News of The Abacos

"On Line" in the Abacos
By Stephanie Humblestone

Last week I was standing in line in the little post office in Hope Town. In front of me was a family of four, mother, father and two young sons. One of the boys was slouched lazily in the corner, his pale complexion reflecting colder climes. I surmised that the hot sun and lack of canned entertainment had got to him. His brother was tapping his fingers impatiently on the counter and looking around for something of interest. Suddenly his face lit up as his eyes rested on the public notice board.

"Look, Dad!" he exclaimed, " They've got Pentiums here."

"Wow!" came a voice from the corner as the other boy sprung suddenly to life. Within seconds the two brothers were poring over the notice board while I surveyed the room for some exotic fauna or flora I had somehow missed in the three years I had lived in Abaco. The father gazed despairingly at the advertisement for Windows 98 loaded Pentium computers at give-away prices.

"I thought this was just a sweet little island and we had left all that stuff behind us," he sighed to his wife. "Sweet" it still is but backwards it is not. In no sense are we in the Abacos lagging behind technologically. We are literally "on line" and "in line" with the rest of the civilized world. (Unless you feel like Mahatma Ghandi. When asked what he thought about western civilization, he retorted, "Yes, it would be a very good idea!!") The irony is that the technology which provided smooth holiday plans for the family of four - the computerized airline bookings and rental property details - was the very thing the father was railing against.

From large banks operating out of Marsh Harbour to tucked away island schools, computers are an integral part of daily life. Teacher of the Year, Mr. Kenneth Roomer of SC Bottle School in Cooper's Town claims that every student in his school will be computer literate by the eighth grade.

In Marsh Harbour ex-school teacher Malcolm Spicer, owner of Abacom, is a self-taught computer wizard who introduced the first computer into a school in which he was teaching. Today Malcolm sells, programmes and repairs computers. He supplies the whole of Abaco and has an enormous workload.

My interest in computers - or rather my appreciation of them - began the day I tripped over a grey wire in my son's bedroom which led around his bedside lamp to a telephone jack. "Unplug that wretched lead. I nearly broke my leg," I balked. "That 'wretched lead, as you put it, Mother, is YOUR link with the outside world," he replied evenly. My mind scanned continents and seas as I considered his words. I concluded that it was a tiny price to pay for a mighty treasure.

Like these islands, I resisted change until change became irresistible. For a long time I maintained that I could only be creative bashing away at my manual typewriter.
"Why don't you work by gas lamp?" a friend of mine asked me facetiously. "If you can't make the leap to an electric typewriter, then why switch on the electric light. Go the whole hog! Be consistent! That did it! I went out and bought an electric typewriter-word processor and then gravitated to a computer and am now being coached by my teenage children! Parents who are computer dependent on their offspring endow them with strong bargaining powers. The words "Your welcome, Mum," also tacitly mean, "What's it worth?"

Having discovered that computers are virtually invincible - and I am not - I am slowly becoming more adventurous though still a little wary. A friend who is a computer genius assured me that will break long before my computer will. When I lost four hours of work a few nights ago, I was only sorry I did not have the strength to throw the hard drive - I was the one hard driven!- and all its accessories out of the window. The machine was not so much "user friendly" as "abuser unfriendly!" When the lost text suddenly mysteriously materialized after I had laboured for three hours over a second draft, my family had to use physical restraint to stop me from attempting to jettison the whole caboodle!

Abaco is on par with its progressive neighbour. Show me an abacus in the Abacos, show me a writing slate and I will show you a populated island which is unfettered by power lines and cables. Like the father of the two boys, we have a certain ambivalence to technological advancements but realize that they are inevitable. Personally, I am both ambivalent and confused. When my son tells me he is "going surfing," I have to ask which one. Internet? Cable TV? Ocean? And then decide in my own mind which is the least innocuous!!