At 54, Patricia Persaud appears to reflect on her life with a considerable measure of satisfaction. She used to be the ‘other half’ in a union of two teachers-turned-farmers and part of the community of Parika Back farmers whose pursuits have been filled with both challenges and rewards.
Patricia grew up on the farming island of Wakenaam then ‘migrated’ to Parika Back after leaving secondary school in the mid-1980’s.
Pushed in the direction of farming by the availability of abundant farm land, she took an interest. Perhaps not altogether surprisingly, she married a farmer one year after moving to Parika Back. Herself from a farming family she took to her new life like a duck to water. She felt too that working in the fields side by side with her husband was the best form of support that a wife could give. Teachers’ salaries being a ‘country mile’ away from being a king’s ransom, farming also represented a not insignificant family subsidy. The two grew potatoes and cassava on a plot of land close to her mother-in-law’s residence and sold the produce to middlemen.
