Childhood Memories - A Wistful Tale

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Grahams’ Moravian Primary School on the northern side of the abandon railway behind Atlantic Ville was a wonderful small school that I attended from the time I moved from William Street, Cambellville in 1976. In the schoolyard there were two buildings used for primary and secondary education and a two feet wide concrete passageway separated them. To the western side of the school was a large burial ground running from the railway line to the Moravian church just behind what is called the forty feet sideline trench at the back of Atlantic Ville. To the east of the school was a large plot of land with shrubs, bushes, razor grass, cork and monkey apple trees.

What fun I had at Graham’s Hall! We played cricket, thieves and police, war break, marbles and a host of other games. We climbed the tombs and were scared like hell to peek into those that had cracks wide enough to see the bones of the dead. We ate the downs from the lone tree in the graveyard and were not afraid of dying. We learnt music in the churchyard from a bearded musician who lived in Industry Front.

There was one day that I went to school with a bright orange shirt and my class teacher asked what I think I was doing. She chased me home to take it off. There were days that I went barefooted to school when the holes in our Bata boots got too big a hole to wear. And on some midday when we went home we had milk and rice with sugar or biscuit and sugar water for lunch, and we were happy. We did not complain. There were days too when we had good meals, like chicken curry and rice with liquefy yellow split peas. On most occasions we had fish curry from freshly caught fishes from the Atlantic Ocean.

The teachers were really excellent at Graham’s hall. Mr. Bacchus who made us learnt from 2 to 24 times table. There was Ms. July who taught the common entrance students and from whose class many later went on to Queens College and subsequently became renowned scholars. But I mostly remember Mr. Bachus who made us knelt on the hard floor with our arms in the air holding our heavy book bags whenever we made a mistake. He drilled us in spelling and the multiplication tables in the classroom and on some days in the schoolyard like we were in the army. Luckily I used to get most correct and save myself a flogging on the behind or in the palms where the welts used to make you grimaced when you sat down or hold anything with your hands.

Childhood Memories - A Wistful Tale

Best-love-ever: "Childhood Memories - A wistful Tale "

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As I lay there with vacant eyes staring into the roof, listening to distant music floating on off as the wind huffed and puffed through the mountain that towered over my apartment. Intruding into my trend of thoughts now and then, I could even hear dogs in the distant barking at the stray cows and goats that wondered through the mountainsides in the sleepy little town of Road Town. Then methodically as if propelled by an unseen force my mind kept wondering back to my homeland. Recollecting the pleasant memories.

The early morning when my mother would force us boys wake early, to light the fireside shaped like a two burner kerosene stove, then to peel garlic and to cut up the onions that made our eyes run tears, then to wipe the steps clean with a piece of cloth and zex soap before we proceed down the road with two buckets each or four one gallon paint pots each, to fetch water to fill a forty five gallon drum. Our arms did grow long from this arduous task. And by the time we finished to get ready for school our hands were branded red and we had corns and blisters that burn.

Childhood Memories - A wistful Tale

Best-love-ever

It is not easy for me to tell you that I have lain in my bed down in Pasea Estate, in Tortola, many nights, thinking of beautiful Guyana. I remember as a boy growing up in Industry a village on the outskirts of Greater Georgetown, standing in our yard that had no fence, I would watch the coconut trees, tall, almost elegant, swaying drunkenly, teasing the human mind, they would snap at any moment, only to straighten and allow you to breathe a loud sigh of relief.

In the nights as we lay down to sleep on the hard floor covered with rice bags, followed by beddings, I could hear through the cracks in wooded walls, the mango trees singing a melody of their own, daring you to listen for the plod of a fallen ripe fruit from its stem and forcing you to rise early in the morning to race other siblings, to grabbed the fallen mangoes from the dry hard ground and taste the succulent freshness.

(to be continued )

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