Potaro Dreams

Jan Carew

Description

This is the first volume of Jan Carew's memoirs. In naming this first volume 'Potaro Dreams', Carew draws a parallel between Guyana's Potaro River and the shaping of his young life. Carew's engaging memoir takes the reader from his near-death experience with malaria, into his village life in Agricola and Mocha, a brief turn in New York when his sister was kidnapped and his family's return to British Guiana. Throughout, the reader sees the formation of Jan Carew's young mind and character at the hands of various adults along the way. This volume ends in 1939 with the beginning of WWII.

Sujets

• Philosophie et théologie
• Memoir
• Guyana

Informations

• Publié par: Hansib Publications
• Date de parution: 17 avril 2014
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781910553138
• Langue: English

Extrait

POTARO DREAMS
POTARO DREAMS

My Youth in Guyana
JAN CAREW
First published in 2014
by Hansib Publications Limited
P.O. Box 226, Hertford, SG14 3WY
United Kingdom
www.hansibpublications.com
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 978-1-906190-64-4 eISBN 978-1-910553-13-8
Copyright Jan Carew, 2012
Back cover image courtesy of Aukram Burton, RamImages.com
All rights reserved.
Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the publisher of this book.
Printed and bound in Great Britain
For Joy and Shantoba
PREFACE
T his is the first volume of Jan Carew s memoirs. In naming this first volume Potaro Dreams , Carew draws a parallel between Guyana s Potaro River - which is an essential river in what the Amerindians called the land of many rivers - and the shaping of his young life. Born in 1920 in the village of Agricola Rome, Carew s engaging memoir takes the reader from his near-death experience with malaria, into his village life in Agricola and Mocha, a brief turn in New York when his youngest sister was kidnapped, and his family s return to British Guiana and New Amsterdam. After years of recurring bouts with malaria and being forced to spend much of his time in bed, Carew overcomes these early years by a thirst for reading and an alert mind that blooms with the encouragement of remarkable teachers at Berbice High School. Throughout, the reader sees the formation of his young mind and character at the hands of various adults along the way. This volume ends in 1939 when the Second World War draws him, his best friends, and fellow students into joining the British armed forces and going off to Europe.
Jan Carew chose to use less familiar names for some family members, often using their middle or first names. For instance, his mother s sister, Maud, is here referred to as Aunt Harriet, using her original first name. Carew s sisters, too, are referred to by other names: his older sister Cicely is here referred to as Stephanie , and his younger sister Sheila is here referred to as Irma . Jan Carew, himself, was known as Ian as a young man growing up in Guyana and uses that name here as well.
Though a memoir, this is Jan Carew at his storytelling best, sharing not only vignettes of his past, but also crafting memorable characters along the way.
CONTENTS
Foreword
1. Malaria
2. Mocha and the journey to New York
3. New York and Suriname, 1926-1928
4. Agricola, starting school
5. Agricola Rome
6. Grandfather
7. Edmond Rohlehr
8. My tutor and learning from Sister
9. Berbice, New Amsterdam
10. New Amsterdam, Part Two
11. Irma, BHS and my teachers
12. Braveboy at BHS
13. BHS, Yisu Das and going to War
FOREWORD
O n 6th December 2012, Jan Carew died at the age of 92. After a life spanning the majority of the 20th century and stretching well into the 21st, he began to seriously turn his attention to constructing his memoirs at age 87. For decades, friends, colleagues and fans entreated him to do memoirs, but he was not going to do this until he was ready. Instead, he revised, added to and organised a new collection of poetry; he completed revisions of a new novella, The Riverman ; completed a new collection of stories, The Guyanese Wanderer ; and he began painting again. The Guyanese Wanderer , published in 2007, has one of his most archetypical images, depicting a path extending off into the distance amid amaranth fields.
When asked about his delay in writing his memoirs, Jan would offer a coy smile and suggest that, in fact, he d been writing pieces of them all along. His novels, The Wild Coast and The Last Barbarian , have clear autobiographical strands in them, so does his landmark novel, Black Midas . Many of his stories also contain aspects of his family history.
But, for a more purposeful effort, he envisioned a memoirs set of two, possibly three, volumes. The first volume would set out the foundations of his life and lay out what he termed the prism through which he would come to view the world. The volume or volumes to follow would look at his life after he left British Guiana during the Second World War. Jan was able to finish the work on this volume before he passed. The subsequent memoirs work, Episodes in My Life , he began with me as he grew progressively weaker. One evening, Jan turned to me, smiling faintly, and said, I m afraid, I m not going to be able to finish this opus. And, I told him, We ll finish it, Jan.
In his 1990s memoir about his meetings with Malcolm X in London, Ghosts in Our Blood: with Malcolm X in Africa, England and the Caribbean , he quoted his great grandmother: We re blessed with the blood of the most persecuted folks on earth - Africans, Caribs, Portuguese Jews, French convicts from Devil s Island, Highland Scots, and only the Lord alone knows what else - so whenever we cut ourselves, we can see the ghosts of those others peeping out from the African and Amerindian blood seeds. The ghosts are always there talking their conflicting talk until there s a Tower of Babel inside your head. So we ve got to listen well and search out the kindest, the strongest, the most human of those voices and make them your own... He shared this philosophy with Malcolm X and cited the importance of knowing not only Malcolm s story, but also that of Malcolm s mother and father and those who preceded them as a means of knowing him.
Thus, in this volume, Potaro Dreams: My Youth in Guyana , Jan brings the reader into the communities of his youth in British Guiana (now Guyana) with its polyglot cultures. The many personalities of family members and others surrounding him in the household would be complemented by and, sometimes, contrasted with that of his teachers in elementary school and then high school. These, in turn, would be affected by events and people at both local and international levels, as his circles of experience grew wider and wider. Then, as the young Jan Carew set out to do his university studies, he would be propelled on by the wishes and aspirations of his mother, his teachers, and himself determined to take full advantage of whatever the larger world might offer. This is the bedrock upon which his life, with all of its accomplishments and challenges, would be lived.
Joy Gleason Carew
1
Malaria
O ne night when I was nine years old, I died and miraculously came back to life. It was during the worst attack of malaria I had ever experienced. I remember Mother looking tall and wraith-like in the yellow light as she stood at the foot of my bed. An ornate kerosene lamp with a reflector that shone like a pale moon hung from a rafter. A gentle night wind made the lamp sway and shadows came to life on the walls and the ceiling. Dr Francis, the District Medical Officer and a family friend, stood beside Mother and commiserated with her quietly. Ethel, you ve got to face up to the possibility that the boy might not live through the night.
There were others gathered around my sickbed like vultures waiting impatiently for the last breath to be expelled before pouncing on a carcass, and all were speaking in hushed tones. I wondered why they assumed that someone who was dying could not hear their stage whispers because I heard every word that they said. Their voices were different but they were united in the belief that Mantop, Death s messenger, had already entered my name in his Doomsday Book.
Poor Ethel, what a thing to loose her one-boy when he s in the morning of his life!
And wid that good-for-nothing husband of hers gallivanting about in America, she has to manage the funeral all by sheself! Because, is three years past and gone since her papa, Schoolmaster Robertson, who was her Rock of Ages, gone to the Great Beyond.
And ah hear dat the man not sending her a blind cent from dat Yankee-land!
You felt the boy s foot? With fever burning him up, they re already cold as ice.
Me? Touch his foot? Chile, ah cyan stand touching dead people! The very thought of it makes my skin crawl.
But when good looks were sharing, that husband of hers got more than his fair share, This remark was followed by a heavy sigh, but a sharp retort was fired by one of the group.
Chile, where I m concerned, handsome is as handsome does. Chu!
Mother, overhearing the last remarks, thanked the guests for coming and complaining very pointedly that the air in the room was becoming rather stuffy, politely ushered the gossipmongers to the front door.
He will live, I m telling you, my son will live! were her parting words to them before rejoining Dr Francis at the back of the room. She turned up the wick of the hanging lamp, but its light barely reached the dark corner into which they had retreated. The doctor, a five-past-midnight Black man, was wearing a crumpled white suit. And standing in the shadows, he appeared to have neither head nor hands, when his disembodied voice repeated calmly that it was unlikely I would outlast the night. Ian s resistance seems to be at its lowest ebb. The Quinine hasn t brought his temperature down, and he s apparently given up fighting for his life. But after hearing every word he said, I felt a faint stirring of life coursing through my aching limbs and knew in my bones that I would prove him wrong. The doctor emerged from the shadows, and light shining on his dark and ageless face made it look like a benign ebony mask. His eyes were veined and bloodshot when he took my pulse once more and timed its reluctant beat with a pocket watch that hung from a heavy gold chain. With my blurred and feverish vision, I thought that his gentle manner was more that of a minister administering the last rites than of a doc