The village, that is!

LAST week, the Pepperpot Magazine visited the rice-producing village of Champayne, Burma Road, Mahaicony to highlight the way of life of the locals.

Champayne village is divided into two sections, east and west, and according to elders in the community, it was in the west all the people resided until it started being more developed.
Most of the villagers moved upfront instead of remaining three and a half miles down a mud dam.

The village is tucked away between Calcutta and Catherine, and it is found several miles down the Burma Road, Mahaicony.

Champayne village is a tiny community with dwelling houses scattered all over the land and it is a large-scale rice-producing place with vast rice fields that go on for miles. Champayne is a little village at one side of Burma Road with rice fields surrounding it.

The village comprises of mostly Indo Guyanese farmers, and they are hard workers who toil the lands to earn.

The dwelling houses are mostly in one row and side by side while some are behind each other and it takes a bit of walking down a muddy track to get to those houses.

The people of Champayne village are curious but friendly and will not hesitate to invite you to sit and chat for a bit, even though they are go-getters; busy people doing the most they can to earn.

It is a place of rice farmers and this community produces a lot of rice all year round, but the people are simple and down-to-earth.

Champayne is a breezy and very quiet place to reside and enjoy the life of a being a farmer.

A handful of locals are cash crop farmers who mostly plant for self-sufficiency while others sell their produce.

Along Burma Road there is the sprawling complex of the Guyana Rice Development Board and Research Centre.

No public transportation system goes through this village, and those without their own vehicles have to utilize taxis, which is costly and run up to $1,000 per one-way trip to the main public road.

Sections of the main access road is asphalted while; other sections are crush and run, and the last leg is made up of a mud dam.

There is a tiny wooden mandir at the edge of the village, on one side, and it is near two drainage canals.

Burma Road is about six miles to the end and only part of it is all-weather road and at the back, there is Air Services airfield and along the road there is Saj Rice Mill and many old and abandoned buildings that were once occupied when the area was abuzz with activities.

On this road, there is a village called Burma Housing Scheme and it has descendants of some of the first settlers.

Burma Housing Scheme has some houses, two shops, a school and rice fields. It was established in 1968 when the rice mill was then state-owned and things were good in Burma.

Back then, they had more than 600 workers at the rice mill and people from all over came to find work and eventually settled in the village.

Sadly today, only sections of large, sprawling, old, weathered buildings remain of what was once a booming rice mill which was eventually privatised.

Some old oil boilers, workshops, stores, mills, and silos are still there, but many outbuildings, such as the administrative building, are gone.

“At that time, the train used to pass through the village carrying parboiled rice and other goods and when the rice mill operations folded, it was leased to some foreigners and today a group of foreign investors are operating the rice mill,” Chairman of Burma Housing Scheme, Japeth Williams said in an interview last year.

Williams remembered that when he used to work at the MARDS Rice Mill, the area was transformed into a large shopping plaza where people were plentiful, selling all kinds of things and people used to stay overnight for the Friday Market Day.

He recalled that Friday was pay day for rice workers and it was big spending then and things were really good.

Williams reported that Burma Housing Scheme was developed for rice mill workers because then the government allocated lots to rice mill workers and government houses were built for them. Just two of these colonial-style wooden houses still exist.

“The sad part about living in here is we do not have the rice lands to cultivate rice but the outsiders do. Many acres of lands were leased to them and they have control of it,” Williams said.
Williams added that even though lands were promised to them, they never benefitted except for 23 acres, which the villagers rotate to plant rice.