The beach that Michael Meldman's Discovery Land Company has allegedly offered the locals of Guana Cay. "Didn't the people before me, slave for this country? Now you look me with your scorn, and you eat up all my corn. We're gonna chase those crazy baldheads out of town." - Bob Marley "There seems insufficient concern regarding the restriction of traditional access by local inhabitants to sources of food and income." - Dr. Michael Risk Written on September 25, 2005.

The Discovery Land Company, a California-based development company known for big, unsettling and distasteful golf courses, has gone behind the backs of islanders in the northern Bahamas in order to build an atrocious golf course on their tiny island.

The creation of this golf course and development will ruin both the people's way of life as well as their reef, both of which depend on a light footprint. In Western Democracies, the people in a community are always given the ultimate say in the direction of their community's development. It is a concept that is both humane, efficient and democratic - locals are the long-term stakeholders in their land, and the only people capable of weighing the net effect of something on their grand-children's grandchildren.

But why in this case did the government route all the traditional steps in approvals and community involvement? Why does the government of the Bahamas believe that a California-based golf company knows what's best for Guana Cay?

No rational government would allow foreigners to infringe on their own people in such a harsh and demeaning way.

And since the Government of Bahamas is a central player in this hostile takeover, it has been suggested that it is unlikely they weren't bribed all the way up to Prime Minister Christie. I started asking myself after reviewing the set of events at Guana Cay: in what case would it be in the rational self-interest for a Prime Minister to support this development?

The EIA for the developer says, "Public discussion of the project has been discouraged prior to final project approval through the Office of the Prime Minister." It also says, "without an official approval of the (project) from the office of the Prime Minister, (the group) has not been allowed to publicly present information about the development plans and solicit input from the community."

Bahamians believe that they are on the cusp of the world's greatest wealth, but are unable to tap into it. They see their proximity to Miami and even New York - Bahamians regularly fly to such cities to shop - but ask themselves why they can't tap into that wealth. Young Bahamians dress for this hope; they style themselves in hip-hop luxury and with shiny coastal American trends. The Bahamas is gripped by a volatile mix of urban desires and religious fundamentalism. When Miss Teen Bahamas courageously announced a week ago that she was gay, the country's press showed that it could completely disregard both science and compassion for some nasty outdated views.

The Christie Government's answer to the country's hopes and desires is to promote development - rapidly. More hotels, more big developments. To Christie it appears that if it's shiny, if it's American, if it's got lots of color, it's good.

That, tied with the country's renewed fundamentalism, which is often endearing and from the heart at the individual level, is also encapsulated by the government, which views science largely as a tool. The Prime Minister's own environmental consultant, Livingston Marshall, was paid by the Discovery Land Company to become the Vice President of Environment and Community Affairs of the Bakers Bay Golf and Ocean Club.

The Discovery Land Company has even offered a job to the district counsillor who represents Guana Cay. Everywhere, it seems, the Discovery Land Company is trying to buy off the people who could defend the people of Guana Cay. However, this district counsillor has said 'no' to Discovery Land Company, according to people close to him, and is rising up to serve and fight for the people who elected him.

Irresponsible foreign development in Bimini is ripping out the wetlands to build a golf course. The wetlands are home to 100 species of fish. The sharks of the Bahamas bear their young here. Mangroves and wetlands are how islands resist hurricanes and being washed away to sea. Photo courtesy Dr. Sam Gruber of the University of Miami.

Despite all the alleged underhanded moves of the development, it could be argued that the Bahamas has no need for a rapid development strategy at all. What it's lacking is a marketing strategy. If you visit websites like GoNomad.com, the disdain for Bahamas-style tourism is clear. In this case, a small bar flashes on the bottom of the screen:

"No Disney. No Bahamas."

What they mean is, this website doesn't write about cheesy places.

The Bahamas relies on tourism for its economic growth. People who travel to the Bahamas tend to be upper-middle class east coast Americans, Canadians and Germans. These types of people read glossy travel magazines, they are keen on trends in travel and they spend money on travel accessories.

But the image of the Bahamas has been downgraded severely in the last fifteen years by the fickle travel-hip machine, which despite a terrorism-wary public, is sending Americans to places like Panama or Guatemala. The Bahamas now seems to stand for low-rent casinos and barf-bag cruise-ships.

The reality is that the Bahamas is the opposite of all that - it is a quiet and beautiful ocean wilderness; dotted with thousands of small islands, cays and shoals - it is a rich ethnic pallette and a gem. Its sole natural resource is the quality of its beautiful marine environment.

That wealthy westerners have forgotten all this is not their fault. Rather it's the fault of the Bahamas Government itself - for the idiotic idea that you can bring McDonalds to a white-sand beach and call that your national development strategy. In recent years, the government has brought developments to places where developments just do not belong.

But where is their marketing? Why do Canadians think the Bahamas is a casino, why do Germans think the crime-rate is too high, and why do Oregonians think the Bahamas belongs to the state of Florida?

In the case of Clifton Cay, the government sought to support a development that would lie on top of a rare Bahamian archaeological site, endanger sea turtle nesting grounds and disrupt the natural beauty of the land.

In Bimini, a war is raging over a development that is mowing down mangroves, which happen to be the breeding ground for the wildlife that attracts people to that island.

In Guana Cay, a ragtag fellowship of native islanders, flip-flop pirates and a legion of environmental groups are fighting the most horrendous of them all.

Guana Cay is a paradox to the Bahamas at large. It has 100% employment and a slow but steady tourism base. Because of the island's unique quaint settlement, its excellent bonefishing, beautiful unspoiled beaches and its beyond-the-pale coral reef, Guana Cay should be a model for all of the Bahamas as to how an island should develop while preserving its resources.

It is a model of second-home and cottage tourism, the concept has always been the strategy of the Abacos. In an April 2005 Bahama Journal article by Darren Cullmer,

"Officials with the Ministry of Tourism pointed out that in addition to observing the significant increase in the number of visitor nights in Abaco last year, they also noted a tendency among visitors to that island to choose alternative living arrangements."

Despite the repercussions of recent Hurricanes, the Abaco tourism community has been thriving, far better than other islands in the Bahamas, some of which are suffering.

Despite the successful Abaco model, and the very public outcry in the Abacos against this project, the government and developer continued to work together in secrecy. A petition against the development was given to the Prime Minister, and several others in his government. The petition included signed signatures from almost 100% of Guana Cay. Despite that, the government never responded and has continued to veil its support of the development in a strange veil of secrecy.

The Hurricane Hole, like so much real estate in the Abacos, is just the dynamited remains of a failed development. Hurricane Hole is yesterday's golf community. Yesterday's marina. Yesterday's happy foreigners. Now the approach (bicycle, golf cart) is inhibited by growth - theoretically, it's not even legal to be here. The rumor: this blown out and abandoned harbor is all filled with sharks. In the Bahamas, automated spear-crossbows have been illegal for years. To kill a fish in the water, you need to do it with human power. The old Bahamas theory to conservation is, if you aren't man to kill a fish, you ain't gonna kill a fish. It's called a Hawaiian sling, and its a piece of rubber, a piece of wood, and a metal pole between. Pull it back, release. Boom. The pole fires.

You're not allowed to use it with SCUBA gear. In the Bahamas, the hawaiian sling is practically the national sport. The water here is always murky, and its always unsettling. I hear Hans' spear cling against the rock. And again. But this act - the primal act of killing a fish as it was done in man's infancy - gives me the jitters. And the water tires me, the constant diving, the poking your spear at fish. The wading, fighting the tide.Cling again. I look up - Hans' spear is raised in the air, which means a fish. Which means you book it as fast you can to shore. It's about three minutes before the sharks come for the fish blood. Hans is booking for the shore, which is what you do when you spill blood in shark water. But I'm booking for my life, because this place has always gave me the creeps.We grab the rocks on the cliff inside the abandoned harbor, hoist ourselves up. We climb alongside the cliff edge, and place the dead grunt on a ledge.

My flipper catches the rocks on the cliff, and as the tide comes up, the force of the water twists my body despite my foot and I yelp in pain. But with the blood out of the water, we climb back down again into the sea. This time Hans pushes us deeper into the water, and we split up.

You can float there on the water surface for minutes, and the sea will appear void. A silver breaches that void, and it's a familiar symbol of speed and form - a group of mackeral. I pounce.

Meanwhile, some fellow, somewhere very different from here, some fellow is walking on fake grass. Perhaps he is in California. Surrounding him are mega-developments and huge Home-Depots and unsighly strip-malls. In this world, the golf course is serenity.

He's middle management, he's playing golf with middle, but slightly upper-than-him management. He lives in that American ideal where thirty-pounds overweight is acceptable. He wears those Tommy Bahama shirts that make women gag. He is not particularly creative, nor skillful and certainly not athletic.

He lacks personality, he is uncomfortable with the outdoors. He focuses his energy on people-skills, which makes his handshake overly-energetic.

Golf is a great way to have a conversation with a friend, and it's a beautiful pastime. We find that as we approach our oldest years, our sports relax and we find comfort in taking walks, or fishing, or golfing. Golf has become a universal symbol for the frank discussion. Whether in business, or between a father and son, golf's simplicity lends itself to something missing in urban society; a quiet place to talk and think.

Golf yields some of the greatest examples of North American landscape architecture; a component of the sport that has long gone unrecognized by the outside world. Most men I know golf, and I think it's fair to say about ten percent of the women I know golf as well.

Today, the USGA is actively working to make golf courses ecologically superior to the alternatives. According to Dr. Jeff Nus of the USGA's Green Section, golf courses sometimes harbour endangered species, and often help attract birds when traditional wetlands have been displaced elsewhere.

Beyond this simple and beautiful side of the pastime, there is an ugly side to golf - a minority side of golf - that attracts and develops an ugly part of our culture. Don't mistake me - by golf I do not mean the sport. I mean the culture of the post-modern male; the effeme heterosexual.

A chiton, a type of mollusk, is clamped tightly against the porous rock of an Abaco Cay. The limestone in these cays acts as a sponge, so that anything leaking in, finds its way quickly to the ocean.

David Brooks, in his frank depiction of today's America, explains:

"...Golf is more than just an environment. It suggests its own state of spiritual grace, a Zenlike definition of fully realized human happiness. In the realm of golf, that state of grace is called par. And par is the established suburb's version of nirvana."

Brooks describes par as being a virtual religion in America; a replacement for the traditional qualities of male competition and aggression.

This type of golfer spends thousands on clinics, gadgets, golf guides, golf philosophy books. To him, par has become a kind of addiction. And if you doubt any of this, just walk into any golf emporium around the United States.

As a sport, golf has not been growing in the US. Even the supposed boost of Tiger Woods did nothing to actually increase the amount of players. The frustration of the sport, of not being on par, means that about as many people quit the sport each year as those who join in. But why then has the amount of golf courses doubled in the United States in the last fifteen years?

Golf can become an addiction in which the player feels constantly inadequate. Only 2% of all American golfers have earned a single-digit handicap, according to Silverstein and Fiske's Trading Up. This personal sense of failure apparently felt by millions drives golfers to try any potion to help get them back on par - an unachievable goal.

Golf's par-seekers are largely heterosexual, but something in their drive has been diminished. It's as if the journey towards par replaces physical sports. It is probably no coincidence that the market for male cosmetics has risen to an 80 billion dollar industry alongside the doubling of American golf clubs. Walk in your local golf outlet, and you will find some of the most tasteless par-potions you've ever seen. There is an entire industry to exploit the need for par, and way too many fall for it.

Heavy construction equipment is tearing up the mangroves in Bimini. Photo courtesy Dr. Sam Gruber of the University of Miami

While true golfers - people who love the sport, do not come close to falling in this category, we all know that other side of golf. Clearly, many of America's yahoos can be found on the golf course.Serious golfers simply do not play in tropical golf developments. These far-off clubs are not even designed to attract them. They are designed expressly for the par-seekers.

To make par-seekers content - to sell them a property on a golf course, you have to convince them they can achieve par if they buy property. On Guana Cay, the potential home buyers will need to be convinced they will have everything they seek in achieving par. Immaculate green space, highly architectured lots and lawns and shrubbage.

Putting this golf course on this island is like installing a Bed, Bath and Beyond in Yosemite Valley.

The Discovery Land Company calls their golf course development a "veritable playground of possibilities." They write, "For those with larger water craft, Bakers Bay's unique deep water channel makes it one of the only places in the Abacos that can accommodate large yachts." The deep water channel they are referring to is the one Disney dug out, destroying conching grounds, turtle grass beds and sections of coral reef.

Then its, "The Ocean Club will feature a fabulous clubhouse with fine and casual dining, beach service, resort-style swimming pool, spa and fitness facilities, tennis courts..."

Fabulous?

Abaco has largely succeeded in continuing to drive tourism because it is everything opposite what the Discovery Land Company promises.

In the words of Steve Pike of the PGA, Abaco is everything those horrible California golf courses aren't.

"I've found the real Bahamas," he writes, "Not the over-developed, over-hyped Paradise Island version, but the Bahamas the British Loyalists found when they fled here in the 18th century. Descendants of those Loyalists -- and the Indians before them -- still live on the islands of the Abacos archipelago. That is, cobalt blue water, white sand beaches and fishing to last a lifetime, each in the serene surroundings where time, while not quite standing still, isn't in any hurry to move forward. "

When you bring these golfers to a seven mile island and expect them to feel a sense of par in a place that has almost nothing to do, nowhere to go, and not much in the way of shopping, you are asking Abaco natives to literally give up the culture and feel of their own island.

The people who have inhabitated Guana Cay, and the people who have visited the island for generations are a certain sort of people. They demand quiet, long days of bone-fishing, reading or just drinking a bottle of wine in an old weathered restaurant in the island's heart. Putting this golf course on this island is like installing a Bed, Bath and Beyond in Yosemite Valley. The noise of seaplanes landing in one of the largest marinas in the Bahamas, the huge yachts of partying golf yahoos, the nightmare of this fabulous playground could only be conceived in deference to the people who live there.

The developers offered to allow them access to one of the beaches. The beach could be called the worst on the property. And remember, the property is not all private - part of it was acquired from Bahamian Crown Lands, which are similar to BLM lands. In the Bahamas, anybody is allowed to walk on any beach up to a certain level, but access to those beaches is not guaranteed.

Oddly, the inhabitants require those beaches for their food and their incomes. Like the kind of people who visit the Abacos, the native inhabitants require access to those beaches for spearing, foraging, conching, taking snorkelers.

Discovery Land Company's gated community is clearly installing its own Tommy Bahama Republic. And they're already starting to control the way things are run in the Bahamas.

Without any real public consultation, the developer and the government entered into an agreement that would give the developer a range of special perks, deals and tax benefits.

Oddly, this would seem unusual unless those on the government side benefitted personally, because this development will have no positive effect on the Bahamas economy. The profits for the project will all end up out of the country, and the development is isolated on a tiny island, which means that the development will not jumpstart the local economy. Although the development will employ a small number of Abaco Bahamians, the net effect will be negative on tourism in the area in general.

The Guana Cay reef

The development boasts "guarded gates" and of "an exclusive island paradise." These are ideas that may fit into a California gated lifestyle. But this type of trashy tourism is despised in the Abacos.

Second home-owner tourists, in response, are expected to respond to the new development negatively. Some regulars to the Abacos have told me that they believe the Abacos are losing their character, and that they intend to look elsewhere to find what has kept them coming back to the Abacos for years.

Photo courtesy Lory Kenyon

Bahamians across the nation are dumbfounded that foreign developers are being given so many perks, at the expense of locals and local investment.

Andrew Allen writes in an article for the Bahamas Pundit, "...Abaconians are sick of being pointed to by Nassau politicians as a Family Island success story, only to have the fruits of that success siphoned off into the consolidated fund with nothing to show for it in terms of public investment...For growth to be sustainable, planning and decision-making must exist primarily at the local level."

He continues,

"The mood at Guana Cay, which is at the centre of government’s controversial plans for an ‘anchor’ project for the area, epitomises the sense of inertia and frustration that takes root when locals are denied both real decision-making and the tools to implement it.

He explains that Abaconians are given little in return for their successful economy. Homemade inventiveness often make up for the inadequacies of a government literally giving their land away to foreigners. In Elbow Cay last year, I met a young man, perhaps 19 years old on the island of Elbow Cay. I asked him, "If the government can't fix your potholes, why don't you just do it?"

He said, "It's a matter of principle. If we fix our potholes, they'll expect us to pay for it and fix it ourselves. We have to draw the line somewhere."

Abaco resistance to their repeatedly being ignored by government seems strong. That is perhaps why so many Abaconians, and Bahamians in general, see the islanders on Guana Cay as heroes.

Allen continues,

"If you look at some of the things the people of the Abaco Cays have organized for themselves, independent of central government (a reliable ferry service, a successful fishing industry, a solid tourist industry based on the rental of their homes) it may seem strange that they would wait years for someone to come and bring the mail. But that is the nature of government in the Family Islands. It comes in, makes the rules, puts up the buildings, takes over the responsibility (sometimes even monopolises it!), then fails to deliver."

Allen reminds his readers that "Elbow Cay, Man-o-War Cay and Great Guana together comprise one local administrative unit. Between them, these little islands contribute more than their fair share to the treasury."

Guana Cay islanders have noted oil barrels on the developer's property literally dripping with oil.

An article on Bahamascommunity.com supports this idea. The author writes,

"Out of one side of (a politican's) mouth he said, "No one can stop the locals from having picnics on the beach they used for many years." Out of the other side of his mouth, after a woman asked him if the locals will be chased off of the beach like they are doing to the locals in Winding Bay. He said, "Well, if you have a million dollar home, you might not like people having parties in front of your house."

SGCR Attourney Fred Smith talks to the press.

The government hopes to see Discovery Land Company's Baker's Bay mega-development become a cornerstone of fancy development in the Abacos. But the affects of over-development are not only hurting the economy of Bahamian islands, but the tourism base as well. Wherever there is mega-cheese, the baseline of repeat and second-home-owner tourism is packing up to find somewhere new.

Why, then, would the government want to support a development like this?