“When I was four years old, I was in bed on Christmas night and heard people dancing in the street outside. I wanted to join them, so my mother put a costume on me and I went out and danced. I’ve been doing it every Christmas since!”

Now in her 70s, but exuding a crackling energy, Arlene Nash Ferguson’s eyes shone as she showed me around her Educulture Junkanoo Museum, based in her former family home in Nassau on New Providence Island. “This was where I was born; where I grew up.”

Junkanoo, a street parade of music, costumes and dance, was first documented in the Bahamas in 1801 but probably started much earlier than that. Under British law, enslaved people had to have time off at Christmas, so they used to recreate the festivals they had celebrated back home. Boxing Day and New Year’s Day are still the main dates for the major Junkanoo parades; others occur on special occasions and events, but all are held in the small hours – “We wait until nighttime. It starts just after midnight,” explained Arlene.

Costumes have always been made out of whatever is available. There was a time when sponge diving was important to the islands, so the designs back then were all crafted from sponges; however, for some time now they have been fashioned from paper or card.

“I find it ironic that paper became the material used for the costumes. Slaves were not allowed to read or write,” Arlene told me.

Segments of discarded card are cut out, painted white and then decorated – pasted – with coloured paper. “We make a masterpiece out of something someone else has thrown away,” said Arlene. “But you get to reinvent yourself every year.”

Ex-teacher Arlene started Educulture (a portmanteau of education and culture) for schoolchildren in 2000; now it is for everyone. After a look at the costumes, I browsed the instruments, gazing at a conch shell that once doubled as a horn – care is taken to use only the mature ones. Cowbells were passed around the visitors, with one person given responsibility for the drum. Arlene blew a whistle: “Are you ready?” We yelled a collective “yes”, then somehow found a rhythm.

My first impressions on landing were not entirely auspicious as the driver on the hotel transfer pointed out golf courses, huge all-inclusive resorts, the superyacht marina and where various celebrities lived. But, fortunately, there is much more to the island.

History kept tapping me on the shoulder. The original residents of the Bahamas were the peace-loving Lucayans, who were the first Indigenous people of the New World to encounter explorer Christopher Columbus. It didn’t bode well; their population was decimated within 30 years of his arrival. At Lucayan National Park, home to one of the largest charted underwater cave systems in the world, remains were found of what were most likely ceremonial Lucayan burial sites from long before Columbus arrived. There is nothing to be seen of these now, but the park was beautiful and had steps leading down into several caves. Meanwhile, a short walk away, across the empty highway and through some mangroves, lay the dazzling Gold Rock Beach, dubbed the Caribbean’s best shore by many.

Back in capital Freetown, I visited the newly opened Bahamas Maritime Museum in Port Lucaya Marketplace. It was set up to tell the story of the islands’ rich maritime legacy and is best known for its exhibits of treasures from the Nuestra Señora de las Maravillas shipwreck, a well-known Spanish galleon that sank in 1656 with a cargo of gold, silver and gems; however, it was the museum’s human stories that haunted my dreams. I was shown around by its director, Dr Michael Pateman, who took me through what little is known of the Lucayans before moving onto another sorry time in the islands’ history: the transatlantic slave trade. It was a theme that I would return to more than once in the Bahamas.

It was a short drive from there to my accommodation for the night, Rollezz Villas. As we pulled up, the pristine white sands of Old Bight beach stretched away in either direction. After the gloom of the Deveaux plantation, it was as if the colour switch had been flicked – vivid yellows, greens and blues.

The welcome was warm and colourful too. The resort is a family affair, owned and run by Carl and Yvonne Rolle, and I was met by Yvonne and her sister Margaret with big smiles and even bigger hugs. Over coffee, they filled me in on their location.

“We are flanked by two creeks and get lots of sea life; one guest saw 30 turtles. We get stingrays and sometimes dolphins,” said Yvonne, before raising a common subject on the island that I’d encountered before. “My husband’s aunt and uncle were born here when it was called San Salvador. But then the government changed the island’s name. You lose your history to someone else.”

Yvonne is from off-island but told me that she couldn’t imagine living anywhere else now: “Not much changes here. It’s still in a bubble. But it’s good to sit down with local people and hear about the old ways.”

As the pair filled me in on more history, sights and places, I was beginning to regret the shortness of my stay – and even more so when Pamela Poitier, daughter of the late, great actor Sydney Poitier, called me. She lives on the island and was dismayed to find out that I was leaving so soon.

“Cat Island is not a quick trip,” she told me. “There’s so much to see and do. My father was brought up here, and it’s where he learned respect for people, respect for nature, and where he learned about being a human being.”

Dinner was cooked by Carl. I tucked into creamy conch chowder and homemade coconut bread, as well as grouper and crayfish that had been caught off the island; this was followed by guava cheesecake. Rocky, a local musician, sat in a corner singing a mix of Bahamian songs and international classics.

A bonfire was alight on the beach and we were invited to take a seat by it. A rake-and-scrape band started playing into the night. Then, while they took a break, a local storyteller arrived and told tales of times gone by; his sonorous voice almost sounded like a lullaby as waves swished gently behind me.

It had been a very long day and I was struggling to keep my eyes open; but as the band started up again, I found myself tapping my foot and getting absorbed by the rhythm.

Pamela Poitier had said to me: “Cat Island and the other islands of the Bahamas have a strong sense of freedom. Junkanoo is a celebration of that freedom. And this year we celebrate independence. The sense of freedom intoxicates us all.”

I pushed out of my chair, started swaying my hips and danced around the fire to the intoxicating freedom of that music.