Survival in the Bahamas – Columbia Daily Herald

By JAY POWELL jpowell@c-dh.net

Reconnecting with old friends after years, or sometimes decades, are opportunities I wish would happen more times than they do.

Its nice to see how the years have treated the other person, how theyve navigated the labyrinthine ups and downs of surviving adulthood. There is also the chance to reflect on how much Ive grown since that time, from back when I was younger and interacting with this person was part of my normal routine.

Some friends have fared better than others. Either way, there are always great stories to relive and new ones to discover in each other.

I had such an experience last weekend, with a friend who I had not spent time with in more than 10 years. We reconnected last fall at a music festival when we discovered we both wound up working in media. Where it all began, however, was a tale of survival involving a group of teenagers marooned on an island in The Bahamas during the summer of 2004.

Our mission was to travel to an island called Eleuthra, which spans about 100 miles and has a population of only a few thousand people, many of them poor.

We were to split up in two groups. A few of us were to spend each day at a local daycare working with children, while the rest of us strapped on our work boots and built a house. I was in the latter group, probably because the job involved heavy lifting and smashing things.

That was our quest, or at least the plan according to what we were told.

It so happened we arrived on the island a few days early. Another group was stationed at our headquarters for the time being, and they had no place for us. We were left with two choices swim for the States, or find shelter.

Being a bunch of young people seeped in pop culture, we all started thinking about Lord of The Flies, Survivor or Robinson Crusoe. Lost had just become a popular new television show, so there were jokes about looking for secret hatches and being watched by the others. It also didnt help team morale when our chaperones on the island approached us carrying machine guns.

Thankfully, we found an old school to hole up in for a few nights, the first night bunking together in a large room like inside a crowded army barracks.

When the heat became too much to handle, about six or eight of us grabbed our mattresses and lay down on a nearby basketball court. After days of traveling on planes, boats, buses and the realization that about 20 people were now homeless and miles from their beds, gazing up into the clear sky and seeing the entire universe above left us all speechless.

The next day, we did what a bunch of teenage boys and girls do when stranded on an island with nothing but time on their hands: we roamed around searching for food, leapt off cliff edges into barracuda-infested waters, trapped crabs and other critters. Mostly, we just wanted to know where the heck we had landed the night before, and just how far away from civilization, at least as we knew it, we now stood.

After a few days of roughing it in the wild, we all became closer with one another than on any trip like that Id taken before or sense. Surviving those first few days was a test of our abilities to keep it together when faced with a great challenge, allowed us to bond and come up with ideas to pass the time or keep our minds off the current situation.

We met plenty of locals, did little odd jobs, wandered into a food market and even watched a reggae band. Ill have to tell you about the life-changing fear that runs through a person when you drive a truck with no brakes offroad sometime.

Life could have been worse for being lost on an island, thats for sure. The whole experience made it so when the real work finally started, we were more ready than ever.

I still keep a pack of photographs from that trip I take with me everywhere I move. Its nice to see pictures of those friends I once knew, and to think about what theyre probably doing now. Thanks to Facebook, its not such a stretch to find out these days.

Its also fun to see how long my hair was back then, and the progressions of our sunburns from those days in sunny Eleuthra 13 years ago, when at one point we were convinced our lives were doomed.

Jay Powell is a reporter for The Daily Herald. Contact him at jpowell@c-dh.net and follow him on Twitter at @JayPowellCDH.

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Survival in the Bahamas - Columbia Daily Herald