Guyana is such a vast and multi-dimensional country that one could write a column about the different aspects of the place, every week for a year, and still not cover it all. One such trend for me would definitely be the Pomeroon River, where I spent many August holidays when I was a student at Saint Stanislaus College on a scholarship, while the Martins family lived in Vreed-en-Hoop. My father, Joseph Francis Martins, son of an immigrant family from Madeira, had two farms in the Pomeroon: one in Martindale, about 2 miles from Charity, and one, directly across the river from it, in Cozier. JFM, an active gentleman, also had a Government contract to clear vegetation from several of the small reptiles that drain into the big river, and I went with him as a teenager on some of those trips, including one, way up, near where Pickersgill sawmill was located – I’ve written about that before.
Folks who know the river one famous broadcaster Joseph “Reds” Perreira; his mother was Claudia, a daughter of my father’s first marriage – she can attest to the turbulent nature of the river, known for its harsh spring tides and frequent floods in agricultural lands, and also as a repository of Amerindian culture, producing the likes of political leader Stephen Campbell and his son, the highly regarded musician David Campbell, among many others. In retrospect, years after I emigrated to Canada, and later the Cayman Islands, Guyana has remained my anchor, with the Pomeroon and the Rupununi Savannahs, in particular, being special pieces of the puzzle . From as soon as I can remember I had some sort of mystical connection to this river, driven partly, I suppose, from the physical nature of the place, with no electricity and no roads, you went you everywhere in boats, but also this very turbulent mix of different races, battling the combination of scorching hot days, cold roaming nights, a host of mosquitoes, and frequent floods with sea water destroying crops, supplemented having a powerful sense of family and brotherhood, with a variety of boating on the river, exchanging greetings and spontaneous visits.
Known for its abundance of fruits – especially coconuts, citrus and mangoes – the Pomeroon was heaven for a bare-footed country boy like me, from West Dem, for the produce and for the metal shed area my dad had in Martindale for dry the coffee beans for the precious Pomeroon coffee. At a young age, I caught hell from my mother for my black shorts, caused by sliding down the galvanized sheets of the roof of the shed on my back – how I was never injured, only God knows.
For the people who lived there at that time, and I presume it still is, they had a personal, family-type connection with the mighty waterway. Passengers would pass by waving hello to people on shore, and I particularly remember, being in bed at night, and feeling this sense of comfort from the sound of boats passing in the dark; if they had a horn, they would blow it; a lovely connection in the dead still Pomeroon night in a sharp, sharp sound. The center of the river for us in Martindale, was Charity, with Khan’s colorful wooden buses carrying us up the Essequibo Coast to Adventure to catch the steamer for Parika hooking up with buses heading for Vreed-en-Hoop. I made that journey, time and time again, sometimes with my family, sometimes individually, so much so that being on the stelling at Parika always interacted with old friends and familiar places.
The sense of community was strong and widespread. He was always involved, powerfully showing up at weddings or baptisms or even birthdays. We didn’t use the words in our midst, but this sense of family was always there; they didn’t state it openly, but that “Pomeroon thing” was a powerful fact in the lives of those who lived there, sharing, exchanging, intermarriage, and forging a bond in general (I’ve heard Reds Perreira and Gerry Martins, son of my father’s first marriage, mention this) that we would carry with us wherever the times of our lives took us; it was something he could almost touch.
I don’t remember ever talking about it specifically to anyone, but a large part of the experience I was involved with had to do with the river itself. As rivers go, the Pomeroon is not what one would call big. In Martindale, for example, my father’s place, it wasn’t even half a mile wide, and the water was generally not rough, although we would catch a hell of a swim in it as jellies because of the presence of perra and barracuda. I remember a couple of teens from families who work on my dad’s farm – young boys with missing toes, bitten by fish from young people hanging their bare feet in the various streams. It is a beautiful, winding river, coming from the Atlantic Coast, winding almost to the northwest and often joined by a variety of small creeks. There’s also the human touch. Government steamers providing the regular freight service directly to Georgetown would stop at many of the private riverside steamers, such as the one at Martindale, for cargo and passengers, and their arrival was a joyful time ok, with old friends and new ones getting together. Many years later, we will talk about this aspect and point out that we can’t remember in all those busy stelling exchanges one angry confrontation happening in that crowded melee. River folks that connected, shared, merged in a kind of unofficial family exchange by the riverside. Hectic, energetic, trading, bubbling and, yes, noisy.
Looking back now, I recognize that Pomeroon’s experience, as I did with a later one at Atkinson Field when I went to work for BG Airways, put me in touch with not only an area, but literally a lifestyle . Those of us who went on those Pomeroon trips, by bus or train, and then by boat from Charity, will know what I am referring to, and why it remains so alive all those many years later. Pomeroon is much more than just a place name to me; it is a unique way of being and doing. It’s a river and a path for people who make their world, live their collective dreams, sleep to the sound of a passing boat, and walk in the backdam with your Dad holding a banana leaf over your head, shelters you from the rain. It’s more than a river; it is a world. What I became as a songwriter is largely a mysterious process with many inputs, not all of which I know, but one of the main ones I recognize is my stay at the Pomeroon Times in the past. It was the foundation, as I know Reds Perreira, part of my Pomeroon family, in a unique mix of many races, including Amerindians, living harmoniously together. I didn’t live there – I was really the outsider, there for a couple of weeks at a time because of my dad – but I could recognize the glue he had brought me in those Pomeroon times that were remembered a long time ago. It is a bond that remains to this day; memories of a shared world, of days and nights very well known, apart from the mosquitoes, of course. If you want more details, call up Reds Perreira – tell him Dave sent you.
Normally, my SO IT GO column would end there, but in this case I also have to declare the emotion that came with writing this particular burst. It left me with a combination of wonder and emotional surge for a truly amazing time in a wonderful part of God’s earth, and I was there, hand and foot, as we say in GT. Individual, respectful memories, warm me up to this day. Pomeroon Panorama.