By Michel Outridge

FOR residents of Parika Back, East Bank Essequibo, life doesn’t stand still because the community is close-knit and everybody is their neighbour’s keeper. Annette Adolphus is originally from Moruca, Region One (Barima-Waini), but she has made Parika Back her home.

The mother of two related that she has been residing in the village for the past 10 years and she is very comfortable there with a life of farming.

Adolphus and her husband have an acre of cassava and bora, but with the present dry season and no potable water supply, they have had to put farming on hold for a bit.

“We don’t plant on a large scale because of the water woes here, but from the bridge onwards does benefit from potable water supply, but this half don’t get any and we would like to,” she said.

The farmer added that right now they are not getting market for their produce and when they do, at times it is bought at a very reduced price; as such, they would incur a loss.

“The thing is, here you can survive because the people are very cooperative and friendly and we assist each other. Look, my neighbour going on a bicycle to collect my children from school and that’s how we live, in unity regardless of our ethnicities,” she said.

Adolphus is the mother of a four-year-old and a nine-year-old, who attend the Parika Back Nursery and Primary Schools respectively, which is some distance away.
“I ended up on his land because I looked after my husband’s grandmother for five years prior to her passing and she gifted us this place for which we are happy for,[sic]” she said.
Meanwhile, her husband, Chaitram Khemraj, who returned home on his tractor after a day of work doing some land preparation on other farms, told the Pepperpot Magazine that life is fair there but it can be further enhanced with potable water supply.

“We applied for potable water supply a while now but so far, I haven’t seen anything yet and I am of the hope it will materialise soon,” he said.

The life of a farmer is hard, back-breaking labour in the humid climate, but it is our daily bread and we have to do it, Khemraj explained.

He related that they have electricity and he is thankful for that, but water is an issue right now because of the current dry spell.

“You can’t play lazy, here you have to work for a living and to support a family,” he said. “The crops of bora are very dry and the canal where water is sourced is almost dry, so I am hoping it would rain soon for the crops to be hydrated for healthy produce.”
Khemraj added that his fields of cassava are ready to be reaped, but no market is on the horizon and he is unsure of what to do with it, as is.