When the mood for exploration comes, we must venture into the areas of understanding heritage as it applies to what is relevant to survival now, based on what was successful along our timeline, serving past dire times.

Journey back to the dark shadows of the slave trade, the dawn of present Guyana. Their colonisation served to develop the survival of European nations. Plantation Slavery was populated by desperate and, thus, ruthless men in the majority of cases, though not all were like that. The plantation order required strong but dispensable humanity as the workforce.

Africa had its kingdoms, and with their wars of expansion, this saw access to European guns as a means to save the lives of its warriors through these weapons with swift victories, resulting in prisoners of war – at times, their noncombatant dependents.

These captives of such local conflicts produced persons who were traded for weapons with European Slave traders. There also existed an Arab Slave Trade of Africans at that time. However, that is not relevant to this article. It must also be noted, however, that this human trade for weapons was not intended for them to be slaves in Africa. The ‘enslavement factor’ became enforced upon their arrival in the ‘Americas.’

How did these ancestors survive? Africans subjected to slavery were susceptible to high mortality figures. They died because of the “unhealthy conditions in the colony.” Many diseases afflicted the enslaved, dysentery, typhus, smallpox, yaws, tetanus, etc.

Disease was aggravated by the intense rhythm of labour, coupled with inadequate sustenance. One must not forget that this extensive period also incorporated the incredible civilising of Demerara, where lands had to be retaken from the sea and swamps to accommodate extensive plantations with new drainage and canals. This rested upon the shoulders of the African enslaved.

Walter Rodney in his book ‘ A History of the Guyanese Working People 1881-1905’ quoted “the Venn Sugar commission of 1948 estimated that each square mile of Cane cultivation involved the provision of forty -nine miles of drainage canals and ditches and sixteen miles of the higher levels of waterways used for transportation and irrigation. The Commissioners noted that the original construction of these waterways must have entailed the moving of at least 100 million tons of soil.

This means that slaves moved 100 million tons of heavy, waterlogged clay while enduring conditions of perpetual mud and water” towards what is now termed the civilised colony of Demerara.
But the needs of the slave had to be addressed, and Berbice, before Demerara had a template that the enslavers applied, the slave garden, which was an integral part of the tribal realms of Africa and with the earliest slave plantations before the English.

The covenant with agriculture was well known to the enslaved. With this in place, the enslaved complemented their diet with products from their own gardens. Every traveller who visited Demerara in the earlier period marvelled at the slave gardens, where they grew yams, corn, and a variety of squashes. They also raised chickens, ducks, goats, and turkeys and (more rarely Pigs}.

In addition to the small gardens near their houses, slaves also had access to provision grounds: a parcel of land given to each family to grow what they needed. They worked on their gardens and provision grounds during their free time. Slaves sold their surplus to each other. Or to free Africans and whites in the neighbourhood. On Sundays, they took their produce to the Market at Mahaica or Stabroek-Georgetown. Market day was more than for commercial exchange. It was for socialising, meeting with friends, gambling, drinking, and participating in other forms of entertainment” -see Crowns of Glory, Tears of Blood. – Emilla Da Costa.

Thus,this is the answer to how the slave communities acquired the monies that they bought the first villages with and developed the villages along the template of the individual family ‘back dam agricultural lands’ common today with the villages. Their established system of dual agriculture is still used by cash crop farmers across Guyana today.
Among the crops for the table, they grew the healing plants and fruit trees that served during and after slavery towards their means of survival. In closing, there is a little Creole menu that impacted the tables of the very planters and their religious elite in a dominant way.

‘Sunday -Soup -cut of leg of boiled mutton, yams, mashed pumpkin, fried pumpkin pudding, cheese and an orange;
Monday – Soup – beef which had been boiled for the soup but hashed after it was taken from the soup, yams, fried pumpkin, bread and cheese and an orange.
Tuesday – Soup – hashed pork chops and potatoes, as well as cheese , beer, and wine, were served every day.’ See – CULTURAL POWER, RESISTANCE and PLURALISM colonial Guyana 1838-1900 by Brian L Moore