When we met Karen Pollard on Tuesday evening she appeared amiable and relaxed despite admitting to having had a demanding day. She explained that the period immediately preceding Emancipation Day is usually filled with orders from clients for African sweetmeats like cassava pone, conkee, mauby and ginger beer – ”African snack foods,” she calls them. What she offers is a modest taste of some of the favoured foods of our foreparents. The practice over the years has been for her clients, individuals, offices and families to share these foods with families, friends and clients. It is a kind of unwritten tradition which she values as much as she values the patronage.
We talk about African dishes and about the fact that African cooking has never really ‘taken off’ as a commercial venture in Guyana. Cook up rice and metemgee are among the few exceptions to the rule. She says they were valued by our foreparents because of their “lasting” quality. “That is why they are called dried food. In those days the Africans had to walk with their food in the fields.”
If there may be a handful of African Guyanese who prepare authentic African dishes the tradition is not strong
