Beauty in the Workplace: Exuma Discovered

Exuma is a sandy wonderland of unscathed beaches and raw beauty.  Unlike the cold-cathode chromaticity of a cityscape the colors that this island boasts come from mother earth.  The ocean sparkles a calming celadon and aqua and remains a still body of water year-round.  As with so many beautiful places around the world, it has become a desired destination to visit.  Here small town nature meets affluence.  The main road that runs the length of the island can lead your car to extreme stops.   One turn will take you to the blissful and immoderate retreat of resorts with Infiniti pools, a stately casino and four-star spa with meditative music.  A turn further down the road will take you by sporadically placed one-story seaside homes and open side yards dotted with leashed goats, wandering gangly dogs and clotheslines in use.  The sharp contrast in lifestyles parallel the reasons why people visit the island.  People are either here to work or relax.  There’s virtually no medium.  While it’s easy to slip into vacation mode in such a beautiful country my trips there were for work. My travels to Great Exuma were spent running installations for an interior design firm.  The process began with applying for work permits, then loading freight containers full of furniture, window treatments and accessories.  Once those were in place our design team flew over the Atlantic and got to work.  In my three years of travel the procedures should have been all too familiar yet somehow the nuances of Bahamian systems always seemed to cause some level of uncertainty.  It was never known when the officials were willing to keep things orderly and when they felt that power needed to be inserted.  Once past customs the next hurdle was the jobsite.  After a few instances of uncertain trust in the local laborers that we worked with, it was decided that we’d employ the developments’ landscaping crew.  This ended up working out great because they knew the layout of the land.  Normally a furniture installation wouldn’t require a trek but we were often faced with outlandish obstructions.  Sometimes heavy goods had to be hiked uphill from the construction site because the community was still being built and the container couldn’t sit closer. Another predicament was resolving how get our premium, Nassau-made bed mattresses retrieved from the port.

We had to skillfully find someone on the island with a truck large enough to haul the items.  The resolution was found in a local produce-carrier who happened to have a flatbed.  Not exactly the cleanly and protective transport that we had in mind for the pure white merchandise.Unexpected holdups became something to expect when working overseas.  The upside to the frequent chaos was the view of the stunning ocean from just about anywhere in the resort villas that we beautified. While the working conditions were hectic, the downtime is leisurely and local (as is everything in such a small place!).  If you’re not interested a laidback Bahamian outing then it’s best to stay on the resort properties and enjoy the formal pleasures.  But if you do want to experience an authentic evening with the natives then there are some great places to socialize.  There are certain places that are definite hot spots while out-and-about in Exuma.  The first is a series of informal, unfinished wooden establishments with large hinged planks that hook to close and prop open with a two by four.  These shacks are individually owned and collectively called Fish Fry.  When Fish Fry is hopping there’ll be a barbeque or two beside the storefronts with chicken or ribs cooked-to-order, patrons strolling from counter to counter and electrical spools to lean against.  For a restaurant-style atmosphere Cheater’s is worth the drive to eat the seafood that was caught fresh.  Cheater is the owner and his jovial personality adds to the encounter.  There aren’t too many business owners who I know of that will take a nickname that stuck from a grade school race competition and name their eatery after it.  The last notable place is D’s with its brightly painted fence, Caribbean beats that fill the air and conchs pulled up from the sea beside your table.  D, the owner, makes sure that Bob Marley is always playing and that your pina colada is presented with an oversized rum floater.  The food is amazing and the place is basically one big deck made for fun. The trick to having this experience is to pin down D and make sure that he is on the island and interested in working while you’re there.  The cliché phrase of “Island Time” is personified on this sometimes backwards but always happy paradise.

-Erica R. Dunhill