This week the Pepperpot Magazine journeyed overland to visit the countryside village of #68 Village Carnarvon, Upper Corentyne, Berbice, to highlight the way of life of the people.

The community is quite large in size with massive land mass which extends from the foreshore to the backlands, which is used for large-scale rice farming.

Number 68 Village Carnarvon is an agricultural village of fishermen, rice farmers, cash-crop farmers, livestock, and poultry and cattle farmers.

Number 68 Village is between #69 to the south and #67 Village to the north and it has those colonial-style houses, most of which are well-perserved and also has modern buildings.

The village has many shops, barbershops, churches and mandirs, but no mosque and two supermarkets, one hardware store, a primary school, a community centre ground and a ballfield.

Number 68 Village has the Roadside Baptist Church out of which has a technical and vocational skills training centre, conveniently located on the public road and is easily accessible.

The village is occupied by predominantly Indo-Guyanese, but it also has a handful of Afro-Guyanese and people of mixed ethnicities, all residing in the same community.

Number 68 Village has eight internal one-vehicle streets, which need upgrading and it has a squatting area section near the sea dam.

It is a quiet, breezy village that sits on the roadside with a population of about 2500 residents and is a place of rice mills, about one functioning, one for sale and the other seemed closed.

It has many roadside small businesses and it is a place that is mostly well-kept with plants, flowers, fruit trees and vegetables in abundance. Most locals grow their own foods and rear chickens, ducks, fowls, meta birds, pigs, cows, goats and sheep.

Life is quiet, except for those residing just opposite the squatting area section when things would get loud and noisy as a result of indecent behaviour, loud music and drunken brawls.

Number 68 Village has a lot of professionals such as teachers, nurses and other persons, who work outside the village in both the private and public sectors.

The people are warm and friendly for the most part. There was some form of curiosity among the squatters during the team’s visit. The people kept their distance except for one lady, who complained that they are not getting electricity and need better roads.

None of the internal streets in this village are upgraded, due to large agricultural equipment traversing it to access the rice fields.

The people lead simple, everyday lives, utilising their skills to earn an honest dollar and they do many things for work as well.

Locals expressed their concern in which some youths in the community have been abusing drugs and alcohol.

At nights, they would break and enter the kitchens and homes of the people and take away valuables, which they sell to buy more drugs.

Many of those young people are jobless and are not doing anything constructive with their time, except being nuisances to society.

Most people have outfitted their homes with solar-powered lights for their own security and some have dogs.

Some of the churches are located on the roadside and are well-kept buildings, although old like most of the old-time houses in the village.

The #68 Village Primary School is one of the cleanest and it has a canteen, a benab that serves as a waiting area for parents and it has adequate yard space for recreational activities and some slides and swings for the pupils.

The villagers are mostly self-sufficient, but when the need arises they would go to Skeldon to shop, since there is a market there and on Saturdays it gets larger.

Number 68 Village is a rice-producing community and paddy is processed right in the community at a rice mill in the School Street, almost to the end of the village where there is a pasture area.

Most of the people who were the first settlers have migrated and others inherited the houses of their fore parents, while there are hardly any newcomers; the people have lived all their loves right in the village.