EPISODE 1

It has come upon me that I must  write about the momentous events of my life that have brought me to this, the 81st year of my life. 

A few of them span a single year and the events that I am about to describe are tied to a single goal and so might be considered a single experience. 

It was the year 1981. I was teaching in a Secondary school in Guyana and attending the University of Guyana in the evenings. 

It is not my intention to bore you, my reader, with the difficulties of these years. I will leave you to imagine a mother with a full-time job in  the day, and a student at night. I badly needed that degree to move up the salary scale upon my graduation. 

These were the B— years and life under this repressive regime was not child’s play. My readers who are Guyanese will understand the cultural and political underpinnings that marked these years. To this day, I still think that the ruling political party was a fascist one. What was supposed to be a four year program morphed into a five year period. There being added an extra year spent in futile servitude.

Whatever the truth, it was mandated that all University of Guyana students who had completed their second year of study do one full year of National Service. Join the Guyana National Service (GNS) or leave the university. Some parents of hopeful students sent their children abroad to escape. They had heard the stories of the unmentionable things that happened to young female university students in the GNS.

I, like so many of the UG students, was caught up in this turn of events. We were forced to sign over a year of study to fear, hopelessness, frustration and humiliation. As most university students do, we found an underlying layer of fun in some of the mundane things and in poking fun at our jailers behind their backs.

My best friend and I were sent to the Office of Finance located on Waterloo Street. There it was that the frustration began. 

I will describe that year in three parts:

Hope Estate

Kurubuku

Papaya

HOPE ESTATE: EPISODE 1

Hope was a coconut estate about 20 miles outside of the city of Georgetown. It was a huge acreage of land given over to growing and reaping coconuts to be made into copra and then into oil for cooking.

This estate was formerly owned by the Sankar family of Georgetown. Mrs Z. Sankar was my father’s sister. However, at the time this story took place, the estate had been given over to B—— at a price far less then it was worth, so (unhappily for me), I could not claim kin when I, like many of my fellow students,  was called upon to  go to Hope Estate to give free labor. 

Pick coconuts, peel and dig out the flesh of the coconuts, set them out on aluminum sheets in the sun to dry, weed the grass, and most dreadful of all, clean the weed-choked canals. 

On Friday afternoons, a bus would arrive at Hadfield  Street to pick up the student workers. With week-end bags packed, we were taken to Hope Estate and  assigned to barracks. Then we would be assigned tasks. 

I am dreadfully scared of snakes. If it happened that I was assigned to clean the canal, and in order to avoid any contact with snakes,  I would exchange my task with one of the willing boys in our cadre. 

So, snakes aside, one Friday afternoon, after we had been allowed to stop work, I decided that I would not take my bucket-shower in the unsavory  outdoor bathroom knocked up with aluminum sheets ( the doors didn’t even have bolts to preserve privacy), so I picked up my bucket, my toiletries, my towel and crossed the dam that separated the two canals that had fresh river water (we used this water for our bucket baths) and crossed over to the little cottage on the other side. 

Guyanese people are very welcoming to strangers and especially so as they knew that we were UG students. 

I saw her, the mother of the house under the house.

Me: Aunty, can I use  your bathroom to bathe? I don’t want to bathe in that bathroom over there.

Aunty: Yes, beta (my child). You want one ah dem pickney bring de wata fuh you? 

Me: No Aunty. Thank you. 

However she made her son fetch the water from the canal and put the bucket in the spotless outdoor bathroom.

In the meantime, we had this conversation which still brings a smile.

Aunty: Beti, (my daughter) weh you come from?

Me: Aunty, me live in Georgetown. 

Aunty: You ah who pickney? 

Me: Aunty, you know Mrs Sankar and Uncle John who was the living here? (my fathers siblings) 

Aunty: Yeees beti. Me know dem good. Uncle Jahn was a good, good maan. And de mistress too. Uncle Jahn bin ah de manjah (manager) on de estate heh.  

Me: Aunty, de mistress and Uncle John was me father brother and sister.

The minute she heard that, she almost fell off the steps where we sat. 

Aunty: YOU ah  de mistress niece? Beti, you ah Uncle John niece? Pa, PAA, come hear dis story heh.(She shouts to her husband.). Dis pickeny heh ah Uncle Jahn and de mistress niece. 

Pa heard this news  with his mouth open.

Pa: Beti wah you ah do HEH wid them people dis? How come you come heh? You ah Uncle Charlie daughter? 

Me: Yes, thats my father. You know him?

 I had to forget the water in the bucket getting colder and explain the whole. 

I was given carte blanche to come over any time to use the bathroom and to bring my friends too. 

Next episode tells how Pa became my wasta, my friend on the inside. 

Note: In the Guyanese culture, young people show respect for older persons by using the honorific “Aunty” and “Uncle”.

Wasta is an Arabic word that refers to a person in a high position who may be called upon to use their position to help someone they know well.