Photos by Shabna Ullah
You know it is Christmas at No 8 Village, West Coast Berbice when the aroma from the black cake baking in a huge mud oven fills the air. Starting about a week before Christmas, women from the village take their pre-mixed cake in large bowls to the home of 82-year-old Julia Melville, who pours it into pans which she places in the oven in her back yard.
The residents also bake their own bread for the pepperpot, which passers-by can smell bubbling away in almost every home about three days before Christmas. As they add the final touches to cleaning and decorating their homes, residents start to feel the spirit of the holiday season.
Melville’s youngest daughter, a nurse, explained that for the