Alexandria Griffith : BAMSI

 While studying abroad in the Bahamas I was given the opportunity to view the Bahamas Agricultural Marine Science Institute. The institue opened in 2014 as a way to help the islanders learn and grow in ways that they had not been able to before. The location has many teaching opportunies for locals and students and overall seems like a great idea. The idea of the institue sounds great, a way for locals and students to learn how to grow crops, and care for themselves if a drastic event were to occur and they would not be able to receive goods (like covid). While I was at BAMSI I talked to many students and realized that many people had different views on the idea of the school. I went to one of the many fields at the school and spoke to some students. I asked what projects they had been working on, what they have been doing, what they have been learning, ect. They informed me that they just recently learned that they can not harvest crops in the same field that they had used in a year prior. This was very odd for me to hear that they had just learned that. For me, that is something I had known for a while, as well as many other students within my class. So, I was caught of guard when they said they had just learned that. Especially because this was a school so I figured there would be professors there to teach the students what does and does not work. BAMSI also has a very large chicken coop on the property. I went there with a few of the local students on the tour and asked them the purpose of the chicken coop. Was it there for egg production? Were the chickens there as a sense of food? These were questions that I asked the students and they just stared at me with no response. They told me they just cared for the chickens(most days), but none of the BAMSI students I was with could tell me why their school had this large chicken coop. The chickens within the cages also had a very poor quality of life. The BAMSI students informed me that it is one chicken per cage. But, there were many chickens that were 2 or 3 to a cage. The chicken cages were barely large enough for one chicken, so 2-3 in a cage was impossible. The few cages that did have 3 chickens were on the smaller end but there still was no room for movement. The chickens that shared cages were stacked on one another and due to the lack of space and movement they had to go to the rest room on one another. The chicken coop is what caught me the most of guard about the school. Overall, I believe that BAMSI is a great idea, but that the current exacution of the school is very poor. I think if some more knowledgeable professors were to come in to teach the students, and if there was a little more structure the school could flourish. But for now the school will remain how it is and maybe in a few years the students will be able to learn more (and maybe even learn why they have a chicken coop.)

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