Emancipation in an emancipated Guyana

Aug 02, 2015 Features / Columnists, My Column

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Yesterday was Emancipation Day and the people, particularly the black people decided to mimic their African roots. Women in particular went out of their way to buy the prints that have become the symbol of Black Africa in this part of the world. Young girls and even the older folk, donned head wraps.
All told it was a colourful affair reminiscent of my young days when black communities celebrated things African. In some communities there were the drums. I remembered the days when Emancipation Day meant travelling to Hopetown if one lived on the western side of the Berbice River. That was the home of the soiree.
That community became transformed. Drums throbbed all through the night of the eve of Emancipation Day. There were long lines of cars and homes were filled with visiting relatives. I still remember the large open air cooking pots, the dancing and of course, the drums.
As things go, the younger people introduced their own kind of partying so the event became a large ‘bubble session.’ But some people still went. Habits die hard.
So it was a pleasant surprise when Mellissa Roberts, nearly everyone knows her as Vanilla, called me to say that she was going to be at the centre of rekindling the Hopetown spirit. I missed out, but I know that something good came out of that community.
I also remembered back in 1978, a Berbice community named Brighton—amazingly, many communities in East Berbice have English names—was the place to be. Like Hopetown, the village hosted a big soiree. I have not heard much about those things anymore. I did not hear about the gathering at Public Buildings nor did I get a chance to enjoy the assembly at Square of the Revolution.
It must have been that people felt liberated after the May 11 elections and therefore did not see the need to have a ceremony that harkened back to yesteryear—they did not have to sing, ‘Take me back to the Mother Country’.
But I often wondered how many really wanted to go to the Mother country. Many of us came from Senegal but a few came from Ghana. I am not certain that more than a handful came from Nigeria. I was told that there are some of us whose ancestry can easily be identified by our facial structure. I am told that my ancestors probably came from Senegal.
But then I wondered at the inter-breeding, one set of people breeding with another set. And of course in Guyana there is the preponderance of further inter-breeding. Most Guyanese have some Amerindian blood and the rest are descendants of all the other races.
My sisters and brothers are of Portuguese ancestry, my children have Portuguese and Amerindian, although if you look you wouldn’t know it. My grandchildren are equally mixed up, one of them with a heavy dose of Chinese. So when this time comes around I smile when they opt to place themselves into one classification. That is bound to happen, because the society sees them as being of one ethnic group. And so it is that I smile when many of the people dressed as Africans reveal by their visages, other aspects of their ancestry.
I was in North Korea when I saw a Korean girl obviously mixed with the tar brush. Try telling her that she is black. But back in Guyana life is so simple. At one time we had the Douglah—the result of a union between a black and an East Indian; we had the Santantones, the Mulattoes, and the bouviandas. I don’t hear those terms anymore. And I never learnt what they called the mix between a black and a Chinese. In fact, I never heard a name for any other racial combination.
And thinking of this, I realized that there must have been some focus on black people. For example in the United States there was even a nomenclature for people with different levels of white blood in their veins. There were quadroons (one-fourth white) and octoroons (one-eighth white).
More recently, the census takers couldn’t be bothered about all the various combinations. They called people mixed. And the excuse was that these people did not want to classify themselves as black and they certainly couldn’t call themselves anything else. They couldn’t be Indian or Chinese or Portuguese. Of course, the Amerindians allow the bouviandas to be Amerindians. Just goes to show the groups that are accommodating in Guyana.
But there is some good in all this. We have all adopted the foods of every ethnic group and we have done so readily. My friend, the Argentine Ambassador once said to me that he never had cook-up and pepper pot. I told him that I would prepare those dishes for him. With raised eyebrows, he asked me whether I was being honest.
I invited him over to my house and, with his wife, he feasted on these two Guyanese delicacies. Yesterday would have been his metem day, but I did not invite him and he did not come.
There was one more thing that struck me yesterday. People were dressed as Africans but they could not tell me whether their garb was Nigerian or Senegalese or Ghanaian or a mix of all. I am told that different countries have their prints. I don’t know one from Adam or Moses.
But who cares? Yesterday was a day of reflection. I remember flying over the West Demerara and looking at the conservancy. It was as straight as an arrow and ran for miles. My ancestors dug that conservancy with their hands. It was the same on East Demerara. I shudder at the brutal work they put in. I couldn’t blame some of them for wanting to run away and some for being violent to their masters.
I look at the villages and except for a few, there is precious little to show for the work of my ancestors. They brought rice to this corner of the world. A mere handful cultivates rice these days. Except for children, not much is left of their heritage.

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