A farmer’s oasis

Last week the Pepperpot Magazine visited Cuffy Dam, Friendship Village, East Bank Demerara to highlight the way of life of the locals.

The community is close-knit and consists of like-minded residents lead a very simple way of life by mostly farming and doing other jobs outside the village to earn.

Friendship Village is bordered by Garden of Eden and New Hope communities. It is a village that is set deep within the backlands area.

The main access road, once a mud dam, was paved to an all-weather road in 2018, which significantly enhanced the lives of the locals and is about two and a half miles long.

Cuffy Dam, Friendship Village, is a large community with fertile soil composition, but this area is often flooded due to the lack of drainage and irrigation.

As such, farmers have to plant their crops in buckets and other things instead of cultivating directly into the soil.

There are dwelling houses only on one side of the village and it is basically a lot of farmlands managed by a land cooperative society.

In giving a historical background, villager and elder, Fitzroy Valentine, better known as Uncle Val, told the Pepperpot Magazine that Friendship is divided into 50 sections and 50 freed slaves bought it.

He added that he saw a transport that had the date 1856 inscribed on it to verify ownership, and it had the names Francis and Robert Roberts on it and they were related through kingship.

Valentine reported that when Friendship was bought, each person was given four sections of the land which was divided into a, b, c and d.

The elder stated that the rest of the land was undivided, remained underdeveloped in a block, and became ancestral lands.

Valentine related that after the land bought by the 50 freed slaves were parcelled they became individual proprietors.

The resident of Friendship said the name Cuffy Dam derived from the Ranger of the estate, which cultivated cotton and coffee and was owned by Mari and Cedric Smith.

The couple had one son who migrated but passed sometime later. Cedric Smith then passed away, leaving his wife, Mari, who later remarried Ranger Cuffy.

It was then another proprietor started to encroach on Mari’s land and she made an offer of sale.

Valentine narrated that Prem Persaud’s father-in-law bought some land in Cuffy Dam, Friendship and he wanted to rename it Prashad Nagar but exchanged the land for that of Prashad Nagar, in the city.

The resident noted that in the 1960s, during Linden Forbes Burnham’s rule he nationalised the land in Friendship, which Booker Tate then owned and it was an onion estate.

However, in the 1970s the state lands were then occupied by individuals who moved under the pretext of the then 1976 “Feed, clothe and house the nation” programme to live and farm in Friendship.

Valentine noted that 17 farmers began occupying the land and it was then the Minister of Agriculture visited and encouraged the group to form a cooperative society.

The farmer pointed out that the group began organising themselves and they realised it was too much for them and approached Pastor Herman Craig of the AME Zion Church at Grove and he mobilised the people to form a farmer’s coop society.

Valentine stated that the founding members are Yvonne Williams, Sunny Bumbury, Eugene Lewis, the London brothers, Rita Austin and June Williams.

The elder of the village explained that when the coop society was established it was a marketing/producers coop which was registered on August 11, 1982.

He disclosed that each of the 17 farmers were given a passbook and a set of rules and awarded 2.4 acres of land for farming only.