Today we did our big field trip to the Bahamas Maritime Museum. It was a big deal for the kids, but we learned it was an even bigger deal because next week, the museum will be packing up and moving to Nassau, so this is an experience many on Grand Bahama may never have the opportunity to have again.
We learned about some of the history of the Bahamas: of people coming for religious freedom, of the slave trade (and a very poignant tie-in to how slavery continues to this day in the form of human trafficking and the taking of child soldiers in some countries), and of English loyalists coming to the Bahamas to settle during and after the American Revolution. We learned a bit about the Lucayans: the original inhabitants of the Bahamas. One interesting thing we learned about their traditions was the tradition of head-binding in infancy to flatten the forehead, which modern scholars believe was considered beautiful by the Lucayans.
Next we looked at several artifacts from the shipwreck of the Maravallas. The museum is tied to the recovery efforts for this ship, which sunk in the 1600s and holds silver coins, cannon, jewelry, and other artifacts. At the end of this portion of the tour we toured the restoration lab where one of the lab workers explained how artifacts are restored when recovered from the shipwreck.
The last portion of the tour was a hands on activity in which the children got to experience restoring artifacts. While the labs for cleaning coins exposed to the elements used modern coinage, and the labs for reassembling cracked pottery used modern mugs, etc. the lab for cleaning pottery shards found in the wreck used actual 400+ year old pottery shards. The wreckage contains a significant amount of pottery too damaged to fully restore but as an exercise for the development of potential future archeologists it is still a great resource for the museum.
After the field trip, we returned to the home for some recreational activities and a pizza party before leaving to get ready for our evening’s cultural experience.
The director of the home accompanied us to Goombay: a summer festival showcasing local music, cuisine, dance, and arts and crafts. It’s impossible to fully explain the experience of Goombay without being there. Everyone had a lot of fun and experienced a little bit of Bahamian culture. A word to the wise: if you order the snapper, you’re ordering a snapper. The whole thing: head, tail and bone. Make sure you have a place to sit to eat it…
Tired but satisfied, we returned to our lodging and are thinking about tomorrow: our last day with these wonderful kids.
