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Grenada – Ian Roberts: Mangos of the Island

Grenada - Ian Roberts: Mangoes of the IslandIan Roberts is a craftsman who sells bracelets and other trinkets from a stall at the beach. He uses black coral and other natural elements which he polishes and shapes using a cigarette lighter. The results are finely crafted pieces with a rich amber hue.

My people came from indentured Indian people who mixed with Africans. There were so many races here, the Indian people, the Africans, they mixed with the overseers. My people came after slavery and signed a five-year contact. After the contract ended, they stayed. Maybe it was better than in India. Maybe they didn’t have enough money to leave. I don’t know. I was raised by my grandmother and mom. My mom had so many children, eight children, I had to make it on my own.

There was a big estate up on the West coast. The grandparents worked on the estate; they got coconuts and sold them to a factory for making soap. There were sugar cane plants – every farmer had a ¼ acre. When one was cutting the others would help. They would cut the cane and trucks would come and the children would load up the trucks. Mr. Nichols owned the estate. He was French. He didn’t like locals…He hardly paid them for the sugar cane.

A group of us, of boys, would come together and sell fruit from the estate to the yacht people at the harbor – oranges, mangos, sapodillas that grow on the hill.  People from all over the world would come and relax in Halifax Bay at the nice clean water. We had to steal the fruit – we were boys. You know boys. We didn’t call it stealing. We called it pilfering and hunting. Sometimes, the overseer would run you down. You could go to jail for that. (He smiles.) We would sell the fruit to the yacht people – oranges, grapefruit, bananas.

In the dry season we would go hunting and fishing at night, especially when the mangos were ripe. All the children would go on a hill with buckets and collect the mangos. Everything was drying out and the possums would come out looking for water and get the mangos. We would hunt them down with a sharp rod and get them like this (jabs into the air) and we would cook them and eat them.

Everyone was looking for survival in those days.

The estate is closed now. The government took a big portion of the land – they called it land of the landless. During the Revolution they took a portion of the land for a playing field. The revolution was nice. It brought a group together to cooperate. People came together.

After the interview, he shook my hand. “I hope I will see you soon, sister.” I was wearing one of his bracelets when I left.

My people came from indentured Indian people who mixed with Africans. They came after slavery and signed a five-year contact. After they stayed. Maybe it was better than India. Maybe they didn’t have enough money to leave. I don’t know.

I was raised by my grand aunt and Mom. My mom had so many children, eight children, I had to make it on my own.   Sometimes a group of boys would come together and catch iguanas and possums.

We’d sell fruit to the yacht people at the harbor – oranges, mangos, sapodillas that grow on the hill. We would sell the yacht people oranges, grapefruit and bananas. People from all over the world would come and relax in Halifax Bay at the nice clean water. We would sell them fruit from the estate. Sometime you had to steal it – the overseer would run you down. We didn’t call it stealing. We called it pilfering and hunting. The grandparents worked on the estate, they got coconuts and sold them to a factory for making soap.

The grandmother I grew up with was a fisherwoman, I use to help her sell plastic bags to put fish in. I helped in the garden, growing corn, wheat, yams. We used to sell fish, agriculture, peas, sweet potatoes and corn. We sold the mangos at the local market in St. Georges. We had early pigeon peas. Everyone shared food, it was very nice in the ‘70s.

My Mom would clean the roadside, put down pavement.

It was a big estate up on the West coast. It is closed now. They were Every farmer has a ¼ acre, when one is cutting the others would help. When it was the dry season the trucks would come and the children would load up the trucks.

Everyone was looking for survival in those days.

Mr. Nichols owned the estate. He was French. He didn’t like locals…He hardly paid them for the sugar cane. The government took a big portion of the land- they called it land of the landless. During the Revolution they took a portion of the land for a playing field. The revolution was nice. It brought a group together to cooperate. People came together.

 

Grenada – Alvin Heinz: Cacao Tea

Grenada - Alvin Heinz: Cacao TeaAlvin Heinz spends much of his day in a tree outside the Radisson Hotel at the Grand Anse beach or at St. Georges when the cruise ships come in. He carves coconut shells into polished dolphins, palm trees, nutmegs, and other medallions which he sells to tourists. His job, he says, is to make sure they have a good time on the island. When they come, he says, they bring money.

I am 46. I was raised by my great-grandmother. My grandmother lived with her mother. We would all wait for money from my mother. She lived in Trinidad. I was born there.

To make more money, my great-grandmother made chocolate rolls that she sold to the people in the village that they melted into tea. Everyone bought chocolate for the weekends, so on Friday, we made three times the amount.

For meals we got a coconut, put sugar and limes in the juice and that’s what you’d eat. You’d go to the garden close by and get bananas and cook them and make bread fruit and yams, mangos, plums. There were a lot of fruits you could survive on. You can’t go hungry that way.

The fruit grew through generations. One banana tree puts out another – in a few months there are other banana trees. You don’t need to cook for the kids – they had bananas, mango, sugar cane. If a neighbors’ tree had lots of mangos, all the kids would come and get it. The neighbors shared – they had plums, mangos, paw-paws, cane sugar. Nutmeg supported the family for years – from children to grown-ups. We used it as a spice – and for cooking, pastry and cakes. Some sold them to market vendors.

Split Cacao Pod
Split Cacao Pod

All the trees got its use. Bamboo was the main thing for brooms, baskets to carry the cocao and other things. Or you would put wood together in a big pit fire to make charcoal. It would sit for days. People didn’t have gas or electricity – the food was cooked on three stones and a pot.

There weren’t many doctors. You go to the person who has the most experience. They say, go to the river and get this and you get it and in a few days you are OK. No one had vehicles. Everyone had a donkey that we put in one place, like horses. The donkey carried the load, we fed the donkey and got fertilizer for the garden. We had rabbits, goats, all animal feces went back to the garden. Everything grew right there.

Most people worked on estates. There was lots of land – like slave land. They did work for the estate owner to sell to the big companies. People would leave their homes, and work for a certain amount – no matter how big or small, you have to get that amount to survive.

Banana, cacao and nutmeg. It was hard but at the end of the day, we are here now.

How to make a chocolate roll – aka chocolate balls

As described at the GCNE Nutmeg Pool

  • Pick a cacao pod
  • Take the cacao bean out of the pod
  • Dry in the sun for about a week
  • Put it in a big pot over a fire of coals for 15-20 minutes.
  • Stir the whole time or it will burn
  • Let it cool for a day or so
  • Remove the shell
  • Get the bean
  • Grind it in a hand grinder with spices: nutmeg, bay leaf, clove, orange peel, cinnamon

According to Alvin, the spices and the natural fat in the cacao held the balls together

Grenada- Carl David: The Cane and the Corn

Grenada- Carl David: The Cane and the Corn“Without working, you cannot inherit your part in life.”

Carl David is a taxi driver and our guide while researching the spices on the island Grenada. He left school when 11 years old. He helped his family grow yams, sweet potatoes, corn and sugar cane. Later, he held many jobs, among them a diver, pipe-fitter at the water works, and soldier for revolutionary leader Maurice Bishop. He said the revolution taught him much and made him “sensible.” He said people worked hard back then. They don’t work as hard today.

I was born in 1954. My mother moved to Trinidad and left me in 1955 – I was very small. [At first] I lived with a family. Being that I was not the lady’s child everything I did was wrong. It was very bad and I was forced to run away. Then I was adopted by these people, they were very good, they were my adopted mother and father…My adopted father lived for 99 years.

My mother and father worked on land at the estate – that’s what they did for a living. We never knew the people who owned the estate. There was no “massah”, no head of slaves, lashes, that was abolished in the 1800s. By then, the government owned the land – you paid a tax to the government, something small.

We planted yams, sweet potato, corn, and sugar cane. We made mounds for the sugar cane that were round and long. Each stalk has joints and we cut the cane at the joint and planted it so a group grows out of the joint. We cut the cane every year in the dry season, just before the rainy season. These days the rainy season may be in June, you never know, with global warming, it’s not like before. You plant in June and reap in August.

Sugar cane -Before and After
Sugar Cane -Before and After

We cut on different days: everyone came together and cut one field at a time. Then the young people would put the cut cane in heaps and put it on trucks and we would sell it to the Woodline sugar factory. It was nice cane – very good and very tall. It was soft cane with a good long joint.

We would peel the cane with our teeth. The cane juice would run down our (motions to chest and stomach)… we were half naked in those days. I remember my mother would cut the stalk and hold it up like this, and the juices would run into her mouth. There are different kinds of cane, black cane, green, yellows, crayfish – red and yellow – each one tasted a little different. The sugar cane was soft, you could squeeze it, it was so soft. Not like today. Today it’s hard and not as good.

I never knew my (biological) mother again until 1984. I went to look for her. I didn’t sit down and ask her questions or any of that. I just saw her. That’s all. Now, I have one son – he is a chef – and a life I have enjoyed.


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