“Dear Sampson Cay” - A Letter by Kim Arahna We All Need to Read

On September 5, 2025, The Tribune published a heartfelt letter from Kim Aranha that captures what so many Bahamians and visitors feel about Sampson Cay. Her words reflect decades of memories and remind us why this place is special. But they also sound an urgent alarm about what will be lost if dredging and large-scale resort development move forward.

We are sharing her letter here in full, as it deserves to be read widely and remembered:

Dear Sampson Cay,

 My very first memory of you was before I  was married, but after I had met my husband, we had a small Bertram and zipped all over in The Bahamas in that little boat. She was called the Flipper 11, and we brought Flipper 11 more than once to tie up at your dock.

I remember the first time I saw you thinking that I had ended up in “heaven on Earth’.’ You were so laid back, Small and intimate, your one long table for meals where everybody ate together, a bar with a cheerful bartender. You brought people together as no large resort ever could.

You were surrounded by water whose colours man cannot duplicate. You were a gem, nestled out of the way in a string of islands as near perfection as possible.

When I first met you, I took a walk around your paths, turning comers not knowing what to expect: I came upon the greatest surprise of all! There in the perfect, limpid, translucent water lay a mermaid with her beautiful little naked babies frolicking in the shallows beside a seaplane... I tell you, had to blink more than once to realise that this spectacular scene was Rosie Mitchell playing with her and Marcus’s children. I don’t remember how many little ones there were but they were round, laughing, and beautiful cherubs playing in their mother’s arms. A scene that Botticelli would have happily painted had he existed in The Bahamas in the 1980s. I will never forget that image for as long as I live. It is my safe place, the memory of that moment.

Fast forward, we were married, bigger boat, kids, we still would come to visit you. At the dinners, within your walls, we made lifelong friends, we would swim in your shallows and walk around, exploring every treasure, you had in store for us.

One night, one of my babies wouldn’t settle so I carried him onto the dock and walked him around in the moon light to settle. I came upon two men fishing off the end of the dock.

It was very quiet and I was bare footed, I think I scared them, I realise I must have looked like a ghost, long trailing blond hair in a diaphanous white night gown soothing a baby in my arms, walking the dock in the light of a full moon. Another scene that a renaissance painter might like to have a go at painting.  

The good Sampson Cay memories stack up, and the beauty and the serenity and the richness of nature all come to mind vividly... and now...what are they doing to you?

 Are they really going to turn you into the host of a big fancy resort just “plonked” down where man should only tiptoe? Say it isn’t so. I am hearing painful reports of dredging a channel through our precious rich seabed. Sea grass that is home to young conch and baby turtles, barracuda, and a host of other baby marine life. That is the day care center of the sea, the small and defenceless hide there until they are big enough to venture out into the open water. Alas, defenceless they will be when the big mighty metal machines come in to dredge all of that away to make way for a channel for enormous yachts to come in polluting the environment in so many ways.

Has there really been a thorough environmental analysis made by a totally unbiased and independent group?

Look I understand all the arguments about moving forward, and living in the 21st century, but The Bahamas is completely losing its value as an environmental paradise. We are rapidly becoming the waterpark capital of the world. Small cays, one after another are being destroyed and built on to resemble wannabe Disney world theme parks.

Whatever happened to those wonderful advertisements for the out islands boasting that you would have the time to watch a conch walk along the beach. You are lucky if you even see a conch, or a shell, or a starfish. We appear to have got ourselves caught up in some race to be the biggest, the most entertaining, the flashiest of all destinations, no longer does The Bahamas market pristine clear waters, now we will market the tallest slide, or the most colourful playground... There will still be places where you will see turtles and sharks (if they haven’t been run off by the unnatural display of pigs swimming in the sea), because they will be artificially enticed with food.

What has happened to this bravely determined little nation who stood up to world powers and demanded recognition of how important the environment  is and how fragile it is and how damaging the ecosystem can have such a devastating and lasting effect on small island nations?

Dear beautiful Sampson Cay, I will mourn you, and your beauty. Your memory will remain with me as long as I live, and the image of your mermaid with her babies frolicking in the shallows remains dear to me. Forever. 

Love

A frequent visitor when we were young.

This letter, written by Kim Aranha, was originally published in The Tribune on September 5, 2025.