Plantation Life

The logies of De Willem were directly north of the sugar factory. In addition to a few who had survived slavery, most were either five or ten-room structures built directly on the ground with peaked corrugated zinc roofs that sloped sharply in the front to the passage or “cow mouth” in front. Unfortunately, Rambishoon had arrived during a prolonged period of depression in the sugar industry due to competition from beet sugar in Europe. At the national level, it was a period of consolidation of plantations, and Uitvlugt, Zeeburg, and De Willem had been amalgamated with the factory, soon to be shuttered.
At the local level, cost-cutting meant that overseers in the fields set daily tasks demanding long, strenuous, impossible hours to complete.
By 1888, fifty years after the abolition of slavery, most Africans had moved out of the logies and built cottages-some multifamily, resembling logies-near the Public Road, as some continued to work on the plantation while others migrated to Georgetown. The 1881 census showed the population to be 725, consisting of 92 African “Creoles”-born in British Guiana-87 Creole Indians, and 23 from “other lands.”
Immigration Returns placed “Asiatics”-which could include Chinese-at 523, of whom 281 were not indentured. De Willem had 638 acres in cane, 34 in plantains, and 250 uncultivated. In 1886, it produced 100 hogsheads (1,350 tons) of sugar. On the Allanshaw, Rambishoon encountered Africans for the first time in his life, as a small number had been employed as workers called “lascars, “ who worked under grueling conditions in the boiler room and who often took out their frustrations on the Indian indentureds.
Rambishoon was placed with three other experienced Indian workers as “partners” who were supposed to “break him in” to the nuances of cutting cane on a plantation. A single stalk would be grasped, pulled forward, and cleanly severed about a foot from the ground with the sharpened cutlass. It would then be twirled to chop off the leafy tops and then thrown onto the ground to form a heap-all in one fluid motion. The heaps would be picked up by other workers, including women, placed on their heads in bundles, and fetched to nearby canals to be dumped into punts that would take them to the factory.
Rambishoon would prepare his meals-which were monotonously but invariably boiled rice with curried vegetables and dhall-some eaten immediately as “breakfast” and the rest during the morning break from cutting his task as “lunch. “ Very early on, he noticed that African cane cutters did not prepare their lunch at home but would break around 10 a.m. to cook “ground provisions” that would constitute breakfast and lunch. This difference in custom was one that militated against the two groups working together as “partners.”
He learned that the water to be used for cooking or drinking was taken from the irrigation canals. The white overseers on their mules would ensure that all workers-male and female-were up by 5 a.m. to be marched into the “backdam. “ Those who were not were sent to the hospital at Uitvlugt to determine whether they were “sick. “ There was no other excuse. A decade later, a planter would testify, without irony, to a Royal Commission inquiring about working conditions that indentureds could only legitimately be in one of three places-in the field, hospital, or jail. The last was most frequently for absences from work, since this civil infraction of their contract was deemed a criminal offense and dealt with condignly by the magistrate’s court.
As in the depot and aboard the Allanshaw, relations with women had become increasingly less constrained compared with the village, and this continued in the logies and backdam. In fact, several “liaisons” occurred at the former, and on landing, were sent to the same plantation as “married. “ The proportion of women to men was tremendously skewed against the former, who were then in great demand. They were not slow in taking advantage of that fact to break the constraints that had been imposed on them in India.
During his indentureship, young Rambishoon would have a relationship with a woman who would bear him a child named Rambharose, but they did not get married. As a child, my Nanie would tell me about Rambharose, who grew up farther west in Tuschen and recognized the relationship.