My father was the second of three brothers. My mother was the first of six sisters, and she had one brother. We lived with my paternal grandparents at the bottom of the hill on the riverbank. My dad’s eldest brother also lived on the property in a simple wooden house he had built himself. He lived there with his wife and four children, my cousins: Helen, Marsha, Kirk and Brent.
My father was rebellious at school but had very good grades. He kept his hair long despite the rules, and argued with his teachers. He excelled in his art classes and started reading about different ideologies and political systems. He was barely into his teens when he started hanging out at labour meetings and discussing Marxist-Socialist ideology with a few of the men who would go on to form the National Union of Freedom Fighters, NUFF, in the 1970s. His knowledge of the trails through the Northern Range became indispensible to the guerrillas. The trails he used as a child to explore the forest could be used as escape routes. The forest fruit trees and wild yam vines and his ability to spot animal tracks ensured a food supply. The rivers and waterfalls were their water source and another way of moving through the forest.
My mother was also a good student, but wasn’t allowed to complete her education at the convent-run school.
When I was a child, the daytime was full of activities, and at twilight our teachers were our ton-ton, tanti, gang, parents, brothers and sisters. If we were lucky we would get a story, with drama and singing, and each story had its rationale and lesson. Aunty Irene (sister of Mary) sang best, and would compose songs about how beautiful her sisters were. We didn’t have a television set until I was eight but we were never bored as there was so much to do outside. We spent almost every waking hour outdoors and a lot of those hours were on the river.
We always felt close to our ancestors, first by remembering and speaking the names of the birds, the animals, the trees, the herbs, all species of river fish, the snakes, the roots, the fruits, the grass and the insects. The names of the places and the names of the rivers.
Our family knew the value of kinship and community, so it was no surprise that Clemencia played a role in the formation of the Santa Rosa Carib Community (now called the Santa Rosa First Peoples’ Community), and my great aunt Valentina Medina performed the role of Santa Rosa Carib Queen until her death in 2011. The Assings and the Medinas worked together at the Torrecilla Estate in an area under the care of Dr Thomas Godfrey Mason. Dr Mason was the first professor of botany at the Imperial College of Tropical Agriculture, which later evolved into the Trinidad campus of the University of the West Indies. My grandfather was Mason’s personal assistant, even accompanying him on a trip to England once. There is no doubt the two men learned a lot from each other. Dr Mason was involved in plant research and sometimes brought his work home with him, so his garden was full of experiments.
Valentina, who we knew as Aunty Mavis, was the sister of my grandfather John, and her husband Bertie was the brother of my grandmother Mary. They lived next door to each other for most of their lives. Aunty Mavis/Valentina (who would become the ‘Carib Queen’) had the most beautiful front yard. It was always planted up with pink flowers. She tended a variety of plant species, but always pink. Her husband, Uncle Bertie, took great pride in tending the front yard. He also tended a small plot across the river, where he grew cassava, hot and sweet peppers, corn and peas.
Aunty Mary (sister of Bertie, Irene, Elsa and Verna) and Uncle Sonny’s yard was next. They didn’t have any children but their yard was full of fruit. Uncle Sonny also raised a few chickens for their eggs. Their yard was a favorite haunt, but they did have a fence and would prefer if you paid them a visit, had a chat and asked to pick some fruit in the yard. Occasionally one of Uncle Sonny’s chickens would disappear, too, and he didn’t like that at all. Not everyone followed the protocol, always.
Aunty Elsa (sister of Verna, Irene, Mary and Bertie) lived across the street.
With three boys to send to school, when work ended with Dr Mason, John worked on the Port of Spain docks as a stevedore. It wasn’t until 1890 that asphalt was used to pave roads in Trinidad and aggressive road improvement works followed. My grandfather went to work also, in the work gangs paving the road to the North Coast with asphalt from the Pitch Lake. Mary and her sisters went to work at the Torrecilla Ice Factory, among a network of industrial pipes, where they were exposed to a different kind of science, ammonia-cooled water drawn from the Arima River to make ice. The river changed, water levels dropped. When refrigeration well and truly took hold and demand waned, the ice factory closed. My grandmother and her sisters went to work at the Cannings Poultry Processing Plant (which became Arawak Chicken) and my uncle and his friends put up a basketball net and painted a half court in the old loading bay of the ice factory to play.
* * *
Contrary to the idea that the indigenous people contributed nothing to the development of what we know as Trinidad and Tobago today, we have been ever-present. The nation was built on traditional knowledge, indigenous labour and natural resource exploitation.
Trinidad and Tobago’s economic fortunes are closely tied to the exploitation of our natural resources. The asphalt from the Pitch Lake is just one of those resources. The country’s economic rise and fall have been closely tied to oil and gas. In 1857, the Merrimac Company drilled the first well for oil in Trinidad. It was sixty-one metres deep and in the vicinity of the Pitch Lake. Today, the islands are home to several multinational corporations engaged in the extraction of oil and gas. The state controls major interests in the extraction industry and energy consumption levels are high.
The Trinidad and Tobago government receives billions of dollars in revenue from major oil and gas companies. The energy sector’s share of Gross Domestic Product is almost fifty per cent. The state itself is heavily invested in the energy sector, through the National Gas Company, Petrotrin and National Petroleum.
Post-conquest, the indigenous did not resist when they were all registered as ‘indio,’ even when they knew their ancestors came from different tribes. At the time, they knew also that no special rights came with the title, that their children would have no special rights. In fact, the only thing the designation came to represent was a category of persons from whom things were continuously taken away. The indigenous said nothing when they came to be referred to as Carib and Arawak – the labels meant nothing to them. So much of their identity had been erased by then. So, when a beer became a Carib and Arawak became known for chicken processing, the indigenous said nothing. What did it all mean, anyway? We had grown tired of the labels people had chosen to both recognise and erase us. Each label seemed to have the same purpose.
It is clear that the companies involved appropriated the labels for economic gain, attempting to link their beer and their chicken to the founding of the nation and to authenticate their indigenous claims.
Even as the indigenous community is recognised – by the special holiday in 2017, for instance – there is no acknowledgement of how history has displaced and disempowered their descendants. Indigenous people played a key role in the development of the country’s early cocoa, coffee and tobacco industries, but remained landless. We were settled in religious missions, which were later disbanded without reparations.
We knew the land best. We knew when to plant and when to reap. The story of how the country’s natural resources were exploited is our story, too. Native resources became natural resources, and land became capital. This is how connected we are to the land. Understanding our connectedness, we knew that plants, trees and animals were all connected, that they spoke different languages and shared a common one. Our farming models were very sophisticated, employing different levels of crops, fully utilising the richness of the soil. Cocoa and coffee were grown in the shade of immortelle trees, which also did the job of drawing water to the surface. The growth of the fine parasitic vine commonly known as cocoa mint, which covered the cocoa trees, was encouraged because it would add flavour to the prepared chocolate.
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sp; Successive governments of Trinidad and Tobago have failed to diversify the economy and reduce the country’s energy dependence. Corruption and the recent fall in energy prices have depleted financial reserves. With the country in the midst of a recession, more calls are being made for the national community to ‘go back to the land.’
Traditionally, the indigenous farmed or gathered the food we ate. Food was always plentiful on the riverbank. The river gave us water, fish, crabs and crayfish. We didn’t grow food in the yard around our house – instead, small gardens were tended a short distance away (across or down or up the river). We grew corn and cassava alongside pigeon peas, peppers, pineapples, ochroes and ginger. The forest and the old estates provided cocoa, coffee, mangoes, chennet, bananas and plantains, pawpaw, wild yams, honey, nutmeg, bayleaf, roucou, shadon beni, roots, leaves, nuts and stems that could be boiled or ground and made into medicine or something to eat – sometimes, often, one and the same. Some distance from the garden we also planted fruit trees to feed the animals we liked to hunt. For the indigenous, the forest was a like a supermarket.
In the yard, my grandmother tended a large patch of river stones as carefully as she tended her small herb and tea garden. This pile of rocks would dry clothes and cassava on banana leaves. This pile of rocks would bleach sea moss, and you could crack a coconut here. A large mortar and pestle as tall as seven-year-old me was in a corner of the kitchen – just like any other magic cauldron, things went in there to be transformed.
The corn was transformed into coo-coo, payme, pastelle, boy, roast corn, boil corn, patch corn, chilibeebee, corn porridge and corn flour. The cassava turned into boiled cassava, roast cassava, farine, cassava bread. Other meals included caldofreco, sancoche, cassareep, tom-tom.
My father remembers working in the garden as a child. ‘The work was pruning and drainage, agriculture work, all leading up to harvest time,’ he remembers. ‘Pick, crack, sun and dance the cocoa, pick, sweat and crack the tonca bean, both to be sold to the Cocoa Board. Pick and pack orange and grapefruit to be sent to the Citrus Growers Association.
‘At times, on a pay day, there would be cock-fights, with game cocks our relatives brought from Venezuela. The cocks would be put into the gayelle and the “med cai” would judge the fight. My father had a few of these fighting birds: a drun, a zenga and a camajuay. They are called by the native names according to their appearance.’
My father’s memory is good. So I ask him to talk to me for a while about what he learned growing up. He rattles off the names of animals and plants I have never heard before. Or, I think I have never heard before. It all sounds somehow familiar.
‘We were taught about snakes,’ he continues. ‘The dangerous ones, we can smell them, hear them and avoid them. We were taught about the mappipire – balsain and zanana – coral, cascabel, mapamare, creebo, macajuel, tigre. The pretty, attractive ones were poisonous. Our teaching from age one to seven years was about seeing as a form of knowing, smelling as a form of knowing and hearing as a form of knowing.
‘We were taught about scorpions – if stung by one, we can eat them. If we don’t like the [raw] taste, we can roast them in fire and then eat them. We were taught about Jack Spaniard wasps, which we call jep: jep cohong, jep tattoo, jep cesar. If stung by one, we must take three different types of bush, grass or herb and crush the leaves in our hands and rub the juices on the jep sting to avoid swelling. Of course, all stings are more potent during the full moon, and although we know all these remedies we must avoid getting stung by bees, snakes, scorpions, jep. So, always be alert whenever in the forest, on the estate or by the rivers.
‘We were taught about zagweeh, cheenee, santapee, congoree, tac-tac, marabuntas, fire-ants, red ants, garapet, battimamzelles, butterflies. We were taught about insects with wings and without wings.
‘We were taught about the birds: kweleebee, kai, ramea, chat, viennal, taoday, cravat, picoplat, toucan, chikichong, semp, zotola, greeve, pawi, guacharo, gabila, tuvatuva. We know these birds by their marking and colour, by their mating calls and their distress calls. In order to catch them, we were able to feed them by calling them for food and using their distress call to get them closer to us. This ability comes from listening to the birds and mimicking their calls. The forest is like a school.
‘As children we had lots of fun in the river. We would play “hide the stone” in a pool. Which involved hiding a stone underwater and then the other people have to find it. We had swim races under water. This helped strengthen our lungs. Sometimes we would venture far up river or down river. We were taught about all the fish in the river. What was edible and what was not. The tayta, guabin, zangi, cuscorob, watamal, crayfish, maki and buc. We would catch these fish with our hands or sometimes we use the old native plant, balbac. Our ancestors loved and respected the river and we did the same.
‘We were shown the trees and told the names and fruits. Kapok, guatacare, tapana, crapo, oilver, mahoe, ceret, galba, calabash, cazuka, anare, moriche, touca, balata, coffee, cocoa, roucou, cayoneg, caimit, cashima, cashew, mamisepote, aguma, guanabana, gree-gree, groo-groo, peewah, kereckel.
‘On our treks through the forest for dry wood for the fireside, we were taught about the animals, the trees and the herbs. We were taught about the iguana, the agouti, quenk, tattoo, manicou, matapal, pillowee, porcupine. We were taught the hunt and the trails. There are ancient trails connecting each mountain region to the other.
‘We didn’t have money or a deed for land but we were never hungry.’
Were we more fearless then?
In 2013, a team led by Dr Basil Reid, professor of archaeology at the University of the West Indies, uncovered the remains of sixty individuals underneath the Red House in Port of Spain. The indigenous were in the very foundations of the seat of Parliament, originally built in 1844 and painted red in commemoration of Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee. There was once an abundance of silk cotton trees in the area and it was believed to be a heaven for warriors. Silk cotton trees are the ladders that connect the earth to the cosmos. But if you look around the Red House now you would be hard-pressed to find any at all.
Can you hear me now?
Their bones, like mine and yours, are the evidence of their existence come to tell us they were here. We still use the words they whispered to the trees although our voices remain unheard in the corridors of the Red House.
The people who came arrived with new systems, new technologies, new ways of thinking, new ways of living, but they arrived to an abundance of natural wealth. At the Pitch Lake, mining started in earnest in 1867, and millions of tons have been extracted since. There is a little section of the visitors’ centre that’s a bit of a museum. Over time, the lake has coughed up some of the stuff it once swallowed: indigenous artifacts such as ceremonial stools and tools, the fossilised remains of a giant prehistoric sloth and a mastodon tooth. In 1928, a massive tree, estimated to be more than four thousand years old, suddenly emerged from the centre of the lake and sunk back down again. This endless ebb and flow is now the substance of roads and roofs. The lake is estimated to contain reserves of around six million tons, which could last another four hundred years at current extraction rates.
These islands were not terra nullius when Christopher Columbus arrived. The natives resisted. We refuse to be buried.
In case you’re wondering how we got here, how we survived? We learned to adapt. Listening to the land.
1980s Pacific Testing
Fetuolemoana Elisara
Samoa
Remember those out-of-this-world skies
in Rarotonga when we go ‘Woah,
God’s amazing!’?
& we aren’t allowed to eat
the fluorescent fish?
Remember the deformed dogs
in Tahiti, that one with its right leg bent
up in salute, we call Hitler?
& all those rat-looking cats?
Remember how heaps of the family
fly off to Paris
& we go ‘Woah, so lucky!’
but they aren’t laughing?
Remember the bombing in Auckland,
when Greenpeace becomes part of
our lexicon & Herbs’ ‘French Letter’
is banned in Wellington?
Remember how we boycott French goods
& plaster ‘Make France an Atoll’ posters
everywhere & we hang that huge banner
outside our flat?
& after Mururoa mushrooms,
we connect the dots ...
& realise that those flying off to Paris
can’t be saved, even
with their healthcare
taken care of.
Coming Off the Long Run
Cecil Browne
Saint Vincent and the Grenadines
Skipper Jardine unstrapping his pads one evening when he spot this man approaching him. It was a hot Saint Vincent May with a light wind, the kind of day where you could prosper outdoors or in. The weekly cricket net session over, Jardine could hear a cold beer whispering his name. But, before the short drive home, he thought it only courteous to find out whose religious tracts this man was pushing.
The man was about his age and height, late thirties, five-eight and well built. Hair glistening in the sun, his face full and round, he had big eyes and black rich eyebrows and a black bushy moustache supporting his nose. His olive trousers high on his stomach, he could pass for a salesman promoting the benefits of a fish diet, though Jardine know from long experience it dangerous to judge a man by looks and the colour of his pants.
‘Mr Jardine?’ the man begin, head at an angle, like a police about to serve a warrant.
‘Yes,’ Jardine concede, standing up to meet him.
So Many Islands Page 11