Reclaiming the Past

2002-09-05

RECLAIMING the past

By CALDEO SOOKRAM

When reggae artiste Burning Spear sings “Christopher Columbus was a damn blasted liar” you can hear the conviction of truth in his voice—One of the biggest lies Columbus perpetrated was against the indigenous peoples he found in this part of the world.

What with their tawdry beads, bits of glass and diseases the Spanish all but destroyed the culture and civilisation they found when they first came to their New World.

Now, centuries later, some of this is being healed through cultural exchanges between indigenous peoples. One such exchange is currently taking place between indigenous peoples of Guyana and Trinidad and Tobago.

Currently, there is a five-member team of indigenous people from Guyana teaching handicraft skills and the preparation of native foods, to the Caribs of Trinidad.

One member from the Arawak tribe is Neville Gouveia of Demerara.

Gouveia, a 70-year-old father of 12, is a master craftsman and can build carat leaf houses, bows and arrows, canoes, blow pipes, walking sticks, spoons and other kitchen utensils.

Other members of the team include Lucy Barker, Ruby Savoury, Ingrid Calistro and Hyacinth Ruffino. They have taken up temporary residence at the Santa Rosa Community Centre, Paul Mitchell Street, Arima and will return to their country soon.

Hyacinth Ruffino is the group’s co-ordinator and spokesperson. When questioned, she replied in slow speech and chose her words carefully. “The purpose of our visit to this country is to assist the Caribs here (Trinidad) in maintaining their culture, by means of teaching them the language and food preparation,” she said recently.

“This is not my first visit. I was here in 1993 for the purpose of an indigenous craft exhibition,” she added. For the past nine years, Hyacinth Ruffino has been visiting the Carib community in Arima and maintaining links with its members.

While Ruffino spoke, the other ladies were busy inside the kitchen, peeling and grating cassava to extract the flour from the water.

Ruby Savoury is the person designated to handle the “matapee”. The matapee is piece of indigenous handicraft made from wild forest vines and longish in shape. The grated cassava is placed inside the matapee so that the dripping water can fall into a basin underneath.

Cassava is the staple diet of the indigenous people of Guyana. From cassava they make cassava bread. Casareep (pepper pot sauce) is made from the water extract and cassava powder is made into farine.

Cassava also yields starch for clothes and tapioca for making porridge. Casareep is used for cooking meat and fish, according to Hyacinth Ruffino.

Ruby Savoury spoke very little. Like her other colleagues Ingrid Calistro and Lucy Barker, they stared at strangers in silent curiosity or perhaps in deep admiration.

“This place is like New York to me,” said Neville Gouveia. This is his first trip to Trinidad and he is thrilled to see modern highways and lots of fancy buildings. “We have the same type of trees like you have in Trinidad,” he said. In Guyana, he is a commercial fisherman and hunter.

Many of the indigenous people in Guyana are adopting Western lifestyles today, he said. “There is inter-racial marriage and young people from inland tribes wearing designer jeans, shoes and T-shirts,” he said with some concern.

The indigenous culture in Guyana is taking a lot of beating from Westernisation, he claimed. Lots of natives in Guyana are nowadays driving tractors, big trucks and cars and going abroad to study, he said.

At the Santa Rosa Community Centre, Neville Gouveia is the man in charge of teaching the art of covering roofs with palm leaves. That skill he learned from his grandfather. As he worked on a small shed placing the leaves neatly and tying them together, Christo Adonis, the medicine man of the Arima Carib community, looked on with keen interest.

“Dai methe,” (I am tired) said Gouveia in Lokono, his native language, which he spoke fluently. “Now, for ‘good morning’, it’s ‘satho kasakobo’,” he said. “Taboska dai” means I am sleepy and “Dai hamosha” means “I am hungry,” he added. And it was really time for him to get something to eat after working hard all morning.