Reflections of an Immigrant

By Claude H. Chan

In 1927, Claude Chan was born to a young couple who were third generation Chinese. They lived in British Guiana, a British colony on the northern coast of South America. Times were harsh and conditions were poor. By the time Claude turned sixteen, both his parents had died from the harshness of a third world country. Claude was the oldest of 6 s

• Language: English
• Publisher: Stratton Press
• Release date: Sep 11, 2018
• ISBN: 9781643451237

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Foreword

Colonel Chan’s deeply personal look at life in the air force—as an immigrant faced with a host of challenges—reflects his incredible perseverance, his tremendous insight into the challenges he had to overcome, and how God and his family led him to a successful career. Dr. Chan is a man of impeccable honesty, forthright courage, and relentless dedication, all of which was demonstrated in his great leadership to the many men and women in the medical communities in which he served. Having made the air force my career for twenty years, Reflections of an Immigrant validated many of my own service observations, and his story touched my heart. I could not put it down once I began to read it. I recommend it to my many friends.

—Bob Russell, Lt. Col., USAF Retired,

Fighter Pilot and Public Affairs/Executive Officer

Introduction

I am an immigrant to the United States of America. Originally, I entered this country with a student visa. When you see my face, if you’re stereotyped in your thinking, the immediate thought would be I am from China. Well, wrong! I came from South America. There was no Chinese culture or language in my immediate background. Born in British Guiana (BG), my parents and I spoke English. The British colonized the country, and there was a lot of Dutch influence. For example, the village where I grew up is called Den Amstel, and I was born at Anna Catherina, both Dutch names. British Guiana no longer exists as such. It was renamed Guyana after obtaining independence from Britain several of years ago. Located eight degrees north of the equator, it is tropical. It’s the country where the infamous Jim Jones did his thing.

My father was third-generation Chinese and my mother was a mixture of Chinese and Scottish. I used to think that we had Dutch blood in our background, but I recently found out that great-grandfather McClean from Scotland immigrated to Dutch Guiana. He later moved to British Guiana where he met my mostly Chinese great-grandmother and married her. As I recall, she had very wavy brown hair and hazel eyes. There may be other genes in the background of which I know nothing. I am the oldest of six children, four boys and two girls. The first girl was child number 4, and the second girl was the youngest, child number 6.

I was never so conscious of my race until I came to the USA. That was shortly after World War II. The reasons for this resulted from certain early childhood experiences. Looking back, I can see how God had prepared me for several later race-related encounters.

In British Guiana, I won a scholarship to attend Oxford University in England. US influence during World War II led to my preference for an American education, and it was hard to convince my British schoolmaster, who vehemently labeled me an idiot.

I managed to save enough money to come to America by way of Trinidad. Union College, Lincoln, Nebraska, was kind enough to accept me on their work-study program. After finishing at Union College, I studied medicine at Loma Linda University Medical School in California. I graduated with an MD in 1953.

Eventually, I was able to help all my brothers and sisters to come to the USA. Two other brothers became physicians, following my footsteps. Two sisters became nurses and my youngest brother became an orthodontist.

In 1952, I married the most wonderful woman in the world. She came from Honolulu, Hawaii, and while she was studying in La Sierra, California, we met. She was to change my life forever. Now we have been happily married for over sixty-five years. We raised five sons. Four are dentists. The oldest, Clayton, practices in Las Vegas. Clifford, Craig, and Curtis practice in the Southern California area. Our youngest son, Carlton, is an optometrist practicing in Del Mar, California.

The doctor draft was still going on when I finished my medical internship at Loma Linda, California. To remain in the country, I would be subject to this draft. After obtaining permanent resident status, I obtained my green card. To avoid the draft into the army, I volunteered for the air force. My assignment was in Bavaria, Germany. It was an enriching experience. That is where we learned to speak German. Our third son, Craig, was born there at Fürstenfeldbruck Air Base near Munich. When the two-year draft obligation was completed, we went to live in Charter Oaks, California, and spent a year in family practice with my wife’s brother, Wallace Chin, MD, in a nearby town of Covina.

In 1958, we went to British Guiana, my home country, for a little over a year to join a classmate at a mission hospital. In 1959, we returned to California and settled in the San Fernando Valley where I spent fifteen years in private practice as a family physician. Quite often, I think of that old song which as a young lad I used to sing and play on my guitar: I’m gonna settle down and never more roam, and make the San Fernando Valley my home. Little did I dream that this would really happen.

In 1971, Craig, my third son, desired to visit his birthplace in Germany. Therefore, we planned a five-week trip traveling throughout Europe. When we visited Fürstenfeldbruck, it had been turned back to the Germans and the ambulance drivers at the hospital were still doing the same job as in 1957, fourteen years prior, when we said, Auf wiedersehen. They remembered us well and gave us each big hugs.

This second European exposure gave me a yearning to live in Europe. I could only do this if I had a job there. It happened that the air force needed doctors of my type, so it was easy to get an assignment in Germany in 1974. I signed up for three years and the whole family went.

It was providential that I gave up my private practice because after that year, malpractice insurance soared and the whole health-care arena gradually went into turmoil with costs skyrocketing. My attempts to get out of the air force always brought me a feeling of uneasiness. Finally, I decided to make it a full career. Hence, Uncle Sam got a total of twenty-three years of my life. Not a single regret from my family and me! I went from ordinary family doctor to department chair. Later, I commanded four air force hospitals and eventually commanded the largest air force MASH unit of one hundred beds in the sands of Saudi Arabia. That was during Desert Shield/Storm in the Persian Gulf (August ’90 to April ’91). All these assignments took us to many parts of the world. We became better people as we learned various cultures. By retirement in 1995, I had been awarded numerous medals among which were two Legions of Merit and one Bronze Star. I have been a US citizen for more than fifty years. What a great country we have! A county founded on Judeo-Christian principles. A country that is God-blessed as long as we trust in Him. What a privilege to have served in such a manner!

I know who I am. I know where I came from. In addition, I know what I fought for. Freedom! Freedom is not free; there is a big price to pay. Some of us must pay for those who take it for granted. Freedom, not only for my family, all Americans, and me, but also for others who are threatened with despotic oppression.

God bless America! I am an immigrant, yes, from a poor background. Now I am proud to shout: I am an American. I belong to the land of the free and the home of the brave. The Stars and Stripes is my flag!

Childhood and Early School Days

My earliest recollections take me back to a little country schoolhouse at Den Amstel, British Guiana. There were many coconut trees in the schoolyard, and we were always afraid coconuts would drop on our heads. Our teachers advised us to stay away from under these trees. In classes, we sat on wooden benches. I vividly recall my legs and feet dangling. The seats were not that high, but my feet could not touch the floor. I was only about five years old. There were no rooms for different classes. It was one big floor space, each class claiming its own section, so we learned to concentrate and not listen to other classes.

Teachers used a whip to assist the learning process. Indeed, we learned from fear. We would have to extend our hand to receive one or two lashes for wrong spelling or for whatever else made the teachers unhappy with us. Child abuse was not in the mind of the culture. Most of the population were descendants of African slaves and indentured servants from India. I was accustomed to living among dark-skinned people, blacks and East Indians. Teachers surely had our respect. They represented the educated. Parents usually supported anything teachers said or did. School was not mandatory. Many children had to work in the fields. Illiteracy was high. Education was at a premium. You can understand why my British schoolmaster gave me a hard time for turning down the opportunity to study at Oxford. However, I never regretted that decision.

One of the most traumatic experiences of childhood was the recurring singing sessions every Friday afternoon. The whole school participated under the direction of the headmaster. Our British school reading book at that time contained a song about a Chinaman. All would sing, There was a Chinaman with pigtail spick-and-span, Ha, Ha-Ha-Ha, Ha-Ha; he never would go out when there was rain about, Ha, Ha-Ha-Ha, Ha-Ha. Well, guess what? Being the only Chinese-looking student among a field of blacks and East Indians, they would all stare at me, laughing while singing, Ha, Ha-Ha. After the singing sessions, the students would mockingly ask me, Where is your pigtail? As a little boy of five, it left a deep hurt within my being, as it happened every Friday for six years. As my siblings joined me at that country school, they too, in their formative years, were subjected to this unintended ridicule. No one showed any sensitivity during those days to the racial implications of such approved behavior. It was prevalent throughout the British public school system. We all learned to accept that as a part of life.

My parents pushed education on me despite my early years. I had no choice. I remember having nightmares. They kept telling me how smart I was. Being the oldest, I had to set a good example for the other five siblings. Mom and Dad never had the opportunity to go beyond sixth standard (equivalent to eighth grade). They could read and write well. This put them in the 30 percent of the population who were literate. They ran a country variety store in the village of Den Amstel where I grew up with my siblings. The local citizens considered us well-off. Every two weeks, Dad would take a bus to town (Georgetown) to purchase supplies at wholesale and then return home to sell at retail. That’s how he made a living. The products would be shipped by rail. The country operated an antiquated train service on both east and west coasts of the Demerara River. On the west coast, it ran from Vred en Hoop on the Demerara River to Parika on the Essequibo River. On the east coast, it went from Georgetown to New Amsterdam on the Courantyne River. Our village rated one of the stops where there was a primitive railway station. The stationmaster lived in humble quarters immediately adjacent. I recall a first class and a second class. First class furnished soft seats. Second class had hard wooden benches. Then there was the freight car that carried cargo to and from town. I can still hear the steam engine puffing along. The products would be transported from the train station to our store by donkey carts operated by local entrepreneurs. Then we had a wheelbarrow to bring them in from the donkey cart to our store.

We lived in a two-storied building. Typical of all tropical houses, it stood on a foundation of brick pillars. The store occupied the front half of the ground floor. Our living quarters were downstairs in the back half. The kitchen extended like an L southward of the west end of the downstairs living quarters. Sleeping quarters were on the second floor, with three bedrooms and a large living room. Our beds were the four-posted kind with canopy and mosquito curtains hanging from the ceiling. In the large living room, an old upright piano dominated the scene. As kids, we all took turns pounding out tunes on it. Chairs and smaller tables were scattered around. There was an old-fashioned recliner we called a Berbice chair. I do not know why. Perhaps they made them in the Berbice County. Similar ones in other people’s homes bore the same name, Berbice chair. On the walls, there were pictures of family and some nature scenes. I can still visualize, hanging in our bedroom, a picture of a huge deer with antlers standing in the forest. It had a caption, Monarch of the Glen. In each bedroom was a washstand with porcelain basin, pitcher, and soap dish. I don’t recall seeing anyone using these for washing up. Each bedroom also had a chest of drawers with mirror. Each of us kids was assigned our own drawer.

We had a huge wicker laundry basket in our room where we tossed our dirty clothes. Each Monday morning, a washerwoman came to take the laundry and returned them by Wednesday. Every Sunday night, we would lay out the dirty clothes assorted in piles. We recorded the number of each item in a notebook. The washerwoman would bring all back, cleaned and ironed, on a huge wooden tray carefully balanced on her head. We would recount the pieces to check that all were accounted for before paying the washerwoman. No washing machines or clothes dryers existed in those days. We only knew washtubs, scrubbing boards, and flat irons. The irons were heated over hot coals. Washed laundry hung on clotheslines for the sun and wind to dry them. We could tell where the washerwomen lived by the display of rows of loaded clotheslines in their yards.

Now back to describing the house. There was an old RCA Victrola sitting on a table in the living room. We cranked it up on weekends to listen to the few records my dad had acquired. On the left, after reaching the top of the stairs, was the bathroom, but not the modern version of today. My tooth marks remain imprinted on the fourth step. I recall when I slipped and fell. Fortunately, I did not lose my front teeth. The teeth marks were still there when we visited the place in 1958, some twenty-three years later.

We pumped water into a rectangular tank suspended from the ceiling. From the bottom of this container extended a shower nozzle and a pipe with a faucet from which water could fill a bucket beneath it. There was another pipe extending to the top of a WC tank in an adjacent room, from which we flushed the toilet, old-fashioned style. You know the kind with a chain to pull. This was reserved for guests. For normal day-to-day use, we had an outhouse in the backyard. We cut up old newspapers for toilet paper. Pumping water from a huge cylindrical vat adjacent to the house was a daily activity for me. I learned to take the pump apart and fix it when it malfunctioned. During droughts when water was scarce, our baths were limited. We were allowed only three calabashes-ful of water. A calabash is a scooped-out gourd looking like a small basin for dipping water. With the first calabash full, we wet ourselves from head to toe and soaped up. The second one washed off the soap. The third one served as our final rinse. We boys became quite proficient at it, especially when we poured the water for each other.

The kitchen was furnished with a wood-fired stove in the southwest corner. Across from the stove were shelves to accommodate the pots and pans. There was a large cupboard for dishes at the northwest corner of the kitchen with a working table extending out. This is where we rolled the dough for making roti or to prepare the ingredient for cooking. At the east end of the table was a large chopping block made from the trunk of a greenheart tree. Between the stove and the cupboard was a window. Right outside the window was a sink mounted with a faucet for washing dishes. The water drained into a pipe that extended from the toilet upstairs to a concrete cesspool just outside the kitchen window. Opposite the window was a door leading to the outside. Beside the door, opposite from the shelves, was a wooden mortar and pestle for pounding fufu. This was made from boiled plantains crushed and formed into hand-sized balls.

The roof of our house was of corrugated galvanized zinc sheets. Once, it was a slate roof, the remnants of which were stacked up under the house. When tropical downpours came, the noise from the zinc roof informed us to be sure the gutters were draining into the big iron vat that stored our water supply.

After school, I had to sweep the store floor with a broom made from the sturdy center veins of coconut palm fronds. We called it a pointa broom. Nomenclature stemming perhaps from local Indian parlance.

One of my most cherished childhood memories was kite-flying season. This began during the Easter holidays. Why this time of year? Perhaps it had to do with the windy season or maybe it had something to do with resurrection. Flying kites ascending high into the air might have tied in to the thoughts of the season. Every child it seemed had a kite. Some were for beauty. Others made noises. We used to buy them, but later, I learned to make my own. The shops would be filled with kites hanging from the ceiling. They sold for twelve cents each and up depending on the size. Most of the shopkeepers made them, and they sold like hotcakes. Along with the kites went the balls of string and the tails. People started flying them on Good Friday when the schools were closed. However, Easter Monday, which was a holiday then in British countries, found everyone picnicking at the seashore with kites lighting up the skies from dawn to dusk. People would let all the string out to see who would have the highest-flying kite. Some tied the end of the string to their legs while they took naps, as they were lulled to slumber by the tropical breeze. Many others who preferred to remain at home flew their kites from their front yard or in the streets. The tall palms, telephone poles, and wires with kites tangled across them along the entire coastal road were earmarks of the season that lasted well past the Easter holidays.

On Good Friday, a public holiday in those days, I recall my neighbors, Mr. Sobers and his son, building a straw man out of old rice bags. With a calabash for the head and old broomsticks for arms and legs, they brought out into public view the object they had been working on days before. They braced it up against their donkey cart parked by the roadside. The village people came to look at it. They labeled it Judas. As the crowd gathered, the younger Sobers brought out a cricket bat and began to hit the straw Judas in the head and all over the simulated body until the whole thing disintegrated. This obviously represented his dislike for Judas for betraying our Lord. In a poor country with not much going on, this event was the village highlight on Good Friday.

Early Sunday morning, just at daybreak, the local Salvation Army band would march through the main road playing Up from the Grave He Arose. They wore the Salvation Army uniform, and the band would consist of about four people. There was a drummer, a trumpet player, a saxophonist, and a tuba player. Other early risers would be trailing behind, singing along with the tunes the band played. I could hear them and see the little children pulling out their kites to catch the early morning gusts of tropical breezes.

I could hear my father still: I want you to become a doctor, he would repeatedly say, so study hard. Although the house had been wired for electricity, the generator in the garage remained silent. Hard times necessitated discontinued use. I studied at night with a kerosene lamp; later, by a Coleman camping lantern when we could afford it. These were depression years, and times were difficult. As young as I was, I could sense the hardship.

Although everyone suffered hard times, our family was better off than most. My father owned a car—a Willys-Overland. However, during the depression, he put it up on blocks in the garage since he could no longer afford to run it. The garage became a prominent play area for us as children, as we jumped in and out of the car. We had a lot of fun, I recall. We did some horrible things to the car. I remember pouring sand into the carburetor during our playtime. The car never ran again.

We played cricket in our backyard between the woodshed and the genip tree. A huge mango tree overshadowed the corrugated tin roof of the woodshed. We made cricket bats out of the bases of coconut fronds, using a cutlass to shape them. Sometimes, we made leggings with cardboard and tied them with string around our legs. A tennis ball usually served as our cricket ball (something like an American baseball). The ball was bowled (not pitched) with the intention of striking the wicket. Old wooden crates served as our wicket. We used to give ourselves the names of the countries’ champions. Those were days of a lot of imagination and pretending, typical of childhood.

Many people came for groceries but could not pay. I remember my parents keeping books on those who owed money. I did study hard, and at age eleven, I won a scholarship to go to Georgetown, the capital, to study beyond sixth standard. Education beyond sixth standard was not free. Only those who could afford to pay enjoyed this benefit. So winning a scholarship was a coveted thing.

My father suffered from malaria. I remember him taking me on his bicycle to Georgetown to take the examinations to qualify me for the scholarship. Only elementary students between eleven and twelve years old could take the exams. We had to ride seven miles, cross a ferry, and ride another two miles to the examination location. He waited all day while hundreds of elementary school students from all over the country sat for the exams. We returned home together in the evening very tired. When he became seriously ill, he ran very high fevers. He would demand a lot of ice. He would suck on ice chips to keep his mouth cool. I would ride my bicycle all over a three-mile radius, looking to buy ice from anyone who was willing to sell his or her supply. We had to keep our thermos flasks full of ice chips. There were no refrigerators in those days. I would stand on the street in front of our house and wave a white flag for the doctor to stop as he went by in his Morris Minor. The roads were of red dirt, full of potholes, and very dusty. The doctor, Dr. Cunningham, was a hardworking person, a local black who went to England and studied medicine. He returned to British Guiana to help his countrymen. Some days he would not pass by until late into the night.

Unfortunately, Daddy died before the results of my examination were published. I remember the night he died. It was 3:00 a.m., June 11, 1938, a Saturday morning. The whole family stood around the bedside as he breathed his last. We were all devastated, especially my mom. We could not understand why a loving God allowed this. He was buried the same day in the churchyard of the Brethren Church at Leonora where he attended. Friends came from all over, including Georgetown. The news went by word of mouth. Telephones were rare then, and we did not have one. There were twenty-seven cars in the procession from our house to the churchyard at Leonora. For BG, that was a huge funeral. All the cars had to cross the ferry, which could not hold them all at once. It took several crossings to accommodate them all. So they had to start early to make the 3:00 p.m. service at the country church in Leonora.

Dad, while still alive, never heard of my success. It was announced in the newspaper six weeks later. I was among the five in the country who got the highest scores in the exams. My father’s prayers were answered. I recall he was a very godly man and read his Bible every morning. Mom was so thrilled with my success that she bought me a new Phillips bicycle. She managed to scrape up enough money to purchase the cheapest model. I really liked it and cleaned it every day, wiping off the red dirt with a dry cloth to keep it spick-and-span. It saw its demise when a motorcycle cop, by the name of Sergeant Eversley, ran over me two years later.

Adolescence and Days at Queen's College

I actually began to attend Queen’s College at age eleven. It was really a junior college, measured by our American system. Beyond elementary school, where the different levels were called standards, one went to college where the levels were called forms. Promotion was from one form to another. There were first, second, third forms. At fourth form, there were two levels, fourth A and fourth B, then there were fifth and sixth forms to complete the college education. Queen’s College was an all-boys school, divided into four houses: A, B, C, and D house. We wore a uniform of white pants and light-blue shirts. We were required to wear short pants until fourth form. In fifth and sixth forms, we could wear long pants. Each house wore a special identifying tie and a matching ribbon tucked into the right folds of a required white tropical helmet. We called these helmets bug houses. I guess they tended to harbor bugs. I belonged to C house. Therefore, my color was green. The ties were a basic yellow with a cross stripe of black alternating with the color of whatever house you belonged to—in my case, green. The ribbon piece tucked into our helmets had a tendency to slip and fall out. Therefore, it had to be replaced frequently. Ingenious as I was in those days, I painted my colors onto the helmet with appropriate enamel. Soon, others began to copy my idea.

I was the only country boy attending. All the others were city boys; it was quite a status among the kids of that age. They taunted me regularly because I was from the country. Hi, country boy, they would exclaim as they greeted me. That would be equivalent to being called a farm boy in the US. I struggled for and longed for recognition. I rode my bicycle morning and evening seven miles each way and crossed a ferry to get to school. My dad took the same journey the year before when I took the exams. Tropical downpours frequently drenched my clothing, and I would dry off in classes as strong trade winds blew through the school windows. I was learning Latin and French. Algebra and geometry fascinated me, as did English literature and history. Of course, I excelled in art and scripture. Physics and chemistry held my attention as much as geography. Physical education and carpentry were exactly what an eleven-year-old needed. I was a proud country boy attending Queen’s College, the most renowned educational institution in the country.

However, I was a rascal in those days and irritated my granny a lot. We referred to her as Catherina grandma. She was Dad’s mother and would remind me that as the oldest, I should set the example for my siblings. I would snicker in defiance. She would remind me that though my father had died and gone to heaven, he could still see how I was behaving. One day, I thought I could no longer stand her reminding me of this. I rudely said, Daddy’s been dead all these months. His eyes are rotten by now, how could he see?

My cousin, Lawrence, burst out laughing as he was within earshot. Fully annoyed, Granny chased me out of her house, as I disappeared laughing disrespectfully. In those days, I got into a lot of trouble, even in some accidents. Granny would say, See, God is watching over you and protecting you, even while you are so naughty. I would grin and retort, There is no such thing, Granny, and I’m a college boy now and learned that there is no such thing. I could tell that my remarks caused her a lot of grief. Sometimes, I would fall out of trees without any injury, and Granny would remind me of God’s loving care. I don’t know how many times I laughed at her remarks. Granny, I finally said, I’m just a tough guy, and when the time comes for me to die, I’ll die, so don’t give me any more religious talk.

I recall my voice getting deeper as adolescence set in. The college loaned us a book to read about how boys grow up. I was beginning to fit the descriptions. My childhood fat and contour were gradually disappearing. I was becoming a man.

Looking back, I regret that I was so rude to my faithful granny. I should have shown more respect, but that was my fallen nature and what a sinner I was and a real smart aleck. I had become haughty hanging around those city boys at Queen’s College. That was not always a healthy influence.

My cousin Lawrence on the left with me on the right

My grandma on my mother’s side (Leonora grandma) used to buy us new shoes for Christmas every year. She would make the trip to town, buy what she thought would be appropriate for us six kids, and that was it. Maybe she got some input from my mom. We had to wear them whether they were a correct fit or not. The trip to the city was a huge chore and expense. She must have spent a lot of money outfitting six fatherless kids with shoes. To take us along would be out of the question. She always bought sizes larger than we needed because our feet were growing. We stuffed paper in the tips until our feet grew to accommodate the shoes. My grandma was influenced by a story we heard repeatedly throughout our childhood. The Indian word for shoe was jootta. An Indian man went to town to buy shoes. He noticed that the prices of the shoes were all the same, regardless of size. He was heard saying, Big jootta, little jootta, all same price. Give me big jootta.

My grandma tried mostly to give us big jootta since our feet were constantly getting bigger. Sometimes, the sizes were not exactly right and were tight. Your feet will stretch them, Grandma would say. So we toughed it out, blisters and all. I recall one time I got a pair that was beige in color. That color of shoes was unusual in BG. It must have been on sale. None of my friends or classmates ever wore anything but black or brown shoes. Beige! That was awful. I wouldn’t want to be seen in them by my peers. So I immediately tried to color them with brown shoe polish to change the color. It looked horrible, and I did my best not to be seen in them, especially by my classmates. Furthermore, it was tight, and I got blisters until they stretched. I finally broke them in. With more layers of brown shoe polish, it became more acceptable. It was all I had to wear that year.

One day, I made a kite and wished to fly it. However, it was raining heavily, and it seemed to be an all-day thing. I had barely begun to attend Queen’s College and was still about eleven years old. I thought and wondered if God would hear a prayer from a naughty boy. So I prayed, Lord, I would like to fly my kite. Can you make the rain stop and send enough wind for me to fly my kite? I doubted whether anything would change. But to my amazement, the rain ceased. The sun came out and the wind began to blow. Gleefully, I flew my kite to my heart’s satisfaction. I was beginning to think that there was something to praying after all. No sooner I returned home, the rains began again, heavier than ever. I was impressed. I do not recall saying, Thank you, God.

A city family, the Lows, parents of one of my classmates, fed me lunch periodically during school days. This family was also godly. They had several sons, the oldest of whom frequently came to our village to preach the gospel to villagers. They would periodically occupy the pulpit of the country church at Leonora, where Dad was buried. Dad and Mom would host them whenever they showed up. They were very sympathetic to our fatherless family following Dad’s passing. In addition, I did appreciate the memorable meals I enjoyed at their house while I attended Queen’s College. I particularly enjoyed the pork pepperpot flavored with local cassareep. The local aboriginal Indians made cassareep out of bitter cassava through a process of their own, and it was a common flavor among the locals. One could buy it as a thick brown liquid, looking like molasses but far from sweet. They bottled it in old beer bottles and sold cassareep in the city markets. My struggling mother offered to pay for those meals, but the Lows knew our situation and would not accept any payment. We were very grateful. Some of their older sons, Gerald and Crossie especially, came to the countryside often with their car to enjoy some of the fruits in our area. There were fruits in abundance. We had star fruits, cashews, genips, golden apples, sugar apples, oranges, monkey apples, guavas, gooseberries, tamarinds, mangoes, custard apples, bananas, star apples, and sumatoo (passion fruit elsewhere) to name a few.

Mangoes were especially delicious. One Saturday, it was raining cats and dogs. I sat on my back steps musing. The neighbor’s mango tree had a branch loaded with mangoes hanging over our fence near the garage where the car remained on blocks. The mangoes were red ripe, glistening in the rain, waiting to be picked. Before reaching them, there was a six-by-twelve-foot concrete slab, at the garage entrance, slick with growing tropical moss. My city classmates would be delighted with some mangoes from the country, I thought. They would respect me for such a gesture. I ventured through the heavy downpour to pluck them, but I never got there…

The smell of vinegar aroused me. I had a terrible headache. I had slipped and fallen on the slick mossy concrete and knocked myself unconscious. My mom rescued me and put me to bed. Vinegar and brown paper had done again what it did for Jack and Jill in the childhood ditty. I can’t believe it, but most of our village folks believed this nursery rhyme superstition. Fortunately, the concussion left no residuals.

There was a lot of folklore in BG, especially among country folks. Our neighbor, Mr. Sobers, used to help plant vegetables in our backyard. One day, he was digging the ground with his shovel. Suddenly, the story goes, he was slapped to the ground. He was sure he had encountered a baku. A baku is the surviving spirit of a man who was killed beside a hidden treasure after he had made the commitment to guard it. This clued Mr. Sobers that there was buried treasure in our yard. Every attempt he made to dig there was met with one of these superstitious encounters. Later, when asked why his face was drooping on one side, he would reply, The baku slapped me there. He went around the rest of his life with his right face muscles drooping. Others in the village attributed it to sleeping in the moonlight. Now that I am a physician, I believe what he had was Bell’s palsy, leaving his right facial muscles paralyzed. As children, we heard many of these stories. But our Christian teaching in Sunday school kept us from believing them. Yet we were sharply aware of demonic activity. One day, my cousin, Doreen, went with school friends to see this supposed baku in a nearby tree. As she appeared, a voice identified her, You are Doreen Choy and you steal your mother’s cookies to share with friends at school. She became afraid and left the scene in a hurry.

My mother became a Seventh-day Adventist (SDA) under the powerful influence of her mom, my Leonora grandmother. She had been converted to Adventism by SDA missionaries several years back. So we quit attending the Brethren Church at Leonora. I shall never forget when Mom decided to close the store on the Sabbath (Saturday). That would be the best day for business in those days. I came from school one Friday afternoon to hear her announce that we were closing up the country store from Friday sundown until Saturday sundown. I told Mom how foolish that seemed since Saturday was the best day for business in Den Amstel. The customers would go elsewhere, I insisted. But Mom was firm in her decision. As children, we obediently attended the Seventh-Day Adventist Church that next day with her. Of course, Grandma was there and very delighted to see us all in church with her. Sundown Saturday came and I opened up the store and lighted the Coleman lanterns. To my amazement, the customers showed up. They had all waited for our store to open. They remained loyal. In two hours, we did as much business as if we were open all day. God was teaching me how He was faithful to honor my mother’s commitment, and I was beginning to notice it.

Mom instituted morning worship with all six of us. Immediately upon awaking, we sat in the living room upstairs and sang a hymn. She hand-wrote seven