Save the Youth, or Face a Future as Bleak as Hell

(For The Punch – Issue 28 October 2010) by P. Anthony White

Last Sunday the 2010 National Youth March and Rally saw thousands of young people from a myriad of schools and youth organisations parading in unity through the streets of New Providence.

The kaleidoscope of colours of the various uniforms and the harmonious stepping to the rhythms of the various bands – if one watched and listened carefully – easily translated into the One Bahamas of today and tomorrow.

Obviously the whole magnificent extravaganza entailed detailed planning and organisation by persons and groups in the community and in the government who understand and appreciate the urgent need for care and attention to the emerging youth of the nation.

That was the situation last Sunday, and it was all beautiful as thousands of other citizens lined West Bay Street, Blue Hill Road, Poinciana Drive, and Nassau Street to observe and applaud the Bahamian future passing in review.

But what happens after last Sunday? What truly happens to the youth of The Bahamas in the weeks and months ahead until the 2011 National Youth March and Rally?

Some Smart Ladies Happen to be of the Evening Variety

In a novel, “Butterfield 8”, written by John O’Hara, a fabulously successful prostitute named Gloria Wandrous nevertheless hated her job and the nature of it, and once in a kind of angry desperation cried out, “Command performances leave me quite cold. I’ve had more fun in the back seat of a ’39 Ford than I could ever have in the vault of the Chase Manhattan Bank.”

We thought of that line one evening earlier this week down at the Fish Fry on Arawak Cay where a group of five ladies sat in a kind of wake, except that they were more in an attitude of merriment than of mournful melancholy.

In fact they were all dressed up to the nines and knocking back Daiquiris as if Bacardi were going not simply out of The Bahamas but out of style. They were actually ladies of the evening apparently taking at least that part of the evening off.