Five of them were afterwards burnt with small fire, or rather, roasted, and continually nipped with pincers; and another stood on the wood-heap and died at once. After this the fire was slowly lighted around Atta so that his agonies should last longer; through which it happened then, that notwithstanding they kindled the fire at eleven o’clock; he still remained alive half-an-hour later. It was a matter of surprise that they all let themselves be burnt, broken on the wheel, hanged, etc., without shrieking or moaning. The only thing that Atta said was to the Governor, frequently calling out in his negro language, ‘My God, what have I done? The Governor is right. I suffer what I have deserved. I thank him!’ This was the end of that renowned monster whose blood-thirstiness and cruelty brought about the death of so many Christians and the almost irreparable destruction of this Colony.
Even while I was in Georgetown reading this account by Hartsinck of the Berbice slave-rebellion, Christians in British Guiana were protesting at the government’s plan to take over control of aided schools. Christianity was in danger in British Guiana. Mass meetings of the descendants of Atta’s rebels were held; a missionary wrote to Time magazine. So quickly have the postures been adopted, the cries of the jehad; so quickly has recent history been forgotten. And this history remains important. Although since emancipation Christianity has asserted itself and has in many ways rescued the colonial society from utter corruption, it has not lost its racial associations, its association with power and prestige and progress. The ministers of God, like the senior administrators of the civil service, were expected to be white; it is only of late that the white collars of church and civil service have begun to set off a certain nigrescence. The striving towards the now accommodating faith of an unaccommodating race has inevitably created deep psychological disturbances. It has confirmed the colonial in his role as imitator, the traveller who never arrives. ‘Indian girls not good. They don’t know anything.’ In his attitude to his people, Lucio spoke not only for the Amerindian convert but also for the East Indian. As for the descendants of Atta’s rebels, it is the cardinal article of their faith.
I was glad I had insisted about the hut, for it began to rain during the night: a pleasant noise on the sheltering leaves. ‘Excuse me, sir,’ I heard Lucio say. ‘Can Nicolas and I move our hammocks here?’ They had been sleeping in the open; and it was astonishing to see them in pyjamas as in the morning to find them pulling out toothbrushes and tubes of Colgate.
On the way back we came upon an old Amerindian bowed down under an enormous load in his warishi carrier. Frustratingly, the packing cases were Heineken beer cartons; and the whole load was topped with a brand-new panama hat. Quite half an hour later we met the rest of his family crossing a rocky riverbed: two very old women and two girls, all barefooted, all carrying loads. One of the women held a rum bottle containing a white liquid labelled ‘The Mixture’. The forest appeared to be full of Amerindians that morning. A little later, at a cool shallow stream that ran over rocks as large and flat as paving stones, we found the guitar-player from Santa Helena resting with his family and dog on the high dry rocks beside the bank. They were going back to Santa Helena: the walk would take a week. They had built a fire on one rock, and the guitar-player, who wore a knife-chain, shoes and socks, was using his knife to make a sort of warishi for his two cardboard suitcases. He asked for a cigarette. Then, suddenly in the Amerindian way, he left, the dog tremulously following through the shallow but swift stream and frantically wagging his tail when after two failures he managed to climb up to the other bank.
Nearing Paruima, we came out of the forest into a clearing, where a low crumbling mud hut was set in a small cultivation of giant plantain trees and clumps of giant sugarcane. A family was sitting in the sun in the yellow dirty yard. The young girl and the women, in dirty sack-like cotton dresses, fled to the darkness of the hut. Two tiny pink rubber dolls were left on the ground among bits of chewed sugarcane. The man, relaxed in the dirt, was eating sugarcane: he bit, chewed, sucked, swallowed, spat out. We exchanged greetings and walked on. When the hut was about fifty yards behind, Lucio said, ‘Would you wait for me here?’ They had been invited to a meal. We walked back. The boys took off their warishis and sat down on low benches in the yard. The women put a grater on the ground, a straw mat on the grater, and cassava bread on the mat. They brought out various enamel pots: one with vegetables in an oily stew, one with dasheen, one with black-eye peas. Lucio and Nicolas used pieces of cassava bread as dippers and ate from the pots. Then from another pot and with great contentment they drank a thick white liquid. Their hosts looked on approvingly, the man laughing and chattering in the yard, the women standing silent in the hut. I was given bananas and sugarcane.*
‘Why, hello there!’ Mr Winter called, as I came up the hillside. And he was at once full of questions. What about the wild hogs? The logs over the gullies? (The Chinese boy had spoken of these logs and I believe had frightened Mr Winter as much as he had frightened me.) Were the boys all right? Did they ever leave me behind? Was I tired when I got there? How long did it take me to get my second wind?
‘It took you two hours, did it? That’s the way I woulda done it. Just foo-lin’ along for those two hours. Say, what was the water like up there? White or black? I sure have had enough of this black water. With all this washing that’s been going on, the whole river’s polluted for sure.’ He gave me a little of his news. He had rowed some distance up the river and found a white-water stream. So he had at last had a proper bathe. ‘Say, do you know this yellow fever they’ve been going on about? I don’t think it’s yellow fever at all. It’s hepatitis.’
I didn’t know the word.
‘You’re lucky. I once knew a man who had hepatitis. They’ve had twelve cases. And that’s enough for a fair-sized town. I know it’s bad not eating their food and things like that. But if I ask you to my home in the U-nited States – and I would love to have you – and if I had hepatitis, I wouldn’t ask you to my home. I would take you out to a restaurant or something.’ The pastor’s dinner invitation still rankled. ‘Do you know,’ he added conspiratorially, ‘I boil the water even in my hotel in Georgetown? Boil it and put it in the fridge. To cool.’
In the next room the Negro teacher and the Chinese boy were talking about boiled eggs. Food seemed to be on everybody’s mind.
When I got out of my hammock in the morning Mr Winter was dressed and packed. His mosquito net had been taken down and was doubtless in one of his polythene sacks. We had coffee; and, waiting for the launch, we talked about the water problem and the sanitation problem.
‘They’re gonna have one hell of a sanitation problem. Right now that latrine smells and has so many flies. I don’t know what it’s going to be like when they get those twenty-five boys they’ve been talking about. Twenty-five boys in full spate. Boy, they’re gonna have a problem.’
By eleven o’clock there was no sign of the launch. We made more coffee. Sipping it, tasting the black river water, we spoke of the deliciousness of pure, tasteless water. I offered the pawpaw the pastor had given me from one of his own trees.
‘No, thenk you! Never touch soft fruit.’
But he took one of the Amerindian’s bananas. We ate slowly, without speaking. The banana didn’t help thirst or the craving for fresh water.
‘You know,’ he said after some time, ‘you know – I sure don’t like to mention it now – but you know those cans of Trinidad orange juice? Those large cans with the black-and-orange label? I sure would like to have one now. The next time I come on one of these trips I’m gonna stock up with those cans. They’re heavy, but they’re really worth it.’
It was while I was negotiating for one of the mission’s over-large, over-ripe coconuts that the launch was announced. We ran down to the river, got into the open launch, and sat. There were delays. The sun was hot, the water dazzling and there was no breeze.
‘I suppose,’ Mr Winter said – and now I admired him for his control – ‘I suppose now they’ll go
on to the village and fool around there a little.’
So indeed they did, and after a while we joined them. There we saw the reason for the delay: a new single-engined aeroplane on the landing field across the river from the village. It belonged to the mission and had just arrived, piloted by an American in green trousers and a green shirt, with the Portuguese pilot from Kamarang Mouth as passenger. It was now half past one and extremely hot. I spoke to Palmer about crops, but without enthusiasm. Even if we started right away it was now too late for us to get to Kamarang Mouth that day. We could travel on the river only by daylight and would have to spend the night at the Amerindian village half-way down. Then the pastor suggested that we should go back to Kamarang Mouth on the plane.
Half an hour later, after a view of the perverse windings and loops of the Kamarang over which we would have spent a day, the Portuguese and American talking all the way of planes and routes just as other men talk of cars and bypasses, we were at Kamarang Mouth.
I loaded an Amerindian boy with my bags and almost ran to Seggar’s refrigerator. I had two beers, the first quickly, the second slowly. Feeling the cold wet bottle in my hand, I luxuriated in the heat. For the first time for days tobacco had a taste. I inhaled deeply and swallowed and gazed down the Mazaruni to where Roraima was hidden by haze. When I went over to the rest house I found Mr Winter lying on his back across the bed, his feet dangling, his hat unhinged without being off, a fulfilled, beatific expression on his face. He raised a languid hand and pointed to the table.
On it I saw a tin of Trinidad orange juice.
‘There it is,’ he said. ‘Left some for you.’
I didn’t tell him about the beer. But the orange juice he had left scarcely came to an inch in a tumbler.
‘Oh, by the way,’ he said, when I had emptied the tin, ‘drink as much of that as you can. Drink it all. I’ve had my share.’
An hour or so later, when calm had returned to both of us and we were preparing once more to leave – a Dakota was coming in unexpectedly and would take us that very afternoon to the coast – Mr Winter said, ‘That orange juice sure was good.’ A smile broke and spread slowly over his face. ‘Drunk more than my fair share.’ He started to laugh. ‘Drunk more than half. Nearly drunk out the whole can. Did you get much?’
I showed him how much.
‘Gee, I sure am sorry about that.’ But he was smiling. ‘It just looks like I drunk more than my fair share.’ I confessed about my beer.
‘It sure did taste good. Boy! I am sure looking forward to getting back to Georgetown. I’ve got two bottles in the fridge. Boiled. Keeping in the fridge for one whole week. Two bottles. As soon as I get back I’m gonna drink an awful lot of water.’
‘No beer?’
‘Never touch alcohol. But I sure love water.’
* For the Hollywood-style stories of Ben Hart and other Rupununi characters the reader is recommended to consult Michael Swan’s The Marches of El Dorado.
* ‘The aforesaid Indians having brought the expedition to a close, sixty or seventy of them, armed with bow-and-arrow, returned to Dageraat to report to the Governor, saying that they had scoured the forests throughout, finding eleven Negroes whom they had killed, in proof of which they produced a little stick with as many nicks cut in it, and asking for some reward. The Governor gave their captains, six in number, each a piece of salamfore, two jugs of rum, some mirrors and other gee-gaws as a present, with which, being quite satisfied, they returned upcountry.’ The Story of the Slave Rebellion in Berbice – 1762, by J.J. Hartsinck (Amsterdam, 1770). Translated by Walter E. Roth. Published in the Journal of the British Guiana Museum and Zoo, September 1960.
Likewise, though with less success, Moskito Indians from Central America were used to hunt down Maroon slaves in Jamaica in the 1730s.
* In the 1961 elections Dr Jagan won 20 seats, Mr Burnham 11, the United Force four. Some months later there were Negro riots, and after that an American-supported strike. Many people were killed. Dr Jagan was finally defeated by a system of proportional representation.
* Just one week later Mrs Jagan was attacked while she was alone at home.
* These facts, and the quotation, are taken from an article, ‘The Village Movement’, by Allan Young. Mr Young has dealt with the matter more fully in his book, The Approaches to Local Self Government in British Guiana.
* From William Morris:
Hark the rolling of the thunder:
Lo the sun and lo thereunder
Riseth wrath and hope and wonder.
* ‘Whilst there is no proof that the sugarcane is indigenous in America, it nevertheless can be found in the remotest Amerindian settlements, and of types never now seen on the plantations. These canes probably developed from cuttings obtained from the early settlers.’ Vincent Roth: ‘Amerindian Influence on Settlers’. Columbus took cane-cuttings to the West Indies on his second voyage.
4. SURINAM
– The language in which we are speaking is his before it is mine. How different are the words home, Christ, ale, master, on his lips and mine! I cannot speak or write these words without unrest of spirit. His language, so familiar and so foreign, will always be for me an acquired speech. I have not made or accepted its words. My voice holds them at bay. My soul frets in the shadow of his language.
James Joyce: A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
IN 1669 a citizen of the island of Barbados (166 square miles) wrote in a letter of ‘a place much cried up of late, taken from the Dutch, called New York’. The contempt was justified, for even fifty years later Barbados was exporting to England nearly as much as all the American colonies put together. What had happened was that in 1667, by the treaty of Breda, the Dutch had surrendered New York to the British and taken Surinam in exchange. The Dutch thought then they had got the better bargain, and think so still, because, as Dutch school children are taught, the British have lost New York while the Dutch still have Surinam.
Surinam, former Dutch Guiana, lies next door to British Guiana on the north-eastern coast of South America; and although the Corentyne, British Guiana’s easternmost region, and Nickerie, Surinam’s westernmost, have much more in common with one another than with their respective capitals, to fly in one hour from Georgetown to Paramaribo is more unsettling than to fly from London to Amsterdam. For suddenly Holland, almost unknown in Trinidad and British Guiana except as the exporter of beer and powdered milk, becomes important, far more important than England is to Trinidad or British Guiana. It isn’t only the surprise at hearing Negroes and East Indians, to all appearances just like those of British Guiana and Trinidad, speaking Dutch; nor seeing, in a West Indian setting, the Ingang and Uitgang and Niet Rooken and Verboden Toegang signs one had before seen only in Holland; nor the sedate Dutch buildings of the administration in Dr J. C. de Mirandastraat. The talk everywhere is of ‘Hol-lond’ and ‘Omsterdom’. In Surinam Holland is Europe; Holland is the centre of the world. Even America recedes. ‘The first thing you’ve got to get out of your head,’ an American official said to me, ‘is that you’re in Latin America. Why, no shutters even went up over the windows at election time. The most that happened was that some members of the opposition who lost left the country. And they went to Holland.’ Notwithstanding that since 1955 Surinam has been virtually independent, an equal partner in the Netherlands kingdom with the Netherlands Antilles, New Guinea and Holland itself, Surinam feels only like a tropical, tulip-less extension of Holland; some Surinamers call it Holland’s twelfth province.
Nearly every educated person has been to Holland, and the affection for Holland is genuine. There is none of the racial resentment which the British West Indian brings back from England. The atmosphere is relaxing. With Negroes, East Indians, Dutch, Chinese and Javanese, Surinam has a population more mixed than that of British Guiana and Trinidad. Yet it does not have the racial problems of these territories, though there is inevitably a growing rivalry between the Negroes and the East Indians, the two largest groups. With Du
tch realism the Surinamers have avoided racial collision not by ignoring group differences but by openly acknowledging them. The political parties are racial, but the government is a coalition of these parties. Every group is therefore committed to the development of the country. The Dutch complain of Negro hostility, but the complaints, like the demonstrations of hostility, are muted; and in spite of all that has happened in Indonesia and Holland relations between the Dutch and Javanese are cordial.
With no inflammatory political issues, no acute racial problem, and with the Dutch Government contributing two-thirds of the money (one-third gift, one-third loan) for the development of the country, nationalism would seem an unlikely and perverse growth. But a nationalism has arisen which is unsettling the established order, proving that the objection to colonialism in the West Indies is not only economic or political or, as many believe, simply racial. Colonialism distorts the identity of the subject people, and the Negro in particular is bewildered and irritable. Racial equality and assimilation are attractive but only underline the loss, since to accept assimilation is in a way to accept a permanent inferiority. Nationalism in Surinam, feeding on no racial or economic resentments, is the profoundest anti-colonial movement in the West Indies. It is an idealist movement, and a rather sad one, for it shows how imprisoning for the West Indian his colonial culture is. Europe, the Surinam Nationalist says, is to be rejected as the sole source of enlightenment; Africa and Asia are to be brought in as well. But Europe is in the Nationalist’s bones and he feels that Africa and Asia are contemptible and ridiculous. The Dutch language is to be rejected – since ‘my soul frets in the shadow of his language’ – and its place taken by – what? A limited local dialect which used to be called talkie-talkie.