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Fond Memories of the Essequibo Coast

Aug 01, 2011 Letters

Dear Editor,

Reading about one chap’s recent happy holiday experience on the Essequibo Coast was a real treat, and brought back my own enjoyable experiences during the August school holiday, as a young girl in the early 1940s.

My holiday was spent further down the coast, but the people were just as hospitable, charming, gentle and calm.

I went there to attend my cousin’s wedding (the cousin was being married “under bamboo”).  The lead-up to the wedding was a very busy time for all involved, and I had the honour of being part of the ‘picknee’ group who were sent to pick and gather large leaves from trenches, to use as plates.  The unmarried young women would often gather together after lunch, to chat and exchange gossip, and a neighbour’s daughter around my own age and I overheard things meant for older ears and found ourselves wondering and giggling.

At night, I looked forward to two rituals; one unpleasant, one fascinating. The unpleasant one was the ‘daubing of the ‘fireside’; when cow dung was mixed with earth, soil and water into a sort of soft cement and rubbed on to the ground-level, two-circle, manmade cooking facility and surroundings (the fireside).  This was a maintenance procedure, to prevent cracking and disintegration – a disaster if cooking was in progress.

The other was the mother of the bride-to-be grinding yellow dye and water into a paste and applying it to her daughter’s face immediately before going to bed.   This was done for at least three consecutive nights immediately before the wedding and I always wondered why. When the bride appeared for the ceremony, I had my answer, and gasped – her face was several shades lighter than her hands, which were their natural colour. Weird!
I had always assumed eggs were laid with their shells on – until I saw the laying process for the first time.  One morning, our neighbour let her fowls out of their pen and started to scatter paddy, to feed them. Suddenly a hen crouched low and out popped a wobbly blob.  I watched in fascination as the jelly-like sphere hardened into a white shell.

The doctor’s once-a-week visit covering the length of the Coast was another fascinating experience.  A small red or white flag would be planted on the roadside, outside the house of the sick person and the doctor would keep a lookout for the flags and stop.  We children would keep watch over his car while he did his job, each hoping, perversely,
that “our turn would come one day for the doctor to visit”.  A sort of status symbol was what we felt it to be.

The happiest days of my childhood were spent on the Essequibo Coast, where, among other childish things, we “strayed content along a sunlit beach gathering shells”, so I was pleased to note that things and people have not changed all that much in over 60 years!

There was a minus, however – at night the mosquitoes merrily feasted on me and disturbed my sleep.  If I am ever privileged to visit again, I’ll consider wearing a necklace of garlic as is done in some Dracula films!

Geralda Dennison

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