Second Piece: The ones that came.

Dedicated to my narrator: Mohamed Swideek — my “brother ”.

This piece on our quilt begins its journey in Allahabad, India.

In a small village consisting of a collection of small wattle-and-daub huts in Allahabad, India, lived a father, mother, son, daughter, daughter-in-law and three grand- children.

Like most of the people in those places, they were poor farmers who worked their small plots of land from morning to night to eke out a living, and as the family grew, the harder they had to work to make ends meet. Money was scarce and as time went by and the children grew, food was scarce too.

The son realized that life in that village would forever be marked by poverty, want and neglect. He had heard from a recruiter who came to the village, that the British government was recruiting labor for its sugar estates in British Guiana. Each person would have to sign (or thumbprint) a contract that required the indentured laborer to remain for five years on the sugar estate in British Guiana, during which time, he or she would be paid a small wage and be given a house in a “logie” for himself and his family.

After the period of indentureship was over, a laborer would be given a repatriation fund and could either return to India, or take the money and stay in British Guiana.

Anyone who signed up would be transported by sailing ships to the plantations in that far away place where, to reach it, you must break an age-old cultural taboo and cross the “kala-pani” or the black water.

As he walked behind the bullocks ploughing the muddy rice-field, he thought about it long and hard and then, after had had made a decision, whispered his plan to his pregnant wife. He knew that his parents in their anger, would defintitely put a stop to any plan that robbed them of a son and an extra hand in the field.

They secretly packed their “jholi” with whatever was necessary for this epic journey, and in the dead of night, picked up their sleeping children (aged 8, 6 and 3) and with the younger sister, silently crept away from their mud- hut and all that it meant.

They walked for three weeks to reach the depot in Calcutta from which the steamship, the S.S Ganges would sail with them on board.

I hesitate to give you, my dear reader, the details of this harrowing journey on foot to the port of departure. Suffice it to say, there were others on the same journey, and they must have supported each other.

At the port in Calcutta, they were registered, and put in a “holding place” with the other indentured people to await the day when the ship would sail.

And then, the young man got a message that his father was outside waiting to say goodbye to his beloved son.

Aaah! The son went, but he never returned.

His wife and children and his sister waited for him until the last moment before the ship set sail, and so, when he never came back, she had to board the boat without him on a journey into the unknown – pregnant, no husband, and with her three children and a young sister-in-law.

Imagine her turmoil. No protector, no skill, no knowledge of what awaited her across the “kala-pani”, no money.

Terrified, she huddled with the children in the space assigned to them.

The journey took over three months and during that time, her pregnancy reached full-term and with the help of the other women on the same journey, she delivered her baby.

Many, many years later, my brother-in-law (her grand son) told me his grand mother’s story as told to him by his mother, her eldest daughter. He related how distraught his grandmother was, how on many occasions, she, in despair, would stand by the rail of the deck and try to throw her baby overboard with the four children clinging to her skirt in terror begging her not to.

Then, providence stepped in. On board also was a man, another indentured laborer, older than she, who saw and understood what was going on. He took pity on her and spoke to her kindly telling her that what she was about to do was wrong, and somehow, he managed to change her mind. After a while, he offered her his protection and his name and she wisely, accepted.

The fateful trip came to an end at last. The indentured laborers were registered at the Crosby Office in Georgetown, Demerara. The family was indentured to Blairmont estate on the West Coast of Berbice, where they lived out their lives in a “logie”, having no real desire to return to India.

Life for these indentured laborers in the British colony was drugery from sun-up to sun-down for all of them – men, women and children of working age. Historians refer to it as another form of black slavery. And indeed, they are right. It was a new form of slavery instituted to replace the one that had been abolished.

Duties included burning the fields, planting the cane stalks, then cutting the ripe cane, fetching bundles of it on their heads and loading it on the punts to be taken to the factory to be converted into sugar to sweeten British tea, cleaning the canals on which the punts, filled with cane, moved from field to factory. Their payment included punishment for any small infraction. One day off each week might see them sitting in front of their logie smoking their “ganja” and catching up on news.

The 8 year old girl, Shahidan, grew up on Blairmont sugar estate, and when she was of age, married my father’s second cousin. She gave birth to eight sons and two daughters.

One of the sons* became a world-famous agronomist working with OXFAM, advising poor nations ( including India) on maximising the efficiency of their agricultural practices. (He later bacame famous for preparing cricket-pitches all over the world).

Another son became an agriculturist and worked as Field Manager on a succession of sugar estates in Guyana and then Manager of Kabawer Cattle Ranch, a third, a soil-scientist, worked with the Canadian government to advise governments in Africa, India and elsewhere on agricultural projects, and another became a biologist. The other four became wealthy cattle ranchers and rice- farmers in Guyana.

You must now recall the young sister who came on the boat with her “bhoujie” and the children. Well, later in life she married my father’s uncle, (his Cha-Cha). She was a handsome woman when I knew her. My father called her Cha-Chee (my father’s brother’s wife). We children ( not to her face) called her “Cotton-Tree Cha-Chee” because she and her family lived in a village near to Blairmont estate named Cotton-Tree.

My narrator, Shahidan’s fourth son, married my sister, Ayesha.

Thank you, my dear “brother”. Your memory was long and strong and in it were were all the stories, and you knew well how to tell them.

“kala-pani” – the black water or the ocean. It was taboo for Hindus to cross the “kala-pani”. Anyone who did so, lost their caste and became castless.

A “logie” is a name for a communal housing in colonial British Guiana similar to a barracks or a range- house that was provided to East Indian indentured laborers on the sugar plantations.

A “jholi” is the Hindi word for a bag or a sack used for carrying items when on a journey.

“Ganja” was a hand rolled cigarette made from dried marijuana leaves.

“Cha-Cha” -my father’s brother.

“Cha-Chee” – the wife of my father’s brother.

“Bhoujie” – my brother’s wife

There were many steam ships that took the indentured laborers from India to Georgetown – the “Ganges” was just one of them.

On a point of interest: my father’s uncle on his mother’s side, John Allison, an interpreter, was employed at the Crosby Office in Georgetown in which capacity, he acted as the interpreter for the immigrants who spoke only Hindi, and the officials in the Crosby office. I often wonder if his path crossed that of the family from Allahabad.

The son who was the agronomist, Dr Nasir Ahmad, rose in the field of scientific research became a professor at the University of the West Indies. He published more than 200 articles and 3 books on soil sciences and in 1983, he published his most notable work, “Soil Genesis and Taxonomy”. He was named Professor Emeritus in 1996.