A few days ago I was browsing the internet and came across a headline that caught my attention.

“Forget the banks, build your own home”

Something jumped out at me and said, “read it a bit more”. Upon doing so, it became glowingly apparent that there was substance to this article.

“Bahamian people you are not entitled. There was a time when we got together, someone got the food and you get together on a Saturday,” Johnson said. “You can get together now, young professionals, if they’re your friends they should be friends in different ways, not just to talk nonsense, but you get together, you buy blocks and you lay those blocks.”

— Bahamian State Minister for Legal Affairs Ellsworth Johnson, Nassau Guardian, January 24, 2019

I do not know this Bahamian minister from Adam; nor do I know his personal politics or the true ideology of his party.

What I do know is this: his words rang true not only for his fellow Bahamians, but more importantly for every Caribbean island, including us in Bermuda.

If we look around this entire island, we will see that a large proportion of houses built before the 1980s, were built not by contractors and their workers, but by Bermudians and those who sacrificed time and effort to assist them.

Depending on which part of the island one comes from, the term for this may or may not be called the “rally system”.

Simply put, a community-based system where individuals rallied around each other on a rotational basis, to help build each other’s homes, with the men doing the skilled work as laying out a roof or not-so-skilled work, as passing up the slate to go on the roof.

At the same time, the women of the family, donated their time to cooking food to ensure the men were well fuelled.

Depending on the rotation, a rally crew would work at one location one week or month, then rotate to help someone else in the crew the following week or month.

In doing so, those building their homes would save tremendously on labour costs.

If we can be completely honest about history, we know that before the 1980s the banks and other lending institutions, for various reasons, were not exactly tripping over themselves to lend money to black Bermudians.

Some folks went to the banks only once they had completed their tanks.

Others could not scrape together the down payments, which were often 33 per cent of cost. Others could not get anyone willing to put their deeds up as collateral.

The net result was that many people had to essentially do the work themselves, with the help of others.

Each one of us aged 50 and over can remember a parent, relative or neighbour taking years to build a house out of pocket on weekends.

Throughout these ordeals, we saw several key benefits come out of this.

For starters, the final costs of those homes were significantly lowered, as labour costs were minimalised.

Second, this is where persons got to learn the basic rudiments of the construction trade. Such as how to mix concrete, measure distances, cut wooden pieces, lay tile, cut channels and join up pipework.

Skills that would last them a lifetime and allow them to not only help themselves, but to possibly make a career or start their own business.

Without a doubt, the most important aspect of the rally system was that it helped to build and maintain an unbreakable ethos of neighbours, friends and families looking out for each other, without expecting any monetary reward.

The term for this is collectivism.

If we be honest with each other, we have lost many of these values as individuals and as a country.

Many of us and our young people lack any knowledge of basic construction skills, which leads to us having to hire someone, often non-Bermudians, to come and build or repair something for us.

The knock-on effect being us having to dip into our savings or go to the banks for multiyear financing, thus making us economically beholden to others.

Perhaps the biggest problem we have created for ourselves is that we have stopped looking out for neighbours, friends and family and, instead, we are now trapped in a cycle of having to go it alone.

Effectively, we traded in collectivism for individualism.

As with most problems, there always lies the opportunity to turn things around; if not completely, then partially.

We have an opportunity as individuals, families and as a community to rekindle that spirit of collectivism by reaching out to assist others.

Not just reactively in times of emergency, but proactively in ways such as helping each other with home maintenance projects: roof and wall painting, yard maintenance, installing new windows and doors or simply cooking a good meal for those who are doing the work.

Across our island, there are seniors who cannot physically or fiscally keep up with maintaining their homes.

At the same time, there are hundreds of parents looking to have their teenagers learn a skill and gain community hours to progress to their academic endeavours.

Let me leave you with this challenge: historically, our country was built by those who helped each other without looking for a dime.

We have an opportunity, or dare I say duty, to do so again.

We have young people needing knowledge and we have skilled tradesmen willing and eager to pass on that knowledge. It is time to make the most of this friends-and-family plan.

• Christopher Famous is the government MP for Devonshire East (Constituency 11). You can reach him at WhatsApp on 599-0901 or e-mail at cfamous@plp.bm