Essay On Bahamian Culture

Philip Bock once said that “culture is what makes you a stranger when you’re away from home.” Marcus Garvey distinguished “a people without knowledge of their past history, origin and culture is like a tree without roots.” Culture can be defined as a group of people who lives in the same environment sharing the same way of life. It influences our beliefs, our language, the manner in which we communicate with each other, the distance we are apart when we are conversing, values and symbols are just a few of our shared practices. Adrian Gibson, a Bahamian educator, consultant and columnist with The Tribune newspaper. For those who doesn’t know of him, Gibson was a graduate of The College of The Bahamas a decade ago. He achieved a Bachelor’s degree in History and Geography.

About how our culture has altered since the time it was originally practiced here. Gibson argues that Bahamians imitate and value the culture of foreign countries, instead of valuing its own. The two nations that first marked our country with their customs were Africa and Europe and those cultural impacts are what we recount as being Bahamian. However, for decades now Bahamians has forgot about the original state of the customs they called their own and started to adapt and impersonate the cultural practices of Jamaica, Haiti and most widespread America. Bethel claims that we adapt to their culture so much that we can be deemed one of theirs. He spoke of us replacing our food for foreign fast food chains. In addition to our cuisines being “put on the back burner,” Bahamians has lost the sight of what Junkanoo meant to our ancestors by commercializing it for competition and greed. Moreover, Gibson wrote of not only the changes of our junkanoo and eating habits but, also our music, dress code, asue, arts and crafts, crediting, formation of lodges, burial and death customs, bush medicine, dialect and