Enterprise
was twelve. Most ah me life since then, me bin ah watch sheer sheep,” Samaroo said. He recalled having to watch 100 sheep.
After leading a life of a shepherd Parsaram worked with GuySuCo. He boasts working with the company for twenty-something and is still with them today as a sluice attendant.
As peaceful as it is, he noted that strangers patrol the village once it gets dark and so most persons try avoid being on the road late for fear of robbery.
Apart from work he attends the Vishnu Mandir sometimes.
A short walk from Samaroo led to the community centre ground where a few boys were gathered, sitting in the pavilion talking. Cricket Coach Richard Albert, who was sitting across at the health centre chatting, agreed to have a photo of his charges taken.
The Enterprise born resident is coach for the under-19, under-17, under15 and under-13 cricket teams. He boasted that Enterprise is home to West Indies cricketer Rajendra Chandrika and national cricketers Zahir Mohamed, Bashram Yadram (under19), Kamesh Yadram and Pradesh Balkissoon.
“Eighty to a hundred youths occupy the ground every day. Enterprise is also home to female national cricketers, Kavita Yadram (under-19 and senior), Yogeeta Balkissoon and Amanda Persaud (both under-19),” said Albert. “We also have a girls club spear-headed by Kavita Yadram. The club plays soft-ball and hard-ball competitions.”
Apart from cricket, the youths in the village participate in football, track and field and bicycle racing.
Enterprise is well on its way in propelling its youths into sports and keeping them occupied; though it has made its mark nationally when it comes to cricket, it has also done so with Kampta Ramnarine, national scrabble competitor.
Albert also shared a few of the services available in the village, not least of which was its “very effective policing group that patrols four times a week.”
Enterprise, he said, is “The nicest place in Guyana…. The people are friendly. The people are cooperative. The people are supportive.”
Though most of the streets remain in relatively good condition, he wishes the few that are not up to standard could be fixed.
Leaving the village the World Beyond Georgetown caught sight of an empty, old and shabby, but charming house that added character to the village. According to a former resident, “That beautiful old house was owned and shared by a typical Indian family. They also worked for the sugar estate and purchased that lot from the overseer who was British. His name was Sylvester
[the British overseer.] The house was built sometime in the late 1920s or the early 1930s and is still owned by the family who has since migrated to the US.”
The former resident, who also wished to remain anonymous, said he lived at Enterprise during the seventies to the early nineties. “I’ve had the great opportunity of growing up there… I’ve seen the drastic change in this village over a few decades. Enterprise [played] an important part in the sugar industry. I would like to call it a ‘sleepy sugarcane village’ that predominantly survived on the sugar industry because almost 80 per cent of the households there had some affiliation with the sugar industry and working in the back lands of Enterprise. Enterprise showed up there I think in the late 1800s after slavery would have been abolished and the Indians started working on the sugar plantation. It was called a logee town… Back in the olden days it was really simple and people actually had time to play on the streets. Everyone was intuned with their neighbours… It was a thriving little village… that really survived on sugarcane and over the years since the sugar industry has been really struggling so was Enterprise.”
He has been living abroad for 15 years, but visits.
Enterprise, he said, also was a better place to raise children years ago when an entire village paid attention to the way a child was brought up and his respect for elders. However, the internet he believes is partially to be blamed for less play and more disrespect.
“Enterprise still is a beautiful place. People are very friendly. People are still very loving. The younger generation I can’t really speak totally of them; I don’t really know them that well but the older generation… very humble, very easygoing people that still live simple lives. I would love to live there again sometime in my life,” he said.