Countryman – Stories about life, in and out of Guyana, from a Guyanese perspective

Mar 30, 2014 News

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Guyana is home, but cutting cane is hell!
Pt. 2   The ‘legend’ of Balgobin

By Dennis A. Nichols
(Continued from last Sunday)
In Part 1 of my story, I spoke of my relative unpreparedness for cane-cutting. Bare-headed, water-less, with unsharpened machete and unrealistic approach, I had nevertheless walked briskly into the blackened field, the ashy heat already stinging my eyes. I think I was actually humming inaudibly the old national service song, ‘I want to build this land that belongs to me…’ I slapped the machete against my leg in manly fashion. My punt-partner wasn’t impressed.

A Guyanese sugar-cane field has a culture of its own. Those who work it generally know how much cane it holds, how and why it was burnt, how many punts it can fill, how much it costs their bodies, and how much money it can put in their pockets. They also know its bittersweet history, and theirs; many of the mostly East Indian labourers tracing back their lineage and livelihood from India, across Kala Pani, to the truly ‘New’ World. Guyana became their home and sugarcane, their identity. I later reflected on these things, but for me then, the idea of cane-cutting was as much a romantic notion as an economic one.
I started out boldly enough, secretly reveling in what I always felt was my wiriness and deceptive strength. I think it was about 7 ‘o’ clock and as I said earlier, the sun was already ‘standing up.’ I swung at my first cane stalk, swung again, and it fell. So far, so good. I bent my back to the task.
After about ten minutes, it suddenly dawned upon me that the other cane cutters were all ahead of me, and that I hadn’t tied a bundle yet. I hailed my partner. He came over and showed me how to do it. My first bundle had maybe a dozen canes, and as I tried to balance it on my head, the canes began shifting and sliding, and seconds later they were on the ground again. I tied them tighter; they continued to slip and slide but I managed to make it to the punt. It felt good, and I went back with renewed will.
My second trip to the punt however didn’t fare as well as the first. In addition to the bundle of canes shifting and sliding, my head was beginning to hurt, my one-inch ‘afro’ providing little cushion from the hard, knotty stalks. As I struggled to keep them from falling again I realized with a growing sense of amazement, that I was literally in over my head. (Cool pun) Twice the bundle slipped and fell to the ground; twice I managed to pick it up and go on, and twice I noted just how far I was lagging behind the others.
By the time I got to my third bundle, my partner, feeling sorry for me I guess, came and asked if I didn’t have some sort of a pad for my head. I answered sheepishly in the negative. Grim-faced, he tied the bundle for me, helped me hoist it to my head and before going back to his part of the field, reminded me, somewhat ungraciously, that we had a punt to fill by such and such a time. By his tone I had the uneasy feeling that he wanted to use stronger language (maybe a few expletives) but he held his tongue, and I held my nerve. The bundle fell only once this time, and I felt a little better.
Time went by, the sun notched up its heat a few more degrees, and by ten ‘o’ clock I was seriously reconsidering my latest ‘profession’ My skin had turned two shades darker, my head was throbbing erratically, and I was building up a mighty thirst. But as far as I could see, no one had stopped working, and I didn’t want to be the first. Despite all the evidence to the contrary, I felt I could do this thing. “I am a Guyanese. I am tough. I will be a cane cutter!”
As the morning progressed I actually felt I was doing a fairly good job. Wasn’t it my first cane cutting venture? Wasn’t I working with an unsharpened machete? Didn’t I not have a head pad? I had made more than a dozen trips to the punt by then and I thought it was beginning to fill up quite nicely, even though acknowledging that the ratio of my partner’s canes to mine was probably close to 2 to 1.
Then without warning, the sun decided to pull out all the stops. It blazed! It burned! It singed! The sky got bluer, the canefield grew darker, my skin got blacker, and the only clear thought that filtered into my mind amidst a cacophony of voices, was one word. Water! It’s the thing they say you never miss ‘till the well runs dry, or in my case, my throat. I could feel my eyeballs sinking a few millimetres into their sockets. My back and head ached. I convinced myself that I could feel my skin shrivelling and my body shrinking. And it was then that I knew, suddenly, and with the certainty of an epiphany, that I couldn’t go on. Forget manliness. Forget pride. Long live common sense!
Finally, it was over; well not quite. It was about one ‘o’ clock if I remember rightly when we took a break, at least a group that included my work pal. Supremely thankful, I sank to the ground under a tree that afforded a little shade, and the one word that had bullied my thoughts for the last hour, came out in a sort of gasp, ‘Water!’ It was then my partner asked me with a look of utter incredulity on his face, if I didn’t walk with any. I shook my head in the negative. He shook his in disbelief. Then, oh Blessed Father, he handed me something that looked like a sturdy canvas bag (I guess it was a canteen) and told me I could have some of his.
I drank, and drank, then drank some more. It was as if there was a reservoir inside me that wasn’t filling up. I think I must have drunk three-quarters of the container. My partner either didn’t notice or didn’t care, or felt very, very sorry for me. I looked at him, and I thought, what were the odds of this scenario happening, where the paths of a relatively young Afro-Guyanese teacher and an obviously seasoned Indo-Guyanese cane cutter would cross so unpredictably, in such a setting? Then he turned to me, and the following brief conversation ensued.
“Tell mi sumting, is whe’ you use to wuk befo’ you come wuk hay pun dis estate?”
“I’m a teacher. I used to teach in the Northwest, near Mabaruma.”
“Go back to teachin’!”
I smiled and told him I was going, and to take whatever I was going to be paid, for himself. I never found out if he did. Then I went back to the estate compound to wait on the truck that would take me to back to Plaisance where I was then living with my sister and nephew.
There was a mild hullaballoo as I turned into the yard on Ben Profitt Drive. I must have looked like a fiend from hell. Dishevelled and dehydrated, skin burnt and blackened, eyes red and sunken, and smelling of smoke and cane ash, I must have been barely recognizable. My nephew, Rasta Gary, seemed awestruck by the transformation, but not for long. As I went to the stand pipe in the yard to wash up, I looked up and saw him staring at me from the house window. Then a wicked smile crossed his face as he yelled down at me, “Wha’ happenin’ Balgobin?”
I didn’t have the strength or wasn’t in the state of mind for a witty retort, but I did manage a broad smile in acknowledgement of the humour and the absurdity of the moment. Yes, Balgobin the cane cutter, a one-day wonder, and a living testimony of the back-breaking effort and fortitude of the Guyana cane cutter. Oh, by the way, Big Respect to all the ‘Balgobins’ out there.

ps: I did go back to teaching. (and to journalism, and national insurance)
(Dennis Nichols is a teacher, journalist, creative writer, and winner of the 2000 International Short Story Competition, run by the U.K – based Commonwealth Broadcasting Association.)

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