Bloomfield, Corentyne

Sep 04, 2022 News

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…a community of friendly, hardworking people

By Malisa Playter-Harry

Kaieteur News – Living among good people is one of the many things a person is likely to hope for when opting to take up residence in a new area.

If for some reason they have a taste for the serene countryside, achieving their heart’s desire can be within the peaceful confines of Bloomfield, a community situated at Corentyne, Berbice. With its friendly and hardworking inhabitants, recently improved road and vast land space, it is one of the many villages in Region Six that is considered a cut above the rest.

You can find Bloomfield just a street after the University of Guyana’s Berbice campus if you are travelling from the west, and from the east, a canal separates the village from Letterkenny. Although it is mostly occupied by East Indian residents, there are a few Africans, Amerindians and Chinese too.

During my visit there, I learnt that just recently several streets were upgraded in the area and works are expected to be done on the drainage systems and other remaining streets in the near future.

What is interesting to note, is that the Minister of Agriculture, Zulfikar Mustapha, is a resident of the village. Based on my conversations with some residents, he is highly respected by the people of the village and with good reason too. They said that by virtue of his Government position, they are able to raise issues with him and see them addressed efficiently.

Among the noticeable sites at Bloomfield is a Thrill Distribution Outlet (beverage company) which is located along the public road.  If you are visiting the area, you will find the scheme is located on the south side and another section of Bloomfield is on the north side (called the waterside). You can find the Bloomfield Masjid and the Grace Baptist Church located on the waterside, and as you make your way down to the back of that village, there is a sizeable parcel of unoccupied land.

During my visit I met a Jamaican man who said that he only moved to the community about five weeks ago. He said, with a bright smile, he moved to Guyana to be closer to “my lady”. According to him, they met online and hit it off quite nicely.

The man, Garnett Williams, said that he was a tour guide while he lived in Jamaica. He said that since his move to Bloomfield, he has been enjoying the “coolness and the quietness” but noted that it is not very different from the Jamaican culture.

He mentioned that, prior to coming to Guyana, he enjoyed his work as a tour guide with a popular tour guide company. He said, “whenever tourists come to Jamaica, we take them from the airport and tour them all over the country to view and get back safely.” He said he did that for five years and before that, he worked as a security officer for 25 years.

Williams said he has made a lot of Guyanese friends through the job that he did as a tour guide and stated that “they are my good friends and if they know that I am here it will be very exciting…”

He is happy to be a resident of Bloomfield since he is treated like royalty the minute folks get wind of his nationality. “Oh gad man, everybody gathers around me to hear Jamaican language, they want me to speak Jamaican language and bring Jamaican food.”

And of course he made it clear that he can “throw it down in the kitchen” when it comes to whipping up a delectable Jamaican meal for his lady and her daughter.

He said, “This morning I do the boiled banana with the boiled dumpling, boiled potato with the saltfish separate,” even as he expressed disappointment that I missed out on the feast.

He observed too that the cooking in Guyana is quite different compared to the way Jamaicans do it. Williams said, “You people mostly do like cook-up all in one, but we don’t do that, we separate our meat and all of that…”

Berbicians may soon get a chance to taste Williams’ cooking as he is actively pursuing the idea of getting his food handler’s certificate to ‘cook up’ some of his juicy and spicy jerk chicken, Jamaican style!

My next encounter was with the owner of the only barber shop in the village, 25-year-old Karran Outar. He said that he has been a barber for 11 years. Outar, who described the village as “calm with good people”, noted that he usually gets an average of 20 customers a day and from this he makes a decent income.

According to Outar, he lives a comfortable life, but he is quite disgusted about the current process to renew a passport. He said that he was told that he has to wait months for its renewal, a decision he said is affecting him since he usually travels to conduct business.

“We went and renew the passport over a month now and they said they out of book and a whole heap of issues. This is hampering me because we have to travel and it should be fixed,” Outar said.

One of his regular customers, Rajin Vishnu Narain, who drove all the way from Bushlot, several villages away, just to get his hair cut at Outar, said that he is one of the best barbers around.

Further down in the village, on the waterside of Bloomfield, ‘Shannon’ was relaxing in his hammock on the front porch of his house when I showed up. He said he has been living there for nearly five years but from his experience, the community is quiet with friendly people. ‘Shannon’ says he does cash crop farming for a living and would usually sell his produce to bus vendors, who drive around the villages to sell.

He mentioned that he had suffered losses during last year’s major flood and while he did receive a cash grant from the Government, it was not enough. He is however thankful and is now taking advantage of the sunny weather to get back into planting again.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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