first interview

Preparations.

for my first interview i chose to talk to my friend Eddie he is from the bahamas and visits home frequently so i figured he would have a good sense of the bahaman culture. i talked to him after my math class (since we are in the same class) and asked him if we could go to the library quick and do an interview. i explained to him the assignment that i had to complete. he agreed and we found a table to work at. i quickly printed off the list of questions for him and we got down to business.

i chose not to transcribe this first interview because first of all i forgot to bring a recorder to the interview and second the bahaman economy is largely based on tourism so many of the cultural aspects of their country are over shadowed by outside influences. things like food and music have been globalized so that people who come from another country to visit still have many of the amenities that they would back home.

Country Report.

In 1492, Christopher Columbus made his first landfall in the Western Hemisphere in The Bahamas. Spanish slave traders later captured native Lucayan Indians to work in gold mines in Hispaniola, and within 25 years, all Lucayans perished. In 1647, a group of English and Bermudan religious refugees, the Eleutheran Adventurers, founded the first permanent European settlement in The Bahamas and gave Eleuthera Island its name. Similar groups of settlers formed governments in The Bahamas until the islands became a British Crown Colony in 1717.

The late 1600s to the early 1700s were the golden age for pirates and privateers. Many famous pirates and privateers--including Sir Francis Drake and Blackbeard--used the islands of The Bahamas as a base. The numerous islands and islets with their complex shoals and channels provided excellent hiding places for the plundering ships near well-traveled shipping lanes. The first Royal Governor, Woodes Rogers, brought law and order to The Bahamas in 1718 when he expelled the buccaneers.

During the American Revolution, American colonists loyal to the British flag settled in The Bahamas. These Loyalists and new settlers from Britain brought Colonial building skills and agricultural expertise. Until 1834, when Britain abolished slavery, they also brought slaves, importing the ancestors of many modern Bahamians from Western Africa.

Proximity to the U.S. continued to provide opportunity for illegal shipping activity. In the course of the American Civil War, The Bahamas prospered as a center of Confederate blockade-running. During Prohibition, the islands served as a base for American rumrunners. Today, The Bahamas is a major transshipment point for narcotics on the way to the U.S.

Bahamians achieved self-government through a series of constitutional and political steps, attaining internal self-government in 1964 and full independence within the Commonwealth on July 10, 1973. Since independence, The Bahamas has continued to develop into a major tourist and financial services center