Raymond T. Smith

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Hopetown in 1951-52

As explained in the introductory material on the page labelled "Village Studies" I arrived in Georgetown, British Guiana on May 7th 1951 and spent quite a long time in the capital meeting people, reading things in the libraries and government offices, and trying to decide upon a village community in which to live and work for the coming year. I travelled all over the country, including Essequibo and the Berbice coast, and gradually settled on Hopetown as the place where I would work. Why choose Hopetown?

This is a question that many people asked at the time, especially as it had a reputation for poor local government and delinquent taxes. Perhaps the best way to explain my reasoning is to reproduce my Journal entry for July 2^nd 1951; the youthful naiveté is embarrassingly apparent.

At the end of five weeks I am in possession of a great deal of undigested information, out of which I have managed to see my way to choosing a particular village in which to work. It may be profitable at this stage to review my reasons for making this choice in some detail as time is bound to transmute the reasons into something quite unrecognisable

To begin with I firmly fixed in my mind the idea that this first locale should be a) predominantly African and b) have a population of 2,000 or less. Consequently these were the things I looked for first, and these were the things I found almost impossible to find in the 1946 Census. My early visits to the county of East Coast Demerara revealed large villages meeting only the first of my requirements, and the proximity of Georgetown did not help to create an impression in my mind of truly rural communities. This was probably bias.

However, my visit to Berbice did impress upon me the fact that this area is comparatively remote, and the villages have a character of their own. Places like Gibraltar exude an air of individuality and seemed much less sophisticated. The figures given to me by the District Commissioner in New Amsterdam immediately suggested Hopetown, and the fact that this place is considered unprogressive and a constant headache to administration aroused my interest further.

When I travelled to Essequibo the idea was already in my mind that Berbice was my baby, and the nature of Essequibo with its absence of plantations and dwindling population confirmed my view. Cut off as it is up there, I think some of the villages would provide interesting data on marginal areas.

Here then I began to mention to other people that Hopetown had possibilities and confirmation for my views came flooding in, though most people thought the stories they told would have the effect of dissuading me.

Hopetown never pays its rates because everybody is related and the Overseer will not bring pressure to bear. Most of the people work seasonally on the nearby plantation. The village is divided into two groups—Anglicans and Congregationalists. Close by is an East Indian village. The people of Hopetown dance and tell old tales. And so on, and so on.

Lands and mines [that is, the Department of Lands and Mines] were able to provide me with a 1926 map, which is rare good fortune. So, being tired of procrastination I put the proposition to government, met with no opposition, and sent a letter to Meyer Fortes. And now I have to start angling for a house.

I have always regarded this project as an occasion for testing the approach of social anthropology in a situation where many features of the group under observation qualify it for inclusion in that category of societies which have hitherto been regarded as the preserve of sociologists. My people came originally from Africa, and though we dare not speak of an historical continuity in culture or social organization, there is significance of some kind in this very fact. When we speak of social anthropology we cannot but think at the same time of kinship studies, and of the central place of this principle of social organization. It would be foolish to pretend that B.G. is likely to yield information upon the wider type of kinship organization, but I believe that we can profitably enquire into the range of family structure and attempt to discover where kinship gives place to some other principle or principles, and what they are. The network of social relations is unlikely to be interlaced with one all-pervading thread, and it may be that the net is a wide one. How far we can speak of integration as more than a heuristic device is impossible to tell at this stage. One other point which engages my attention is the fact that there is so much here that is familiar and therefore dangerously easy to overlook. The exotic elements are few and disguised in familiar garbs [sic].

At this point I had not even visited Hopetown, though I had passed through it on my way to Berbice.   On July 6^th I arranged a lift with Condel Gordon, the head of the Cooperative Department, and he dropped me off in the middle of Hopetown at about 9.15 a.m..  It is important to remember what Hopetown/Bel Air looked like in those days.  The Public Road that runs from Georgetown to Rosignol was then nothing but a dirt track paved with crushed brick, or "burnt earth."  Chunks of coastal mud were slowly baked in large covered fires until they solidified into irregular lumps of coarse red brick. These were then deposited in heaps by the roadside where they were broken up by women using small hammers until the brick was deemed fine enough to spread on the road. The traffic of donkey carts, buses and the few taxis and private cars, soon pulverized the brick into a fine red dust that blew across the village; heavy rains washed away the rest leaving huge ruts and potholes. The annual cycle of paving and wash-out had gone on for almost 200 years.  Fortunately a railway line running from Georgetown to Rosignol carried most of the passenger and goods traffic.  The Public Road, as it was invariably called, was flanked by a couple of drainage trenches across which makeshift bridges led to what seemed like flimsy and distinctly unprepossessing houses and shops.  Few people bothered to paint their houses in those days, and indeed quite a few were built of mud walls and thatch roofs, so that the village had a distinctly grey appearance.  Like many of the villages along this coast the dwelling area was frequently flooded and most buildings were raised about ten feet above ground level.  The atmosphere was distinctly peaceful since this was before the days of amplified music; indeed only one or two individuals possessed battery operated radios.  Barking dogs, crowing roosters, crickets and tree frogs provided such background noise as there was, but during the heat of the day even these were silenced.

The biggest shops in the village were the store, selling cloth and hardware, owned by a Portuguese family named de Souza, the two large grocery stores owned by William and James Isaacs (Chinese in spite of the name), and the smaller groceries owned by Christie Lam and de Veira.  Basil Hamilton’s tailor’s shop was one of the liveliest spots, but when I arrived on that July day everything was quiet.  The village chairman, the Hon. T.T. Thompson, was a prominent figure in British Guiana, being the founder and chairman of The Village Chairman's Conference and a nominated member of the Legislative Council.  Knowing that he was out of the country on a visit to Britain, I first tried to find the Acting Chairman of the village but he was not at home and so a woman directed me to the village office, where I met the overseer, Jimmy Johnson, who ushered me into this dilapidated one room structure [see photograph].  The contrast between the sad state of the building and the warmth of the welcome could hardly have been greater. About six men were sitting in the office, doing what I have no idea, but they listened to what I had to say and enthusiastically agreed that the project was both feasible and welcome.  When I casually asked how many people lived in the village they immediately drew up a plan for taking a census of every house, individual and animal—all without my saying a word.  Two hundred years of colonial rule had accustomed people to censuses of every kind, and they knew the procedures down to the finest detail.  They also knew how to manufacture precisely the kind of information desired by government officials, though it took me some time to understand that fully.

Jimmy Johnson, Hopetown Village Overseer 1951

The arrangement for this initial contact with Hopetown was that I would proceed from the village to meet the Assistant District Commissioner at Fort Wellington, about three quarters of a mile down the road, and from there take the afternoon train back to Georgetown.  By the time I left Hopetown in the early afternoon I had arranged to rent a small (very small) house belonging to William Isaacs, been given lunch by him and his wife and consumed copious amounts of rum and coconut water.  The walk to Fort Wellington under a blazing afternoon sun, escorted by Jimmy Johnson the village overseer, did little to enhance my readiness to meet the Assistant District Commissioner, a very pleasant young man named Ram Singh Rai, but the interview went well and I slept most of the way back to Georgetown on the painfully slow train.  Over  the next few days I went about buying a minimal amount of furniture to serve for the following year and had it shipped by train to Fort Wellington.

On Sunday July 15^th I arrived in Hopetown and spent a mosquito-ridden night in my new house sleeping on a bed (without mosquito net) lent by Mrs. Isaacs because my furniture had not arrived.  The mosquito net problem was easily solved but throughout my stay in Hopetown I suffered a good deal from the bites of ticks, fleas, and sand flies as well as mosquitoes.   I also had a series of crippling fungus infections and one kidney stone episode.  On Monday morning the furniture arrived by train from Georgetown and a swarm of helpers appeared, disappearing just as mysteriously once the work was done.  Martha, Jimmy Johnson’s sister, turned up and cooked a delicious lunch thus becoming my cook-housekeeper.  On Tuesday I was visited, first, by Mr. De Souza, owner of the biggest store in Hopetown, but here in his role as local correspondent of The Daily Argosy.  Then Mrs. Gladys Semple arrived, charged to find out exactly what I was doing here since many people were saying that I was a German spy.  She seemed reassured, and there followed a visit by two of the school-teachers.  The following day I was taken to see “Auntie Big” (Mrs. Ferguson) who is something of a keeper of Hopetown tradition.  She was quite agitated about something that had happened a long time ago when the village had been surveyed in order to bring land-ownership and titles up-to-date, a process that she considered to be destruction of the “ancient landmarks.”  It rained every night for several days but the days were dry and the evenings beautiful with moonlight and cool breezes.  There were no street lights and very few lights in the houses apart from small oil lamps.  Only the bigger shops and a few individuals had kerosene or gasoline pressure lanterns, so the overall impression was one of peace and quiet with people walking quietly on the public road and with most people going to bed early.

During the first few days I was the focus of much attention, and suspicion, but by the end of July I was well settled in, everyone in the village had a good idea who I was, and I had made friendly contact with a large number of people. 

Charles Blair, Main Koker Operator 1951

Perhaps the most valuable friend at this stage was Jimmy Johnson, the village overseer, and his friend Charles Blair who was in charge of the main water control equipment including the large middle dam sluice gate.  As village overseer Johnson was the classic village headman, caught between his superiors in the central colonial government and his friends and kin in the village.  By the middle of August 1951 the District Commissioner was insisting that Johnson issue distress warrants to all villagers in arrears with their rates, this being the first step in a process that would lead to the selling of their lands at auction.  While he began to write up the notices he failed to issue them, arguing correctly that people would not have the money to pay rates until they had sold their rice crop.  Unfortunately the period after the rice harvest was also the period when other debts had to be paid, such as shop debts, and the time for expensive festivities such as weddings.  Eventually he lost the job, without regret, but it went to a man from another traditionally leadership family, Handley Macfarlane.

One of the most difficult aspects of field research in rural British Guiana was maintaining good relations with two kinds of local leaders.  On the one hand were men like Jimmy Johnson, Charles Blair and Handley Macfarlane who came at the end of a long line of local leaders stretching back to the foundation of the village in the 1840s.  Their ancestors had organised the division of the village lands, the work of keeping up the drainage and irrigation system, and maintaining law and order in the community.  Originally village shareholders had contributed labour to village maintenance, either directly or by contracting with others to do their share of the work.  When the colonial government stepped in to organise "local" government and institute the collection of rates, many villagers continued to pay their share in labour rather than cash, thus requiring some creative book-keeping by the village overseer.

The other kind of local leader was the village schoolteacher, who, by virtue of education and status laid claim to office on the village council.  T.T. Thompson was the very epitome of the local leader.  Retired headmaster of the Hopetown Congregational School he had been born in Hopetown and constituted a link to the wider social and political system through his membership of the Colonial Legislative Council.  The man who succeeded him as head-teacher, H.M.S. Wharton, came from outside Hopetown as did the headmaster of the Hopetown Anglican School, and neither took much direct part in local politics.  But, along with younger teachers, mostly men who had been born in the village and worked their way up the hierarchy through the pupil teacher training system, they constituted the core of a village elite that ran the churches and assumed a superiority symbolized by their dress, speech and general demeanour.  Part of that demeanour involved holding themselves aloof from activities considered to be uncivilized.  That certainly included any beliefs or practices concerned with witchcraft or spirit possession, generally classed as obeah and forbidden by colonial law.  But it also extended to such "superstitions" as wakes and pre-wedding rituals known as Que-que (sometimes rendered as Kweh-Kweh) dances.  Nor would teachers be expected to attend local dances or walk on the Public Road at night or drink in the local rum shops.  The fact that some of the younger teachers did all these things, discreetly of course, did not make them any less disreputable.

The kind of activities I have just listed were precisely the kind of activities that I was interested in and which I attended, in my capacity as an anthropologist, but this created something of a problem for an elite that defined itself, at least partially, by avoidance of such things.  

On July 18^th, just three days after arriving in Hopetown, I began to learn something about the class structure of the community when I went to the house of Mr. Lampkin, head teacher of the Anglican School, to watch a bridge game.  The standard of play was very high and these people obviously take it seriously.  Lampkin is a respected figure in the village who always dresses formally and does not mix a great deal with the ordinary villagers.  He is not a native of Hopetown, has been here for ten years and would be glad to get away.  His second wife has a small boy of six or seven months.  Others present were two members of the Persaud family who own a large estate lying between Hopetown and Bel Air.  The head teacher of the Bush Lot Canadian Mission School, Mr. Ramlall, was there too; although he teaches in the neighbouring village of Bush Lot he lives in a rented house in Hopetown.  Two visiting auditors of the Farmer’s Credit Bank were present, as was young Lampkin on holiday from St. Stanilaus College where he had just taken his Higher School Certificate examination.  Finally, and most importantly, this gathering was attended by “Doc” Mitchell, a character who represented himself as a chiropractor and naturopath, trained in the United States, and who appointed himself as my manager.

Popularly known as “Shock-Doc” he carried around a wooden box out of which emerged two leads terminating in metal hand grips, and on the side of which was a handle.  This instrument was used for the relief of all kinds of ailments, and it was only some time later that I discovered it contained nothing but an automobile generator [car magneto], which—when suitably cranked—produced a stimulating and curative electric charge. “Shock-Doc” was always well dressed in a suit and tie (not always clean or well-pressed), and his breast-pocket always carried the symbol of literacy and education—an array of pens and pencils.  I was very conscious of the fact that “Doc” Mitchell, and to some extent Jimmy Johnson, were interposing themselves between me and people in the village but it was impossible to dismiss them summarily and so I decided to gradually evade their attentions while developing relations with other people, particularly people like Handley Macfarlane, “Joe-Bob” Blair [the Koker Warden], and the younger schoolteachers.  This strategy worked well and I gradually extended the circle of people with whom I talked on a regular basis.

In spite of these difficulties I managed to maintain reasonably good relations with most of the elite as well as the ordinary people of the village and the traditional leaders, but with the notable exception of the Hon. T.T. Thompson.

When Mr. Thompson arrived back from England on October 13th 1951 he found me already established in his village, and obviously friendly with people he regarded as his political opponents.  To make matters worse, it was generally known in the country that Hopetown was among the very worst managed villages in spite of the elevated position of its chairman, and I am sure that T.T. Thompson was not eager to have attention drawn to it on any terms other than his own.  When I called on him he was distinctly cool and when I attended the first meeting of the village council chaired by him he ordered me to cease taking notes.  Of course, he had no authority to issue such an order but I readily complied and this only helped my relations with other people in the village.  I never did manage to establish very good relations with him, though I continued to attend council meetings and was even invited to functions at his house on several occasions.

Handley Macfarlane in front of Hopetown Village Office in 1952

It is difficult at the end of the twentieth century to grasp the extent to which English customs of the nineteenth century permeated the life of Guyanese African villages in the closing decades of British rule.  In Hopetown/Bel Air the two schools were owned and operated by the Anglican and the Congregational Churches respectively, and had been since the ending of slavery and the foundation of the village in the 1840s.  However, they were now financed by the British Guiana Government out of local revenues.  Schoolchildren wore uniforms and so did the teachers.  Most teachers were men and all wore heavy suits, white shirts and ties to school, even in the hottest weather.  Many elected to wear this uniform even outside working hours, though the tie might be omitted for informal occasions.  Teachers were expected to behave with the utmost propriety at all times, and all were expected to spend a good deal of their spare time in church work of one kind or another, including lay preaching, running the Boy’s Brigade or Boy Scouts units, Women’s Groups and so forth.  Unfortunately that propriety did not always extend to sexual behaviour and schoolteachers, along with policemen and shopkeepers, were notorious for having affairs outside marriage and fathering outside children.  Whereas most houses in the village were very sparsely furnished, the élite families tried very hard to achieve a higher standard of furnishing and home decoration.  For example, T.T. Thompson had a photograph of himself prominently displayed on the wall of his house flanked by photographs of the current King and Queen of England, while on the opposite wall were framed prints of “The Artful Dodger,” “Oliver Twist,” “Duty Calls,” and “The Hero’s Return”—all very English and indicative of the owner’s familiarity with English culture.  Or, at least, that aspect of it that was represented in the colonies.

The new office of the Regional Authority located in Hopetown

The notice Board in front of the new office reads "Dedicated to the past Councillors of Hopetown-Bel Air Local Authority remembering yet the late T.T. Thompson Founder of ULA [Union of Local Authorities] of Guyana."  The rest of the board is for notices but it says at the bottom "Be wise pay your rates and rents for progress"

The Hopetown Discussion Group

As I have reported elsewhere the question of political independence and economic development was a major focus of public attention by 1951 and the publication of the report of the Constitutional Commission in October of that year set off intense activities as individuals and political parties geared up for the elections that had been scheduled for early in 1953.  Although it took some time for the majority of Hopetown residents to become enthusiastic about the pending changes, the schoolteachers and other members of the small elite group were more politically aware.

From the moment I arrived in the village I was repeatedly asked to speak to this group or that, particularly to schoolchildren or youth groups, and not only in Hopetown.  In a way this was a mark of respect to a person of education who was expected to offer inspirational words in the manner of a missionary or clergyman.  When I explained that I had no inspirational message to convey, this was met with a certain amount of incredulity—almost as unbelievable as the fact that a white man was actually living in an African village.  As one policeman’s wife was heard to say to another, “Wha’ kind a white man dis, that wrap up wie black people so?”  After a while the requests became so insistent, and the idea that I was selfishly refusing to share knowledge so pervasive, that I finally suggested that a group of people form a discussion group, to meet at my house, to discuss any matters that seemed important to the participants.  And so began an activity that I thought was perhaps not quite right for an “objective” anthropologist, but that grew into something not originally foreseen at all.

Soon after this the group decided to go public; that is, to organise a series of public lectures on topics of general interest and practical significance.  The Extra-mural Resident Tutor of the University College of the West Indies was invited to speak on adult education and the District Commissioner spoke on Local Government.  These were safe topics dealt with by individuals whose presence was non-controversial, but the group was interested in the future and in the all-important matter of "development," the latest version of that "uplift" so assiduously pursued by Christian missionaries.  Except that now it was clothed in the rhetoric of politics.  And so it was decided to invite Forbes Burnham of the People's Progressive Party to speak on socialism and "Honest John" Fernandes of the National Democratic Party to speak on capitalism.  Although these overtly political sessions were only a small part of the whole programme of lectures they attracted the attention of the Colonial Government.  Much more important from the point of view of the village were the lectures on Cooperatives, on Agricultural improvement, on Health and on Education. 

By the time the lecture series had ended the Hopetown Discussion Group decided that it was time to begin to think of action rather than words by constituting a number of action committees to explore positive projects.  Thus one committee was to explore the possibility of starting a rice farming cooperative that would purchase machinery, starting with a tractor and perhaps working up to a combine harvester.  Another committee was to review the availability of raw materials for the purpose of starting local industries, such as straw work or furniture manufacture.  Yet other committees were formed to deal with education, health, animal husbandry, drainage and irrigation and other issues of immediate practical importance.

These committees were formed and started work just about the time that I left Hopetown to go to Jamaica for three months of preliminary analysis and writing.  Dr. Frank Williams, the local General Medical Officer, had played a crucial role in the formation and development of this group but he also had to return to Georgetown at about the time I left.  Three or four months later when I returned to British Guiana, and to Hopetown, it was clear that the ambitious plans of the Hopetown Discussion Group had foundered on the all-important issue of organisation and management.  The Group had become riven by dissension and conflict, separating out into factions based on status, education and perceptions of competence.  And so ended an interesting experiment in local self-help.

Under Construction: more to come

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