Hope for better days

The dreams of a nation live in the hearts of her people.

Many Bahamian hearts brimmed with hope as the year began, prepared to realize these dreams through their will and work.

Hurricane Dorian dealt a crippling blow to Abaco and Grand Bahama months earlier, and though we knew the rebuilding and recovery would be hard, we were preparing to confront what we believed would be our greatest challenge.

But no one could have dreamed what lay ahead.

Contagion.

A disease caused by a novel coronavirus burst out of Wuhan, China, at the beginning of the year and spread like fire among kindling throughout the world.

Then, for the first time in a century, an enemy we could not see changed life as we knew it.

When the first COVID-19 case was reported in The Bahamas in March, a state of emergency was declared by the governor general.

The prime minister made himself the competent authority to suspend civil liberties and create laws by edict under the Emergency Powers Act.

The borders were essentially shut.

Tens of thousands of workers were sent home as non-essential businesses were ordered closed.

Schools were closed; beaches and parks were closed.

Social events were scaled down dramatically or banned outright.

Our tourism numbers, which hit record highs the previous year, flatlined overnight.

Family Islands were isolated, curfews were instituted, movement was restricted and lockdowns began.

And the isolation, the depravation, the fear that set in, began to strangle the hope that once filled hearts.

We tried to encourage one another.

We tried to educate ourselves about what was among us, even as some refused to believe it or take it seriously.

We became full-time teachers’ assistants.

We adjusted how we worked – those of us who still had work.

The vast majority of us stayed at home as we tried to keep track of shifting orders from the competent authority, whose at times questionable decisions we were told were based on science and medical advice.

Frustrated masses waited on payments from the National Insurance Board; on free food from the government.

We tried to rationalize the acceptance of the resignation of the country’s health minister in the midst of a crisis.

We had lost 11 souls to this scourge; a toll, at the time, we thought was too high.

We rejoiced as the prime minister signaled we were on the way to reopening in July.

We thought the worst was behind us.

But as we all learned, COVID-19 comes in waves.

After reopening the borders, the second wave came and brought with it such wholesale suffering, desolate sickness, tragic loss, and galling death that the flames of hope flickered ever lower in the hearts of so many.

As of December 29, there were 7,857 cases, 170 deaths, an unemployment rate estimated at around 40 percent and billions in lost revenue and economic fallout.

This is the grim toll we paid; at least that which we can calculate.

We believe we have lost so much more.

There are those who lost important relationships and lives for tangential reasons.

There are those who lost jobs, businesses, their life’s work and life savings.

Not to mention the loss of human connection, shared ceremonies and gathering we crave that cleaved the fabric of our souls.

But hope is indomitable.

It does not die as long as we live to carry it.

We appear to be at the end of the second wave; we pray there will not be a third.

Make no mistake, COVID-19 has not gone away.

A pandemic still exists.

We are still under a declared state of emergency and may be for some time.

Yet, human ingenuity, like hope, is boundless.

There are now numerous effective COVID-19 vaccines being rolled out.

Many large nations predict that with enough public buy-in, life will return to as close to normal as we have recently seen before the end of 2021.

How we recover from this depends a great deal on the world, but the future of The Bahamas is for Bahamians to determine.

We can learn from this and grow to become better citizens, better leaders, better people who will build an even better country.

Or we would have gone through all of this for nothing.

We leave 2020 scarred in ways we would wish on no one.

Those scars, and the potential of others, will not go away at midnight Friday.

However, we believe there is reason to have hope for better days in the year ahead.

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