EMANCIPATION was not a continuous celebration for the formerly enslaved African population, but rather a challenge of survival. Thus, they persisted, carrying the memory of past hardships into the new day to shape a better future than the past.
Their first challenge arose when the requests from the Africans outlined labour costs and benefit allowances for food and medicine, which were denied. Another issue was the taxes levied on the purchases of former plantations that the freed Africans had bought, which were then increased to facilitate the plantations with funds to import indentured labourers.
A major clash occurred in a strike in 1842, supported by indentured labourers from Sierra Leone. Tensions reached a peak in 1848, but the new indentured labourers from Portugal and India did not support the strike. The village taxes were meant to finance village drainage, but the planter-governed Colonial Government used them to finance indentured labour. Thus, village agriculture and infant loss were affected because the proposed drainage did not occur.
However, during the late 1870s, some subjects of French Guiana began prospecting in Cuyuni. This was the pilot group that contributed to lighting the torch that launched the saving grace of many villages—whether it was luck or a lenient act of the Faiths.
Though the Gold Bush was by no means a simple adventure, it enabled many, and many did lose their lives. The Gold Bush created a chapter of rich culture in folk songs and bush lore. It brought the emancipated British subject closer to his land of suffering than to the shores of his African beginnings before the slave ships came. That past will always be valued through the drums, rituals, and memory of his folk being.
But this was a land where the village lay in which he was born and suckled; for example, the lyrics of the national song “MY GUYANA, ELDORADO”:
“My Guyana, Eldorado, best of all the world to me,
In my heart where’er I wander, memory enshrineth thee;
All my hopes and aspirations, all my longings only tie,
Everlasting bonds around us as the fleeting years roll by.”
It was by the depth of passing on the knowledge of the past, while embracing the wisdom of today, that people survived.
Emancipation is a celebration of seeking answers, understanding the worlds that envelop, and more so, the individual worlds that we are.