.jpg)
On December 27, 2011, Mrs. Spooner, since then Guyana’s oldest citizen, had celebrated her 111th birthday and had reminisced on her journey along life’s path while revealing her relationship, with the sustainer of her soul, Jesus Christ.
That day, during a mid-morning visit, Mrs. Spooner was well dressed and powdered, hair neatly braided, as she sat on her bed, prepared to meet her guests, who included Pandit Suresh Sugrim, his wife, Devi Gossai and daughter, Sandyha, of the New Jersey Arya Samaj Humanitarian Mission in the United States (U.S.).
The overseas-based visitors, who took nutritional items as gifts along with her favourite chocolate and ice cream had visited to celebrate and share with her and, in turn, were entertained with hymns, spiritual songs and advice.
Born on December 27, 1900, to Barbadian parents, Ebenizia and Livingston Hinkson, in their ‘flying fish’ homeland, Spooner’s father died prior to her birth, so her mother was forced to be an all-round domestic in order to care for her and three other siblings.
She had recalled: “My mother had to wash, cook, scrub and bake, doing all the work for the same money. Not like now, a washer, a cook, a baker and a cleaner would receive different sums of money. In those days, you had to do all the work for a little something.”
BAKED CAKE
She remembered being told, by her mother, that she was a ‘baked cake’ at birth. Acknowledging their curiosity to know what she meant, Spooner explained: “I was a dried up baby and my mother used to cover me up so that no one could have seen me. But, one day, one of my mother’s friends asked her why the baby was always covered and, on seeing me, the woman advised my mother to find a donkey which has a young foal and give me a spoonful of the animal’s milk mixed with that from her breast for nine mornings.
“After my mother heeded the advice, I became a fluffier baby,” she mused.
As if the stories of her life would bore her visitors, Spooner had rendered songs in soprano.
Continuing her life story, she had recalled leaving Barbados as a young girl, at about ten years of age.
She said: “My uncle heard about work as indentured labourers in then British Guiana and told my mother, and she decided to bring me along with her. But, on our arrival, the work on the sugar estate was hard and my uncle, along with other Barbadians, returned to their homeland.
“My uncle said what he did not do for work in Barbados, he was not doing in Guiana. So he, along with others went back but my mother said she did not want to be going and coming as if she did not know what she wanted and she decided to stay and work at Skeldon Estate,” Spooner related.
She also had told of being taken advantage of by her superiors, one of whom impregnated her resulting in her giving birth to a ‘mulatto’ daughter, Elsie, whose father was caucasian. Unfortunately, the child died overseas, prior to her being married to Harold Spooner, a fellow ‘Bajan’ and a cane harvester, for whom she got no children.
WORKED HARD
She went on: “But I worked hard. I bailed punt, threw manure, cut cane, weed grass, break bricks and fetch bagasse, all for six cents. Those days that was big money. We did not have notes then. When my mother and I first came to the estate, we were given a few sugar bags to spread as mattress, a caban (cot) and a list to take to the shop. The shopkeeper would keep the list, in which he will add whatever you take and, on Saturdays when we got paid, we will clear off our expenses. But after we embraced the Adventist message, we never collected our monies on Saturday. Instead we would uplift it on Mondays and one day the boss man asked why we were collecting the money on Monday and we explained that it was because we were Adventist and that we were not doing any business on Saturdays anymore. And, since then, we started to collect our money on Fridays.’
She continued: “The money was not much but you could have done so much with it. I worked real hard. When I left the estate I worked in people’s kitchen from dawn to dusk. Is now I am not working, she said, with a laugh.”
Spooner had quoted from biblical books telling her visitors of their significance before praying.
Asked what she wanted for her birthday, she had responded: “An ice flask so I can drink a little cold water.”.
Her caregiver, Ms. Iris February had commenced her duties in 2000, after realising that the elderly woman could not have managed on her own.
February said it was a joy caring for Spooner who was her mother’s best friend and had no major health condition except glaucoma which had rendered her sightless.
February had noted then that Spooner was not a beneficiary of the National Insurance Scheme (NIS) as it was not in existence when the latter was working but she had received a weekly pension from the sugar estate.
To celebrate that special day, a thanksgiving service was held at the Corriverton Seventh Day Adventist Church.
