Modern Medicine in the Bahamas

The United States always seem like the best option for medical care. This week I interviewed a doctor here in the Bahamas and the answers to some of the questions left me thinking that maybe the Bahamas has better medical care than the US. I know it may be a huge thing saying that, but I have some evidence.

I recently interviewed – Dr. Melanie Cooper at Exuma Medical Clinic and found some interesting differences between going to the doctor at home compared to the Bahamas:

Mix of public and private clinics –  In the US everyone is competing. Doctors’ offices compete with other doctor offices, fast food restaurants compete with other fast food restaurants. Here in Georgetown Bahamas, it’s different as it is part of their culture to help each other.  

There are two types of clinics here private and public.  If you don’t have money, then go to the public clinic and if you have more specific needs then go to the private one.  Each one offers great medical care and they work together to help their patients.

More affordable – It is cheaper to see the doctor here and a lot cheaper for prescriptions.  A three-hundred-dollar prescription in the US is just twenty dollars here. 

The clinics here also won’t turn you down if you can’t pay for the price of an appointment, you just pay what you can afford. In both types of clinics children and elderly visits are free and adult appointments usually cost about eighty dollars.

Get in right away to see the doctor – To schedule a doctor’s appointment you don’t have to wait weeks in advance, all you have to do is call ahead or just show up and you will be with the doctor in ten minutes.  There are also some islands out here that don’t have local doctors, but the doctors will fly out at least once a month to go do checkups with everyone in town. 

Each community looks after their own – Sometimes the people on other islands get sick and can’t fly to Georgetown, so everyone in the community will make sure that person is well supplied and well fed until the doctor comes to see them.

Improving all the time - One of the questions I asked Dr. Cooper was: “If you could add anything to this clinic what it would be?”  Since the clinic was really new and they just opened in September she had a lot of things on the list.  She wanted a pharmacy in the building so a client could leave with everything they needed. For blood tests they have to send it on a plane to Nassau and wait, to save time she wanted a local lab to get results in minutes.

It isn’t all "Better in the Bahamas" though as they are facing challenges such as:

Keeping Doctors- It's sadly not everyone’s dream to be a doctor in the Bahamas and right now they are facing some real problems, the Bahamas are losing doctors and nurses. The doctors and nurses are traveling to the states for jobs that pay higher. [i]

Lifestyle Changes- The Bahama Lifestyle has changed tremendously since the 1970’s.  Another interesting question I asked Dr. Cooper was what is the biggest health care problem facing the Bahamas? The answer was obesity. They eat to many fried foods and sugary drinks according to her. In the 1970s everyone walked everywhere and ate what they grew and caught.  Now people eat whatever the latest fast food restaurant has to offer and drive, instead of walk,  everywhere.  The Bahamas is the highest obesity rate in the Caribbean and Latin America.[ii]

Food Supply-  I thought that reef fish poisoning would be a lot more common here but apparently only a few people have come in to the clinic with this problem. Reef fish poisoning is when someone eats a fish that lives on the reef like a barracuda. The barracuda can get ciguatera from eating the smaller reef fish.  This is a growing problem here in the Bahamas. [iii]

Visitors– When tourists visit they can bring viruses and bacteria the Bahamians aren’t used to so a lot of them get sick with a cold or the flu every season.

To summarize, the Bahamas has great health care at reasonable prices, so you won’t go bankrupt when you are sick. Everyone has to exercise more and eat heather but, in the Bahamas, it is a huge problem with 69% of the population being overweight. Since their community is so strong I am sure that they will overcome this problem together. 

Fun in the Sun in George Town!

It has been a few weeks since my last blog post so I wanted to let everyone to know we have now made it all the way down the beautiful Exuma chain and are anchored at a really amazing place called George Town.

To get here we have sailed over 120 miles from Eleuthera and have seen dozens of islands.  Some of my favorites have been Warderwick Wells, Staniel Cay and Blackpoint.  Each one was so awesome they deserve their own blog post!

One of the big reasons I really like George Town is because there are a lot of kid boats here and new boats seem to show up every day.  We get to hang out with our friends everyday after boat school.  Some of the fun things we get to do are movie nights where we get to go to another boat, make popcorn and watch a good movie. 

Sailor from SV Soul Shine and Aiden and Ava from SV Sava came over for movie night!

We also celebrated my 13^thbirthday on the boat with my friends and we tried out the boom swing we made. 

Birthday Party Boom Swing!

My Dad made an awesome kid launcher that pulled you 30 feet in the air and we landed in the water. 

My Mom and brothers also made a cake for the party all the boat kids were super excited because they haven’t had cake in months and the whole cake was gone in 2 minutes.

Friends from SV Sava, SV Gato and SV Mariposa came over to celebrate! 

It is easy to make friends in George Town and I have met kids of all ages.  Some of my good friends are Aiden and Ava on SV Sava and  Penelope and Christian on SV Gato and Heather and Katie on SV Mariposa.

George Town also has a lot of cool things I like to do outside.  From our boat there are three great snorkeling spots where I get to see turtles, reef fish and sting rays.  The water is calm here and some spots are shallow enough to stand up if you get tired.

We found an abandoned resort across the bay called “Crab Cay”. Before this resort was abandoned they build a really expensive canal that had tall cliffs and under water there was coral and fish. This was the perfect spot for a good cliff jumping picture. It was so much fun to jump off the tall cliffs into the clear water. 

My favorite thing to do after boat school is to hang out at the Chat-n-Chill beach with my friends where we can do a lot of fun things.  I have learned to play beach volleyball and here is a picture of my mom and dad playing a game.

People play "Fun" Volleyball everyday at 2pm. My mom calls this the adult PE class. 

They have a tall rope swing over the beach that goes really fast and we also play on a slack line where you can test your balance.

Hanging out on the slack line with our friends Daniel and Elena

Swinging from the rope swing!

There are also 5 cats that live on the island and I get to play with them all the time.  These cats are nice and purr when you pet them. My friends and I have named all the cats Buttercup, Ginger, Waffles, Pepsi, and Slick. I was the one who named one cat Waffles.

Here are some cool pictures of Waffles taken by Josie on SV Tailsman

I hope you will get a chance to see George Town as it is a great place  Next week is the Bahamian Family Sailing Regatta which is going to be really interesting.  I will write you soon to let you know about our next adventure as we leave the Bahamas after five months and head to the Turks and Caicos and then we are heading further south to the Dominican Republic.  

Adventures in Eleuthera

My family and I started a hot and sunny day in Eleuthera by renting a car to explore the island. The car wasn’t all that great. It had four temporary tires with over 200,000 miles and no AC. We were told to call when the car broke down. We didn’t get very far before my parents smelled the smoky smell of BBQ and stopped to investigate. The BBQ “restaurant” was in someone’s front yard and was only open Fridays and Saturdays. We had some amazingly delicious BBQ, I had the chicken with rice and peas.

Here is the sign for Under the Tamarind Tree. A little hard to see from the road. 

I have never been to a restaurant like this! 

Beautiful view of the harbor from the restaurant. 

   Next we drove up to a cave that was hidden in a really tall grassy green area. You couldn’t see the cave unless you were standing few feet away from it. To enter the cave we had to go down stairs and each step you took the darker it got. No matter how loud you yelled there was no echo. In the cave there was graffiti everywhere on every wall but some of the names were dated back to the early 1900s. Some people say that pirates used to store their treasure and perishable items in the caves. If you turned off your flash light and stayed quiet you could hear the drip drop noise of water from above falling to the ground.

This is the entrance to the cave. It is easy to miss. 

Just inside the entrance. We can still see daylight.

The graffiti on the wall. Check out the dates. 

The brothers next to some cool formations in the cave.

Making our way through the cave.

This is a big cave! 

I even found a rock to climb on. 

Here is one of the big rooms in the cave.

   After the dark cave my family and I caught one of the last ferries out to Harbor Island. It’s the tourist destination of Eleuthera. There was a boy my age working at the ferry dock holding the ferry for us. The ride was bumpy but not to bumpy, the ferry had a type of engine that made a lot of fumes and that gas smell hung around the boat for the ride. When we got to Harbor Island we rented a golf cart to get around this big island. The golf cart we rented was the coolest golf cart I had ever been in, it had painted cherries on it. All the golf carts from the company had different fruits on them. So you could easily find your cart. When we would stop for a second then start going again our cart made this really loud backfire noise that would get all eyes in the area looking at us. The beach we were heading to was known the pink sand beach. The sand was pink from ground up coral. The beach had these big waves to jump into. So we all quickly changed into our suits When I swam in to them I got a head full of sand and a mouth full of salt water. After a couple of hours we took the ferry back to our car then started to head back to the boat in Hatchet Bay.

    When we got back to the boat I was laying in my bed looking at the bright night sky thinking “ Wow that was a full day”.

This is the ferry dock at Harbor Island.

Here is a picture of the pink beaches.

The boys playing in the waves.

Mommy and Daddy on the pink beach. 

   

Dinghy Dilemma

On February 8 our family decided to go to a deserted island that we had never been to before near Little Harbor called Lynyard Cay. As soon as we got there our Dad suggested we should to go a restaurant on another island, Little Harbor called Pete’s Pub. There was a cut between the two islands and it was really wavy for the dinghy and the ride was about two miles long.

     We were two-hundred yards from land and the motor suddenly stops. Waves crashing on the boat and my Dad was trying to start it over and over and nothing happened. So my parents both took out the emergency paddles and started going for shore. There was a nervous tension going around the boat. My Dad put the paddle down and started playing around with the motor trying to figure out what went wrong. I started paddling in his place. The shore we were paddling to was 85% rock and the other 15% was a small sandy place. Eventually my Dad tries to start the motor again and it gave out this weak cough almost like a dying cat.

Here is the beach we landed on. We took the picture a few days later at high tide so it is hard to see the rocks.

As soon as we got to land the whole family grabbed on an end of the rope and tried to pull the dinghy to shore. Unfortunately, the dinghy was too heavy for all of us. As soon as we stopped pulling, Jack and Sam wandered off to go play as if it had never happened. My Mom and Dad made sure the dinghy didn't hit the ground too hard because it was bouncing up and down while the waves crashed  over it. I climbed the rocks and started looking for the restaurant.
My parents decided that my Mom should go look for help so I tagged along. The walk from where we were  to Pete’s Pub was about 20 minutes. As soon as we got to the bar my Mom explained our situation and the bartender pointed over to a local guy named Mitchell. On small islands the people who live there know each other really well.  Mitchell drove us back to the dingy in his golf cart.

Pete's Pub looked really cool. Unfortunately, this is about as far as went on the dinghy dilemma day.

     After they discussed the situation with him he said he would go to get his boat and come back. As we waited the boys are still off in lala land while my parents talk over stuff ( I don’t know what they were talking about because I wasn’t listening). Mitchell came back with his boat and towed my Dad and the dingy around the corner to Pete’s Pub.

     My Mom and I were both thinking what a day! We started walking to Pete’s Pub and Sam comes down the sand hill and says Jacks has been hurt. Sam, my Mom ,and I all start running to Jack who is crying. Sam told us Jack cut is toe. It looked a lot worse than it actually was because (not to be gross) the toe is caked in red sand. It was bleeding bad I had a couple of small band aids in my backpack so we put one on to try and stop the bleeding. Jack couldn’t walk so my Mom carried him on her back to Pete’s Pub. Sam and I ran ahead and asked the bartender for a bottle of water to wash Jack’s foot off.

     As most of us are helping Jack, my Dad and Mitchell are fixing to dingy. They found out there was air in the fuel line. To fix that they only had to buy a three dollar part, then voila!  If only there was a West Marine in sight. The temporary fix was to remove the connector and put the fuel line directly in the tank. Back to the subject of Jack, the other lady bartender gave us a bigger band aid. Pretty soon Jack was back to normal. While my Mom went over to check on my Dad and Mitchell the three kids played tetherball.

Daddy working on the dinghy.

Here is the small part that broke.

Once everything was settled with the dingy Mitchell drove Jack, my Mom, Sam and I back to the boat while my Dad followed to make sure that the dingy was ok.

Here is Mitchell's boat that helped us back to SandStar.

It was dark by the time we got back and the other 20 boats that were near us were having a big beach bonfire. Of course my parents thought we needed a good "dose of fun" and decided to go. All of the adults were having a good time while the boys and I played in the water and found glowing bioluminescence that we could pick up. After the bonfire we all went back to the boat for a nice dinner. 

The bonfire!

Fun on the beach at the bonfire!