– ‘But it never stopped us from loving each other’

LLOYD and Feriza Barker can still remember those days – only with a laugh now – when they felt uncomfortable holding hands and being seen together in public. He was a young Afro-Guyanese boy whose family had high hopes of him marrying a Trinidadian girl, while she was a teenager of East Indian origin whose family could not even fathom the idea of her marrying an Afro-Guyanese.

But all Lloyd and Feriza were concerned about was being able to be together. So he left Trinidad, where he was living for some years, and came back to Guyana permanently so that he can be closer to Feriza.

But Feriza’s family was concerned that she was too young to be with Lloyd. Although this is the reasoning they’d put forward, Lloyd thought to himself that they didn’t like him for a very different reason.

Feriza was sent away to stay with her grandmother, but even so, she would get away and go to meet Lloyd at the Plaza Cinema on Camp Street, where he worked at the time. Tired, the family thought to themselves, “It’s better they marry since we can’t stop them from meeting.”

Lloyd Aubrey Barker, 49, and Feriza Baijnauth, 44, eventually married. They have been together over the past 30 years, and their union has produced three sons, Andy, Randy and Joshua.

“One day I tell her I ain’t able run around the place anymore,” Lloyd recalled during an interview with the Pepperpot Magazine. The two often wrote letters to each other, as back then, there was hardly any access to a telephone.

The challenges they faced as a couple were numerous, but they stuck together and pulled through mainly because they genuinely loved each other, and made sure that nothing or no one got in their way of being together.

“If we were walking on the road holding hands and saw a black couple approaching, we would stop holding hands and walk aside. But I eventually realised that I was hurting myself. I no longer wanted to please people, so we stopped living to please anyone,” Lloyd expressed.

No place for racism
Even after more than three decades, Lloyd says that “marrying Feriza was the best choice in the world” for him. Feriza, too, does not regret the decisions she made earlier in her life and says it was the understanding in their relationship that kept them going.

In their household, there is no place for racism and dirty politics. “We all come together and decide who to vote for, and we let that remain between us. We never let race decide who we will vote for,” Feriza said.

As for the children, who are now ages 24, 22, and 19 respectively; they were never taught race or politics, Feriza said, and they would be corrected if they ever got out of line in these areas. “Racism is a problem that goes way back, and it is really the older ones who need to stop it. Everybody is one. We should all live as one and stop the racism,” she said.

Feriza would often make it a point to listen to her husband and check in with him before she makes a decision. “We must love someone for who they are; and it must be love, not lust. We should love them regardless of what colour they are,” she offered.

Lloyd struggled to remember a time that he had a serious falling out with his wife, and noted that they have never separated from each other. “The only time I get vex with my wife is when she promise me roti but I come home and find she didn’t make any. Only she can cook roti for me,” he joked.