at http://www.Jam727.com offers detailed information about the Bahamas at http://www.jam727.com/bahamas.htm |
Jeffrey Meier
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