South Florida Sun-Sentinel (Sunday)
‘STRENGTHEN ME’
Two sisters and their children left the Bahamas for the U.S. Now they’re weighing tough choices and uncertain futures
Amonth ago, Renata Cox-Taylor lived in a comfortable three-bedroom home in the Eight Mile Rock community on Grand Bahama Island where she grew up. Her sister, Rakrisha Forbes, lived next door, and Cox-Taylor’s three children could often be found playing on Forbes’ trampoline with their cousins.
But since Saturday, when Cox-Taylor, Forbes, and their children loaded onto a cruise ship in Freeport bound for South Florida with more than 1,000 other Bahamians, the family has made their home on the fifth floor of a Holiday Inn Express in Dania Beach.
The sisters have two rooms, but everyone can be found crammed into one. Possessions are limited to a few suitcases, a box of water near the closet
and some snacks on the nightstand. The five kids pile on one bed in a tangle of arms and legs to watch cartoons. Sometimes, DeAveaugn Taylor, 17, the oldest of the bunch, takes them to the small hotel gym and pool.
Her mother and aunt usually stay behind and try to come up with a plan. “We are trying to put our thoughts together to figure out what it is we are
going to do as their mothers,” Cox-Taylor said.
About 4,000 Bahamians have gathered the proper documentation and left the Bahamas since Hurricane Dorian devastated Grand Bahama and the Abaco Islands, according to a spokesman from U.S. Customs and Border Protection.
The vast majority have settled in South Florida with friends and family, while others have been put up in county shelters and temporary housing. Some have started the job search, and others have registered children into schools — as of Wednesday, public schools in Miami-Dade had 12 registered students from the Bahamas, Broward 41 and Palm Beach County another 24.
Talk to an evacuee, and most will tell you that they are looking to regroup after a traumatic storm that has destroyed entire homes, claimed dozens of lives and left over 2,000 people missing.
But for many, trying to rest has proved difficult because of big questions that remain to be answered: Where will we live? How long will we stay? And, will we ever go back?
One foot here, another back home: Cox-Taylor had two chances to get on a plane and leave Grand Bahama Island before Hurricane Dorian arrived. She said no both times. “I didn’t want to leave my Bahamian people,” Cox-Taylor explained.
The offers came from Victoria Payne, a member of a service organization called the Dania Beach Lion’s Club. Payne first met Cox-Taylor in mid-August, when Cox-Taylor was introduced to club members by the non-profit Children First Ministries International who helped her raise money for a series of examinations her youngest son, Jeremiah, 3, needed at Joe DiMaggio Children’s Hospital in Hollywood.
Payne had dinner with Cox-Taylor and hung out with her children while they were in Florida. When the family left on Aug. 25, Payne didn’t expect to see them again until December, when Cox-Taylor would be back for another appointment at the hospital.
Cox-Taylor said she knew about the coming storm when she boarded the plane, but she’d been through hurricanes before and wasn’t worried. “I wasn’t expecting it to be so disastrous,” she said.
On Wednesday, as she sat curled on one of the hotel beds in the room, the air conditioner humming behind, Cox-Taylor grew despondent thinking back to Dorian. “We lost a lot of lives,” she said.
She rode out the storm with her husband and children in their home in Eight Mile Rock, on the west end of Grand Bahama Island. Although the Abaco Islands some 100 miles east received the brunt of Hurricane Dorian, large swaths of Grand Bahama were also battered, particularly during a 24-hour stretch in which the storm stood stationary over parts of the island.
Like others, Cox-Taylor Rakrisha Forbes listens to her sister, Renata Cox-Taylor (not pictured), talk about evacuating to South Florida while Victoria Payne plays with Forbes’ daughter, Unicia Forbes, 6, in their hotel room in Dania Beach on Wednesday. Keandra Russell, 13, plays with her sister, Kassidy Russell, 6, at B.F. James Park in Hallandale Beach on Wednesday.
recalled howling winds. At some points, her roof began to rock, threatening to peel off. She tried her best to keep a strong face for her children, telling them that everything would be okay.
But at one point, CoxTaylor ran into the bathroom to cry and pray. “I said, ‘Father, I’m afraid. You didn’t give me the spirit of fear.’ I said, ‘strengthen me.’”
When it was over, CoxTaylor found her sister, Forbes, and they held each other’s hands tight as they went around the neighborhood to check on others. Their homes had largely survived, as had the homes of her family and friends.
However, power was gone. Water was scarce. Schools were closed for the foreseeable future, and food was hard to come by.
Forbes thought back to the one-two punch of hurricanes Frances and Jeanne in 2004, when power and water were out on the island for three months. Hurricane Matthew had also done a number on the island in 2016, and many still had tarps on their roofs when Dorian arrived. Forbes, like many Bahamians, knew recovery would be long and slow.
Cox-Taylor had been in touch with Payne throughout Dorian, sending her frantic messages on WhatsApp, a free, online messaging service. Payne offered to pay for a flight for the family, but then the sisters learned about the Grand Celebration cruise ship leaving from Freeport on Sept. 5.
Luckily, the sisters and their children had the appropriate paperwork to travel, as they all have made frequent trips to Florida over the years to shop at discount stores and see the attractions at Disney
World. Payne, with the help of her organization, reached out to the Holiday Inn Express and was able to get two rooms donated for Cox-Taylor, Forbes and the children to stay in when they arrived.
Cox-Taylor said she is lucky to have someone like Payne to look after her and her family. She said she has spent the last few days trying to enjoy the comforts of the hotel that she can’t find back in the Bahamas now — light, air conditioning, warm baths. But mostly, she has spent her time thinking about her mother, her husband, her grandparents and everyone else she’s left behind.
“Leaving them was the heart-wrenching part,” she said.
Cox-Taylor and Forbes, who both have valid visas until November 2027, haven’t made any decisions about how long they’ll stay in Florida.
As of now, their hotel room is donated, but they aren’t sure how long that generosity will last. Their children were supposed to start school in the Bahamas on Sept. 4, but that date has been put off and they wonder whether to enroll the kids here in Florida.
Largely, what they are doing in this hotel room is waiting for news from back home; waiting for the sign that they can return back to their beloved island and go back to normal life. “I honestly don’t see myself staying,” Cox-Taylor said. “I’m honestly ready to go home.”
Although there has been much hand-wringing about just how many Bahamians will migrate to the United States in the coming days and weeks, and even a statement from President Donald Trump that “very bad people” could end up
here if visa restrictions were relaxed, Cox-Taylor said she believes most Bahamian evacuees think the same way as she does.
“We’re Bahamian,” she said, her voice brimming with pride, shooting up a few notches in volume. She repeated a popular motto on the island: forward, upward, onward, together. “We just need some time to revamp, pull together and do what it is we have to do as a people,” Cox-Taylor said. “And then we’re going home!”
Considering staying: Virginia Russell also traveled to South Florida on the Grand Celebration cruise ship from Freeport. She called the trip a “leap of faith” — one that she hoped would benefit her three young daughters and the family she had to leave back in Freeport, where she is from.
Russell’s boutique in Grand Bahama, called Trinity’s Fashion, was destroyed in the storm. Afterward, she gave away all the clothes, wet and dry, to those who needed them. She’ll have to start her next business venture from scratch, she said.
Because Russell and her husband run their own businesses on the island, they rely on patrons, local and tourist alike, for their incomes. With barely anyone left on the island and no tourists traveling there to shop, they can’t make money, she said.
Russell had to leave her husband and 24-year-old son, Keno Jr., on the island. She brought with her three daughters and hopes to be able to enroll them in school.
Russell and her daughters made it to South Florida by the skin of their teeth, with a passport and a certificate from the local authorities vouching for her clean criminal record. “I’m lucky we made it. I don’t know if we’d be able to now, with how things are changing,” she said, referring to the Trump administration’s refusal to ease entry requirements for Bahamian evacuees or grant them temporary protected status.
The refusal effectively means Russell won’t be able to secure the visa she so desperately needs so that she can get to work and fend for her family. And because Grand Bahama’s hospital was destroyed, and Nassau
is already overpopulated and can’t handle all the residents coming there from both islands, including Abaco, coming to South Florida was their only real option, she said.
She knew it wouldn’t be easy. But already it’s been harder than she imagined, she said.
Russell said at one point, she had to leave her three daughters, including 6-year-old Kassidy, back in the terminal as she went through customs.
“When I got inside without them, I became very emotional,” she said. “I never thought the day would come when I would face what we are facing now.”
They eventually made it to a friend’s house. But they can’t stay there for long and are working on finding a more permanent situation so the girls can go to school.
“I have a 17-year-old daughter who is eager and wants to finish school, who has a bright future ahead of her,” Russell said, with something just short of anger in her voice. She hopes the Trump administration will reconsider the decision not to grant evacuating Bahamians work visas.
Russell said she would like to be able to stay for a year, maybe two years tops. She stressed that she isn’t asking for residency and doesn’t want to stay forever. She just needs enough time to regroup, get back on her feet and get to a point where she can go back home and rebuild her business.
“I just want to work and provide for my children, and give them the best education. I want to have the best possibility of being a mom. I just want to give my children the best,” she said.
Russell nodded toward her youngest daughter but couldn’t quite muster a smile.
“I’m just seeking refuge for them. I’m seeking school for them. I’m here seeking also if I even can work here,” she said. “I want to do everything the right way. I don’t want to do nothing under the table, because my future depends on this country.”