By Michel Outridge 

ELOISE Daniels is considered the matriarch of River’s View Village because she is of age and practices traditional medicine using bush and plants from within the community to cure illnesses among villagers.

The 79-year-old, who is originally from Wakapoa, Region Two (Pomeroon-Supenaam) grew up around elderly folks, who were versed in traditional medicine using bush from the environment and she was able to learn from them over the years.

“Whenever people in this community get sick, depending on their symptoms, I does boil bush to make medicine and give them to assist them to recover,” she said.

Daniels believes that she was chosen to do such work because she believes that plants and bush used correctly on sick people can bring the much-needed relief they are seeking.

Even though bush medicine is not popular these days, Daniels reported that she still helps people who are sick by finding out what kind of sickness the person has then she would pick certain types of ‘bush’ to make medicine, the traditional way.

She explained that back in the 1940s when she was young, the elders in Pomeroon used to practice bush medicine to cure people of varying illnesses and it worked well.

“A time I try it on my daughter-in-law, who was unable to bear a child after years of marriage and her husband threatened to leave her if she didn’t get a baby so she came to me and I got some bush and administered some on her and she was able to conceive and got a daughter, who is an adult today,” she said.

Nowadays, Daniels doesn’t practice bush medicine in full but only does it in emergency cases where she would assist sick persons, whose lives are hanging in the balance.

The elderly woman told the Pepperpot Magazine that she lives between Guyana and Venezuela these days but River’s View is her home, a place where she has lived for the past 25 years.

Since her husband passed away 12 years ago, Daniels said it has been difficult for her because she had to tend to 11 children thereafter, but she did it anyway and they turned out just fine.

“As an elder I am the one that showed the people here certain things about heritage and our traditional way like the matapee dance, you don’t sit for that dance you have to stand and it is not about wine up or down, it is our culture and we must preserve it and teach our young people,” she said.

Daniels added that to date she still speaks in her mother tongue, the Arawak language and some of her children still do too but they used to complain that it was “ugly”.

Even in her golden days, she is still an active farmer with crops of both bitter and sweet cassava and in her days back then she delivered some babies too.

“Our people are simple and if they give you something, take it don’t refuse because it is bad manners in our book,” she said.

“I am still able to do chores like cooking and I prepare mostly roast meats because it is my favourite to go with home-made cassava bread. I returned from Venezuela a few days ago and I am here for the village heritage but years ago I used to open the ceremony in my Arawak language and I am not sure if I will this year but what I can say for sure there have been a lot of development in this village and I like this place a lot,” Daniels said.

The Pepperpot Magazine also met a talented young man, not a villager but a visitor, who is from Lethem and a soldier.

He is Teusimar Peters and at the time he was tasked with painting an indigenous drawing on the stage, which depicted the Indigenous way of life and it turned out well.

Peters said as a child he always enjoyed drawings but didn’t pursue it but now he is into portraits and has a Facebook page with his work.

This young man was part of a large group of soldiers attached to the Guyana People’s Militia and is the second officer-in-charge as a signaller within the Communication Section of the Guyana Defence Force (GDF).

A villager, Leslie Daniels spent a few minutes in conversation with the Pepperpot Magazine and highlighted how he spent a night in the jungle to catch two alligators, which he used to prepare the traditional Pepperpot for the heritage celebrations.

He related that he stayed in the swampy area and waited for the alligators to come out to feed and when the opportunity presented itself he chopped it rendering it mortally wounded.

Daniels then caught it and took it home where he seasoned the meat for a tasty Pepperpot of which he sold on heritage day at a stall he was manning.

“I came to live with my family many years ago and for me, this is home because of the people and the place is one to remember. Life is good here but you must work and I am in the logging business where I work right in this village and support my family,” he said.