Farm on the East Bank Demerara is nothing like its name, unless you count the little kitchen gardens here and there. Home to approximately 250 persons, Farm has a unique kind of warmth that extends even to the smallest child. Neighbours gather at each other’s places, enjoying a gaff or playing a game.
Many years ago, according to a few of the villagers, before the existence of Farm, the lands were all canefields of the Diamond Sugar Estate. Another smaller part of Farm was once Herstelling Cemetery. In the 1980s when the cemetery and the canefields were no longer of use the government told persons they could use the canefields for farming. However, persons decided to build homes; what was supposed to be a farm was called Farm after it became a residential area.
Stopping at a house in Farm, the World Beyond Georgetown came on Radah Ramanah chatting with her mother. She felt that the older ladies should speak about the village, so she called her neighbour Debbie and another neighbour, Dian Thomas from a few houses away.
Natasha Singh also known as Debbie came smiling not expecting to see a reporter there, since, according to her, her neighbours usually hollered for her for no reason at all.
Debbie came from the nearby village, Herstelling, 24 years ago after she noticed other persons squatting. She thought it would be an opportunity to have her own home as well. When she came there were four or five others squatting. Farm was canefields and a burial ground.
“The place was for farming but persons use it for housing instead,” she said. “The road was a mud dam and when rain fall, the mud use to reach yo knee. We use to walk a distance over to the other side [a few lots away separated by a canal] to get pipe water. Sometimes we use the trench water to wash we clothes and wares. The drainage was bad and when the rainy season come we use to get flood. Before we had the road, I use to sometimes got to fetch my father out before I reach the road where I can get a taxi to carry he to the
