‘Mai’ At 78 Has Never Worn Shoes
’MAI’ is 78 years old, and despite the amazing changes sweeping across her life, she has never worn a pair of shoes nor been to the cinema
She doesn’t mind too much - she can watch television at her grands’ if she wants and after decades of pounding barefooted the mud and dust of roads and cane and rice fields, shoes are a humbug.
The matriarch of her family, ‘Mai’ bore seven girls and six boys for her husband. Her husband died 16 years ago, but all her children and her 70 great-grands and 35 grands are alive.
Everybody calls her ‘Mai’ or Sarah but her real name is Dhanpati Bajan. She was born November 8, 1911 at Pouderoyen, West Bank, Demerara. ‘Mai’, at 16, started working at the Versailles sugar estate, weeding the fields and moulding young cane plants. Soon after, her wedding was arranged to a groom she had never seen before.
“You had to agree, you can’t say anything,” she said. Those were the days of arranged marriages, and for ’Mai’, hers worked.
Her husband did not have his own house and they moved into a coconutbranch thatched structure that was to become home for some years at Pouderoyen. From there they started the family and after raising their own cows and cultivating a rice plot, ‘Mai’ and her husband eventually put up a small but ‘real’ house.
Those were hard years, she says, but times are very hard now. “I wish things did cheap now like they was long ago...you have to eat good food, dat is why we live so long, and I want to reach 100 years.”
The years of toil stretched, but as the children got older they began to help and soon the family built a bigger house.
At one time, she says, theirs was the biggest house in the village, and they had the first radio in the community. “People use to come to us to listen the news.”
‘Mai’ is short and thin but wiry and still agile. She does not take it easy and has her own kitchen garden which she tends herself. She does not need spectacles, and after gardening and household chores, spends time visiting her many grands and great-grands around.
For her, the typical female East Indian headtie or ‘romal’ is still required wearing and she does not leave home without one.
With the extended family scattered she now lives by herself. However, her youngest daughter, whose husband is away from home on a scholarship, stays with her.
She is taking each day as it comes, and as a devout Hindu, goes to temple two times a week.
‘Mai’ believes in good manners and respect for other people. “I content with what I get from me pension but dey should pay it fortnightly instead of monthly.”
Fun? ‘Mai’ likes to kick it up at weddings, fairs and other functions, and she is usually the life of the party, relatives say.