On arriving at Sparta, the small Essequibo Coast village sandwiched by Danielstown and Windsor Castle, I noticed two signs—one with the name Sparta and another, several yards ahead, which read “Fear Not.” My initial thought was both names were used for the village, but my investigations revealed that though the Gazetteer of Guyana has Fear Not as the name of a place, it is actually the name of the canal before Sparta that runs along the rice fields.
A native of Sparta, Telackdhari Persaud shared that the village has been around for more than a century and noted that his parents are from the village as well as a grandparent. However, there was only a handful of families in the early 1900s.
“Sparta is a cool village, very quiet,” Persaud said. “Most people here do rice farming and fishing. I would say about ninety per cent of the people here are Hindus. We have a temple here in the village that we attend. It’s one of the biggest mandirs on the whole coast. There’s also a Christian church here, a school, and plenty shops. When I was small, the village had trash [troolie] houses then they start making wooden houses and then concrete houses.”
