By Mutryce A Williams
Jane lives on a street where all you can hear at times is the rustling of the trees, the waves rolling, and see the occasional car passing, where everyday seems like Sunday. She would be lying if she told you that she knew the name of more than one person in her neighbourhood, and trust me it’s is not for lack of trying. She wonders, “Is this what most people aspire to? Is this progress? Is this development? Is this community? Is this living?” Each day she wakes up, looks outside, sighs and remarks with a sense of longing, “Boy this is a far cry from home.”
She is used to hearing cocks crow at mornings, looking outside and hearing the hens clucking, checking them to see if they had laid any eggs. She is used to waking up to check on the pigs and mixing the mash and pulling the bucket with yesterday’s scraps and “hogmeat” to feed them. To this day it grieves her heart when she reaches to the floor for her white butter ‘kit’ or kerosene pan in which to throw her scraps for the pig, then she ‘catches’ herself, shakes her head and say, “Lord, I forget I aint home. What a waste eh, Lord what a waste…look there no…a whole heap of food going to waste…is so much that Poor Man could have get some for he pig.”
She is used to seeing the occasional boy or two in his mother’s old shirt or frock, saunter down the road with his bucket as he wiped the ‘yampy’ and sleep from his eyes. She is used to taking the bucket and wetting down the yard to keep down the “loose dirt” before sweeping it. She is used to hearing fellow villagers chatting as they scurry off in the early hours of the morning to earn a day’s living, hearing one or two of them cackle as a joke ‘sweet’ them and they can’t seem to hold it in any longer. She remembers being sent to the gate at mornings to wait and see when the lady with the tray of bananas was going to sell, so she can get first choice. She is used to smelling fried dumplings and a ‘lil’ pig snout on the stove for breakfast or Johnny cakes, scalded mackerel, stewed saltfish, oatmeal or cornmeal porridge and hearing her grandmother lament about how good times are now because in her day it was flour or cassava ‘pap’ that they used to eat. She is used to hearing the neighbour’s radio blaring with Radio Paradise or ZIZ playing. She is used to waiting for that bathing song, “When you wake up in the morning, don’t mind your neighbour business, take you wash rag and your basin and go wash your daylight…”
She is used to going down the road to the shop to buy the occasional tin of milk or piece of cheese and sausage to put in the bread, and if there was no money for such, then it would be jam, banana, red butter or sugar placed between that loaf, washed down with some swank or bush tea. She is used to passing people along the way and when things were not as sophisticated as they are now there was that morning crowd that congregated at the reservoir to fetch water. They shared the pleasantries. They caught up on the village gossip or happenings. They sent their ‘howdies’ as well, steadied their buckets on their turbaned heads and swayed up the street as one or two would remark that she had forgotten that her pot was still on the fire. One mother or two would storm down the road cursing, already swinging her hand, only to see her young one playing in the bucket of water or tossing it at another child. She coops him, readies her hand in a lash or cuff and send her child wailing up the street with that bucket of water, ‘splishing’ and splashing, almost toppling over.
There was so much chatter, so much hustle and bustle, so much vibrancy, so much living and so much community to be had. Life was much simpler and much richer back then. People actually liked people back then, or so it seemed. We grow up and aspire for a better life and, trust me, nothing is wrong with this. We desire affluence and we desire solitude but all of this comes at a price. I think sometimes we fail to realize that what makes us uniquely us is the humble beginnings from whence we came. We are the sum of all of our experiences. We can reminisce on times, we can long for times because we had time. They shaped us. These times built character and made us who we are today. But as we age, as we aspire, as we develop and as we progress, we are not slowly but actually moving away from these things at rocket speed. Our children are growing up without these experiences. They are growing up devoid of these things that we saw as poor people things, non-necessities; things that we no longer view as part of our culture but rather symbols of poverty.
There is this, if you still eat cornmeal porridge or fried dumpling and pig snout for breakfast you are poor. If you can’t afford to give your children money to buy whatever rubbish their heart desires, as opposed to them eating the school meals or whatever you prepare at mornings, then you are not a modern parent and you have failed them. Some children cannot tell you what fungi or ‘turn corn’ taste like and it’s not that for some it is an acquired taste but rather they have never been exposed to any of these dishes. Yes, we are developing. We have more people owning homes, but how do we save our culture and instill a sense of pride in it? My mind goes back to the commune or feast of washing out your pretty colour plastic or enamel bowl and cup in the kit and sitting down waiting for your food then going up to the kitchen window and letting my aunt ‘bowl’ out the soup or whatever she had prepared, and if there were playmates they were not sent home to eat or left starving, they were given their fill as well. People came together over those things. There wasn’t this stern telling your children “don’t go over by them there”, but rather ‘sounding’ your mouth to see where your child was and when located you go, “Oh he over by you, he behaving, alright then, just as long as he aint making mischief.” Where did all of that go?
Listening to all of the talk shows and observing the happenings in my dear Federation, we seem to be singling out one of two things that have gone wrong. It’s the parents. It is society. It is the sophisticated times we are living in. It is the government. It seems to be everything, but could it be that we have lost our identity as a people? Could it be that we have looked at what made us uniquely Kittitian and West Indian as ‘backward’ or not progressive? The carving a top out of guava wood, or making a box cart from jelly stalk and sandbox tree, the making a doll from the ‘pinky’ of the breadfruit tree, the going down the bay and picking whelks, using the Nido tin to make an oven to bake your own bread or roast ground dove, the raising of pigs, sheep or goats, going mountain and helping out in the ground, the making of tamarind, guava or gooseberry jam, all of these things that taught creativity, humility, entrepreneurship and responsibility, these things that we have thrown by the wayside in favour of progress, in favour of another culture, in favour of whatever it is that we have now?
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