Yesterday, 23rd January is a day that will live in my memory as a nightmare. In my capacity as a lawyer, I acted within the bounds of the law and within the bounds of my ethical responsibility to my profession.
How these innocent actions can be so misconstrued, so perversely twisted to mean something other than it was, is a mystery. I assure the Bahamian people of my complete and total innocence and I am satisfied that when the full story comes out that I shall be fully vindicated. I will then take all appropriate and lawful actions for redress and to protect my good name…
Pleasant Bridgewater thanks me and some other people of goodwill:
I want to thank the wonderful people of the Marco City Constituency for all their love, encouragement, prayers and support. I thank all people of goodwill who have sent words of encouragement. I thank my family and my counsel for all of their assistance. I am unbowed and I fully intend to fight so that I shall be vindicated. Please continue to pray for me.
Cousin Pleasant, I will continue to pray for you.
Now whether you believe it or not, I am praying for Pleasant Bridgewater.
And while I do not know the ambulance driver, I am also praying for him.
And whether you believe it or not, I am praying for Pleasant Bridgewater because she asked me to pray for her. Here note that I am also pretty certain that the ambulance driver would have no objections were I to pray for him.
In truth, prayers do matter.
It is also true that prayers can and will be answered; but then all in God’s own time.
For the moment, please attend while I share with you some of what Pleasant Bridgewater shared with me and a whole pile of our other family members.
Incidentally, Pleasant Bridgewater just happens to be my cousin.
So you see why I am praying; I am doing so for one of my own.
I pray because I must.
And for sure, I know it for a fact that had it not been for the prayers of people like Terecita Armbrister, Myrtis Rolle, Euterpe Stubbs and Orthneil Johnson, I would not be here today with this survivor’s testimony.
Note also that I am witness to the fact that things are going topsy-turvy in these isles of perpetual June.
One day, you go to bed, dream, wake up – with shards of dreamscape littering the narrow space that held you safe thus far; and you try to remember that in the dream you dreamed, you had won the lottery; that you had paid all your debts; and that you were young again.
Then one night, you try to sleep and sleep itself refuse to enter that place where you waited; but yet – with eyes wide open – you dream a dream about movie stars, a dead boy, an ambulance driver and twenty five million dollars.
But truly, as you dream day or night, please be reminded that things are not always what they seem in this God-forsaken place.
On yet another day, you dream a news report about a senator, a former Cabinet Minister, a gaggle of lawyers chatting among themselves in a jocular kind of way about ethics, good behavior and their fees.
And then your mind keeps coming back to the twenty five million dollars. And you say to yourself, "Self – would it not be nice for us to put our hands on a tithe that could sweeten and also soften the hurt of being born poor in these isles of perpetual June.
And then you hear some Negro advice that it would be far better to have been born lucky than it is to have been born rich.
But for sure – as my sainted Mother might attest – sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.
It is here that I say that I have told you before and today I tell you again that I was fated to have been born to a girl who became a woman – as it were – in an instant and in a space where things happened in a twinkling of an eye.
As I imagine, my being must have been seeded in a moment, time and space of God’s own choosing. I am also believer enough to take it as truth that I was known to God Almighty before I was ever configured in my mother’s womb.
What I am really trying to say is that I think very highly of myself.
This also explains – and neatly so – how I now talk to myself when I need to get the undivided attention I think I have earned now that I am hovering on the cusp of a sixth decade on the lee side of Jordan’ River.
As I hold on, I sometimes say things to my self.
So it was yesterday morning that I said to my self, "Self – what the hell is going on in this place…?
Strangely enough, the answer that came back came back in the form of any number of thoughts as to how Negroes learn things and what they do with the knowledge they acquire along the way.
And then I thought to myself as to what happened for me when I learned how to read, write and count. Here note that I was fascinated when it came to numbers and the things that could be done with numbers like zero: put a zero in front of a number and things begin to get smaller and smaller.
Put the same zero behind a word and things got bigger and bigger.
Wow! I said to myself.
And then the teacher described how numbers could be broken down into units, tens, thousands, tens of thousands and thereafter hundreds of thousands and thereafter that thereafter in the number world, you wake up in Freeport, Grand Bahama and the Negroes are talking about one hundred thousand million dollars.
Wow! The Negroes are talking numbers that just blow me away.
My mind wanders in this direction as I try my best to wrap my head around some of the stuff I am reading in the news papers; some of this stuff involving senators, ambulance drivers, a dead boy, a prime minister, a Hollywood actor, his wife, US Magazine, CNN, Marvin Dames, the FBI and then I am reading some more stuff about dollars that were set to be numbered in the tens of millions.
And then I have heard some dread words about extortion and some more frightening words about how this or that special person and a former Cabinet Minister could end up in jail – albeit in separate cells – if they are ever convicted.
And for sure, there are also words to the effect that a person is to be presumed innocent. And then there is some other advice about how no one who is without sin should cast a stone.
But evidently, while this cacophony sounded concerning the money and the people who they say wanted to put their hands on the twenty five million dollars, there was other information that made the news.
As I learned some of this information had to do with the awful fact that Black Bahamian men were still about the bloody business of dispatching each other –via gun fire and gun smoke – to that place where there is neither night nor day; that same place where nothing happens.
Sounds a lot like Eternity to me!
And so it is: some very angry Black Bahamian men are today dispatching some of their fellow Bahamians to those precincts of the dead, where there is no hot, no cold, no tears and no pain.
In the meantime, cousin Pleasant begs me to pray for her.
