– Meet Mukesh and Hansmattee

ASK for Mohan Sookwah in Riverstown Village on the Essequibo Coast, and no one would know who you’re talking about. Ask for ‘Fresh Oil’ though, and the villagers would point you to the exact street and house to find him.

They’d also know him by the name Mukesh. In fact, he is one of the more popular farmers in the village; his family being the first set of people to occupy what is now known as the Back Street in Riverstown.
The 53-year-old rice, cash crop and poultry farmer toils long and hard to make ends meet with his supportive wife, Hansmattee, whom Mukesh said has stood “foot and foot” behind him ever since they married 30 years ago.

The father of two, who plucks about 30 chickens a week, grew up looking at his parents’ farm; they worked rice and provision farms to support their eight children and were very poor. Because of such poverty, many of the kids, including Mukesh, did not get to attend school a lot.

Following in his parents’ footsteps, Mukesh has continued to farm over the past 40 years, making it the only type of work he has ever done. “Every month, I buy about 100 chickens; at least I get the mould for my garden, and I get the chickens for the house use and sell a few. I really do it to get the mould for the garden,” he shared.

He and his wife have two stalls; one in Suddie, which they go to on Sunday and one at Anna Regina, where they would work on Fridays. To get their produce ready for the markets each week, though, is not always smooth sailing. “We really need a plucking machine,” he said, adding, “the labour cost is also there, and then you don’t find good people to work.”

Even with the challenges and hard work involved to make ends meet, there’s no place that Mukesh would rather be. “If I go to Georgetown, by afternoon, I want to reach home. I fall in love with this place; I am comfortable here at home,” he said, noting how the place has seen some amount of development in terms of getting proper streets and road lights.

“We were the only people living at the back here, and now we got neighbours. This whole place was a playground, and now people came to occupy the land. Our Back Street area is now more busy than the public road,” he shared.

Commenting on his wife’s significant role in helping with the work, Mukesh said: “The only work my wife didn’t do was to dig the drains with me. Other than that, she weed, plant, and everything she do with me.”

He could not escape providing an explanation of how he got the nickname Fresh Oil. Beating around the bush, he said: “Long ago, we didn’t have well at the back here; they had ground pond in front and when you go out, all the boys would reach together. One of the boys call me that name, and I got vex and the name left on me.”

But his wife chimed in to clarify: “The boys them said his mom sent him to the shop to buy coconut oil and tell the shopkeeper that he want fresh oil. He used to always ask for fresh oil, and the name stayed.” At last, the answer was clear. Mukesh always wanted “fresh oil.”

Meanwhile, when she was just 20 years old, Hansmattee from the neighbouring village of Airy Hall married Mukesh in an arranged setting. “My mother and his mother used to sell in the market and they made the match,” she related.

She had known him before, though, when he used to pass her side to go and play cricket. When they married, he didn’t have a regular job. “So we started the farm, and I went to help him. We work hard together and we still working hard. We start our day at 04:30hrs to start cooking and cleaning and go backdam,” she explained.
To this day, Hansmattee said she and her husband have enjoyed a good marriage with no serious problems ever coming up.