AN October day in the countryside. It is warm and tranquil, the streets bordered by modest houses in white with different colour accents with a few subtle changes to modernity.
The woman, in her thirties, stepping out of the car unto the gravel road breathed in the fresh air as though it was a life line.
“So good to be home,” she whispered to herself, as her suitcases were unloaded, to begin a much-desired vacation, to find peace within herself and to heal after the tragedy of her husband’s death. From the metropolitan life of skyscrapers, rush hours and the cold of North America that was home, to this place in a small tropical South America country that had been home, a real home.
“I wonder who’s still here?” she wondered.

All the family and friends she had left behind, the girls her age, for sure, would have gotten married in the rich tradition of lavish wedding celebrations.
The quiet was broken by a loud squeal.
“Eh eh, Julie girl, ah yuh dah?”
Julie turned around at the familiar voice to see who had spoken in a language she hadn’t heard in a long time.
“Oh my gosh,” she laughed, recognising one of her old friends from the neighbourhood.

“Anita, it’s you?”
“Yeah gyal and yuh come back from foreign.”
Julie hugged her old friend, tears of joy welling in her eyes, “It’s so good to see you.”
She remembered Anita as a tom-boy, who played cricket and marbles on the streets with the boys, but looking at her now, mature and married with children, Anita became a new person, her womanhood defined.
Nothing stays the same forever. Everything changes with time.
The neighbours came out to welcome her with hugs, kisses and tears. She had been away for over two decades and yet received such a show of affection. It touched her heart and aroused a deep sense of belonging to a place she was born, the people and its culture.

The spicy Indian curries was a delicious awakening to recognise her roots; the fresh fruits and cool coconut water; the religious songs early in the morning and the chutney beats in the evening. The one thing that held her in awe was the language, the sweet rawness; a blend of Indigenous, African, English and Hindi that formed the unique Creolese language. For every day spent and for almost everyone she saw, a memory was attached, like leaves to a tree. She embraced it for it was all she had of her girlhood days that she could impart to her children.
A loud singing awakened her from a midday siesta lying in a hammock under the mango tree and she recognised uncle Bikarma, the old man who sang old melodies after a few drinks.
Julie spoke to him and gave him some money and he looked at her vaguely, then he exclaimed, “Hai Ram, is Lakeram daughta, God bless yuh chile, yuh grow up suh nice.”
Julie smiled and watched him as he hobbled down the street.

His drink buddy, Uncle Willie, had passed on, a very lively character who one day had caught two ugly toads from the drain to scare his nagging wife. She had run over to Aunty Galo’s yard screaming, “Help, de man runnin’ me wid crappo!”
Aunty Galo scared of the hideous creatures, had run, screaming, through Julie’s mother’s yard who also ran, and it was a really funny scene seeing the three women running up the road screaming and Uncle Willie behind them with the toads.
The people of this settlement were like one big family, limbs of a tree, its blossoms and fruits.
Julie cherished every moment as she retraced her steps to her girlhood days, remembering vividly her best friend who was like a sister to her and the ‘grocery shop’ they used to run with empty milk tins, soap boxes, candy wrappers and the mud and water cakes they baked for the ‘cake shops’.

They used to pick and sell English cherries on the street corner to buy sweets and pencils, and the guava trees they used to climb.
Her friend Maria had a ladies Raleigh bicycle that they rode a lot, racing around the streets on turns and Julie would never forget that day when she turned the corner so fast that she didn’t see Uncle Billie’s donkey until it was too late and knocked the animal down, but amazingly she didn’t fall and had hurriedly ridden away. Uncle Billie came later that afternoon, fuming to complain to her father.
“Dis ah wan race track?!” he quarrelled, “Dem chilren’ dis getting too wile on dem bicycle, she knack me po’ donkey down!”
Julie’s father had apologised to appease the old man and Julie was banned from riding for a week and if that wasn’t bad enough, Marie was also handed a ban for crashing into an old lady’s gate and scaring the woman out of her wits.

Julie loved the warm mornings and cool nights, sitting on the veranda chatting with her old friends, whilst the children played on the streets.
One night when the moon slid behind some clouds, Shanta, one of her friends, asked, “Yuh remember Deepan, de ghost who used to walk through de streets?”
“Good Gad, chile, dah was ah real frightening time,” Demitri said.

Julie remembered Deepan’s ghost, a white apparition, haunting the neighbourhood for almost a week, children so scared they couldn’t even peep through the cracks in the wall. It had puzzled the men, who were not scared of ghosts, until Uncle Krish, ‘The Cherry King’ decided to stake out the ghost and discovered lo and behold, it was his own brother-in-law in disguise with a white sheet, trying to drive a scare into his wife, so she could stop nagging and bullying him. It was a little tale that evoked much laughter, so many little episodes that created stories upon stories to tell and retell, of the days of the lives of the people in that settlement, as time moved on and memories stayed for the new generation born.

It would always be a place to love and at the end of her vacation, Julie felt reborn, a tinge of sadness in her heart that she was leaving again, but a part of her life was in the script of the stories, that will be told and retold until she came back again, because there is no place like home.