Dear reader, last week, while the undergraduate population recovered from hangovers and began classes, I went on vacation with my family to the Bahamas. I spent seven days blissfully ignorant of world events. I am ill-prepared, then, to write about anything else, so this week’s column will be: What I Did on My Summer Vacation - by Rishi, in case there was any doubt.
Detroit Metro Airport’s efforts to heighten security consist mainly of an elaborate maze of nylon webbing without cheese at the end. The theory being, I suppose, that any terrorist stupid enough to try hijacking a plane these days would find himself or herself trapped in a dead end.
Unfortunately, the same principle applies to government officials stupid enough to believe terrorists will continue to attempt to hijack planes as their primary offensive; I spotted several Homeland Security bureaucrats bumping futilely against the walls of the maze.
The flight itself was memorable: I was sandwiched between a very pleasant man of about 800 pounds and an older woman who, upon taking her seat, began praying. Her prayer, incidentally, consisted of nothing more than her loudly repeating, “Oh, Lord Jesus,” over and over. When the turbines screamed for takeoff, her voice rose in volume, as if the son of God were having difficulty hearing her. She kept mumbling this litany until the cabin doors opened, at which point she said, “Thankee, Jesus.”
The Bahamas are post-colonial, and obviously so. The islands gained independence from Great Britain in the early ’70s, and it seems the nation picked and chose which parts of the infrastructure to maintain, and which to let decay. The effect is similar to a game of SimCity that has been hit by several tornadoes: The court and jailhouse in Freeport are spotless and gleaming, but the roads around the island are torn up.
The peril of those roads is more than their crumbling. The Bahamas took from the British the habit of driving on the left side of the road. The cars on the islands, of course, come from the United States, and have the driver’s seat on the left side. The result is a constant and spectacularly exciting game of chicken in which drivers try to guess how close to oncoming traffic they can get without actually caring about giving me a heart attack.
Trying to relax on the way to the hotel, I stared out at the houses along the way, which were constructed out of the pastel painted concrete that is standard in the tropics. Concrete, by the way, is the Bahamas’ only export. It is very strange to be in a country that is entirely dependent on imports for everyday life. Isolated, the Bahamas would be able to survive, certainly, but not to live well. Everything we associate with modern life, from pizza to pop, has to come over the sea, and this lends the island life a precariousness and a cautiousness that anyone who needs glasses to see can understand.
I spent the week in a lovely and quiet hotel with my family. The prospect of spending some time with my parents and sister was, at the beginning of the trip, very appealing; for the past year, our schedules were disparate enough that I was rarely able to see all of them at the same time. My sister, in particular, had finished her sophomore year at college, and I had no idea if she had even enjoyed it.
As it turned out, being around my family had the curious effect of forcing me to regress in age. I am 24 years old; in 10 months, I will be a physician; while on vacation, I was forced to engage in a spitting fight with my sister. In my defense, I will only say that I am physically incapable of sleeping in a room that is warmer than 67 degrees, much less 75, and spitting seemed appropriate at the time. I draw the curtain of discretion over the remainder of the issue.
My days were spent quietly sleeping and reading on the beach or in a hammock - my first few days at least. The hotel was equipped with a large marina, and midway through the week, the boat people started arriving.
I have never understood boating as a hobby. Sailing is graceful and requires skill, but the appeal of roving about in a motorboat eludes me. This has always been problematic; I grew up, after all, in a state where it’s very common to tie yourself to a fast-moving boat for fun.
The boats that docked at the hotel were all from southern Florida and were equipped with fishing chairs on their aft decks, which almost always had coolers of beer on their tops. They all had absolutely stupid names, such as “Chasin’ Tail,” “Miss Direction” or “Reel Estate.”
The boats were all captained by fat, sunburned men with gray mustaches, hairy chests and Oakley razor sunglasses. They were, in other words, men who wear gold chains about their necks, and nothing more needs to be said about that. Their wives, similarly fat and sunburned, were loud when they complained at dinner and louder when they were drunk at the end of dinner.
Do I sound angry? Perhaps it’s because these beer-soaked clowns of the sea insisted on telling the world they were relaxing by blaring either Jimmy Buffet or reggae throughout the night. Perhaps it’s the one jackass in particular who managed to find a reggae version of “Margaritaville” - a song I can only describe as a soundtrack to hell. It could be the engine exhaust that blanketed the beach; it could be their accents, which made Anna Nicole Smith sound like James Earl Jones; it could be their cigars. No, it’s probably the reggae “Margaritaville.”
Despite the boat people, the fights with my sister and the roads, I had a lovely time on vacation. I managed to get a bit of a tan, read some books and caught up on sleep. Well-rested and well-browned, I will return with news commentary next week. In the meantime, just try and imagine what a reggae version of “Margaritaville” sounds like, and weep for me.
Rishi Kundi is an MSU medical student. He can be reached at kundiris@msu.edu.
