Tony Deyal | Carapichaima: Yesterday, today and tomorrow

I was born in a place called Carapichaima in central Trinidad, and I will never, ever forget it. The reason was simple. It had people from different parts of Trinidad but also from other countries. They were all working and living there, linked by the sugar-cane industry. While the parents worked hard, the children, who started working early, went to school and, like children, we played together. Moreover, the older ones shopped together and talked together, the men drinking and the women discussing who did what, why and when.

What remains with me and ensures that wherever in the world I live and work, I am what we call a “Trini” or “Caribbean”, is that for me and several others, we were not races to the bone. Unfortunately, especially when the parties, blacks and Indians, tried to take over the country for five years, things were not happy except in our Carapichaima. It is why I go back every 10 years or so to see what has happened to the one place where I learnt to be “one for all and all for one” (most of the time).

THE PEOPLE OF CARAPICHAIMA

SADOO

For me, even though I walked past the railway station twice a day on my way to the Carapichaima E.C. School, the real centre was our home. We lived on the left before Roopsingh Road, beside which the engines pulling sugar-cane-filled wagons passed on their way to the Mc Bean factory, and almost opposite what we knew as ‘Saddoo Shop’.

At the time, the shop’s owner, Siewdass Sadoo, was not the heroic figure he later became. He sold rum and dry goods, had the only rice mill in the community, and had packed up his first wife for a new and younger lady (Samdai). I used to hang out there a lot with my hero, my Uncle Jacket and, although I know now that when people said “Sadoowine” they referred to the wife of the Sadoo, I was confused, not knowing whether they meant the cobweb-covered Cherry Brandy on the shelf in the shop or some kind of errant behaviour on the part of the holy man when he filled the front of his bicycle with rocks and masonry tools and headed west.

I had the opportunity a few times to accompany Sadoo to Orange Valley, where he was building a “cootyah”, or temple in the sea. For whatever reason, perhaps because I was a “mannish young feller”, Sadoo liked me and used to hoist me onto the handlebar of his bicycle and take me with him. I pretended to help him but really spent most of my time playing in the sand on the seashore.

MY UNCLE JACKET AND OWEN ALI

Yet, Sadoo was not the star of our little community. In fact, he was often derided for trying to build a “cootyah” in the sea, and some people thought he was “off”. My Uncle Jacket, with his cattle, bull cart, jokes and ability to consume copious amounts of alcohol and remain standing, stood out among the residents.

Next to us was Owen Ali, a famous ‘Indian’ dancer who was of African descent, openly gay, and whose scandalous laughter could be heard “quite by Jerry junction”, as we often said laughingly. Owen was also a notorious gossip and would detail, without being prompted, his most intimate adventures, whether as a dancer performing in Guyana and elsewhere or his sex life.

‘WATCHING’ TV, MAJOR AND O’CONNOR

Heading west, the building before Sadoo’s shop was what we called a “barracks” but would now be considered an apartment building. One of the tenants was Maharajin. She was the first person I knew with a television set. She had lived in the United States and ended up in Carapichaima.

This was many years before Trinidad had a television station, but a few of us had read about this marvel, and so Maharajin would uncover the big lacquered box with curved grey glass in the front, a descending row of big knobs, and a contraption she called an “antenna” for us to stare at longingly. We watched her television even though there was nothing showing on it.

Yet, big and sexy as she was, Maharajin was not my star. Neither was Major, who regaled us with stories about Boysie Singh (a gangster, pirate and murderer), nor Mr O’Connor (we called him Mr Ocanno), who was such a cricket fan that he was angry when the West Indies lost away to Australia.

“We does play cricket in the day. We bong to loss when dey have we playing cricket in the night,” he complained angrily, supported by knowing nods from my father, Uncle Jacket and others.

DONKEY ARTHUR

My boy was ‘Donkey Arthur’, who lived in the apartment behind Maharajin. He got the ‘Donkey’ added to his name because every Carnival he came out with a ‘Burrokeet’ mas’.

He spent hours bending wire and then gluing together all the strips of brightly coloured, sparkling decoration on his costume. We called it a donkey but, in fact, it looked more like a golden stallion and Arthur danced it with flair and obvious enjoyment.

One year, Arthur was persuaded to play ‘Jab Jab’ and, knowing how much “licks” would pass from whips, sticks and bull pistles, he wanted to be well prepared. He wrapped himself in tubes from a truck tyre, two from car tyres, a leather goatskin, a thick blanket, an old jacket from my Uncle Jacket, and then put on his costume.

He started perspiring heavily even before he tottered out of the yard and, after a hundred yards, he was bathed in sweat. Before he reached the railway station, Arthur started to strip. His way back home, where he grabbed a bucket and ran to the standpipe to cool himself, was littered with Arthur’s under armour.

Long afterwards, he told my father, “Mr D, not me again, nah!” He kept his word and, from what I heard from my cousin Joe, Arthur became one of the legends of Ole Mas’. He was last seen playing the Donkey in the Point Fortin J’ouvert.

MOVING ON, MAYBE

Those were great days. It is believed that the colour orange represents enthusiasm, fascination, happiness, creativity, determination, attraction, success, encouragement and stimulation. This is how it was for me as I played by the seaside, built my own sandcastles, and hung out with the fisherfolk.

Even when there was an ‘Orange Valley Seven’, Mr Amanda Rampersad, the daughter of one of the murdered men, said at her father’s cremation: “What I learned from this experience with my dad is that life is short and brutal and the best way to combat that is with family, prayer and a good laugh, and an ability to appreciate the small moments of joy despite any circumstances, because you don’t know if this is the last time you will see them.”

Tony Deyal in rickety pick-up trucks or ‘jitneys”’ passing along the roads, horns giving warning to the people ahead, of fish like “Carite, Red Fish, Boshay (Brochet or Snook), Herring and Fry-me-Dry”. This last one is what worries me!