A Weekend on Great Abaco Island

Yes, I was on the island for more than a weekend, but my first two days on Great Abaco Island were especially intense.

I landed in Marsh Harbour around 10am on Saturday, March 7. Flying over the waters of the Bahamas reminded me of flying into Australia. The color of the ocean is a little different, but still a vibrant teal gradient to deep navy. Our plane was very small – only three seats across and twelve rows. I didn’t see the runway until we were literally on it. The airport was tiny, and the arrival and departure areas were right next to each other.

Window Seat

Katie, an Unto intern, and Candice, a Campus Unto staff, picked me up from the airport. Because the Bahamas were once a British colony, the drivers sit on the right and drive on the left. But not all vehicles were that way; one of the vans was an American car, but sitting on the left still meant driving on the left. The ride to Marsh Harbour Gospel Chapel was a short 10 minutes, and wow I was in shock. If you told me the Hurricane Dorian happened last week, I would have believed you. Houses lay in ruins. Trees completely uprooted. Cars broken and abandoned. Shipping containers corroded. Boats washed up, far from shore. It was a ghost town.

This Was Everywhere

"You haven't seen anything yet," Candice stated, as we drove to the school we were staying at for the week. It's difficult to capture the scenery in words, but I have never been to a more devastated place.

After a simple sandwich lunch, Candice took me down to the beach. I wouldn’t exactly call it a beach because there isn’t any sand until you wade into the water, but it was a nice to stand next to water. It was cloudy, so the water wasn’t a glistening blue, but it was still a beautiful sight. Candice also brought a couple of plastic bags so we could collect the broken glass on the shore.

So Clear It's Invisible

At first, I couldn’t find any. All I saw was rocks and tiny shells. Slowly, my eyes adjusted to the bright green glass. Occasionally, I found the brown and clear bottles, too. As I scavenged the shore, poetic lines about sea glass and brokenness popped in my mind, but I don’t remember any of them. 

In the afternoon, Ben gave us a tour of the island. Ben is an Unto staff who was on the ground just four days after Hurricane Dorian hit. As he drove us around, he asked if we saw any progress. It was hard to say yes, because everything still looked terrible. There’s no electricity or running water in the majority of the area. Houses lay wasted. But to him, there has been so much improvement. There are two lanes on the road. The grocery store is open (but not always stocked). Some areas are clear of debris. He admitted that, after being on the island for so long, he had started to block out much of the devastation. It’s exhausting to constantly see the overwhelming needs but be incapable of making significant change.

Heartbreaking

The first house we stopped at was completely empty. It didn’t even have doors or windows. We walked straight through the front and back door, suddenly greeted with the beautiful blue Bahamas water. It was particularly windy that day, yet I couldn’t help but stand on the balcony, admiring the breathtaking view. We ventured around the house and down the shore, where little waves lapped on the rubble. This wasn’t a sandy beach, but I wouldn’t mind living in a house with this kind of view.

To The Balcony

I Want This Backyard

On our way to Treasure Cay, Ben pointed out a massive plot of fenced land. This was "The Mud," an area where undocumented Haitian immigrants used to live. It got its name because it's a low-lying and usually floods when it rains. A loophole in the Bahamian law allowed immigrants to stay, as long as they could squat on a plot of land for a certain period of time. But since there was no building code requirements for the government-owned land, poorly constructed houses squished together in what used to be a shantytown. You can google "the mud abaco bahamas" to see what it looked like before the hurricane, but either way, all the houses have been destroyed, and many people died as they tried to weather out the storm in their homes here. After Hurricane Dorian, the government a fence around The Mud so the families couldn't come back. It's an understatement that the Bahamian government and the Haitian immigrants don't have a good relationship. 

The Mud

We drove to Treasure Cay, a normally boujee (boojee? Meaning expensive) resort area. It’s supposedly home to one of the most famous stretches of beach in the world. The remains of the accommodations clearly showed that each one used to be a luxurious place to vacation, honeymoon, or retire.  A couple places were newly rebuilt, but I’m not sure who would want to live there with no electricity or running water. We did drive by a golf course with nicely manicured grass (a rare sight in Marsh Harbour), so I guess you could come just to play golf. (Note: TripAdvisor says this location is temporarily closed. I’m not sure how long it’ll take for tourists to start coming again).

The beach -- WOW. White, fine sand, so soft I sank into it. The water was this color:  

Beautiful

What Color is This?

I would say this is my all-time favorite beach (from me, the self-proclaimed beach connoisseur. To be fair, I have been to MANY different beaches all over the world). It's incredibly sobering to witness this paradise and all the nightmare in the rest of the city. What a cruel juxtaposition.

~

On Sunday, we attended Marsh Harbour Gospel Chapel for service. We walked up the hill to the light blue building that functioned as a church and school, and entered the sanctuary. Rows of folding chairs lined the concrete floor facing the unpolished, plywood stage. A white sheet draped against a metal frame served as the screen, where pink insulation peaked through several gaping holes in the ceiling. We sat near the back as locals, mostly elderly, trickled into the room. The congregation was small, about 40 people, which including various volunteer coming in to do service for the coming week.

Church

We soon learned that this was the first Sunday that service was being held in the sanctuary; they had been meeting in the gym (where we were staying) for months, and much progress has already been made to repair parts of the chapel. We stood up as two locals led us in acoustic worship, while a third scrolled through Word documents of the lyrics with chords.

The worship was bare – not in a condescending way, but raw and pure. There was no show. No microphones. No cool lighting. No decor.The stage was darker than the congregation. The contrast between the production I’m used to and this shook me. Worship is not about the lights, sounds, and production; it is ultimately about my heart.

The first song we sang was “Blessed Be Your Name.” All of a sudden, the lyrics took on unprecedented depth, and I was moved. The people sang:

You give and take away

You give and take away

My heart will choose to say,

"Lord, blessed be your name."

In the midst of extreme loss, these people choose to praise the Lord. I have no idea what it truly means, but I got a glimpse of others who sincerely spoke these words, and I am humbled.

I don’t remember very much about the sermon, and I failed to take notes except for this one line:

“The only thing that matters in any storm ins Christ magnified. Make Him your focus."

I so often throw myself a pity party during a storm (and very few and small storms at that), and it’s so easy to turn all my focus on myself. Even in this little drizzle that is the quarantine, I’ve caught myself thinking that the world is against me and punishing me for traveling to such a beautiful place. But that’s not true. Storms are a part of our everyday reality in this world, and as long as we are alive on earth, there will be days when we experience turbulent weather. But these difficult times can be used to the glory of God, if we choose to focus on Him. 

After the Sunday service, the students finally arrived! There were 15 students and 2 staff, so along with the rest of us, our team had 25 people. After lunch and some settling in time, we loaded up the cars and drove to a memorial service for those who lost their lives in Hurricane Dorian.

You might be wondering, why did it take so long for the Abaconians to hold a memorial service? Hurricane Dorian was more than six months ago! That’s a great question. It is true that it’s been half a year since people lost their lives, but it wasn’t until recently that locals started to move back to the Marsh Harbour region. If the memorial service took place a few months earlier, I’m not sure how many people would attend.

We Remember

We unloaded at Vision Chapel, and many people came. Even an hour into the service, people were still walking in. Our entire group, originally seated, gave up our seats to the locals attending. People stood in the doorway and outside the church because there was no room inside.

I’ve been to quite a few funerals/memorial services, but none quite like this.

It felt like people were having panic attacks, where certain points in the service, several people started wailing. (I know it’s part of some cultures to mourn with the death wail, but I’ve never seen/heard it in person.) It was intense, their cries piercing the air like knives stabbing the soul. For a split second, it felt like I could feel their heartache. But I didn’t understand, not completely.

There were so many stories of families losing loved ones, they all seem to blur together. But as people got up to share, one by one, the life of their beloved daughter, aunt, son, friend, mother, neighbor, wife, every single person broke down at the mic. It was painful to agonizing. 

At the end of the sharing time, the pastor of the church came up. He said something that I wanted to remember (it's all I wrote down from that service):

“You feel pain because you loved much.”

I'm not sure why I wrote that down, or what resonated with me in that moment, but it revealed something about the heart of the locals. It seems like Marsh Harbour would have been a joyful place with a warm, loving community. And in this tragedy, they were banding together, tighter than usual. 

We left two hours into the service. It was not over, but the leaders decided it was better to leave than to stay for the one to two hours longer the service was projected to last. We returned to the gym, and I walked the students down to the waters. It was a calming way to end the day. 

This has taken a lot longer than expected, but I'm looking forward to sharing more about what we did, and the stories we heard from the locals. Thanks for getting through this long post!