MORNING in the countryside, veiled still in darkness, but nudged awake by soft devotional songs on the radio, aroma of breakfast in the air, the creole fowl-cock crowing, and the donkey’s bray somewhere down the street, because the cane harvesters always had to leave early for the backdams. 

Morning in the countryside

So it begins for the people in the sugar estate communities; and each day tells a story of sweat and toil, tears, laughter and celebration. A people who had come a long way from Indentureship to those days in the mid-70s, with a long way more to go; and the aged women in their small gardens, cook-shops and market stalls, the real testimony of that era.
Young girls they had been: Brown-skinned, bright-eyed, portraying an innocent ignorance of the world, in their romal headpieces, petticoats and bare-feet. The young, delicate bodies pushed to the extreme, they had worked the land, tired muscles searching for a dream, riding the waves of time through many thorny paths, and from the sweat of their brows and the naked fatigue of their bodies, they had carved smooth paths for their children to walk.

Young girls they had been

Their bodies have now grown old, the hands weak, the smile wrinkled, but there was still the hint of a glint in the eyes, and music in the laughter; and each day, from dawn to dusk, was a day to live for something.
For Rosaline, her vegetable garden was her life; and at the dawn of each day, she would whisper silently her prayers to the sun, and drink a few dewdrops from the hibiscus leaf, for it was something pure from nature. And thus begins her day. The thyme, celery and tomatoes she sold at the town’s market. The sound of a conch shell from down the road, was the call of her old workmate, Sumintra, now turned fish vendor; her livelihood.
“Eh, gyal Rose!” Sumintra called. “How yuh deh?”
“Lil older every day,” Rose responded, with a little laugh.
“Yeah gyal; dat is life.”
Sumintra parked her fish cart as the neighbouring women came out to buy, and she stayed longer to have a little chat with her friend, sitting on the bench under the cashew-pear tree.
It’s a culture, they say, for the women who shared so many memories of the past; a door so easy to open. The news of the day, though, sometimes takes the spotlight, and Irene, another friend, coming down the road on wobbly legs with a small basket was always in the news.
A young boy riding past almost hit her, and she unleashed a string of expletives, as long as the street. Rose and Sumintra helped her through the gate, and she sat down with relief.
“Yuh start on de bottle early,” Rose said, noticing her tipsiness.
She turned to Sumintra: “Yeah, meh sista. Wah happen gyal, Sumi! Meh nah see yuh long!”
“Meh bin ah me daughta in Corentyne! She get another baby!”
“Oh, good! Meh guh tek ah drink fuh dah!”
From a quarter-bottle El Dorado rum in her basket, she took a drink; and, lighting a cigarette with shaky hands, she leaned back with a sigh.
A girl from the Catholic Church, she had been working toe-to-toe with her husband in his farm; then the rice field; and in the end, a bar. She was luckless in marriage, for, after three husbands, all departed, this was all she had left, the children having moved on with their lives, visiting not too often.
“Gyal, ayuh see Hamid?” a loud voice called from the road. It was Millicent, the negro lady from the middle street.
“Wah happen, Millie?” the ladies chorused.
“Meh lookin’ fuh dis man, because he owe me some money, and he dodgin’ meh.”
“Yuh better check de ‘Shaolin Temple’,”Sumintra said. “Is deh he does deh, drinkin’ wid he pals.”
“Yuh see when ah catch he, ah gon put dis hand pon he.”
Millicent was a no-nonsense, big-built woman, a single-mother with eight children. She sold the tastiest ‘black-pudding’ in that neighbourhood, and often bought thyme from Rose. She took a good drink from Irene’s rum and left, as Chilarie, from three houses away, came in fuming.
“If ah had size like Millie, ah woulda wuk some lash in he!”
“Who bada yuh, gyal?”
“Da no-good son-in-law wha meh gat! He thief meh nice Rhode-Island fowl and mek bush-cook wid he friends; and then tellin’ me dat de fowl fly away!”
Now, that was a laugh! And Irene choked on the drink she had just taken.
Rose’s grand-daughter, riding in with her bike, shook her head with a patient smile. “These old ladies; you gotta love them.”
A while later, Irene got up to go, but couldn’t make it, having gotten too intoxicated. And, being old ladies, there was only one way to take her home. They washed Sumintra’s fish cart, dried it, and lining the inside with sheets of newspaper, they put Irene in and pushed her home.
The scene was so funny, everyone down the street laughed. And to this day, stories of the life and times of these women, ‘The Golden Girls’, are told and retold, for, like gold, their richness is invaluable.