Famous, I Am Not.: The intrigue of three countries, Guyana, Canada and the US, as lived by one man.

By Tema F. Kudakwashe

About the Book
Follow the life of the author through growing up in Guyana, making the move to Canada, and taking all of life’s opportunities to the United States.
About the Author
A part of me that I am conscious of that has been with me all my adult life is to do with women's rights in this sometimes-unjust world that can be rough on them. Whenever the opportunity presents itself, I would do or say something on their behalf.
I love to stay physically fit by jogging a few miles a few times a week. Humorously, I would say to others who question my interest in jogging, that whenever I look back and notice the doctor getting close, I take off running.
I thoroughly enjoy helping youths understand the fundamentals of math and would time and time again do so when the opportunity is there.
My wife is, and has always been, the girl I met in high school.
I have spent each third of my life in each of the three countries. My reasons for doing so include taking advantage of opportunities to give my family - my wife and children - a more enjoyable life.
A decade ago, I published a book of essays: Ground Beef for the Mind, that's available on Amazon. Other than that, because of a love for writing, I have been attempting to write books for most of my adult life, but never completing most of them except for my first attempt which I did not get a publisher to take.
One of the people that stimulated in me an interest in writing was Agatha Christie who will forever be intriguing to me.
Interestingly, my first choice of a major when I first applied to continue my studies at U of Toronto was Nursing. The practical’s clashed with my full-time evening job and so I changed to Computer Science, which led my life into the world of Information Technology.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dorrance Publishing Company
• Release date: Feb 5, 2024
• ISBN: 9798889255369

Book preview

Book one, Section One:

The Guyana years.

Prologue.

This book is my second. It follows a book of essays, Gound Beef for the Mind, published in 2008 by Author House.

In this section, the first of two sections of book one, follow the first part of my life; the twenty-three years I spent in Guyana, during which time I saw my parents disappear on me when I was eleven. Where I, as an infant, took part in the celebration of the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II, where as a child, I twice had to escape clandestinely from where I lived, to find a better life. Where as a preteen, my prolific bed wetting masterminded a significant direction my life took; where at just twelve I saved my eldest sister from drowning. Where John Kennedy was one of my childhood heroes and experienced difficulty dealing with his assassination. Where as a fourteen year old I was accosted by and narrowly escaped an unsuspecting pedophile. Where on the streets of Georgetown, one New Year’s Eve, I witnessed a handicapped man we called Bruckup, squash a raging sexually excited mob. Where I was nurtured into adulthood by a great woman, my grandmother. Where I encountered and grew under the wings of a giant of a man, Eusi Kwayana. Where as a teen I got to hang out with the country’s prime minister, Forbes Burnham. Where, at nineteen, I became the head of the science department of a high school. Where I got the chance to meet the renowned Stokely Carmichael (Kwame Ture). Where I, along with heads of states in the Caribbean, encountered and entertained a civil rights era spy who used the alias Kumbi Rahrah and were embarrassingly duped by him. Where I caused a commotion when I tried to support the cause of Rosie Douglas and Joey Jagan in their Sir George Williams civil rights struggle in Canada, and while doing so, unwittingly chased a white pastor from his church, and the country, Guyana. Where I developed serious misgivings about the purpose and benefits of religion. Where I became a Pan Africanist, a playwright and a drummer. Where I had the honors of being the opening act for the great gospel singer Mahalia Jackson at the Globe cinema. Where I performed in the same show with the exciting South African singer, Mariam Makeba at Queens College. Where I won a car even though my contest entry arrived after the doors were closed. Where I met the love of my life who is still my wife, and so much more.

The Canada years.

Prologue.

Interestingly, I lived in Guyana, the country I never had planned to leave, for twenty-three years less one month. Then, the following twenty-three years that saw me raising a family in Canada were beyond being described in a few words. I fast tracked a two year Electronic Technology diploma in one year then I was the first black to be employed by a large telecommunications company where I encountered the racists ire of HR when I showed up for work my first day. I attended the University of Toronto fulltime while working fulltime and taking care of a family, hogging computers after midnight in U of T computer rooms. Let another woman take my family to the brink of disaster, entertained by Let the force be with you, avoided seeing The God Father because the name did not impress me, then decided that it deserved Best Picture, I witnessed friends’ harrowing escapes from immigration authorities, spent some summers in Algonquin Park with moose, bears and wolves, and on native Christian Island playing football with buddies, drinking beer and singing calypso. I saw Boogey and Ingrid in Casablanca, housed more than fifty different persons in my home for different lengths of time for as many reasons. I avoided possible jailtime because of a wrong name. I visited a relative in the Wellon jail after he tried to illegally cross the US border. I watched my wife take maternity leave from a factory job and never returned, as she took a radically different route into the university admin office. Also, where I was among the first to receive treatment for H-Pylori, a stomach bacterium that causes gastritis and ulcers and which had been recently discovered by two Australian doctors that initially were the laughing stock of the medical world; surrounded by five white cops who decided without reservation that I was who they were looking for. And so much more, until I became an old man, Canadian style, at forty-five and looked South to the open-hearted land of opportunity, USA, to rekindle my youth.

A worthwhile note:

This book was written deliberately with a language style for the enjoyment of the reader. In other words, the reader will recognize and appreciate a conversational style in several places as opposed to strict grammatical and structural correctness. Enjoy.

Famous, I Am Not.

Because of

Ice Cream Blocks

Tema Kudakwashe

I am definitely not a famous individual, but my fascinating and intriguing life story will captivate the reader.

I live in the greater Orlando area in the relatively small city of Lake Mary, a city with its own bit of fame having been chosen as the third best place to live in America a few years ago. However, I have resided here for the last twenty-plus years. How did I get here? Well, let me take you on a fascinating journey that started way back in Georgetown, the capital city of Guyana, followed by twenty-three unforgiving winters with my family in the Greater Metro Toronto Area, Canada.

Baby Boomer.

I was obviously a product of the baby boom that followed the last great war, WWII. So, it may help to mention the story I was told of how my parents met. My grandmother, the woman that I spent most of my formative years with, related the episode to me. She probably told me several times. However, she said that one day, while strolling down one of the streets in that garden city, Georgetown, Guyana, her attention was grabbed by the sight of a stunningly beautiful young lady strolling leisurely with a child. As to why she did not assume that the woman was married, since she was in the company of the infant, I never asked. But she stopped her in her tracts, so to speak, and let her know without reservation that she was such a pretty girl and wondered if she wouldn’t mind being introduced to her son Charles, who would soon be twenty-one.

At that time the shock of the attack on Pearl Harbor had already occurred so the great war was raging in Europe, the Pacific, and other regions. But people were still getting married, especially in places that were not directly affected by the action.

My grandmother was delighted to get an affirmative response from the young lady. A meeting was arranged and so began my family. Their first child, my sister Ann, was born within a year of them being married. I was child number four and was delivered at the Georgetown Hospital’s maternity ward.

Of course, like most humans, I was not aware of my existence before a certain age. In my case, this self-consciousness occurred when I was close to two. I find it interesting that although we lived in a small community called River View on the eastern banks of the mighty Essequibo River, I can only recall the night we moved from there. I have no memory of actually living there. But it was dark as midnight when we moved from one side of the river to the other. I recall being in the boat we used and a light, possibly a lantern – the kerosene type that was popular in those days. We were all in the boat, my whole family: my dad Charles, my mother Ruby, my sister Ann, my brother George, and my brother Peter, the one that I followed. That was it. The first four children of an eventual total of ten.

It’s funny that whenever I think of us crossing that river to another location, the town of Bartica, I, for whatever reason, recall the biblical move by Abraham, when he crossed the Euphrates with his father Terah to take up residence in an entirely new place. However, this is not a story of biblical events, but I thought I’d mention it. It’s a part of who I am, how I think.

As for the boat itself? That’s another question that I may never get an answer to. You see, I have never known my dad to have owned a boat. And I don’t have any memories of the family having anything to do with a boat after then. So, the more likely possibility is that we had rented the boat. In other words, the owner of the boat was onboard too as the operator. Or putting it even more simply, the boat was a taxi. The only problem with that scenario is that I have visions of my dad being the driver.

Charles, my dad, has long been deceased but I would love to ask him why he chose to cross the river at nighttime, in the dark, of course. Speculating, I came up with possible answers, but I can’t be sure of any of them. For example, did he work all day and only had the time to make the trip at the end of the day when darkness came quickly? Was there a rental lease involved whereby we had to be out of the house that we lived in, on that said day? Having moved with my family a few times, especially in Toronto, I know how much of an effort the packing can be. So, maybe we just got caught by the dark while packing and was obligated to move that night. Whatever the reason, I always wonder if it wasn’t dangerous to cross that wide river with four little children at night. What if there was a collision with a larger vessel? But then again, perhaps Charles chose that time to cross because he knew that that was the safest time to do so. Maybe he knew from experience that at that time of night the river was completely devoid of traffic. We’ll never know the precise reason.

My sister after me, two years my junior, wasn’t born yet. So, that’s how I always knew that I became aware of my existence before I was two.

On the other side of the Essequibo, in Bartica, we started off living in a house that was behind a cemetery. I was informed that Dad had built that house with his own hands. Which of course would mean that he was building it for a while before we moved there. But the neighborhood was somewhat isolated. There were a few other families around but there was a lot of space between us. That part of Bartica was known as By the Raboo. It was close to the river, and one could take a stroll down to the beach, under the plum and locust trees there. The locust is a segmented fruit in a pod that has a rock-hard shell. What you got when you cracked it open with a hammer was a very powdery fruit that was sweet tasting and carried an interesting odor, so much so that people nick named it stinking toe. The powdery nature of this fruit could cause one to experience choking episodes at times, getting short of breath.

There was a large cluster of bamboos at the entrance of the apparently long trail to our house, from the main unpaved roadway. Halfway between the bamboo cluster and the house was a pond. I distinctly remember that pond as it was the source of caimans and pythons. Very scary times for children it was. Looking back, I presume that the pond was somehow connected to the nearby Essequibo River which could have been the possible source of some of the infestation.

Living in that house etched several memorable incidents into my infant mind. There was the time when a poisonous snake was found in the house. How was it possible for a snake to find its way up into a house that was on stilts that were at least eight feet ? Then there was the time when my brother George could not be found. He had done something irritating and felt he had to leave the home before Dad arrived from work, to apply heavy manners on him. George was missing quite into the evening. He was found fast asleep on one of the tombs. He was six and surely had no fear of the dead. This lack of fear for the supernatural would play a significantly role later in his teenage days.

The incident of all incidents that occurred when the house at By the Raboo, was the fire. The house literally burned to the ground. I suppose the fire started when Mom was cooking with her wood burning stove. Dad wasn’t home but she of course got us all safely out of harm’s way.

We then moved closer to the center of Bartica into a rental house. This house was in a yard with a few other houses. They were small tenement houses, perhaps one-bedroom structures. One may wonder, how do families make out in one-bedroom homes? Specifically referring to the sex life of the parents. Well, let me put it this way: families with many more than four children have been known to get by in houses with no bedrooms. Put that in your pipe and smoke it.

My parents, I suppose, did very well romantically in that two-roomed house. After all, there are times when small kids are fast asleep. And at the time we moved to that new house, my mom was very pregnant, so to speak. Before you know it, she was in the Bartica hospital with labor pains.

Race and my family.

Before I go on, I must relate the connection between racial elements and my family. You see, my dad was a dark-skinned man of African descent while my mother was a very light skinned woman of mostly African descent. My mom’s father was a light-skinned man with red hair. His peers called him Goldman. He was the product of a British man and a woman of African ancestry. Now, my sister Ann, my parents’ first child, was of a dark complexion like my dad. That was no cause for concern since my dad was dark and she obviously came out from the womb of my mother. However, when the second child, George, was born, he looked more like my mom’s dad. He looked more like Goldman, with fire red hair and a very light complexion. So, you would think that George fit perfectly into the family picture. But from what I was told, my dad was not pleased. Charles began entertaining thoughts of infidelity on the part of my mom. At least, that was what I heard. This was difficult to believe since the boy looked like his grandfather. Therefore, if the story is true, I could only imagine that the appearance of his first child, my sister, was precedent setting for him. He probably assumed that that was how his children would all look.

Interestingly, the third child, my brother Peter, was again dark skinned like his sister. I can guess that this occurrence could have possibly re-enforced what Dad was thinking. Then I came along with a skin tone that was close to Ann’s and Peter’s. What do we have here? Three kids of darker shades verse one light-skinned red head.

Well, well! It was now time for the fifth child to appear. Mom took in with labor pains on the thirtieth of November. I was two. Dad got her checked in at the Bartica Hospital on his way to his workshop. By the time he got finished with work that day he got the news: a baby was born, and it was a girl, too. For a while it seemed to him that girls had deserted him, so Charles raced to the hospital. When he arrived, the gate to the hospital compound was locked. Visiting hours were over for the day. But he was not about to return home without seeing his newborn girl and so proceeded to scale the hospital compound fence. He found his way into the maternity ward and what he saw shocked him.

After entering the ward outside of visiting hours, Charles saw a pink baby girl with hair as red as George’s. Dad had no choice but to be humbled by the revelation that it was inevitable that some of his off springs would carry the light skin of his wife, their mother, and the red hair of their grandfather. He proceeded to apologized to Mom for having any doubts about her fidelity when he first set eyes on his first son, George. So that was the end of that.

However, the following night, we all went to visit Mom and our new sister who someone proceeded to call Pinky. But that wasn’t the name that my dad decided on. He named her Patchura. Interestingly, the baby started life with all of us calling her Pinky and it was not until she became an adult in her thirties that she insisted that we call her Patchura. It was time for Pinky to go.

Before I left Bartica at age four, there were incidences that are forever part of my memory. There was the time when Queen Elizabeth got coronated. The celebration took place across the British Empire of which Guyana was a member colony called British Guyana at the time. All schools were involved in the celebration in a significant way. I think that all students attended school that day but not to do schoolwork. It was to drink Coca-Cola and eat cake. I do not know if I was invited. I do not know if students were told to bring their younger siblings along for the day, but I was there. My sister Ann took me along. But what she did not realize was that she was promoting trouble, setting an interesting precedent. I enjoyed being at the school that day drinking free Coca-Cola and eating sweet buns. A precedent was set.

The very next day, even though I wasn’t quite four, found me at the school wearing shoes on the wrong feet. I had escaped from home and followed Ann to school. I don’t know if she saw me following her, but I made it there without incident. For the record, there was no Coca-Cola or sweet buns at the school that day, it was a regular school day and it was difficult to get me to understand it all. Coronation day was only one day and interestingly, at the time of writing, Elizabeth had just died, and her funeral was about to happen. The coronation of her son Charles was up coming.

Another time, we four children went for a walk into wooded unfamiliar territory. When it was time to head home, there was a dispute as to the way back. Ann was claiming it was this way and George was insisting it was that way. As young as I was, I could see that Ann’s way was going to lead us into a creek where who knows what was waiting for us. George won out and led us safely home. Shush!

We moved from the Essequibo region when I was four and headed for Buxton village on the Atlantic coast of the county of Demerara. Buxton was where my grandmother lived. She was Isadora, my dad’s mother. We rented a house just up the street from her and Dad would spend a lot of time at her house, helping her to construct an extension that would significantly increase her living quarters. You see, her house consisted of just a small room attached to a very restricted kitchen. Now she was adding a living room and a real bedroom. Meanwhile, how was Dad earning a living while spending so much time building his mom’s house? The answer to that question I still don’t have. He’s been gone now for more than twenty years, and I never did ask. Peter suggested that perhaps Gran was paying Dad to do the work. That’s possible.

Peter also told me that towards the end of the six months we stayed in Buxton, Mom had disappeared. She left over some dispute with Dad and probably headed for her parents in Georgetown or perhaps a close friend and stayed there. In other words, Mom and Dad separated for a little while at least. I have very faint memories of something like that in the works.

I can only speculate as to why they separated. I wonder if it had anything to do with Dad moving from Bartica to Buxton to spend time working on his mom’s house.

As for my grandmother Dora, we kids started addressing her as Granny. But that did not last for long. She got us to stop the Granny business. She said it made her sound older than she really was. We had to start calling her Gran. And as sure as you were born Gran became her name until she passed at the age of eighty. Meanwhile, Gran was very strict and so it was difficult for little kids to like her. Well, speaking for myself, as a young child, it was hard to like Gran.

My dad the mover.

It is said that Dad was a very restless man. I can tell you that over his lifetime he moved from one house to another, one place or town to another, more than seventeen times. This restlessness of his played a major role in shaping us, his family, as you will see.

As mentioned, living in Buxton only lasted six months. The move from Buxton was complicated. My brothers, George and Peter, were left with Gran. I was shipped off to my aunt Vi for a month. As for my two sisters, I think they were the first children involved in reconciling the family. You see, towards the very end of our six months in Buxton, Dad very likely spent some time making overtures to his wife, seeking to get the family back together. So, when he disappeared, so to speak, from Buxton, leaving me at his sister in Georgetown, he and my mom moved in together with Ann and Patchura. Lucky girls! The boys could be left around but the girls had to be with Mom and Dad. I get the drift. But the problem was that I had a miserable time at my aunt.

Aunt had three girls, all older than I. The eldest one was not akin to having this little boy in her house. Yes, a little boy who would often cry just from missing his siblings. You see, during that month, I did not have a clue as to what I was doing there or when again would I see the ones I loved to be with, so I would often cry. Jean hated me for that and would pinch me to get me to stop crying, only aggravating the situation further.

Lordy, Lordy! After about a month Dad came for me. He took me to the family’s new dwelling quarters – a rented flat on the second floor of a house on Garnett Street in a section of Georgetown called Newtown.

My time in Garnett Street was quite memorable indeed. Initially, the street was not paved and as I frequented out, it didn’t take much for me to end up with stubbed bloodied toes. It was mostly my big toe that suffered as I hit those big stones. It would bleed and pain until healed. Ironically, it was my venturing out without shoes that would make my toes vulnerable, and when one would get busted it would make it nearly impossible to wear shoes. That’s when I had to be shoeless, even in school.

As far as school was concerned, a child could not attend before the age of six. In my case, I was allowed to start public school at five. As to how I got into school before my time? That is an episode I relate from time to time if I have a listening ear. You see my brother George loved drilling me with math problems and it seemed that I responded in kind. By the time I was five I could double numbers mentally starting from 2 all the way to 2048. So, one day I found myself at the admissions office. I can’t recall who took me there. Maybe it was George or perhaps one of my parents. But I was there and whoever took me there ask me to do my math. The headmaster was bowled over by my ability to deal with numbers when I hadn’t even started school. My parents were given an admission slip for me to start school the following day.

While attending that school, one day I arrived at home with a pencil that I did not leave home with that morning. Lo and behold, the presence of this strange article in my hand caught the observant eyes of my dad. Before you could say school I was on the tow bar of his bike on our way to my school. It most likely would seem ridiculous in these times but Dad was taking me back to the school to return the pencil. Again, I can’t recall what happened when we got there. Perhaps the school was already shut for the day. But the lesson was established. That is: Dad was not going to allow any of other people’s property to be brought into his house. Or, better yet, we his children were not to be in possession of things we did not own. But there were more school episodes.

Charles, my dad, loved cork hats. Those were the hats you saw British officials wearing on safari. Cork hats had a solid dome and a solid rim that circled the bottom of the dome. So how did he express his love of the hats? Well, just put it on Jesse’s head and let him wear it to school. Yes, dress him up with it and he would look important. That was OK for him to say. But my donning of his cork hat was surely fulfilling a desire or fantasy of his, but not mine. I had no interest in going anywhere with a cork hat on my head. No! Not this Jesse. I hated the creature. Yes, the hat was a creature in its own right. It became a horrible creature once you put it on a little boy’s head. But I was just a little obedient boy. I couldn’t tell my dad that I hated the domed monster.

Off to school I went wearing the hat my dad loved. He was proud of me. As a result, many children made fun of me calling me names like Tarzan Boss, as they giggled. It didn’t take long before I told Mom that I didn’t like the hat. I said, Children laughing at me all the time. She did not want to upstage Dad, but she promised that she would talk to him about it. The cork hat escapade lasted a few weeks the most, then it was no more.

The booty incident was next in my adventures. This time it was Mom that was the perpetrator. Mom fitted me with what were girl’s shoes as far as I was concerned. They were Booties, girl’s-colored sneakers. That meant more ridicule from the kids. When were they going to stop embarrassing me in public? I wondered!

Somewhere along the line the booty was no longer a factor in my life. Thank heavens! Then there was the slate issue.

All children below a certain grade wrote on slates with a slate pencil. Notebooks with lined pages were the standard for higher grades. But there were two types of slates. The regular slate was the light weight one with a wooden frame around it, sort of like a picture frame. Most kids by far carried these regular ones but some parents wanted to make sure that they never ever had to replace their child’s slate. They would get them the heavy-duty slate. And as you already have presumed, I was carrying one of the heavy slates. That didn’t bother me much. What did bother me was the fact that my heavy-duty slate had a piece missing at one of the corners. In other words, it was an ugly slate. So, when I got tired of carrying the ugly slate to and from school, I devised a plan to take care of that concern.

One day on my way home from school I decided to execute my plan. I would destroy my heavy-duty slate by breaking it, smashing into pieces so small that it would be rendered useless. I would blame something for the demise. I couldn’t believe how things turned out. I tried like hell to shatter that slate. I slammed it against fence posts. I slammed it against house posts and some more. The thing just would not break. I gave up. I lost. When they said heavy duty, they seriously meant it. Unlike these days.

There is one more incident that is worthwhile relating about living on Garnett Street, Newtown. Peter never made it to this new home of ours. He was left to live with our grandmother, Gran, Dad’s mother in Buxton. About the time we left Buxton I was approaching five. Therefore, Peter had to be seven or getting close. The reason I’m figuring this out is because he was deliberately left at Gran to keep her company. Keep the old lady’s company. She lived by herself and could have used the presence of someone else. My question at this time is: Why Peter? Why not George who was the older of the two? But it perhaps is one of those questions that I’m asking too late, if you know what I mean. The point I’m getting at is that besides two more baby girls, Tessie and Alize, that were brought home by Mom from the maternity ward of Georgetown hospital while we lived in Newtown, there were four of us who were old enough to fight. Why fight? Well, it seemed that the events leading up to a fight was always brewing. And there was only one kind of fight that resulted. Exclusively, the fight was always between George on one side and the rest of us on the other.

George was a crisp pugilist. He could beat almost anyone his age in a slugfest. In addition to his fighting abilities, his light skin caused him to earn the nickname Local Joe Louis.

We were tired of being roughed up by George. Most times there were no fights as each one of us knew that it would be an exercise in futility. We were going to lose so why even try. Nonetheless, there was a problem that had to be solved. George had to be put in his place, as it were. And so, we three, Ann, Patchura, and I came up with a plan. We were going to band together as a single force against George and beat him up. After all, Ann was older than him, so she, with as much help as possible from Patchura and me, should be a more than necessary force to defeat the pugilist.

I suppose that the ingredients that created the need to fight were always brewing indeed. So then, we just knew that we did not have to wait for days to execute our plan. Something was bound to happen that same day. The plan went like this: Ann was going to arm herself with a wooden hairbrush. This wooden hairbrush was solid and very impactful. We figured that it would only need one blow to knock him out. Ann could administer such a blow after Patchura and myself jumped on him. Like I said, the occasion for a fight came in a hurry. Ann had her weapon nearby and quickly grabbed it. Patchura and I jumped on George and tried to hold him down so that Ann could apply the brush technique. Well let me just say that the plan failed miserably.

George was too much for all three of us. Before you know it, he had commandeered the brush and was letting us have our share of it. The natural thing to do was run. We did. That was that. There were no more plans to take care of George. We were defeated and accepted that he was the boss when Mom and Dad weren’t home. I suppose that a humbling took place. I wondered what the outcome might have been if Peter was with us.

Ironically, in those days, George used to promote me on the streets as a good fighter. I can’t recall why that would be the case. But I can tell you that one day, while we were on our way back from visiting Dad at his workshop in Kitty, close to the market, there was an encounter with some boys on the street. All I could remember was George saying, as he talked to one of the boys about his size, He can’t beat Jesse! as he pinpointed the little fellow standing next to his older brother. Even today as I look back it is difficult to comprehend what followed. It was if some kind of compelling spirit took hold of me and threw me into a rage as I attacked this innocent boy of my size, the boy George was referring to. Before anyone had the chance to assimilate what was happening, I was on top of that boy who was lying on the street. They parted us and we proceeded to head home without further incident. My, my! We humans!

Then it was time to prepare to move again.

Our own home.

My family grew to seven kids. Six of us lived in the flat on Garnett Street with Mom and Dad. This apartment had one bedroom that our parents occupied. The living room that separated the bedroom from the kitchen was where the children slept. We slept on the floor. But save yourself some tears. Sleeping on the floor was so common in so many households that we thought nothing of it. It was not a symbol of being poor. Once we had several meals every day, a roof over our heads, clean clothes to wear, regular school attendance, a blanket, and many hours to play, we had it made. Nevertheless, I had a serious personal issue to deal with from night to night.

By the age of five I was very conscious that I was a bed-wetter. It never really bothered my parents, and so looking back, I have to assume that they were educated on the subject. I say so because back in those times there existed a lot of ignorance on the subject of bed-wetting. Many people saw the phenomenon as a result of pure laziness. They could only conclude that the child was just plain ole lazy to get up and go to the bathroom. But as far as I knew, it was a miserable handicap. It was both embarrassing and extremely uncomfortable to awake at night with everything next to me soaking wet. My sleeping clothes were wet. My sleeping bag or blanket was dripping wet. The floor around me was wet. It was miserable because once I woke up wet, it was time to start the getting-to-bed process all over again.

Waking up wet meant that I had to find fresh sleeping clothes, a dry blanket and or sleeping bag. Sometimes these could not be found. I had to make sure that my spot was dry or seek out another spot that may or may not be available. With five children sleeping on the living room floor there had to be competition for the real estate. Interestingly, only one other child was a bed wetter but not as bad as I was.

Otherwise, at that time, Ann and George always brought home excellent year-end report cards from school. They were among the top students in their classes. As for me there was no doubt that I had the ability to be a top student in my class, but I was taken to too much play. I fell into the condition that the saying, too much play makes Jack a dull boy was meant to describe. As you will see, it was only after many years of mediocre accomplishments, when a sense of urgency gripped me, that I returned to being a scholar or something of the sort.

A most memorable event occurred while living in this scheme flat. Mom and some others were hospitalized for several days and a child died – all due to home-made drink poisoning.

All that happened at an annual birthday party that many of us would usually attend. It was a very good friend of Mom that kept these annual functions on the occasion of her son’s birthday. Interestingly, I was absent that particular year. Why was I not there? Well, even though I was just seven, I was ironing my own shirt to get dressed for the party. Some how I managed to inflict my belly with a serious burn, the result being that I was cancelled. An investigation by the pathologist revealed that the poison brew was made in a galvanized tub. A drink ingredient and the zinc reacted to produce the poison.

Your guess is as good as mine as to why things worked out such that I wasn’t there.

My parents found a town house in the Campbellville housing scheme. The home placed us a bit more than a stone’s throw away from the school we attended. That was Campbellvilleille Government School. We only rented the upper flat which I suppose had more space than at Garnett Street. Peter was still with Gran in Buxton.

Meanwhile, Dad had joined a housing co-op. The co-op was organized by the government and consisted of a group of people that would work together to build houses of their own. The land was allocated to the east of old La Penitence where there was a sugar cane field. Since I remember going there with him at times as a kid, I can conclude that they possibly formed the co-op a while earlier. However, the deal was that all members were going to join together and build each other’s houses. It would appear that my dad was among the first to choose a lot because he picked out the first one next to the main road called Vlissingen Road. Of course, all the lots along that stretch were backing the main road but was separated from it by another sizeable strip of land which is still empty today.

Concerning owning these homes, the arrangement was that the prices were set at a much lower than market price and there was going to be a mortgage with manageable monthly payments. My parents would finally have their own home.

Dad regularly took me to the construction site. I was able to get involved in filling concrete block molds and pounding the mix to compact it. I also recall Dad using me to show off to his member friends. How so? Well, I was able to read the time on a watch that had hour, minute and second hands. He would say to me, Jesse, tell Mr. So and so the time. Immediately, I would proceed to look at the face of the watch I was wearing and announced the time down to the very second. The person listening would marvel. It was their marveling over what they heard that caused me to conclude that I was able to do something a six-year-old kid did not normally do.

Eventually, the family moved into the La Penitence house. A stone’s throw from the house was a large canal that was principally used by the sugar estates for transporting their products of sugar and molasses down to the river docks for export. Vlissingen Road crossed the canal on a high bridge that allowed the pontoons to pass without hindrance. We would also swim in the trench sometimes, but I think doing so was illegal. The canal was solely for the purpose of pontoon use. It was perhaps owned by the sugar estate. Memorably, that trench that was known as Punt Trench was well loaded with red crabs. I suppose they originally came in from the river, the Demerara River that flowed into the Atlantic. There was much excitement over the presence of these crabs.

For a boy my age, the catching of these red crabs which were sometimes quite large, was very intriguing. Let me explain. Operation Crab Catch involved getting bait such as a piece of meat like chicken skin, the tail of salted fish or perhaps a piece of fish from a fish catch. All these types of bait were relatively cheap and easy to obtain. I used to drop in on any grocer and ask for the remains of salted fish that no one would pay for. If Mom cooked chicken, I could get the throwaway parts and so on. Once secured, the bait was tied to the end of a string and thrown a few feet out from the bank of the canal. The other end of the string was tied to shrub on the bank. And then I would wait. It did not take long before one would see that something was tugging on the string. Such an occurrence created a lot of excitement for a boy – each and every time. We used to call these crabs Sherigas. I don’t know where that name came from, but they were able to outsmart us many times.

To catch these tasty creatures once they began to pull on the bait, I would have to display a lot of patience. It called for pulling the string up very slowly while having a basket made of chicken wire ready to circle under them once they appeared through the slightly murky water. If they saw me before the basket was under them, they would release the bait and disappear. This of course happened many times. But the reverse is also true. I caught my fair share of the dainties.

 There were other reasons for going down to a canal. There was another canal close to Laing Avenue that was walking distance from Punt Trench. There was where daily, many boys gathered at a swimming hole, so to speak. It was legal to swim in this canal. But at the age of eight I was no swimmer. I had never been in deep water before. I used to look on at all the boys sharking around in the water, having lots of fun, and I would feel very envious. But when I