The Bahamas

Population: 354,000

Capital: Nassau on the island of New Providence

Language: English

Currency: It is called the dollar but B$ 1.000 is equal to about $1.003 dollars of the USA.  It is put out by the Central Bank of the Bahamas.

Climate: subtropical to tropical.  In the summer and Fall they are at risk for Hurricanes.

Religion: Baptist 35.4%, Anglican 15.1%, Roman Catholic 13.5%, Pentecostal 8.1%, Church of God 4.8%, Methodist 4.2%, other Christian 15.2%, other Protestant 12%, none or unknown 3%, other 2%. The 'other' category includes Jews, Muslims, Baha'i s, Hindus, Rastafarian's, and practitioners of Obeach.

Sports: While many sports can be found in the Islands the most popular sports are: Cricket (the most popular sport), baseball, basketball and soccer.  The soccer team has never qualified for any tournaments such as the World cup or Gold cup.  There are some famous athletes from the Bahamas.  The women's 4 x 100 relay team won silver in the 1996 Olympics and gold in the 2000 Olympics.  In 2002, Mark Knowles, a Bahamian tennis player won the men's doubles championship at the Australia Open (along with his Canadian partner, Daniel Nestor).  In 2004 Tonique Williams-Darling won gold for the sprint. 

Famous people: Sidney Poitier-actor, Lenny Kravitz-singer, Rick Fox-basketball player

Flag:

Facts: 
* The Bahamas is one of the two countries that officially starts with The. 
* The country consists of 3,000 islands, cays and islets.
* Site of Columbus' first landfall in the new world in 1492.
* Was home to many pirates including the infamous Blackbeard.
* Became a crown colony in 1718 and the British helped stop piracy.
* After the American war of independence the Bahamas was set up as a plantation economy.
* In 1973 the Bahamas became fully independent as a Commonwealth realm.

the famous Atlantis Resort

Culture: Outer islanders make hand-made baskets, hats and bags from palm fronds. Obeah is a form of folk magic and practiced on the islands, but it is illegal and punishable by law.  Regattas are social events in family settlements where they spend one or more days sailing on old-fashioned work boats with accompany on shore festivals.

Activity
For our culture experience we tried to find something related to the Bahamas to do, but after searching the internet and trying to see if we knew anyone from the Bahamas we had no luck.  There are several tanning saloons with Bahama in the name, which made us realize people must associate the Bahamas with sun and tan people, but that is about the extent of the Bahama culture in Salt Lake City.  

Since we have not been to the Bahamas we decided to interview someone who has.  Megan's sister Shelley and her husband Mike went on a cruise to the Bahamas in 2009.  The Bahamas is a popular destination for cruise lines and here is what she said about her experience there:

"We only spent a couple of hours in Nassau, and the things I liked were the Glass Bottom Boat ride, we got to see the island and all the rich people's homes.  Then, not knowing what to do, we just walked around down town for a bit.  to me, it felt like tourism was really the only things that seems to keep everyone going...they have the Atlantis Hotel, which is amazing, and they had the market stalls, where people can go, it's like a huge swap meet and everything is made locally and sold there to the tourists.  All of the government buildings were pink, I liked that.  They had some sort of festival where they do floats and things, some of the people [from the cruise] went to make things for the floats, as an experience   Other than that, we didn't really know what to do, we were doing the water activities the next day at our next stop, so we didn't go in the water at Nassau.  Everyone was really nice, a little pushy to sell their stuff, but the people were warm and friendly."

Shelley in the Bahamas

There are lots of pink buildings.  

a local selling crafts and homemade goods.

We decided a way to involve our kids with a taste of the culture was to go eat food that is similar to what people eat in the Bahamas so we headed to Rumbi Island Grill.  It was listed as food from the Bahamas on google and even though I knew it was a stretch, it was the closest we could get.

We immidently noticed the atmosphere when we walked in.  The restaurant was made to look kind of like a tiki stand.  There was lots of bamboo and palm trees, I felt like I had walked into a tropical island.  The music playing was Reggae music which I felt was appropriate since every time I think of tropical locations steel drums and Reggae music comes to mind.  We ordered rice, noodles, vegetables  shrimp, stake and chicken.  We shared some with the kids and they seemed to really like it.  They are at a stage where they want to feed themselves so we put some on a plate and let them go for it.

We enjoyed the atmosphere for a bit and all the while wished we could actually get a better taste of the culture of the island.  We talked about some of the interesting things we had learned about the Bahamas, my favorite being that it was home to Blackbeard the pirate.  After getting our fill of the food we decided to head out and close our chapter on the Bahamas.