The Paper Trail, part one

Oct 04, 2009 Features / Columnists, Guyanese Literature

by Petamber Persaud

(Extracts of a conversation on the movement of man, with Nalini Mohabir and Juliet Alexander, Georgetown, Guyana, August 28, 2009).
Nalini Mohabir, born in Canada of a Guyanese father and Trinidadian mother, is doing her Ph. D. thesis at Leeds University, UK, on the last return ship from British Guiana to India.
Juliet Alexander, Guyana-born UK-resident, has a Masters degree in Documentary Research. She has more than 25 years experience in print and broadcast media. Alexander’s dissertation will be on the movement of enslaved Africans from the Caribbean to Australia. )

Petamber Persaud (PP): Man is gregarious animal. Man is also a migratory animal. In times past, those characterises were more pronounced than now, but those characterises are still evident now but less pronounced, because the world has become a large global village. The peoples who came from various parts of the world to Guyana – the Indigenous Amerindian, the European adventurers/colonisers, the enslaved African, the indentured Chinese, Portuguese, Indian (and others), came to this land Guyana, eventually to bear the identity tag – Guyanese. Now there is a movement outwards to other lands – USA, Canada, UK…a movement into what we now label – a big word – the Diaspora. There is a claim that there is more Guyanese living abroad than in Guyana.
So we are looking at the movement of man in the context of the peoples who came to Guyana and the Caribbean and their movement away from this area. We are about to take a fascinating journey, because Nalini is looking at the last return ship from British Guiana to India and Juliet is looking at the movement of enslaved Africans from the Caribbean to Australia.
Let’s start with the less complex case of Indians coming to Guyana and the return to India by some of them.
Nalini Mohabir (NM): Just to contextualise the work that both of us are doing in terms of peoples moving from place to place it is very important. Fundamental to human history is migration and when I say migration I mean all outwards journeys from the first outwards journey from whence all cultural history is formed.
In terms of my own research, I hope it is of some relevance to people in Guyana and to peoples in – that big word that you used – the Diaspora. Because within the Caribbean we are Diasporas in that we came from other places and then movement outwards in the 1950s – the period which I am looking at – to UK, or back to Africa or to India. All these journeys inform who we are.
In terms of my own work, I became interested because of my aja, my grandfather, Chablall Ramcharan, worked for the immigration office under the British colonial authorities, and it was his job to repatriate the last group of ex-indentured labours from British Guiana back to India in 1955 – departing September 5, 1955, arrived October 12 – actually those records are right here in the National Archives so that’s where my journey began.
PP: Juliet
Juliet Alexander (JA): I am fascinated by all this and I am actually learning, which is what I love about history, which I love about what you [Petamber] are doing – opening up to our young people, sharing information – which is important – about our history, things our young people may not get in school.
My story is slightly different. I am looking at a group that astonished me while I was working with an absolutely fascinating politician named Bernie Grant, Guyanese, son of the soil, who was fascinated by a find of bones on the south west coast of England. Some remains of bones, and the folklore of the area said that there were from slaves who had been shipwrecked and washed ashore.
That story fascinated me so I went down to the archives and went through these enormous books they have there, they make you put on these special gloves, turning those enormous pages, looking and looking for something, some lead, something to induce me, to propel me on. And I found some fascinating stories about people who travelled in ships, who were brought from the Caribbean and placed on floating hulks in London and then sent to Australia.
I asked myself who these people were. Then I turned to the ship’s surgeon’s note because that’s where you get direct and detail note on the people onboard, fascinatingly, those notes described the people – swarthy skin, curly hair, thick nose, there I struck gold as it were. I started going back and back in the history and then I found my name ‘Alexander’, I found ‘Barringtons’, I found ‘Frasers’…it was one of those chilling moments – I said to myself what is happening here.
And I went back and back and back and found the fury, the fury of fighting people who refused to be enslaved who would therefore fight against their oppressors in the Caribbean. What the slavers would do was just kill them off but that incensed the local people who had their moral. So the slavers said to the British this was your problem, deal with it, so the rebels, the leaders were brought to England…

Responses to this author telephone (592) 226-0065 or email: [email protected]