Port Mourant, Corentyne, the home village of the late president of Guyana, Dr Cheddi Jagan as well as some outstanding cricketers, was described as the only village that offers education from “nursery to university.” It is a very large village made up of about 15 settlements including Free Yard, Bound Yard, Portuguese Quarter, Bangladesh, Ankerville, Clifton, Tain, Miss Phoebe and John’s, and it is nestled between Guyana’s smallest town of Rose Hall to the west and Bloomfield Village to the east. Bound Yard got its name from the indentured labourers who lived there. After they had worked out their contracts they moved to another location suitablycalled Free Yard.
The Port Mourant Cricket Club is known for having produced Guyana and West Indies cricket legends like Rohan Kanhai, Basil Butcher, Joe Solomon, Randolph Ramnarace, Ivan Madray, Alvin Kallicharran, Derek Kallicharran, John Trim and the Etwaru brothers.
It was also home to well-known attorneys like Sir Lionel Luckhoo and other prominent people.
on a race horse
There is a modern crematorium site where the bodies of Dr Jagan and his wife, Janet were cremated.
Mustapha Ally who served as president of the club for seven years and as the third vice-president of the Berbice Cricket Board said “cricket is the trump card for Port Mourant…”
Ally who still runs a halaal restaurant, is an honorary member of the club and recalled that the team “went all over the country to play.” Among their many outstanding achievements was winning the Bristol trophy for three consecutive years as well as the Clifford Reis trophy.
During the school holidays, he said, the club “hosted cricket academy for the youngsters and out of that emerged some national players like the Mahendra and Vishal Nagamootoo and Andre Percival.”
Gifted community
Places of worship for the three major religions are present in a village which has also been blessed with a potable water supply, electricity, a telephone service and good roads. Residents described Port Mourant as the “gifted community” and said it is developing rapidly in terms of businesses. The latest addition is the Guyana Bank for Trade & Industry Limited located opposite the largest Saturday market.
Nearby are popular hangout spots, including Spready’s Bakery and its other branches; a fast food and supermarket along with Paul Singh’s Bakery. During this newspaper’s visit there was a sombre atmosphere in that part of the village as the cremation for the late founder of Spready’s Bakery was being held.
There are also small restaurants, rum shops, a gas station, travel service, barber’s shop, lumber yard, Skye Communication, E-Networks and various businesses. The village also has a turf club which attracts a lot of fans to horseracing events, which is one of the major forms of entertainment.
At the turf club, 36-year-old Winston Appadu who has been a jockey for 20 years was waiting to train horses for an upcoming event.
He loves horseracing because his “whole family was in the business… and I decided to take up the job.” He also rears two racehorses which are named ‘“I Will Get Another’ and ‘Maggaline.’
Appadu also works as a jockey for another owner, Marcel Crawford, and would practise with the horses to “get the body fit.” His skills have earned him a lot of top positions in the races but he modestly said it depended on luck as well.
Cyril Crawford, 65, and his wife, Seeta Persaud had also taken their horse to practice but they were disappointed that because of the bad weather, the gate to the race track was not open.
Crawford was involved in horse racing with his father from the age of 12 and he still enjoys the sport.
Health care and schools
Residents seek health care at the Port Mourant Hospital located in Ankerville as well as at the GuySuCo dispensary. The village is home to the National Ophthalmology Centre which was launched in July 2009 and benefits persons from across Guyana as well as from Suriname.
It also boasts three nursery schools as well as two primary schools, a secondary school, a private business school, the Berbice Islamic School, the Port Mourant Training Centre (PMTC) and the Tain Campus of the University of Guyana which was opened in November 2000.
But even though there are so many schools in the village, there are also cases of children not attending. Some are also said to be involved in drugs and alcohol abuse, and engage in
petty theft and fights.
Students at the PMTC were proud of their achievement after creating a 28-ft Christmas tree using steel rods and 728 plastic bottles as part of their recycling project. Manager, Jainarine Sukhpaul, said it all started when the students were preparing a project for their graduation using perspex and LED light. He casually picked up an empty bottle that was lying around and tried it out with one of the lights and was amazed at the results. They then got down to making the tree which now decorates the lawns of the students’ hostel and has proved quite an attraction for passers-by.
Sukhpaul said that while the “tree beautifies the community,” the project is about keeping the environment clean and educating the public that they too can start similar projects. He said that in the day the bottles glitter in the sun and with the wind it “gives a chandelier look.”
The PMTC currently has 118 apprentices for first and second year courses coming from all the estates around the country. The institution also offer evening programmes to the community through the Board of Industrial Training and GuySuCo.
After high school, Sukhpaul started training at the PMTC as an apprentice. He worked at GuySuCo before joining the staff at PMTC as an instrument instructor. He was subsequently promoted to senior instructor then chief instructor before serving as manager. He also obtained a full technological diploma in electrical engineering while GuySuCo sent him on courses in Louisiana, South Africa and Belize as well as at the University of the West Indies.
Shelter
The Canaan Home for homeless children can also be found in the village. The Arya Samaj Humanitarian Mission is in the process of establishing an empowerment centre where vulnerable persons would be trained, as well as a shelter for homeless persons. Nearby, the Guyana Dharmic Sabha is also constructing a children’s shelter.
Most of the residents are self-employed while some have jobs in and out of the area including at the Albion Estate as labourers and cane-harvesters.
Narinesammy Ramsammy, 40, a cane-cutter had already returned from the fields for the day. He wakes at 4 am and joins the truck at 4.55 am each day. The father of two said when he returns at 3 pm he would tend to his goats that his wife would take out to graze in the mornings.
Joel Sukhnanand, 50, worked at GuySuCo for 20 years as a field carpenter and was involved in building bridges. He retired early because of a back injury. He had inherited a cottage that he lived in from childhood with his family. Sukhnanand had only demolished it a few days before and has already started to replace it with a modern house.
This newspaper visited the area on the last day of the school term. Khemal and Maureen Singh were busy plying their trade from a stall along the street in front of the JC Chandisingh Secondary School. Students purchased food items through the meshed fence before returning to the building. Some attempted to leave before the dismissal bell rang but were promptly turned back by the guard at the gate.
The couple have been living at Port Mourant all their lives and have been vending at the school for over 40 years. They were operating from the canteen in the school’s compound but they were asked to leave and other persons have since taken over.
Positive difference
The Rose Hall Town Youth & Sport Club (RHTY&SC) has been helping to make a positive difference in the lives of young people, the elderly and less fortunate. President Hilbert Foster who was involved in the club for several years said the main aim is to promote sport, especially cricket.
The club is also involved in charity work assisting people throughout Berbice and in promoting education, campaigning against drugs and undertaking youth community development work. The club has over 300 donors. Members were preparing to host Christmas programmes, costing millions, including a luncheon on December 22 for 150 senior citizens with each person taking home about $10,000 worth of hampers and gifts. Together with the Radio Needy Children’s Fund,
the club was also expected to host a massive Christmas party for 500 children on December 19.
The club is currently helping the St Francis Youth Club to get back on its feet and Foster said “personally, I have been playing a great part in that.”
It was observed that “the church had dropped back in terms of attendance with some young people complaining that it was too boring and I tried to correct that.” He has already obtained a music set for $175,000 and has “formed back the choir. We have also launched several other programmes and they [youth] are already starting to see a difference; they are quite happy.”
He recalled that in the ’80s his brother, Alex Foster was in charge of the youth club that had a choir. Members were also involved in feeding the poor and visiting the homes of Catholics.
The club recently donated a variety of items to a 96-year-old former headmistress who has been struggling.
Foster was proud that his “club has survived for almost 24 years and I see that as a remarkable achievement.” It has produced over 100 cricketers at the Berbice, Guyana and even West Indies levels. He said Assad Fuddadin has represented the West Indies at all levels while two girls, Shemaine Campbell and Erva Giddings, were also selected for the WI senior team.
St Francis Community Developers
Alex Foster, President of the St Francis Community Developers (SFCD) said Port Mourant has been home for the organization for the past 28 years. Three years ago it successfully established its permanent head office complex which houses a conference room, finance office and monitoring and evaluation department. It also has a coordinating office for USAID’s Skye project (Guyana Skills and Knowledge for Youth Employment) as well as the executive office for Friends of St Francis
With the support of the Japanese High Commission, SFCD has also constructed a two-flat training centre that hosts up to 500 persons in the upper flat through regular seating and 350 with tables. The bottom flat which is divided into two, houses a “conference room that is utilized by several stakeholders across Guyana and further afield.” According to Alex, the other section “has been established as the consultancy in community development services. In a few weeks we would launch a series of offices to scale up activities in Guyana and across the Caribbean…”
The SFCD is in the final stages of completing the construction of its guest house that consists of four self-contained rooms in the upper flat. There would also be facilities in bottom flat for 30 males and 30 females traveling for training from the interior areas like Orealla, Siparuta, Moraikabai and other communities.
Currently 54 governmental and non-governmental organizations across the region are involved with the organization, including 21 groups in New Amsterdam (NA) and on the East Bank that were formed one year ago. There has also been major collaboration with the Government Pensioners’ Association and the All Saints Presbyterian Church in NA where a series of projects and programmes were implemented. He said the projects seek to respond to the needs of the various communities they work with through monitoring and evaluation.
While his organization may not always have the financial resources to respond to the needs that require large capital investments, it depends on the support of the community and donor organizations, like Food for the Poor. According to him, SFCD “acts as a conduit to bring support to the voice of the voiceless,” helping to change the lives of persons. It empowers members of the various groups so that they can respond to the needs of their community.
These include training programmes in information technology, running small groups, managing meeting, public speaking and project documentation.
Alex who became involved in the club at a young age said he had his calling to service while attending the Catholic Church. He had “found it difficult to fit in because I came from a very poor family. Most of the Catholics in those days were from the upper social class.”
Alex said too, “I understood what poverty was from a very early age. But I am thankful for a good mother and grandmother who taught me how to cope.” He has also lived up to his name Foster, which means to help. “In the words of Mother Theresa, ‘if we want to serve then we must find the poorest of the poor.’” He believes that “poverty is temporary and if you embarrass people when they are down, then they might never get up. We seek to raise people up by empowering them, not embarrassing them.”
Along the roadside, Rajin Rampersaud, a remigrant was vending hoses, pressure wash, tools and other items. He has been doing so for over three years.
