The Paper Trail, Part Three

Oct 18, 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 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):

In a conversation with Prof. Vibert Cambridge, we were talking about song, work song…and we went on to explore commonalities in oral tradition of Indians and Africans – drumming, games, structures of storytelling (Nancy Story and Balgobin Story), rituals, healing and bush medicine…

Juliet Alexander (JA):

As you were talking it reminded me of something – the first time I went to South Africa to train politicians for the first free and fair elections after Mandela was released – some children were playing a game and obviously singing along and I joined in [Alexander singing] and they stopped to ask how I knew that…then we had an exchange on other games children play and I found some games are common in childhood everywhere.

PP:

Nalini, anything on the oral tradition in your research?

Nalini Mohabir (NM):

All of this is interesting and fascinating, but I am trying to move away from using the colonial documents in my research, which is only one perspective in trying to uncover the voices of our ancestors and their descendants.

From all of the interviews I’ve done, it seems that no one has asked these people about that time, about going down to Sproston wharf to see the ship off because it is incredible how their eyes lit up and the things that come forth at the mention of that event, we must remember that ship sailed 54 years ago.

I was in Wales [West Bank Demerara, Guyana] the other day and met with a woman some eighty-five years old and when asked about the moment, she starting singing bhajans, the bhajans that relatives and friends were singing as they were boarding the ship preparing to go back to India.

My aja, Chablall Ramcharan, said that while the ship was in mid-ocean, in addition to the bhajans they were singing – which we would expect of Indians going back to India – they were also singing calypso; at the time there was a famous calypso by Lord Creator. So we can see here that their oral tradition was creolised and that these people were changed by the time spent in Guyana.

JA:

That is fascinating. A couple years ago, for Radio 4 [BBC] I did a series of programmes going around the Caribbean; after sugar what, diversification; another was about a unique flower festival in St. Lucia and how tourism changed that particular culture of that country, the festival was about two groups of peoples representing the rose and the marguerite would sing very lewd songs in patois …the upshot was with the advent of tourists, the songs were watered down and began to lose their richness and texture. In a way this speaks to that creolising you [Mohabir] mentioned about the people on the return ship.

PP:

Now let’s go back to the ships and the movement of man as we wind down this conversation – putting your research in context. You [Mohabir] put the last return ship in context, meaning what was before that event, Indentureship, and same for you [Alexander] about what was before, slavery.

NM:

Indians were not the only ones to be indentured, as you mentioned, but Africans were indentured labourers post-slavery period and of course, Portuguese, Chinese…

There were African return ships. The first return ship to take African indentured labourers back to Africa sailed in 1848; the first group of African indentured labourers came in 1840 and the first to return went in 1848. the Chinese indentured labourers never had the right to return written in their contract which is one of the reasons why Chinese indentureship ended – Guyana became know as the place from whence no one returned which troubled the Chinese Government so they put a stop to that….So there were return ships sailing back to Africa, and back to India overlapping even onto the period nineteenth century and mid-twentieth century.

JA:

It was a sad voyage that brought the enslaved Africans from Britain to Australia, there was no right to return element whatsoever. In fact, there were many protests in Australia itself, whereas a common thief had to serve, I think, twelve years whereas in terms of the enslaved Africans, there was no right to return passage, there was no provision to serve for a period of time and qualify for something.

The majority of enslaved Africans who were taken to Australia stayed there and married. Many, many stories abound, told by their descendants, some of whom are as white as they come with the bluest of eyes…

PP:

Thanks for adding to the discourse of the movement of man, the birth of our cultural histories and thanks for giving voice to our ancestors.

Responses to this author telephone (592) 226-0065 or email: oraltradition2002@ yahoo.com

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