NASSAU, THE BAHAMAS – For nearly two decades Cabbage Beach has been one disabled vendor livelihood, but now, she says she has been pushed to her breaking point.
After being relocated to make way for a multimillion-dollar development, Rashanda Key says she hasn’t earned a single dollar in five weeks.
And now, she’s making an emotional appeal to authorities, saying she’d rather risk her life on the shoreline than give up the work she loves.
Our Chinasa Outten has her story.
She calls herself the “Disabled Boss”, and for eighteen years, Rashanda Key has refused to let her disability stop her from earning an honest living.
Cabbage Beach was where she built her business, supported her children and found her independence.
But tonight, she says that independence is slipping away.
Relocated to make way for the Four Seasons development, Key says her new location is practically impossible for her to access.
“They offered me a relocation spot where I can’t even get. You have to walk a mile to get there. They tell me Beaches and Parks was going to open up the gate. They never there. Y’all know I can’t walk. I Cabbage Beach when people walking I could like try and talk to them and get my own sales sometime, you understand? And people is help me out Cabbage Beach, you understand? But they put me in an area where only the sun, the sand and the sea is. No one there. That don’t make no sense. Chepus they put me by Love Beach by myself.”
She claims she has made several attempts to get help from government officials but she says those attempts have left her feeling abandoned.
“Try reach out to everyone in tourism, nobody answering my call. I reach out to Jamal Strachan for help. He couldn’t help me. So I reaching out to the Prime Minister to help me. I am a disabled boss and I am ready to give up.”
The financial toll, she says, has been devastating, with five weeks passed without her making a single dollar. Now the experience has taken more than just her income.
“I used to make four or five hundred a day and I gone to making zero dollars a day. I ain’t make no money in five weeks. I don’t know. But the government, I feel like the government mess up my whole life. They ain’t give me no more hope to work. I just ready to stay home and I just ready to give up. You know what I mean? I don’t have no thrill to work no more.”
And with the development continuing, I asked what she would do if ordered to leave the beach entirely, her response, heartbreaking.
“That’s where I go by the shoreline. They don’t own the shoreline, right? I willing to drown If I can’t work in peace, I willing to drown. So what they sending me home to? To die?”
As frustration continues to mount, the vendors are making a desperate appeal to the prime minister to step in, saying that their livelihoods remain on the line as the dispute over relocation continues to drag on.
