Some Guyanese are difficult subjects to write on. Forbes Burnham is certainly one of them. We Guyanese all know he is either admired or despised… and we all know that he made it hard for us. My LFB anecdote, I hope, is not about politics, but about a mystery this man left in my nine-ten-year- old head and some other unintended lessons about family bloodlines and racism. Is blood really thicker than water? Well in British Guiana and even Guyana today that truism often takes a back seat to the secrets of the family bloodline. Family, at least in my family, can get FORGOTTEN because of the colour of their skin. Or not forgotten as happened in my case.
On Saturday mornings, Atlantic tides and our Gran were usually the key deciding factors that would decide the rhythm of us Yearwood boys’ day. What were we were going to do for fun and adventure? Mom and our family’s good friend, Father Kiss (pron. Kish) from Hungary, could also have a say. They often took us swimming if the time and tide were right for Father Kiss to leave his duties as Parish Priest of The Holy Rosary RC church in David Street, Kitty.
A Saturday morning was also always a good morning to go on a lizard hunt; or on a shrimp hunt. An incoming high tide could mean the lizards in our garden would have to watch out if Father Kiss was too busy to take us swimming. We kids adored him like the true father we didn’t have.
Father Kiss had three parallel bullet wound scars etched on his forehead. Plain-to-see-evidence of his warrior past. He had fought as a very young boy in the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 and was shot in the head during a machine gun fire-fight in a Roman Catholic church where he had been hiding. The Soviet soldiers left him for dead.
Father Kiss’s pact with God that day meant it would not only be the clergy for him, but vows of poverty too. All he had to do was survive. That is the reason he became a true Jesuit. It took him twelve years from the day he was old enough to enter the seminary to become one and his posting to far-away Guyana only boosted his vocation. He loved his priesthood and that was plain to see by everyone who had dealings with him. He taught me to raise honey bees and how to make Rosary Prayer beads from the buck-bead bushes that grew all round us in Kitty. Up till then I had avoided and deemed them useless because they stung almost as bad as nettles.
Father Kiss loved us kids and we loved him back. His enormous strength was always at our disposal. No one in Guyana could toss us higher! Up, up we would sail before splashing into the turbid Atlantic surf. He was so broad, two or three of us could hide behind him from bigger waves! It seemed all five of us could be clambering over him at the same time and his roars of laughter would resonate deep from within his immense chest. Father Kiss was the strongest, gentlest giant of my childhood and I absolutely adored him. He was a real man and a fantastic model to emulate. By the time he left our lives for missionary work in the Rupununi Savannahs I was sure I was going to be a Jesuit like him. I couldn’t wait to grow up.
Low tide was great for adventure too! It was the best time for shrimp and crab hunting and there were a lot of both to catch on Kitty beach. Me and my three brothers knew where to look for them. The tidal pools could hold no secrets from Leith and Paul my too elder brothers. They were our experts!
To catch lizards, all we needed was to be armed with a fresh spine from a new coconut broom that the ends hadn’t been chopped off yet. The very thin end of the midrib of the frond could easily be twisted into a sort of lasso noose which we would place around the lizard’s or shrimp’s head. Catching crabs was a bare hand business. Shoving your arm down a Buck crab’s tunnel was a mark of bravery among us boys. Leith only caught the most because he was the eldest and had longer hands.
“Who wants to go to market to fetch some brooms?” Was Gran’s question. It fell on willing ears. Today, it was my turn to go to Kitty market. A new coconut broom held the promise of adventure. Extra motivation was Gran’s “Keep the change , Hugh.” It was always good for a bunch of mangoes or a mamee (The mamey sapote (Pouteria sapota). Like all such matters in Guyana my choice was dictated by the season for these fruit. I preferred mamee season, because these big and tasty fruit were not as abundant as mangoes. So, I usually skipped and hopped to our market with its fairy-tale-tower. It was at the other end of Kitty, but visible from the seawall part of Queen Street where we lived in our Chinee owned tenement yard. Our landlord Mr Loew, was a nice man who would even take us rowing, sometimes in circles, to the National Park.
This Saturday morning was to be the day my identity of who I was changed forever. Life was different thereafter. It was the morning I stopped being one hundred per cent Bayne-Stevenson. Forbes Burnham, the Prime Minister of Guyana, and a bit of a bogey man in my family was looking down at me. He was smiling and he was telling me I was a YEARWOOD!
Mr Burnham was out horse riding in Kitty, with a white man! A white man in a Guyana Police Mounted Branch uniform! Way up there above me this white man sat. His mount prancing next to the President’s. Then I recognised him! It was none other than ‘Skip’ Roberts! The star of this year’s police force gymkhana and the very last Guyanese bakra crime chief. I was to find out from my grandmother what bakra meant shortly. I felt a new found confidence in knowing who the officer was. I watched them riding up William Street to the corner of Queen Street.
This was high entertainment! What a thrill! Everyone was awe struck at the sight of the handsome negroPrime Minister and the famous white crime fighter riding regally together.
Everybody WILL be green with envy when I get home and tell them who I saw! I thought in glee to myself.
Way up there the black man and the white man rode. Their mounts prancing magnificently. The sharp staccato of iron shod hooves ringing off stony William Street, filled my ears and magnified the sense of power the two emanated. The Prime Minister suddenly singles me out amongst the other onlookers and reins in his horse.
I already knew it was hard not to notice me. I had a Beatles’ haircut but I knew my favourite band was not the reason he noticed me. I was not completely unaware at nine or ten that I was different. I was a freckle-face, white boy with dark blonde hair and skin constantly peeling off my nose from the equatorial sun. Even being dressed like the other kids, bare-footed and in short khaki pants could not help me blend in. The stark contrast of the colour of my skin to that of the other villagers gathered around meant I stuck out like a sore thumb. No, not even being bare-footed in khaki short pants could help me blend in. I was used to being noticed and I was accustomed enough not to notice it. BUT, not by the Prime Minister of Guyana. My heart beat raced.
“Ah! You’re a young Yearwood, aren’t you?” Burnham takes a long look down at me. His powerful, horse snorting vigorously as if in reply to his query or to lend additional punctuation to his words. The Prime Minister is smiling that famous smile of his and my heat beat responds immediately. I smile back up at him and I swear the blood that had stopped flowing in my veins only then started flowing again!
He knows who I am!!? How’s that possible? I KNEW him. The newspapers and radio were always full of Mr. Burnham. Although politics were not discussed in front of us children, I knew he was a bit of a bogey man in the family, but I liked to listen to him talk. Everyone else did too and everyone agreed he was the best speech maker in the whole Caribbean. He was the best and I agreed!
Burnham continues to look down at me, one hand in control of his powerful stallion. He laughs out loud at the confused look of affirmation that must have been all over my face. His stallion was now pawing so hard at the road that sparks flew from under its shoes. The picture of him on that big reddish-brown horse has left a lasting memory. It is always there to see whenever I wonder about that day.
How did he know who I was? I forgot many things over the years, good memories but mostly the bad ones that happened to me when I was nine or ten, this memory never got suppressed. How did the Prime Minister know who I was? No one at home wanted to tell me the answer. The Yearwood name was taboo.
I never got to learn much more from other people about these Yearwoods the PM went on about that day. Them and the British Guiana plantations he went on to tell me they had worked on. Where was this British Guiana he was talking about anyway?
I knew nothing about Albion Estate. What was an Overseer? Where was Berbice? All I knew about La Bonne Intention Sugar Estate was that they had a fantastic swimming pool and I loved swimming in it. LBI was where Aunty Madge or Gran would take me to watch films. I saw Lord Kitchener killing 10,000 of the Mahdist forces in Sudan on the LBI clubhouse screen. He lost only forty-seven of his own men. His moustache portrait “Britons Want YOU!” Or “Your Country Needs YOU!” were on posters. I couldn’t wait to grow a moustache like his and sign up. Solider and Jesuit ambitions often got mixed up when I was nine or ten. My favourites were Lawrence of Arabia with Peter O’Toole. Omar Sharif as Doctor Zhivago in the Russian snow. John Wayne was much nearer home and in True Grit he became another of my born-at-LBI-heroes. I even became a real life cowboy in later years.
As for the Ogle Estate Mr Burnham counted off, that one I knew straight off. It was him saying Ogle that convinced me our Prime Minister KNEW me. After all wasn’t I always proud and boasting of being the only one of us five Yearwood kids to have been born at Ogle? Right there in my mother’s bed!
“A big, fat negro midwife came over from St Johns Orphanage in Plaisance to BORN me!” Is what I loved to blow my trumpet to my brothers and sister about. Who were these Yearwoods he was talking about? How come I didn’t know them? Burnham had just created a brand new mystery in my hitherto one-hundred per cent Bayne-Stevenson-head. I was indeed one of these Yearwoods too!
My life had suddenly reached a turning point. It was now heading on a different course. Before Forbes Burnham stopped his horse to talk to me I had been a nine or ten-year-old Bayne-Stevenson with the surname Yearwood, an artefact from a long gone father. I was just one of five difficult socio-economical side effects of a singular and very nasty divorce in the crowded Bayne-Stevenson household. This nasty divorce was the reason I hadn’t been seeing much of him since I was four but I didn’t know that at nine or ten. He had just stopped existing. Right up to the Saturday morning Mr. Burnham rode up William Street and STUMPED me. No one had ever seemed to want to tell me where my father had gone, so I stopped asking after a year or three. Somehow, I knew not to feel too disappointed by not getting any Christmas or Birthday presents from him.
Forbes Burnham sowed Yearwood in my head that Saturday morning as I was on my way to our fairy-tale Kitty market for some coconut branch brooms. He told me about the sugar plantations the Yearwood family had worked on in British Guiana days.
“Your Granddad Willy Yearwood was good friends with Baron Jock Campbell. Yes, Campbell of Eskan. The recent Chairman of Bookers who STILL own Bookers Sugar Estate Company,” he proclaimed and his horse snorted back at him and us again. “Yes, that is your roots, my little man.” It was as if in answer to the puzzlement he saw all over little nine or ten-year-old me. How did he know who I was? Willy was my grandpa’s name? I had always thought that was the name of what I used to wee wee with! I knew Bookers though, everyone in Guyana knew Bookers, especially nine or ten year-old children like me. Bookers was the department store Santa Clause visited every Christmas. Grandfather must have been a very important man I thought.
“He’s the very last Guyanese Red Bakra crime chief,” Gran answered my question about Mr Roberts.
“What’s a Bukra, Gran?” I asked, confused. “And Mr Roberts wasn’t sunburnt. He, was white not red.”
“Not ‘what’ Hugh, but ‘who’! Not bukra, but bakra! She grinned at me. “Go, look in the mirror child. You’ll see WHO a little Bakra is!” She laughed out loud now, and that is how I learnt a new Guyanese slang expression.
“You’re not a Pudagee like they call you too either.” She added. “ But, don’t protest dear boy,” Gran paused and took a deep breath as if to gain extra emphasis. “In Guyana Hugh, Pudagee is any White orRed person!”
“Red, Gran? Like the Red Indians in America? But, we don’t have any of them here.” I was as pleased as punch to be imparting some of my own knowledge on Gran. She always knew most of the answers to my questions.
“Do you mean the Amerindians? But, they live in the bush, Gran.” My grandmother’s mirth increased. She took a longer look at me.
“You’ll soon learn what’s Red young man. That isn’t Bakra!” She was having fun with me now and I remember scratching my head.
Years passed and soon we Yearwood boys were all playing Wright Cup cricket, football or field hockey forSaint Stanislaus College. One day Richard, a QC friend, explained to me the purpose of those pretty, fairy-tale towers on most of the markets in Guyana. Even the Georgetown City Hall had one. It was the most magnificent one in the country and painted light blue like the sky. He made sure this Saints bai wasn’t going to forget his Queens College wisdom either.
“Same reason your big Yearwood family jewels hang outside your body,” He laughed. “To cool them down in these tropics, eh? It’s all about ventilation, bai. Gravity ventilation is why they built the towers. They channel the heat up into the atmosphere and the cooler air comes in from below to replace it” That’s how I learned from Richard why it was always so cooler inside Kitty market.
Saints years passed in a blur. A scholarship to the Guyana School of Agriculture was next but at the age of eighteen I was back at Saints! This time as a teacher! By then, the times were desperate times in Burnham’s Guyana. The Jesuits had almost vanished from the school. One of them, my old teacher Father Darke, had even been stabbed to death photographing an anti-government demonstration for the Catholic Standard newspaper. It happened right outside school on Brickdam Street as I was about to leave Saints. He had only just taken my school leaving photograph for documents. There were a lot of Burnham’s House of Israel friends harassing the demonstration at the time.
Winning another scholarship, this time a Guyana Government Scholarship to study abroad, meant National Service and Port Kaituma via a stint of work at Mr Burnham’s Hope Estate on the east coast of Demerara county. I actually enjoyed it there because Crime Chief Skip Roberts’ daughter happened to be in my platoon. Guyana is a small place and the children of older Guyanese kept bumping into each other. I thought she was beautiful both inside and outside and the huge crush I had on her made Hope Estate a place of bliss for me. As long as I got to work close enough to where she was working and offer her help at the slightest opportunity. They moved us out to Port Kaituma much too soon for my liking.
At Port Kaituma National Service Training Camp, I met Mr Burnham for the second time in my life and he remembered me. He hadn’t forgotten who I was. He was able to recognise me even now my hair was dark and I was nineteen. Now the President of Guyana, he gave us cadets a resounding speech on what he/we Guyanese would do to Venezuela or Surinam should they try to take even one blade of our Guyanese grass. He must have really liked “Not a Blade of Grass” by The Trade Winds because his speech was punctuated with Dave Martins’ lyrics about blades of precious Guyanese grass. Burnham winked at me from the stage on which he was rendering his speech He smiled at me like I was an old friend of his. I was transported back in time and felt I was again on the corner of Queen and William Streets, Kitty.
Forbes Burnham was at Port Kaituma with other dignitaries for our ‘boot camp’ graduation. For our ceremonial muster parade, I had won the distinction of best marcher for my platoon and so I got to hold down the foremost right ‘King Pin’ position that all the muster manoeuvres began from. Mr Burnham was pleased with that.
“How are you my old friend?” The now bulkier president asked me. He had stopped his inspection of the cadets to talk to me. My superior officers were paying an unfamiliar and new attention to me as they discovered Forbes Burnham and I knew each other. One of them even smiled at me! It was the first time in months I’d seen him do so. “I see you are growing up into a fine young man. Guyana has great hopes for you!” He announced, patting me on the back, of all things, before he moved on.
His immediate ‘hopes’ for me turned out to be me acting in a GNS play about our young country’s cultural heritage. It was a play for the diplomatic corps.
“On the president’s personal request.” My superiors informed me. They were now treating me like royalty.
That is how I became a big bad-ass, bakra plantation owner on the stage of the Guyana National Cultural Centre as we cadets performed for the president and the diplomatic corps. I remember the energy of real acclaim that I heard in the ovation they gave us. They stopped clapping only after we had bowed three times. That night was the last time Mr Burnham and I were to meet. He patted me on the back again and said something that was lost to me in the noise going on about us. I remember feeling sorry for a moment my scholarship was for veterinary medicine and not the actors’ guild.
As for the thirty-year-old mystery he left in my nine-ten-year-old head, EUREKA! The answer came suddenly, swiftly and under the shower. Of course! Guyana was, and still is, a very small place. It was Dad at QC! Wasn’t Linden Forbes Burnham teaching him when he was assistant master back at his alma mater in 1948? And Bookers and Dad’s dad Grandfather Willy? And Dad’s brother Uncle Bonny? He had been a big boss in LINDEN! Hold on. Sorry, it was McKenzie back then, wasn’t it? Everyone knows our bauxite town was important to Linden Forbes Samson Burnham! How could he not know the little Yearwood me?
