TRADITION LOST?

We often wish that we could capture good times in a bottle, release them, become engulfed by them and live them once again but this isnt Fanatasia, thats what memories are for!

Mutryce A. Williams BBA CTM

It is only as we get older we realize what fun we used to have or how sweet and simple life used to be. We often remark to friends about the good times that we had and comment sadly on how evident it is that our unique Kittitianess is being lost.  I reminisce on the traditional Easters of my childhood, which were quite different from the conventional Easters of today.  I often wish that I could capture those good times in a bottle, release them and live them once again, but thats what memories are for. Easter in St. Pauls was a fun time. It was a culturally rich time. It was a time when the mood changed from somber to happy in a day or two. It wasnt a time for Easter bunnies, baskets or eggs. It was a time for Easter programs, konkie, kite flying, down de bay and cassava bread.

Easter is date season. Church Ghaut, Rawlins or what we call Fentine were the prime places to be. There were the warnings as one set out to look dates, member to watch out for the stones and no forget dat date prickle dig hard. Well, there are two chops in my head and one on my forehead as a result of my date looking days with my cousin Jermaine.

The days before Easter were preoccupied with April Fools Day, John Look Up and John Look Down and there is a rhyme that I dont quite remember but I know the words Salt fish Scale or Tail was in it. It was a myth filled time. There is the myth that around Easter if you stood in the mirror naked at exactly 12:00 sharp you would see the one who you are going to spend the rest of your life with or that there is a plant that you would cut and blood would run from it. I dont quite remember though why we would put the egg in a basin of water and leave it in the sun, but we did that several times. I would have to ask.

The Christmas curtains would come down and the Easter curtains would go up. You would spend forever picking out the right Easter cards. The cake baking would resume. The women of the village would have reserved their cassava, coconut, and sweet potatoes to make cassava bread and konkie. There would be little comments as to how much who wanted and why that person wants so much and that sort of thing. The salt fish or mackerel would be soaking for the feast of salt fish, mackerel, dumpling, corn (fungi) and sweet potato on Good Friday.  There is Palm Sunday, which as a child you dont quite understand but you know that you have to wear green to church and that the church must be adorned with palms fronds, so you scurry through your clothes looking for the appropriate and green article to wear on that Sunday. My grandmother loved Palm Sunday and took it rather seriously; I guess that was because Easter was on its way. On Holy Thursday you have what my grandmother referred to as joint service with Tabernacle and Dieppe Bay Methodist churches. Then there was the bun part of the service, which was my favourite. Everyone was given a bun and would share with the other members of the church. As children we discriminate. We were selective as to who we would let have a bite of our bun, or whose bun we would bite. There was Good Friday service. This threw me for a loop. It was early in the morning and one had to dress as if he or she was going to a burial, but you see there was no dead. These things to a child are quite confusing.  The rest of the day was supposed to be somber. We looked forward to Easter Sunday because we knew that we would be looking extra sharp in our new Easter wear and not one but maybe two, one for morning service and the other for the afternoon Easter program. This was the time that I waited for because one of my favourite hymns was Up from the Grave He Arose I didnt quite understand why we couldnt sing it every Sunday then, but now I THINK I get it now. There was that scrumptious lavish Easter Sunday lunch. Easter Monday was picnic time; it was either Frigate Bay with the Sunday school or Black Rocks.

 It seemed like we have spent forever memorizing and reciting our Easter poem. We attended endless practices and when we went home we were still coached. Scared, we hope that we would get the poem just right and anticipating our reward, the resounding applause of the audience, sometimes we practiced wishing that like the cartoons, roses would be showered upon us when we are done.

 There would be afternoons of scraping and grating the cassava. As small as I was, I have always wanted to say that, I had to do my share, using the spoon to scrape the cassava, which I hated but didnt mind too much because there would be the little gossip flying here and there among the women. There was the wringing of the cassava or I prefer how we pronounce it, cusada. The solution was used to make starch, and it would be fire and brimstone on that child who made the mistake of throwing away the starch mixture. The cassava would be put it in a tray on the roof to sun, hoping that the fowl wouldnt get to it, oh the days eh, the grand old Easter days, the days of sweet, sweet tradition. The women took pride in knowing that they had and owned the equipment to make the cassava, the griddle, the little paddle, the circular things you put the meal in and so forth, that paddle had dual uses on those days if you catch my drift.  My job was to do the brushing away thing of the meal that was scattered, I didnt quite graduate to turning over the done cassava with the paddle.  I guess there was a technique to it. I couldnt quite understand why my grandmother would send cassava bread for Lillian and why Lillian would do the same, if they both had made their own. It puzzled me.

After the cassava bread was done the konkie preparation started. Easter was a time of endless grating. Sometimes you could hear a mother scowling at her young one as he/she was doing more eating than grating, no help to grace, eh, no help to grace whatsoever. The eldest boy knew that his duty was to look for the fig leaf to wrap the konkie. Over the years we have forgotten the leaf and gone foil. Hello! The fun is in the unwrapping of the konkie. Konkie making was quite tedious wasnt it, the peeling of the right length of the leaf for the wrapping, the heating of the leaf and the tearing of the thread or cord to give it that would give it the perfect tie.  What a process!

The children would be busied pitching marbles and occasionally you may hear a yelp, as some mischievous child would have rubbed the nickel a type of gray marble against the pitch and rubbed it on another so that it scorched the skin. It is Easter how could I forget the ultimate Easter tradition, the big thing, the kite-flying thing. Now this wasnt any ready to assemble story that was basically for the little pickney and dem. It was a kite flying competition, who had the best kite, whose kite had the longest tail, whose kite could fly higher. You would go up de Perject to fly your kite and there was always a group of boys running somewhere or climbing up some tree because their kite had buss. You would hear a mothers shrieks after she discovered that one of her sheets or her dresses had been used as tail for this kite. She would throw a fit and threaten licks then realizing that Easter was supposed to be a somber period, she decides she would put up the licks. What a thing eh, put up licks.

Easter memories are my fondest. As I reflect on my childhood days in St. Pauls, I must say that they were fun and that I do treasure them. I would like to ask a nine-year-old child, ten or twenty years from now about his or her Easter and compare to see how much they differ. Easter was a village thing, a camaraderie thing and slowly but surely in our society that spirit is being lost, as are many of our traditions.

 I would like to take this opportunity to remember the following people in the St. Pauls parish deceased and living who made Easter memorable, who gave that sense of community, my grandmother Agnes, aunts Annetta Williams and Lucille Millard, Dorothy Browne, Frances (Pete) Warner, (Joe Joe James) Mr. Gillard, Mrs. Hazel, Caroline Francis, Fanny Jane, Bernice Caesar, my grandfather Abraham Kennings, my mother Veronica, George Edinborough, Joseph Smith, Jeanette Davis, Lillian Francis, Monica Carty, Lorozine Williams, Pauline Locker, Mrs. Morton and Delka Leader.   

We often wish that we could capture good times in a bottle, release them, become engulfed by them and live them once again but this isnt Fanatasia, thats what memories are for!