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Bahamas

  

Source: http://www.traveldocs.com/bs/

The Bahamas, officially the Commonwealth of The Bahamas, is an independent, English-speaking country consisting of 29 islands, 661 cays, and 2,387 rocks. It is located in the Atlantic Ocean southeast of the United States of America, north of Cuba, Hispaniola (Dominican Republic and Haiti) and the Caribbean Sea, and northwest of the Turks and Caicos Islands. Its size is almost 14,000 km2 with an estimated population of 330,000. Its capital is Nassau. It remains a Commonwealth realm.

People

Eighty-five percent of the Bahamian population is of African heritage. About two-thirds of the populations reside on New Providence Island (the location of Nassau). Many ancestors arrived in the Bahama Islands when they served as a staging area for the slave trade in the early 1800s. Others accompanied thousands of British loyalists who fled the American colonies during the Revolutionary War.

Haitians form the largest immigrant community in The Bahamas. 30,000 - 50,000 are estimated to be resident legally or illegally, concentrated on New Providence, Abaco and Eleuthera islands.
School attendance is compulsory between the ages of 5 and 16. The government fully operates 158 of the 210 primary and secondary schools in The Bahamas. The other 52 schools are privately operated. Enrollment for state primary and secondary schools is 50,332, with more than 16,000 students attending private schools. The College of The Bahamas, established in Nassau in 1974, provides programs leading to bachelors and associates degrees. Several non-Bahamian colleges also offer higher education programs in The Bahamas.

History

In 1492, Christopher Columbus made his first landfall in the Western Hemisphere at either Samana Cay or San Salvador Island 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--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, a former pirate named 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.

Climate

The Bahamas enjoy around 320 sunny days a year; and daytime temperatures during winter (December to April) average 70ºF (21ºC) and a perfect 80ºF (26ºC) in summer. In general, the islands are balmy year-round, with cooling, near-constant trade winds blowing by day from the east.
The so-called rainy season extends from late May to November and humidity in the northern islands is relatively high year-round, but declines from northwest to southeast across the archipelago. Hurricane season is June to November.

Culture

In the less developed outer islands, handicrafts include basketry made from palm fronds. This material, commonly called "straw", is plaited into hats and bags that are popular tourist items. Another use is for so-called "Voodoo dolls," despite the fact that such dolls are the result of the American imagination and not based on historic fact.[21]

 
Junkanoo celebration in NassauObeah, a religion of folk magic, sorcery, and religious practices derived from Central African and West African origins, is practiced in some of the Family Islands (out-islands) of the Bahamas.

Junkanoo is a street parade of music, dance, and art held in many cities of the Bahamas every Boxing Day and New Year's Day.

Regattas are important social events in many family island settlements. They usually feature one or more days of sailing by old-fashioned work boats, as well as an onshore festival.

Some settlements have festivals associated with the traditional crop or food of that area, such as the "Pineapple Fest" in Gregory Town, Eleuthera or the "Crab Fest" on Andros. Other significant traditions include story telling

Information extracted from:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bahamas
http://www.lonelyplanet.com/the-bahamas
http://www.traveldocs.com/bs/