The holes in history: a visit to the National Archives in Guyana, South America

By Anita Sethi

The paper was achingly fragile.

So thin and worn and brittle that chunks of it had vanished entirely. So fragile that I was only allowed to touch it if I knew exactly what it was that I was looking for amongst the covers of the large, ancient book.

Black ink in italic handwriting scrawled across the pages spelling the names of people born in the years 1899, 1900, 1901 in the villages of Berbice and New Amsterdam, Guyana. Beside the name and date of birth and place of birth were the name of the ship upon which their parents or forefathers have travelled to this little corner of South America, Guyana, and their original place of origin.

Ship names such as Foyle and Ganges floated in the furthest margins of the pages.

I was in the Walter Rodney Archives, the National Archives of Guyana which holds records of birthdates and ship names from which indentured labourers came from India in the 19th century. I have finally made it to Georgetown after a rollercoaster ride through the villages of Berbice, past chocolate-covered rivers filling even further with the thundering rain, passed beautiful pink and pale white flowers floating serenely amidst the chaos of human life around.

Entering the Archive building, a sign warned of the Dress Code: no strappy tops and sandals, so I slipped a shawl over my bare shoulders despite the hot heat.

"Wah ya look for?", said the Archivist, as I gazed around at maps and huge books and boxes.

I showed the Archivist the names and birthdates I had of my grandmother and her brother, and what the latter had told me about his own parents, although dates and correct birthnames for this earlier generation are not absolute.

"You need to have de exact information", said the archivist as her ebony hands skimmed over the faded white pages, her finger tracing the names, some of which were illiegible, running her finger acrossed curling inky letters and ruled lines to see if the name matched the place of birth and year that I was looking for.

My heart jumped as I saw a name that spelt the ones I was searching for - "Gowrie" and "Persaud" and "Subnauth", but as I inspected more closely, the surnames did not match up, or the village of birth was inconsistent.

The archivist turned another page, and with each new page, the heart rose and fell with hope that this would be the page to hold the key to my history, and with each page the despair grew that it would not - the thin paper had huge chunks eaten out of it, and lay like a crumpled butterfly's wing.

This was the page, it seemed, that I was looking for. Names and dates and places had literally vanished.

Here I stood, staring down at a hole in history.

I had travelled 7242 kilometres, across oceans, rainforests, cities in the hope of filling in the gaps in my narrative and here I was staring down at a quite literal gap in the book which held the key facts about the stories of these lives.

This morning I had left my flesh and blood relatives far away in the village in Berbice and ventured to this place of paper which I had thought would hold more facts to fill in the gaps in my relatives' knowlege; instead, I was met with blanks, albeit amidst fascinating historical records of other lives. I immediately wished to return to swap this paper for the people I had left behind, and proble them further about anything that they might have forgotten, that I had not yet had the skill to tease out of the memory.

The Archivist advised that I visit the National Registry holding Birth Certificates and trace my grandmother's brothers's birthdate and any possible facts of his ancestors alongside it.

"But not everyone have birth certifcate ya'know", she warned.

"Dey may be telling you not accurate dates. People dem not always know de accurate dates".

Then how, I wondered, was I supposed to supply absolutely accurate information about these histories, when the experts themselves conceded that real and concrete facts were hard to pin down? Catch-22.

Before leaving I inspected the rest of the room; another huge book with faded pages sat on a table, this one an archive of newspapers from the colonial age of British Guiana.

"May I look at that?", I asked, hungry to delve into the history of my ancestors' era.

"Not unless you know what exactly it is you are looking for", came the reply.

So instead, I gazed around the rest of the room, which I was permitted to look at.

A huge map of 'the Dutch colony of Berbice, 1740' hung on one wall with a sign next to it explaining its origins: "...Berbice was notorious for its miserable living conditions: the climate is hot and humid. There's even an expression in Dutch, 'to go to Berbice', meaning 'to go to hell and die'. Mortality was high among the Europeans, although they had a better chance of survival than the slaves. In 1793 the plantation slaves revolted against their masters. It took a year to suppress this rebellion. With the former Dutch colonies Essequibo and Demarary, Berbice is now part of the Republic of Guyana".

To go to Berbice... To go to hell and die. Ironic then, that I wished to be back in Berbice, where I might find out more about my ancestral history from those that are still living. How expensive is the journey back there from the UK - a gulf not easily breached.

A worker at the Archives showed me the way to get a bus to Regent Street, and I wandered in among stalls selling chutney music, a medley of Indian fashions, and African carvings, and further still to the St George's white-washed wooden cathedral.

All the while, as I walked amidst the busy streets, amidst the quick of life and the present moment, a cooler present moment now that an afternoon rain had thundered down, all the while the image of those curling, crumbling papers floated in my mind, their inky skins, their tantalising dates and ship names, the long voyages captured within them, and their holes where records of human lives were once held.

Today I drove passed fields filled with sugarcane, rivers the colour of chocolate, wooden houses raised from the ground. From Berbice, it was was an hour's drive to New Amsterdam, stopping off en route to the Rose Plant sugar estate where the air is thick with the sweet smell of sugar mixed with the accrid, oily smell of the industry itself. It was enough to put you off having sugar in your tea ever again, not only the overwhelming sickly-sweet smell, but imagining the realities of the harsh lives of indentured labourers in the 19th century. Conditions have now improved on the sugar plantations, with more workers unions, compared to the days when indentured labourers tolled beneath the burning sun, hearded into ranches like cattle, all to sweeten the plates of their masters thousands of miles away. Having rather a sweet tooth myself (in fact having today consumed at least two chocolate bars), it was a stark reminder of where the food we eat comes from, and the tangle of the gastronomic and the political.

Journeying is an adventure in itself in the idioynscratic landscape of Guyana, with so many curiosties of colour and language and landscape along the way. Not least, the place names. "STOP!", I would too frequently shout to my second cousin as we cruised through Berbice and passed place names such as "Friendship" and "Adventure" and even "Manchester" - a little taste of home thousands of miles away.

Words are seen in a whole new light. Trucks and vans often have interesting little banners on the front of them. As the sun blazed down and we got stuck in Saturday market day traffic (an entertaining traffic jam with views of the huge watermelons and mangos lining the roadside), and nerves began to fray, I see a van with the words avove its windscreen reading: "LIFE GOES ON". Along the way we drove along the straightest road in the whole of the Caribbean, without a single kink or curve.

From New Amsterdam, I took a car to Georgetown, where things gathered pace compared with the slow speed limit in the villages, and there passed a blur of coconut trees, those chocolate-coloured creeks and rivers and glimpses of the sea, houses raised from the ground, and finally I arrived in Georgetown, where I visited the Moray House Trust, a Book Club in the Oasis Cafe, and had a delicious meal in the Cara Lodge (a further blog to follow about these latter adventures). All in all, a bittersweet day.

I'm delighted to have been invited to be the 2012 International Writer in Residence and Ambassador at the Emerging Writers Festival in Melbourne, Australia from 24th May, with thanks to the British Council and the Emerging Writers Festival.

Please click on the website www.emergingwritersfestival.org.au for full details including a short video interview with me on topics ranging from digital writing to how to make a living as a writer.

I'll be speaking and appearing in panels at 5 events which look to be a varied treasure trove of delights.

Australia here we come!

Days 1 - 2

It was a night flight. Or else, a night check-in, so that by the time the flight was about to leave the sun had risen for the one hour ten minute journey from Port of Spain, Trinidad to Cheddi Jagan Airport, Guyana.

My first glimpse of South America as the silver sliver of a river, snaking amidst the vast, dense rainforest, glinting in the sun light, like a strip of pure liquid light. I remembered a phrase a taxi driver in Trinidad had used about the tropical rain. "This is liquid sunshine" he had said. This river, too, seemed like liquid sunshine winding and weaving through the South American jungle. It was a sight for tired eyes indeed.

"The Land of Many Waters" kept true to its name at the airport itself where a replica of the Kaiteur Falls waterfalls flowed amidst a landscaped garden and the words "Welcome to Guyana" were etched in chocolate-coloured brown on the green grass.

"Where you gon stay?" asked the lady at Arrivals/Immigration Non-Nationals queue.

"With relatives", I replied.

"Your family dem Guyanese?" she asked.

"My mother was born here, I'm staying with other relatives", I said.

The thwack of a stamp hit my passport as I was let through to the carousel of baggage, propping my handluggage in a trolley.

"You got plenty bag", said a man with long black dreadlocks.

I was met by a relative - my grandmother's brothers's son - and we embarked on the three hour journey through the hot morning sun from the airport to the village in Corentyne, Berbice. First, we stopped for breakfast at a roadside cafe - my first taste of Guyana this trip was a delicious boiled egg in a crispy coating.

Then we continued the drive through villages with names such as "Friendship" - (Is everyone friends here?, I wondered), passed a hotel called "Full Luck", passed horses casually loping outside wooden houses.

"This is Oxford Street of Guyana", said my relative when we reached Georgetown, "the main shopping street, Sheriff Street". We sped on, passed the Georgetown Sea Wall, engraved with artwork of childen and the words, be kind to our children. On over a huge bridge passed the Demarara River, on through the tollgate into Berbice.

That afternoon I swang on the rocking swing in the yard where a huge coconut tree stretches up into the heavens, and where Indian/Guyanese music filtered from a neighbouring house, soundtracking the tales of Guyanese life I was told, including a superstition that if someone is born with two circle markings on their head they will meet death by water or fire - in the story I was told the person tragically did.

That evening I heard further family stories and resolved to plot a family tree with my grandmother's brothers' son's wife. The rain fell that night as if from nowhere, from the hottest, bluest sky, thundering against the roof, and the following morning I was awoken not by the bleepings of my iphone alarm clock but by a very different kind of alarmclock - the cocoadoodle-doos of the roosters.

"Boca" is the Spanish word for "mouth", and as the speech and storytelling organ it's the perfect name for a literary festival. I spent a fascinating few days at the Bocas Lit Fest in Trinidad & Tobago, experiencing storytelling from both new and established writers, from OCM Bocas Prize winning Earl Lovelace to upcoming talents performing their poetry at open mic sessions on Abercromby Street - displaying the vibrant language and stories of the streets themselves.

The opening session featured spine-tingling readings commemorating Trinidad & Tobago's 50th anniversary of Independence, from such staple texts as Sam Selvon's The Lonely Londoners's, Derek Walcott, and the satirical Macaw column from 1958, in readings ranging from hilarious to heartbreaking. Founder of the festival Marina Salandy-Brown also gave a powerful speech about the importance of reading and books. With a splendid children's programme, there has also been an emphasis on gaining a passion for books and stories at an early age: "You are the future of Trinidad & Tobago, you carry the future of the country in your schoolbags".

Themes throughout these readings included how the archipelago was first formed (with Derek Walcott's evocative line about Prime Ministers cut up the Caribbean until everyone owned a bit of the sea); the pains of migrations; and the search for meaning in meaningless. Such perennial themes as well as new ones rippled through the festival invigorating discussions like an electric current.

I chaired two events, including one with Rahul Bhattacharya and Chika Unigwe, and one with Monique Roffey and Rivka Galchen, the latter which has the theme of the relationship between human beings and the vast natural world at its heart.

A hugely thought-provoking session between Nicholas Laughlin and a PEN Canada representative Brendan de Caires discussed human rights the world over and literature's role in effecting change.

Other memorable hightlights include some of the speeches at the OCM Bocas Prize awards ceremony, including George Lamming's rousing invective for us not to forget the brutalities of the past such as the 1937 massacre which have been white-washed by cultural amnesia, no longer taught in schools. "We are familiar with the rooms we live in but do not know how these rooms relate to each other", he said, speaking of the fragmentation of the Caribbean islands and the need for greater connectivity.

This was certaintly a festival to remember, and many moments and ideas long linger in the mind.

It's been a fruitful day here in the Caribbean.

I awoke early to glorious morning sunshine illuminating the landscape of the Port of Spain and gazed out from the verandah into a world of lush palm trees and the peaks and troughs of the Queen's Park Savannah and the City, a visually intense mix of natural world and manmade city.

After a breakfast of watermelon, pineapple and pears, things continued to go swimmingly with a refreshing dip in the pool.

A tropical rain came as suddenly as it vanished, a warm rain rinsing out the city, quite a different and rather pleasant feeling on the skin than the cold rain of Blighty. The rain soon dried out leaving a gleaming world of bright colours; deep green foliage; sky as blue as can be.

The afternoon saw a meeting under mango tree still weeping with the water caught in its branches, perhaps the most gorgeous setting for a meeting.

With such an inspirational setting, the day was ripe with ideas and we prepared for the CALAG workshop happening tomorrow, with some very interesting discussion about how writing in this region - and indeed all around the world - might best be supported and developed.

The evening saw a splendid party beneath a sky that had deepened into an inky black with a thick sprinkling of bright stars, and to whet the appetite were canapes of fish, rice, and my favourite - rum-flavoured ice-cream; definitely a day to be savoured.