Tragedy in Paradise

Beyond the reach of cell phone towers in the most beautiful anchorage in a secluded chain of islands in one of my favorite places in the world, we were reminded of the harsh reality that is our current world.

Upon settling in at Flamingo Cay we took a short hike from our beautiful anchorage in Coconut Bay to the beach in North Bay. The trail was the usual sharp, perforated rocks of the Bahamas, edged in poison wood and cactus and marked with pieces of plastic flotsam and sun-bleached conch shells. We passed by little pools of water with bright red shrimp and tiny crabs along the way, and were looking forward to checking out a plane wreck that was reported to be on the beach. 

The trail opened to a stunning scene of layers of blue and powdery white sand. It was beautiful! There was also a bunch of plastic trash at and above the high water line. This sadly is not a surprise on a windward shore around here. But we also noticed clothing, some of it in pretty good shape, some in tatters and sun-faded. As we walked east on the beach towards the airplane, we noticed large pieces of brightly-painted wood scattered about. And still more clothing...a lot more than we normally see on a windward beach. And we saw a few bags.

The stunning North Bay beach and the plane wreck we had sought out.

I cautiously walked up the beach towards a nice looking gym bag that seemed to have a nice blouse hanging out of it. And for some reason, I decided to open the bag. Inside were packages of sanitary napkins, a few nice shirts, a pair of earrings, a phone charger cable, and a card. As I reached in for the card a scorpion crawled out about an inch from my hand and I tossed the bag. But the card was in my hand, and when I flipped it over the state of the beach became horrifyingly clear. It was a Haitian ID card. 

We looked around the beach with new eyes. We looked more closely at the scattered wood pieces—they were painted on one side, charred on the other. Some of the clothes were in distinct piles. There was a child’s blanket…stylish jeans…a KFC shirt…men’s cologne and even a pack of condoms (we like to think there was an optimistic man out there). We found several burn piles that looked like little camps along some of the trails. And I wept.

Charred remains of a boat and piles of personal belongings scattered along the beach and in the brush.

There is no telling exactly what we found on the beach today, but it’s hard for me to imagine that we didn’t find the wreckage of a burned-up refugee boat. We talked…told Trent about the geopolitical situation in Haiti and noted how many boats, many overloaded and unseaworthy, are intercepted by the RBDF and USCG in these very waters. 

And we bluntly pointed out that no matter how f’ed up things seemed in the U.S. right now, no one is jumping into unsafe, overcrowded vessels and risking their lives to flee our country. And maybe we just all need to take a second to appreciate that fact.

Trying to focus on the beautiful things.

Epilogue: When we returned to the land of cell service we searched for recent reports of refugee boats in the Raggeds and connected the scene on Flamingo Island to a mass migrant event last fall. Read more at Unprecedented Illegal Migrant Surge in the Southern Bahamas.

~Jo, 1st Mate (with a good bit of help from the Skipper)