Story and photos by Joanna Dhanraj
Amid towering coconut and other palms and many other beautiful trees is a tiny village called Relief, nestled between villages also with odd names such as Support and Land of Canaan. Relief is home to approximately 350 persons, most of whom are related.
remaining coconuts from
a cluster he harvested
One charming resident tells her story of coming to Relief.
In 1950, four-year-old Shirley Sookram arrived in Relief with her parents and six-year-old sister, Leonie Barran. Shirley is the second of nine sisters (no brother) who grew up in Relief. When she first arrived, the East Bank Demerara public road was “red loam,” she said.
She reminisces a time when she, her sisters and friends played among the tiny mangroves (now gigantic trees) on the dam by the river, swam in a nearby trench (now filled up with trees) and wallowed in the mud for crabs to take home to cook.
“We used to paddle boat to Wales on the West Bank to sell at the market with our parents. We sold chickens and ground provisions. At the age of 6-8 years old we worked with our grandfather and grandmother in the farm [at Relief] after school. My grandmother would often catch fish from a pond in the back dam. She cooked the bigger ones and gave me the smaller ones. I kept them as pets in a smaller pond behind us,” said an excited Shirley.
“In our days everyone was referred to as cousin [eg Cousin Shirley] whether they be family or friends, our age or older,” she recalled.
Sookram was once an Office Attendant at the Caricom Secretariat when it was located on the third and fourth floors of the Bank of Guyana and would have worked under the leadership of the current first lady, Sandra Granger. She said that although that was over 30 years ago when society didn’t see the need for a woman to work, her family and friends had always supported her. Sookram said her village is