Your experience of culture shock in the Bahamas

We had an unexpected "culture shock" of the nice kind, when my bride and I went to live in Nassau back in 1967. I wrote about it on my blog a couple of weeks ago, in "Rum and Coca Cola", telling of our introduction to an expats' life. TCB - "Trust Company of the Bahamas" - was a bit old-fashioned in its treatment of expats, and the welcome we received was a pleasant surprise to us. (See the extract below.)

In Nassau, a house and car were provided by Tim, who also worked for the trust company. He was off the Island with his family on “long leave”, and didn't find out about the deal until he got back. That was par for the course, apparently. “Long leave” was a carry-over from the Good Olde Days when the sun never set on the British Empire, in which anywhere in the tropics was a “hardship post”. Two weeks in the hill stations of India or Kenya were a refreshing break from the stinking heat of the population centres, but it needed three months in Blighty every two years to prevent the chaps from “going native”. Mad dogs and Englishmen, and all that.

I never actually got to enjoy a three-paid-months "long leave". The year after I started, the Company eliminated that privilege, in exchange for a raise in salary.