Arriving at the Plantation

The depot at Georgetown was almost a replica of that at Garden Reach in Calcutta: a number of elongated huts housing the indentured labourers before they were shipped off to the specific sugar plantation to which they were “bound”. It was on the periphery of Kingston, north of the lighthouse and east of the battery of cannons that had once guarded the Atlantic approach into the Demerara River – hence “Battery Road”, which led Rambishoon to it from Water St. In modern times, it housed the NCERD offices east of the Marriott Hotel. Since every Indian indentured labourer into Guyana passed through this site, we have long called for it to be declared a heritage site.
But back to Rambishoon and his Allanshaw cohorts, who were all inspected by a doctor, and those who were ill would have been admitted into the “hospital” or, more accurately, an isolation facility to contain contagious diseases. The office of the Agent General overseeing the indentureship process and the fair enforcement of the indentureship contract was also located here. One James Crosby – who had been fiercely protective of the immigrants’ rights since 1858 – had passed away some eight years before but had become so beloved by the Indians that they conferred his name on the office. Rambishoon passed muster and was assigned to Plantation De Willem, twelve miles across and west of the nearby Demerara River. “De Willem” was scrawled on the right of his emigration pass.
He and 26 others – 16 men, six women, and four “infants” (actually children under 12) – bound to De Willem, along with 24 to neighbouring Uitvlugt and 17 to De Kendren plantations, were made to retrace their steps to the wharf near where they had landed. This time, they entered the “Steamer” – as the steam-engine ferry was called – to cross to the west bank of the mile-and-a-half Demerara River. They landed at Plantation Vreed-en-Hoop – the very plantation where John Gladstone had initiated the “Coolie Experiment” fifty years before that brought 239,000 Indians to British Guiana and half a million to the West Indies.
They were driven the 11 to 14 miles to the plantations in horse carts drawn over the red, burnt-earth “Public” Road that ran parallel to the Atlantic Coast – hence the name “West Coast Demerara”. He would observe the green, perfectly flat terrain that so much resembled the environs of his native Ishmailpur. The stark difference was the continuously traversing bridges across canals that led to sluices into the ocean behind a raised, earthen dam. The canals, he would soon discover, originated miles inland to drain and divide plantations. Ramshackle cottages forming “villages” of mainly the descendants of freed enslaved Africans adjoined the Public Road – an increasingly joined presence of time-expired Indian indentureds who continued to work on the plantations. He could see the chimneys of the “grinding” sugar factories a mile inland to his left.
When the horse carts passed Uitvlugt, the one with immigrants assigned to that plantation turned left into the road leading to the factory, as did Rambishoon’s a mile later when it reached De Willem. The third continued on to De Kendren, three miles down the road. As Rambishoon’s batch continued on the dirt road flanked by canals on both sides, he saw carefully laid-out uncultivated fields. He later realised that the ocean dam, the public road, and these fields protected the cane cultivation behind the sugar factory from saltwater.
Finally, they passed several lines of barracks or logies, with the De Willem sugar factory and its tall chimney spouting smoke a short distance further south. Rambishoon’s and the other adults’ names were recorded by a clerk, assisted by an Indian immigrant who acted as interpreter; he was now officially conscripted into his five-year indentureship. The interpreter took him to one of the logies that had ten rooms – each 10 feet by 15 feet, fronted by a six-foot-wide passage with an open earthen “chulha”, or stove, next to a door – and assigned him one.
He was given some utensils and a week’s supply of groceries – replicating the shipboard rations – which would be deducted from his weekly wages for a year. The said wages as an adult male were 24 cents, or a shilling, daily on the completion of an assigned task that would be defined by an overseer as capable of being completed in a day. It was decided that Rambishoon would be harvesting or “cutting” cane for six days weekly.