By OSWALD T. BROWN
WASHINGTON, D.C., May 13, 2020 — I had to share this video of a recent interview Congresswoman Maxine Waters, Chairperson of U.S. House of Representatives Financial Services Committee, gave to a reporter during which she stresses the importance staying at home while COVID-19 continues to wreak havoc across the United States and the world in general. She also offers some pertinent comments on why blacks are disproportionately represented among the number of persons who have died as a result of being infected by the deadly virus.
I had the honour and pleasure of speaking with Congresswoman Waters on a number of occasions when her husband Sidney Williams was U.S. Ambassador to The Bahamas from 1994 to 1998 during the administration of President Bill Clinton. I was Editor of The Freeport News in Grand Bahama at the time and was a guest at the various official social functions held by the U.S. Embassy in Nassau.
Many Bahamians still insist that Ambassador Williams was one of the best U.S. Ambassadors to represent his country as its top diplomat in The Bahamas, which incidentally has not had a U.S. Ambassador since Nicole Avant, who was appointed by President Barack Obama and served in that capacity from October 22, 2009 to November 21, 2011. Since then, the U.S. Embassy in Nassau has been headed by a Charge d’Affaires and currently is headed by Stephanie L. Bowers, who assumed her role as Charge d’Affaires on March 1, 2018.
I got the opportunity to meet Congresswoman Waters again while I was Press, Cultural Affairs and Information Manager at the Embassy of The Bahamas in Washington, D.C., for four-plus years before the change of government in The Bahamas in May of 2017 when I accompanied the then Bahamas Ambassador to the United States, His Excellency Dr. Eugene Newry, for an official meeting with the Congresswoman on Capitol Hill.
Congresswoman Waters has been a close personal friend of Bahamian business tycoon Sir Franklyn Wilson, Chairman of Sunshine Holdings Limited (SHL), and his wife Sharon Lady Wilson from the years when her husband Sidney was Ambassador to The Bahamas, so I was not surprised to see a photograph of her with Sir Franklyn and Lady Wilson prominently displayed among the photographs behind the desk in her office. Indeed, the Congresswoman and former Ambassador Williams have frequently spent the Christmas holidays in Nassau as house guests of Sir Franklyn and Lady Wilson, a former President of The Bahamas Senate, over the years after Ambassador Williams’ diplomatic tenure in The Bahamas ended.
She is a huge fan of Junkanoo, the cultural parade staged annually on Bay Street in downtown Nassau on Boxing Day morning (December 26) and the morning of January 1, New Year’s Day.
“I’m always very, very happy to be here. I love the culture, I love the music, I love the people,” Congresswoman Maxine Waters told reporter Morgan Adderley of The Tribune when she was interviewed at the Boxing Day Junkanoo Parade on Wednesday morning, December 26, 2018. Click on the following link to view the video: https://www.facebook.com/theGrio/videos/1722664881221613/
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