De Kinderen | Where residents live in peace and harmony
De Kinderen Village (Carl Croker photos)
De Kinderen Village (Carl Croker photos)

By Michel Outridge

Michael Sanders and his pigs

This week the Pepperpot Magazine visited the village of De Kinderen, West Coast Demerara and highlighted the way of life of the people and the community.

De Kinderen Village is sandwiched between Meten-Meer-Zorg and Zeelugt and is home to about 200 residents.

It is a small community with a few streets and most of the residents have to go out of the village for work while others have their small businesses. There are a few teachers, nurses, cash crop and livestock farmers and estate workers.

De Kinderen has a Health Centre, a tyre shop, a home for the elderly which is privately run by Muslims, three churches, shops and has clay brick streets.

The Pepperpot Magazine met an elderly villager, Michael Sanders, who was manning a small shop he has in his front yard. Sanders, who has been living in the village for more than 20 years, retired as an excavator operator from the Regional Office and decided to open the shop to earn an income.

He also has a plot of land behind the village, on the old railway embankment where he has a small farm and is rearing some chickens and pigs.

Historical background

Home of Michael Sanders

Giving a background of the village, he reported that the community is small and was established under former President, Hugh Desmond Hoyte in the 1990s under a self-help programme in which 28 house lots were parcelled and given out and 28 houses were later built.

He added that the residents came together and also built the clay-brick road which still exists in some sections but is eroding after all these years.

Sanders disclosed that they had a large plot of land in the village which was allocated as the playfield but in 1992 the Opposition took away the land and converted it into a 32-plot housing scheme.

He reported that later on, another plot of land was also re-possessed and made into a 28-plot housing scheme aback the village.

The senior citizen added that some attention needs to be paid to the village, as for quite some time, the drains haven’t been cleaned and the roads left in disrepair by the Neighbourhood Democratic Council (NDC).

Sanders pointed out that De Kinderen comes under the Meten-Meer-Zorg to Uitvlugt NDC and is often referred to as the “Clay Brick Scheme”.

He related that the residents in the village are prompt with the payment of their rates and taxes but no attention is given to infrastructural works to enhance the village.

Sanders stated that a handful of residents came together and built a bridge in the community without any assistance from the NDC.

“In this community, we have to pool our resources to get things done because the NDC has no time for us and we don’t depend on them to do anything anyway,” he said.

Meanwhile, he told the Pepperpot Magazine that De Kinderen is a quiet, countryside village where the people live simply and do their part to maintain their families.

Sanders added that most villagers ‘go and come their way’ and other than the NDC’s neglect there are no real issues among the people there.

“We are simple people, work and live as others and we live in peace and co-exist in harmony here,” he said.

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