By Jeff Trotman
Verley Etheline Bellamy is satisfied with her life. Spanning one hundred years, it is an unfinished journey of unfolding new horizons and fulfilling experiences. Beginning with the rustic, unpretentious, Amerindian way of life in the upper reaches of the Kara Kara Creek, then living in Linden as a school girl attending the Christianburg Scots School when the fledgling bauxite company was planting its feet in the community, she blossomed into a beautiful lass in Georgetown, who endured the challenge of becoming a young widow and had to garner inner strength and fortitude to bring up two young daughters as a single parent.
Born on 20th March 1914, Verley attained her one hundredth birthday on Thursday. Her two daughters, grandchildren and other close relatives and friends held a birthday party for her on Sunday, 17th March at her elder daughter’s home in Redwood Crescent, Mackenzie. She thoroughly enjoyed the occasion as she caused much laughter, recounting interesting aspects of her life.
Hard time
Quite a story teller, Verley recalled that she was married at the age of twenty two, significantly, with two different wedding ceremonies. Her husband, Eustace Bellamy, was a Roman Catholic so they were married in the Church of the Immaculate Conception – the Brickdam Cathedral – then they repeated their wedding vows at the Christianburg Scots Church, up the Demerara River.
Reputed to be a ravishingly beautiful lass with long, flowing, black hair, Verley said whenever she returned to Kara Kara on holidays, the boys used to rush her but she paid them no mind. “All dem boys in the creek used to rush me but I didn’t have time with them. I used to gaff with them,” the centenarian recalled whimsically. “…I used to paint up my face, lipstick, eye pencil and I gone up the road,” she chuckled, “and the boys deh behind me, following me.”
Declaring that she was a hard nut to crack, Verley professed that even her husband she gave a hard time when he started to court her. “He walked behind me from I don’t know where. He tried to talk to me and I won’t answer him. He walked with me all the way. We walking and we walking and he continue talking and he talking till I reach Queenstown and when I reached Third Street, I answered him. He said if we could meet again. I told him the people I was living with were very strict.”
But her husband’s persistence paid off. “Eventually when I finished work, I would bathe and dress and say I going for a walk. I going and meet he, now. We would walk and talk and go up to the seawalls. He had a nice sister and he mother used to sew. She was a dressmaker. But the first family member he took me to was his aunt, his mother’s sister – and they did like me.”
When asked if she had liked him, she responded: “Well, yes, in a kind of way.” According to her, he had style – he loved hats – and he used to dress up and go to the cinema. Verley said she did not like going to dances. This was probably due to her strict, religious upbringing.
Early childhood
The elders in Verley’s family farmed, made cassareep, starch and cassava bread, which they sold at Speightland, then a striving community on the east bank of the Demerara River, not far from the mouth of the Kara Kara Creek. She said the family also planted cucumber, sugar cane and pineapple.
Recounting her childhood memory of the journey from their home to the mouth of the Kara Kara Creek, Verley said it used to take “half day pulling, going up” with corial. She said they had to pass three savannahs. “Was good bush,” she said. “The creek only running”. And she could only recall passing only two homesteads during the trip. “One was in a lil creek running south from the Kara Kara and the other when you left the first savannah and you come down nearly a mile, you meet a hill.”
“I had one sister bigger than me and a lil baby one that died when she was a month old. Then I had two brothers – William and a last lil one name Comacho,” she said, noting that there was no school in the area where she was born. So, when she and her sister became of school age, they were enrolled at the Christianburg Scots School and they stayed at the home of a family friend about four houses from the mouth of the Kara Kara Creek. They had to cross the river by corial to Section C Christianburg then walk southward along a track to the Scots School. There were no cars in the area at that time but a few people had bicycles.
During school holidays, the siblings returned to their family home in the upper reaches of the Kara Kara Creek. However, fate dictated that the tight familial bond would be broken. “Me mother died when we were small and like we scatter. I grow with my grandmother. My sister grow with her godmother and go to school from there. Me brother grow with his father.
Rounders
Verley said children did not play many games when she was a child about ten years old. “We (girls) just played rounders and the boys played cricket.” Neither did she have chores in the morning before going to school because her grandparents used to do all the work. “We just used to take we breakfast, bathe and go to school. The lady used to paddle the corial across the river for us to go to school.”
But crossing the river could be scary. “Sometimes the swelling (in the river) was high and it got the boat rocking and we go up so and come down so and we in the middle,” she recalled.
Her grandmother died when she was about ten years old and she was adopted by the wife of Reford Allicock. This family lived farther down the Demerara River and operated a launch service. Allicock also owned a speed boat, which the family used to travel to Georgetown, leaving at five o’clock in the morning.
She said the Allicocks stayed in Queenstown when they went to the city to shop. “That time, Queenstown was ah old, shabby place,” she declared. “We used to stay near to a church named Dingwall Church in Queens-town. But we got to go in a pit toilet at the back – behind Dingwall Church. The cricket ground deh in front that and the Seventh Day Adventist house was not far away. We spend a week or so and then we gone back.”
She said the Allicocks subsequently bought a house in Queenstown and she began attending Trinity School in Leopold Street. However, her schooling was erratic because she had to take care of the Allicocks four-year-old son.
Young woman
When she became a teenager, boys were far from Verley’s mind. According to her, the Allicocks were Seventh Day Adventists and they were very strict. “They went to church and did church activities – that’s all. I never used to go anywhere.”
But she began experiencing a restlessness of spirit. “After I got big, I don’t want to stay with them anymore. I came back up here (Upper Demerara) and … the boys start rushing me, you know. That time, I turn a big young lady. But I didn’t take on anybody then. Long after then I met my husband. I married when I big. I marry at twenty two. Then in 1940, I get my first child, Joan. Then my second one, Jean. Only two children I got – two girls.”
Except for that restriction of her mobility she has a degree of health and mental alertness that would be the envy of many forty years her junior. “I can see far,” she disclosed. “All around I could see. But now, cold taking over my eyes. But I could still see.” She is naturally proud to have lived to the ripe age of 100 years and she is grateful that she is relatively healthy except for the arthritis in her knees that restricts her from walking, or standing too long.
Challenges
She said her husband died young, at the age of 45 and she had to do domestic work to mind her daughters, who were attending the St. Mary’s Primary School. Things became so tight that she approached the nuns and told them that her husband had died and she had never worked before he died so she had to do domestic work but it was not bringing in enough money. The nuns then employed her older daughter as a teacher.
Verley does not believe her longevity is a family trait since, according to her, all her older
relatives died relatively young. Neither does she see it resulting from any special diet. “I grow pon pepperpot and cassava bread – wild cow meat, wild hog meat, deer meat, labba – all dem wild meat and river fish like hymara, tibicuri …. Me uncles used to go and catch them and make pepperpot.”
Nowadays, she watches television late at nights and she likes boxing. She enjoys Franklyn Longhorn’s late night radio programme as well as listening to oldies music. She is also a Ron Robinson fan, who in the past enjoyed the music programmes of Matthew Allen and Pancho Carew.
She recalled that early in their marriage, she and her husband spent some time with her father at Speightland and her husband, “a town man”, knew nothing about the bush. “Town people lazy,” she chuckled. “They don’t like work. They like go all about like the seawalls and idlesome dehself.”
Stating that she had lived nearly twenty three years at 319 East Street, Verley emphasized that after her husband died she was not eager to get involved in another relationship. She said she could not stand being questioned or dictated to by any other man.
Years later, she developed a relationship, primarily for companionship, with an older man. She took care of him and, according to her, he treated her well. She said she worked hard as a domestic before she met him but her employers were good people. “I worked with the Bishop. I worked with the priest. I worked with the Ombudsman.”
She stopped working when her daughters got married and started getting children. She opted to assist in taking care of her grandchildren. She returned to Linden to live after her older daughter got married and set up home in Linden.
Offspring
Verley has ten grandchildren, seventeen great grandchildren and four great great grands. Her eldest daughter, Joan, mothered eight children and Jean, two. Although she has a good relationship with her offsprings, Verley is disappointed that they don’t take her out from time to time. “I don’t go anywhere,” she said longingly. “All three of my grandsons have cars, now, and they don’t even carry me for a drive They don’t even say, well, granny come in the car, let’s go for a drive. I does fell like I want go for a nice lil drive. You know how?”
She is not looking forward to living another hundred years. “Sometimes I can’t even walk. I can barely stand up. I does have to hold on and the knee does hurt me.” But in the same breath, she blurted out in a youthful spirit: “Sometimes, I feel like having a swim. I used to swim across the Kara Kara Creek, you know.”
She seriously feels that younger people need to show more respect for elders. “Since you start talking, they give you rudeness or they get up and gone out,” she lamented.
