HIGH REEF …a peaceful and welcoming rural community

Aug 28, 2022 News

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By Malisa Playter-Harry

Kaieteur News – Located approximately 11 miles east of New Amsterdam sits a small village called High Reef. With a population of just around 300 residents, several of whom are employed at the Albion Sugar Factory, High Reef is separated from the other nearby villages by the main canal in Albion.

However, this quiet Berbice community is fast becoming desolate with many a villager opting to migrate to foreign soil; many homes are either newly occupied or simply abandoned.

During my visit there recently, several villagers were seen on the main street of High Reef. I observed some engaging in conversation and then others, I noticed, were working together to fill some holes near the main bridge with pieces of bricks.

Some were seen on their veranda’s relaxing and enjoying the afternoon view of the nearby public road. A regular site, I understand, is that of cattle owned by villagers grazing along parapet of the High Reef public road.

In the village, there is one grocery shop and store where a variety of beautiful Indian clothing for women, men and children are sold. Religious items are also sold there.

I was able to solicit some comments from a villager who is well known as Aunty Zorin. At the time, the 76-year-old was busying herself around her yard.

I was happy to learn that she was the first person to take up residence in the community many years ago. According to Aunty Zorin, she moved to the location with her husband, with whom she shared four children. Her husband, she said, passed away in his early 50’s, just two weeks after celebrating his birthday.

“The place was not bushy like this, it was clear and nice. People started coming here a few months after I moved here so I was here with my husband and four children, we were the only house in the village,” she shared.

According to her, while her family enjoyed a lot of moments being the only residents in High Reef at first, there were some challenges which included the lack of water, proper streets, and lack of electricity. She recalled having to go to her mother’s residence at Albion Front to wash her clothing, among other things. It was nearly 20 years later, she recounted that running water became a staple to the village.

Sometime after the village got roads, and then electricity was provided owing to Aunty Zorin and other residents banding together and approaching the utility company.

“There was no water, no light, no nothing, it was just a dam, me punish bad you know. Dem children use to guh road and wash dem foot in the trench before dem guh to school…after people start come, den tings start improve and we start do things as a community to get wat we need…” she recalled.

After living in High Reef for over 50 years, Aunty Zorin said she enjoys the peaceful atmosphere of the village. However, she confided that the demeanour of the generation of people from years back is much different from the current generation. She explained that back then, the people were quiet and helpful “but now generation, you can’t talk to them.”

According to the elderly woman, her husband, when he was alive, worked at the Albion Sugar Factory as a cane cutter while she stayed at home to manage the affairs of the home and care for their four children.  Her life was simple and happy but when her husband passed, she said that she was left with a gap in her heart that remains to this day.

Eager to reflect on the time she shared with him, Aunty Zorin said that he was a good man who did practically everything around the home. When they moved to High Reef, she said they lived in a zinc house and some years later, after her husband’s passing, she moved for a while to her parents’ house since she needed to renovate the home her husband had built.

Though saddened that he never got a chance to see the renovated house, she is still grateful for the life she has had since his passing and the memories of the time they shared.

These days, when Aunty Zorin isn’t relaxing, she does a bit of yard work. Prior to the flooding situation in 2021, she said that she sold vegetables to the community, which she’d planted in her own kitchen garden. But when the floods came all of her vegetables died and she has not gotten the courage to return planting her garden, she shared.

After my pleasant chat with Aunty Zorin, I was able to catch up with another resident, 42-year-old Punwattie Outar, who had just returned home from visiting her pregnant daughter at the New Amsterdam Hospital. She said that she has been living in the community for the past 18 years. She described the residents as kind and cooperative.

Making a point that crime is not a problem, Outar stressed, however, that there is a need for streets to be fixed and drains to be cleaned.

Once the few issues are addressed, Outar said that there is no place like peaceful High Reef, which is occupied by some of the most hospitable residents, to call home.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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