AT 72 years old, Hestel David has a pain-free life and is very effervescent due to her bubbly personality and full-of-life attitude.

David is a resident of Lighttown Village, East Bank Berbice, and for her age, she is very active and would still go to her farm daily via a speed boat across the Berbice River to Plantation Fern, West Bank Berbice, accompanied by her sons and husband to do a full day’s work.

She is a very pleasant person who doesn’t allow anything to bother her, and once she gets to go to tend to her crops, especially her chi-chira, she is happily living a simple way of life farming in a small community where she is well-known.

David told the Pepperpot Magazine that life in the ‘black and white’ days to now has changed a lot. Back then, they didn’t have a lot but they were happy. These days, she says they have so much, yet food items are so expensive.

She is the mother of eight, grandmother of 20 and great-grandmother of 14.

The village elder added that her life revolved around hard labour -farming – their only source of income, and she is from a family of farmers just like her husband, who is a simple man.

David has been farming all her life, and it is a job she likes because sowing seeds that grow food is indeed a blessing and she takes pride in it.

They have crops of ground provisions, cash crops and permanent crops, fruits and vegetables, and three of her sons would assist on the farm along with her husband, Samuel David.

She stated that the village is usually quiet and the main economic activity of the locals is farming. They are a group of hardworking regular folks trying to make an honest living, doing what they love best.

David has six sons and one daughter and they were all brought up in the right way, disciplined and well-mannered. She explained that that is how young people should be; obedient, and they should honour their parents and elders.

David explained that in the olden days, young people had respect and they were moulded to lead a good productive life by utilising their inbred skills to earn.

She stated that two of her daughters-in-law reside with them and they have a fairly good life and they would assist in selling the produce at the New Amsterdam Market, but she would still do her own chores and prepare meals.

David reported that electricity is necessary in Lighttown Village, a thickly populated place with a lot of children and youths, for them to benefit from the technological era and to be able to access the internet like others.

In giving a bit of history of the village, David told the Pepperpot Magazine that there is no fancy living in Lighttown since they are all normal people trying to earn and the job that is at hand is farming.

From what she was told by elders long before her, Lighttown Village was bought by freed slaves and a village was established over time; the lands were handed down to generations by the first settlers, whose offspring still reside on the ancestral lands.

She explained that the then Governor was named Light, but she could not remember any more of his names, and thus the village name derived Lighttown.

David noted that many people left the village while the old people have long passed on and there are no strangers in Lighttown because almost everyone is related in some way.

Her home is a safe haven for many dogs and at one time, they had 15 dogs, but these days they have only six with a few puppies and they are responsible for security.

“I look forward to going to the farm every day and I would so do early in the mornings to catch the tide because you have to go by boat and I would get a lot done before the sun comes up. It is my form of exercise and it gives me something to do and I feel happy farming,” she said.

Samuel David told the Pepperpot Magazine that at 75 years old, he is still a farmer. It is the only job he knows and he is from a long line of farmers.

He added that his great-grandfather was a man called Kwanza Johnson and he was a freed slave. He is a descendant of his fore parents who came from French Guiana to Guyana as indentured slaves to work on the sugar plantation.

David stated that his foreparents worked as slaves at Highburg Plantation where sugar cane was cultivated and after they were freed, they pooled their monies and bought Lighttown Village.

He reported that the community has about 100 residents and 40 houses, and most people are farmers.

The farmer told the Pepperpot Magazine that he began farming as a boy when he was still in school, and after completing high school, he went full-time into farming.

“I feel good because I can set a seed, care for it until it has grown and then reap the fruits of my labour and for me that is very rewarding to grow food then take it to the market,” he said.

Delano Williams photos saved in a folder in Graphics as Berbice Juliansburg etc. in Feb. 21, 2023.