Today is the golden jubilee of life away from home

Oct 30, 2016 Features / Columnists, My Column

Everybody says time flies. From my young days I have been hearing this statement, so much so that at school when I was dabbling in Latin with my schoolmates, we would look at each other and say, “Tempus fugit”.
For me time flew and continues to fly. Yesterday marked fifty years since I left the nest and headed to an unknown location called Bartica. It was Saturday, October 29, 1966. I had already written the General Certificate of Education examinations and had to leave school. Money was not there to continue academic studies all the way to the Advanced Levels. And besides, my mother was glad to have another breadwinner.
My stepfather was a lowly pump attendant who found other things to do with his pay. The result was that food was often scarce. Out of school, I sat down and wrote some applications after scanning the newspapers for vacancies. The Education Ministry had the most, so I penned applications to some of them, one of them being St John-the Baptist Anglican School.
The response came in August. I should have started out at the beginning of the school year in September, but I read the part that said I would be appointed on November 1, when I would be 18, and interpreted that to mean that I should turn out to work on November 1.
Back then, I did not know that I could cross with the Georgetown ferry and take the train to Parika, so my mother and I left our Beterverwagting home shortly after three that Saturday morning for the Kingston wharf. She had to be there, because I did not know where I had to go.
From where she got the ten dollars I still do not know. What I do know was that she bought my ticket for just over three dollars and she gave me five dollars to face whatever I had to in Bartica. I always tell people that I started life with five dollars in my pocket.
One week earlier, I attended my cousin, Pamela Padmore’s wedding. She was Pam Harris then. I was with her and her husband when they renewed their vows last Sunday at Bethel Congregational Church, Beterverwagting.
So fifty years ago I boarded the MV Powis and got my first taste of seasickness. The boat travelled out the mouth of the Demerara, so far out that I actually saw turquoise water, a far cry from the muddy water that lashes the Guyana coast. I vomited and a sailor, Mr Carlton Joseph, offered me his bunk. I will always remember that voyage.
And as fate would have it, years later Mr Joseph became my next door neighbour. He is now dead, but I established firm relationships with his children, one of whom still lives next door.
The ferry reached Parika and people asked me why I didn’t take the ferry and the train. The ferry was at eight. I could have had five hours more of sleep and I would not have had to walk from Stabroek Market to Kingston in the dead of night. The saying that stranger don’t know burying ground is so apt.
Fifty years ago I got my first glimpse of Bartica. Along the way I kept asking the sailors to name the places I was seeing. At Fort Island I spend fifty cents on fruits and another mite on a puri and something else.
The vessel moored at Bartica that afternoon, and armed with a letter from my parish priest, I headed for the vicarage at St John the Baptist. Of course I had to seek directions.
I remember the carnival atmosphere that greeted me. The entire village had turned out to greet the steamer and that night Bartica was like Christmas. People were out everywhere. My heart lit up; this was the Bartica of which I heard. Life was going to be pleasant.
The place was a little less active the Sunday night, but very dead the Monday night. The steamer had left early that morning. I learnt in a jiffy that whenever the steamer came the place would be abuzz.
I moved to Ms Shirley Davis three days after I landed and paid a princely thirty dollars monthly as boarding and lodging. My salary was $92.50 a month. That was a lot of money. I was not paid at the end of November because the Ministry had to fix the pay sheet, but I got every cent the following month—all the pay for November and half month pay for December.
I went to the cinema a few times, but alcohol was out of the question. I was a little boy and Shirley Davis was like my mother—no late nights, no philandering. I wasn’t being called ‘Sir’ just yet.
Fifty years ago, in November, I went to a show featuring Calypso Rose, Lord Kitchener, Lord Blakie, Mighty Duke, Bill Trotman the comedian, and some others. I remembered the after party at the Barn, a famous location that is no more.
When school closed I went home after collecting my pay. My sister, Evelyn, saw $100 for the first time. That Christmas was great at home. I could go to public dances and I took my sister and some friends. Ten dollars gave us a good time; got some of us drunk and I still had change in my pocket. Admission to the dance was 75 cents.
Bartica helped make me what I am. People who did not know the place labeled it as the village famous for footballers and bad women; they never understood the closeness of the community where you could go out and leave your door open.
I remember travelling to the city on breaks and hastening to go back to Bartica after two or three days. Georgetown had nothing for me. Being away from Bartica was akin to a fish being out of water. The quiet, family-oriented nature of the place was the pull.
I became Slick, because back then I straightened my hair. I learned Guyana because of Bartica. I got married there, fathered three of my children there, and did everything meaningful in that community. It was from Bartica that I visited Kaieteur Falls for the first of my five times.
To this day, I would tell people that while Beterverwagting and Den Amstel were blessings for me, it was Bartica that made me, and that began fifty years ago.
I can’t imagine that all that time has passed. It was like yesterday that I stepped off the Powis, which is now a wreck at the mouth of the Essequibo River. It ran aground while returning to the city and was replaced by the MV Barima.
Bartica has changed a lot. Houses better than some in the city have sprung up. From the days when there were two vehicles, barring the government Land Rovers, Bartica has a plethora of minibuses and taxis. People used to walk to any location, now they don’t.
It is not yet the fiftieth anniversary of my meeting with Dr George Norton and Dr Monica Odwin-Sagala in my classroom, but that is not too far away. And they are only two of those who passed through my hands.

1 thoughts on “Today is the golden jubilee of life away from home”

Donna Fraser November 4, 2016 at 4:03 pm

Mr. Griffith,
I enjoy you and Mr. Fernandes musings on food and everthing Guyanese. You two are really ‘BG boys’ as my uncle still uses this term)
The part that Bartica based on its location should have been the capital city of Guyana, was commented on by and English man, whose book I read, and who lived in Guyana (as an estate overseer) in early forty’s (40’s).
Me, I am retired, living in Canada (now 45 years), and originally from Beterverwagting (BV).
I’ll keep from mentioning my maiden/family name, because ‘too much people know we all’.
I really do enjoy your essays on Guyana and all things Guyanese, and Cynthia’s gentle prodings as if to say ‘tek da’.