Eight miles from Georgetown on the East Bank lies the village of Craig, a farming community which has evolved over the years from its original association with plantation lands.
In that community are three women who lived remarkable lives.
In the area of Grants Housing Scheme which is located on the border of Craig and New Hope lives ‘Ma’ (the only name she wants to give). The 75-year-old old was weeding around her flowering plants when Sunday Stabroek arrived.
Kitted out in wellington boots, a skirt and colourful long-sleeved shirt, and with her cutlass in hand, Ma said she was “cleaning up cause the weather change lil bit.”
Ma explained that she had been living in Grants Housing Scheme for about four years now. She purchased a house lot there in 1977, but went to Suriname to work where she spent some 20 years, doing “house wuk, sow clothes, sell in the market – all kinda thing.” Reminiscing about her time in Suriname, Ma said that “Suriname time too much better than Guyana, but meh get old…”
The mother of seven said that she returned to Guyana because “Meh get old and me get meh own place to take care of.” Now living on a pension and the sole breadwinner for her teenage granddaughter, Ma said she took to maintaining a small kitchen garden “fuh me house use.”
Last month she lost “one ah me best children.” As she talked about her daughter, tears pooled in her eyes, “Ah does miss she ya know,” she added, wiping away the tears with her shirt end; “that is why I does keep ma self busy. And the weather had me bad, only eddos ah grow.”
A smile back on her lips, Ma said she now takes care of her daughter’s child. The girl is in Form Two and assists her with a little housework. Ma said she did most of the work herself because she believed that not because one is old one cannot “help ya self.”
The scheme, Ma said, “is a quiet scheme” and she smiled as she pointed out that she was the oldest person there. A woman who is very interested in politics but does not “want it in the papers,” she reminisced about the time she worked with former President Forbes Burnham.
“I wuk wid him when the Seven Pond been building; I was working there,” Ma recalled. One favourite memory of those days was when, “Me Burnham and Viola [Burnham’s late wife] been picking wiri-wiri pepper and we use to be picking fast, fast…” With affection in her voice Ma remembered the late Viola Burnham as a “very nice woman.”
The silent scheme is brought to life by the occasional passing car. The scheme has some abandoned buildings and bush is reclaiming the few empty plots and vacant buildings. A small variety store services the residential community.
The scheme marks the end of the village. Along with Grant’s Housing Scheme there is also the Moneer Khan Housing Scheme. This too is a mostly residential scheme that is accessed via Busbee Dam; residents here are involved in small business ventures ranging from variety shops to mechanic shops.
According to information from the Caledonia/Good Success Neighbourhood Democratic Council, the village of Craig actually begins at Busbee Dam and ends at the Grant Scheme. It has a population of 26,000 people and is divided into three depths which are owned by residents and by the state.
Leaving the Grant’s Housing Scheme which is accessed by a questionable wooden bridge that is wide enough to hold a car, one encounters a small stand with a variety of vegetables off the public road.
Selling those vegetables is Aunty Betty. The 77-year-old who has difficulty hearing has been living there all her life, her grandson Nerash said. Nerash works on a chicken farm owned by Edun’s Poultry Farms and Hatchery. He described the community of Craig as a farming one.
Those who do not plant vegetables or ground provisions are usually involved in the rearing of poultry or cattle. Aunty Betty said she had been living in the area so long, “me see a lot ah strange people come in.” In her earlier years, she told this newspaper, she used to work “on the farm ah de back dam.”
The village of Craig was once plantation land. Rice, sugar cane and hassar rearing was done on a large scale. The majority of the land was owned by one Beatrice Smith and her husband, but most of it was eventually sold off or turned into schemes, according to information provided by the Caledonia/Good Success NDC.
Aunty Betty, Nerash said, even caught and sold fish as a means of making a living. “Now me nah go nowhere cause me sick,” she added.
Barefooted and in a long flowered dress with a head wrap, Aunty Betty leaves the shade under the bottom house to do business with an elderly man. According to Nerash, his grandmother was very accustomed to working; she swings in a hammock under the house as she awaits business, he said.
Nerash told Sunday Stabroek that the community was not prone to crime, because a businessman who owns a supermarket and a trucking service and is very influential in the community, arranges surveillance around the area.
Nateram’s supermarket is one of the big businesses in the village that supplies a range of items. The trucking portion of the business is located on the public road.
Nerash said on his side of the road there was not much flooding: “We don’t really get flood but the village office don’t maintain the drains, otherwise than that the village aright.” But because the community is opposite the Demerara River, there tends to be some flooding around the time of the spring tides.
Of late the river has been undermining the revetment in the area, and last October, the Cabinet approved $64M for revetment works. Residents along the Busbee Dam and those who live close to the river are the ones who are affected by the periodic flooding.
Long time resident of Busbee Dam, Dacy Mohan called ‘Goodie,’ recalled that years ago a koker in the area had broken and the Demerara River flooded the village. “The koker pun de road did fall down before you [this reporter] born, and the river water come right through; ya had to tek boat to come out.”
Mohan, who lives at the very back of Busbee Dam said that when she came to live in the area, it was a huge citrus farm. “Hey was citrus lands nah housing areas; me an ma pickneys dem alone live at de back hey fuss.”
The 77-year-old said that she and her husband and nine children moved to the area to because they were farming citrus as well. She said when she first came to live on Busbee Dam there was only a mud track, and she and her family would have to “cut trail” to make their way out.
Sitting in a hammock strung low to the ground Mohan said that these days “punishment too much.” She considered that flooding had always been a problem, but “ya can live in hey peacefully.”
Opposite Mohan’s house were neighbours who had extensive fowl pens that were empty and being eaten by running vines. These days Mohan’s family still farm, but it is mostly ground provisions. Some is for subsistence purposes, while the excess crop is sold to market vendors.
In Busbee Dam businesses and residents co-exist quietly, each dependent on the other. During its plantation era, a rice mill was located in the area but it has long since been demolished. Today, the area is the home of a hatchery and feed factory as well as the base for many building contractors.
Trucks and heavy duty equipment line the streets. An old but large-scale poultry operation is quiet in the midday sun; only the flapping of the chickens’ wings disturb the silence. A few houses down is a mechanic’s workshop. The mechanic is working on a truck, and vehicle parts hang from the shed under which he works, taking up most of the space.
As he works, he chats with a bus driver who stoops in front of his bus. The village is not a bad place to live they said. It is mostly quiet.
Obliquely opposite the mechanic’s workshop is Edun’s Poultry Farms and Hatchery which supplies the poultry sector in the community with feed and baby chicks. According to Sharda Edun, in 1985 her father-in-law Abu Edun started making feed for his personal use.
Later, “other farmers came in and were interested in buying feed and from then to now we have good support from the area.” Edun’s has since grown to include the farm, feed factory and a hatchery. The company also produces eggs which are sold both locally and internationally.
The factory in Craig is where Edun’s began. Now it has branches on the Soesdyke Highway and in Garden of Eden further up the East Bank. The business was later adopted by Abu Edun’s sons, and today, it employs 25 villagers. The business was even featured in last year’s ‘Success Stories’ in Caribbean Innovation and Entrepreneurship, published by the Caribbean Council for Science and Technology.
Through the side street are residential areas dotted with little shops. Residents say that there is not much activity in the area besides poultry rearing and farming. A nursery school and primary school in one of the side streets off Busbee Dam provide education to the villagers’ children. The village also has a health centre.
It is interesting to know that the area known as Old Road Craig and the three streets behind it is actually Good Success. According to the Caledonia/Good Success NDC, the area is referred to as Craig as well because of its proximity, and the sideline dam is listed as part of the three depths.
Villagers in that area could not explain why it is Good Success, but they said that growing up they knew that that part of the village was also called Craig.
Residents in the Good Success section confirmed that their community was mostly a farming one with some small businesses. They did not flood they said, but pointed out that the roads were in need of rehabilitation.
According to the NDC for the area, roadworks in the area were expected to begin soon. Craig has seen and continues to see a rapid expansion of its residential areas. The NDC said that the village was of interest to the Ministry of Agriculture, and as such attention to drainage and incentives to farmers had seen a surge in farming activities.
