Bahamian International Motivational Speaker appears as a guest on NPR Morning Edition in Washington, DC with host Noel King

WASHINGTON, DC – NPR’s Noel King talks to Spence Finlayson, a resident in the Bahamas, who hosts a radio show in Nassau, and is waiting to hear whether his cousins have made it through Hurricane Dorian.

NOEL KING, HOST:  All right, I want to bring in a longtime resident of the Bahamas. Spence Finlayson has lived in the capital Nassau for 62 years. He hosts a local radio show there. Good morning, sir.

SPENCE FINLAYSON: Good morning, ma’am.

KING: All right, so you have family on the islands of Grand Bahama and Abaco. Have you heard from them?

FINLAYSON: No, I’ve not heard from them. It’s been kind of rough. We don’t know what’s going on. The phone system has been compromised. There was a friend of mine who was searching for her son in Abaco, and she was very worried about it. And finally, she received an email from him saying that he is OK and everything is going well.

But this is the major problem that we have; we can’t hear from anybody to know what’s going on. I tried to reach another cousin yesterday in Grand Bahama, and I was able to get them for a minute. And I tried to get back, and all night, I could not get them. The phone is just saying they’re not answering the phone – a recording keeps coming on. So that is one of our major challenges right now. We can’t reach anyone. And it’s the fear of the unknown. What is going on in this – this is an unprecedented hurricane, and I’ve lived through many.

KING: This must be incredibly difficult for you emotionally, and for many other people to just not know where their relatives are or if they’re OK.

FINLAYSON: That’s the – yeah, that is the major problem – not knowing. You know, we – this hurricane came – Dorian almost came, like, out of nowhere. We live in the hurricane belt, so we expect to have hurricanes every year.

KING: Yeah.

FINLAYSON: But this one – I’ll be honest – most people didn’t pay a lot of attention to it initially.

KING: Why not?

FINLAYSON: Well, you know, we’ve become jaded. We see so many that we’re – the national thought is, well, we’re looking at this one. It’s not really going to come, and it’s not going to cause any damage. But this storm – it’s just a bad situation.

KING: No, I…

FINLAYSON: So we continue to…

KING: …Cannot imagine.

FINLAYSON: Yeah, we continue to pray.

KING: Spencer (ph) Finlayson is a local radio host in Nassau in the Bahamas. Thank you, sir, for your time.

FINLAYSON: You’re welcome, ma’am. Thank you.