132 CARMICHAEL STREET — WEEKENDS

SUNDAY “Brekfuss” From 10A

bought each day. Grownup children were often sent on such adventures. I was told to buy certain items from specific vendors if sent to Stabroek Market. The British Guyana Museum, a place of great interest (it had a stuffed lion), meant I had to stop, then run to the Market buying items from one vendor. I always wondered how my Mother always knew. Museum visits were allowed to take place after shopping. Some Saturdays I was sent to the Demerara Meat Company to buy ham and bacon scraps. This was a popular item and I had to attract attention by waving my list. Being a child I did not have to wait long.

A popular main meal on Saturdays was cook- up rice…split peas or blackeye with rice, accompanied either by codfish cakes and a “tomatee”, onions, garlic and fine leaf thyme sauce or stew made from one of the following - fish, chicken, or meat. Another revered dish was metagee -root vegetables cooked in coconut “milk” (probably of Pacific origins) with imported pig tails and salt beef (while salt beef was sold in the UK, pig tails were for export to colonies). Dry Food had the same ingredients “ingreasements” according to my Aunt Iris, but without coconut “milk” being used. Meals were sometimes washed down with “swank” made with limes, brown sugar, and nutmeg.

Meals prepared on this day were special. At this point the names of our mealtimes have to be explained. British Breakfast was “Tea” for us, Lunch was “Breakfuss” (Breakfast) and Dinner was also “Tea”. Lunch for us could be a snack between”Brekfuss” and “Tea”.

Tea really referred to tea imported from the UK but became a generic term as in Cocoa Tea, Coffee Tea, Ginger Tea or Bush Tea made from a variety of leaves like congo pump (my favourite), lemon grass, blacksage, mint or sweetbroom (it logically should be sweepbroom.) which was actually bitter and often blended with another bush. I am left to wonder if “bush tea” meant it was the only kind of tea available for workers in the “bush”. These leaves were bought from specialist vendors outside Bourda Market, still there to this day. Homemade bread or fried bakes could be accompanied by a codfish stew or one of the following codfish cakes, shrimp cakes, tinned sardines or salmon in tomato sauce, cheap white cheese or “Dutchman Head” - Dutch Edam cheese which had a wax covering dyed red with annatto they collected from Indigenous peoples in Guyana in exchange for glass beads, steel hooks and knives. At this point I interrupt the narrative to relate a funny story. First time I bought Edam cheese in London I said it was not right because it was a bit soft whereas in Guyana it has a very firm texture not realising at the time that the texture changed during refrigeration on ships on the way to Guyana. Bread as well as cassava bread could be toasted on the coal pot and buttered with bright yellow salted cooking butter. When I first encountered table butter I did not like it but salted table butter was acceptable later on.

Was the major event. Soup was the traditional choice and to be really good had to include marrow bones and beef. My job was to go to Stabroek to a specific popular butcher Mr. Snagg, a name straight from a Dickens novel. Stuck between shouting women my voice was not loud enough but being a regular customer he would always point to me. I would name what I wanted - soup bones and meat. After meat was removed from large marrow bones, the latter would sawn into small pieces with what looked like a giant hacksaw and often split with a hatchet. Chunks of brisket and bones were wrapped in white newsprint.

To split peas, blackeye or red bean (soaked overnight and drained) was added to root crops selected from, green plantain, eddoe, tannias, hard yam (African origins), the softer Chinese yam know as “bell yam” which puzzled me until I did French Saint’s and realised “belle” means beautiful…a linguistic heritage from the French occupation. “Balanjay” is another such word from “boulanger” a baker. The vegetable looks a bit like the traditional French baguette or long bread. Pounded plantains know as “Fu-fu” was also popular. It is a West African Word meaning pounded hard Yams. During the days of slavery in Guyana, plantation owners later had to provide food by law and this led to the cultivation of breadfruit and plantain trees, in the back dam. Several villages refer to such areas as “plantain walk”. The walk I suspected, referred to the dam that separated fields. Crab, callaloo and ochro soup, minus marrow bones, was also a favourite dish. Ochro (ochroe) is really the anglicised work for “okra” which, related to the hibiscus plant, is native to Ghana. It is always interesting to examine the derivation and history of particular words used in any creole language.

Cooking utensils - pots and frying pans made of heavy cast iron were discarded if dropped and cracks appeared. Fuel for coal pots was wood, wallaba best of all because it was resinous and caught fire easily. Not so greenheart which gave off smoke and had to be fanned to get flames started. Coals from wallaba were reserved for heating the irons for “pressing” clothes because they created glowing heat and not flames. I learnt how to use the axe, hatchet and cutlass for cutting wood. Always use a diagonal stroke and not ninety degrees when cutting across a long piece of wood. Two reasons were that the diagonal slices the grain easily, quickly and efficiently. The use of the left and right hook in boxing, the knockout punches, prove the same thing. Cutting small pieces of at right angles was not only inefficient but could cause pieces to fly upwards to hit you.

Sunday is also the time the shout “Enamel wares…solder” could be heard in the yard from the itinerant repairman (tinker in the UK), because he knew everyone would be at home, families as well as single men or women. His worn felt hat, jacket and denim (“dutty powder”) trousers were standard wear for the working man. “Dutty powder” was actually derived from the French “poudre bleu” (blue powder) the name of the rough blue cloth used by workers and peasants. The repairman carried the tools of his trade. There was a tin can with coals used to heat the soldering iron, an iron rod with the soldering head, a piece of solid copper shaped to a point which is easily heated. A small tin of soldering paste and short lengths of solder completed his equipment. It was exciting to watch him