Dear editor,

COW and other cattle farmers have played a significant role in the economy of villages, and in contributing to the health of villagers as well as in agricultural production (kitchen gardens). Every village had small-scale cattle farming. When I was growing up in Ankerville, a sub-village of Port Mourant, during the 1960s and 1970s, many people reared cows, and we all helped each other in cattle rearing. One particular cow herder, Shaw Khan, stood out for contributions indirectly made to the village through the rearing of milking cows. He had several dozen cows that supplied milk to so many homes in the village. There were other peasants or small cow minders in the village. Shaw Khan was the largest, and stood out for his generosity and friendly assistance to others who raised cattle or kitchen crops. I learned a lot from Shaw Khan about my ancestors, and about cattle grazing.

Shaw Khan and other peasant cow minders met an important health need. Milk was among a few sources of nutrients at a time when starvation set in during the 1970s and 1980s.  The economy was in shambles; milk was scarce after importation was discontinued. Canned or powdered milk were smuggled in from Suriname and Venezuela.  Many people had their own cows, but not enough milk was available to meet demand. Villagers went to local herders to meet the needs of their babies, diets, and religious functions. Hindus needed fresh cow’s milk for puja and worshipping in the mandir, as well as to make Mohanbhog and for rituals. Hindus who were fasting during major festivals used to drink only milk. Uncle Shaw Khan and other cow owners in Port Mourant understood the religious practices, and made milk available to them. People used to visit his home to purchase milk when it was scarce during the 1970s after Burnham criminalised the consumption of imported milk. When my family had jhandis, I used to purchase milk from Shaw Khan for the rituals.

I know a lot about cows, because I grew up in a home that also raised cows, and we had a few in our yard. In fact, my great grandfather, or par aja, Ghurbatore (one name only), who came from Ghazipur, Uttar Pradesh, India, raised cows in Ankerville. After he completed his indentureship in the 1890s, he bought cattle and forested land with his savings, and cleared them for grazing and farming. Uncle Shaw Khan, who was born in 1913, told me that Ghurbatore was the largest cattle rancher in Berbice, with hundreds of heads of cattle and thousands of acres of open ranch (in the backdam that stretched from the back of Port Mourant all the way to Canje), he had leased from the State to graze his cattle, as well as hundreds of acres for rice and sugarcane cultivation. “You couldn’t count his cows, and the amount of land he had was never-ending; as far as the eyes could see,” he said of old man Ghurbatore. Shaw Khan continued, “My cows were just a drop of what he had, and he allowed others to graze their cattle on his leased land.” Gradually, Ghurbatore’s stock was depleted through rustling, hunting by wild animals, and dividing of the flock and land among his five children (three sons and two daughters) born in British Guiana. All of the land was later abandoned during the 1970s, when my extended family was forced to migrate during the period of racist, fascist rule. My par aja died in the late 1940s, and my par aji, Amru, a Brahmin woman, died some time thereafter. Shaw Khan knew my par aja and aja and his two brothers and two sisters, and my par aji quite well. In fact, he knew a lot of oral history of the Port Mourant Estate and settlement of sub-sections of Port Mourant. As an inquisitive student of history, I used to ask him and my surviving mother a lot of questions to gain knowledge of life in the village. My mother confirms that her father-in-law and his father had a lot of cattle; too many to be counted.

Shaw Khan was popularly known as Mee-ah (an Islamic honorific clerical title just below that of a Meeji or Imam). He was somewhat of a religious man who never missed a Friday namaz, or an Islamic festival or attending someone’s Koran Sharief. The older people called him Mee-ah. As a youngster, I called him Uncle Shaw Khan. But as I became older, I, too, referred to him as Mee-ah. He was well-respected in the village because of his age and ownership of so many cows. I used to visit him almost daily, helping with the cows and learning a lot from him. I was a friend of his grandson, Wazir, who had to complete his chores before he could play ball with me, or go swimming in the backdam. So I and even others would assist him in his chores like preparing the grass for the cattle. During school holidays, I went to the backdam a few times to help Shaw Khan with grazing. His two sons would occasionally help with the grazing.  His wife, Aunty Doolie, and daughters would go around delivering milk house-to-house every morning.

Mee-ah enjoyed rearing cows, and the rural lifestyle that came with it. He got so much joy and satisfaction in that profession. He milked the cows all by himself; dozens of them every morning, and only a few in the evening. He treated his cows as gold possession, reluctant to part with them. In the nights, he served as watchman on his verandah, armed with a flashlight and a fat bamboo stick. His flock was so large, that some were bedded on the front street and back street where there were few passersby. He would check up on his cows all hours of the night to deter theft. Rustling was a major problem in the village, as indeed all over Guyana. Cows would be stolen and taken to West Berbice or other areas. Many branded cows were found in West Berbice and other places, and cow minders said police did nothing to recover their stolen animals. Ghurbatore’s flock was stolen in the Canje area and taken who-knows-where.
One of the things people respected Mee-ah for was his refusal to sell his cows (including bulls) to butchers. He felt it was too cruel to see his animals sold for butchering. He raised primarily Holstein; he would only sell his animal if it was for herding purposes. Once he sold a cow to a man in Train Line, and after a few months the man returned and told him he wanted to sell the animal to a butcher in town. Meeah bought back the cow from the man, and he gave away the milk from that cow (a big bucket from two or three nights).
Besides selling milk to meet dietary needs and religious practices, Meeyah was also generous with the ‘penus’ or colostrum, that delicious cheese-like milk of the cows from the first three days after giving birth. With so many cows in his flock, he regularly had a cow giving birth. Everyone loved ‘penus’; people would come for free ‘penus’ when word got around that a calf was born.  Meeah also helped people with free access to the manure of the cows; he was glad that people cleaned his pen and yard of cow dung. People, including myself, would fetch dozens of buckets for gardening. Those who made deyas, like ‘Gumman’ from Ankerville, would also come to fetch cow dung, which, when dried, was needed to burn the clay deyas to give them that golden brown colour used at Diwali and for regular poojas.

As I learnt from experience, and from Meeah, it is not easy to raise cattle that can contract so many types of diseases like scours or diarrhea that are deadly, especially for new calves. For me and my brothers, it is hard work taking cows to the pasture in the backdam in the morning, and then go to school and return to get the cows in the afternoon, cutting grass and tending to the animals, and feeding them bran, dhan, and other nutrients. It is quite time-consuming, expensive, and back-breaking. And then one has to spend so much time to combat thieving of cattle. People like Shaw Khan and other cattle farmers deserve praise for minding cows, and for their contribution to village life.

Yours truly,
Dr. Vishnu Bisram