De Buff, a little village along a dam parallel to the Canal Number Two public road, is listed in the Guyana Gazetteer as The Bluff, but villagers are sticking with the name they know and point to their village sign as evidence.
Along the dam, a few trees hang over the trench that separates the dam and the road. The dust from the road blows wherever the breeze takes it. A few painters chit chat happily as they go about their job. Stray dogs prowl looking food while a few others lie along the road in the sun. Inside a hardware store, Deodat Singh sat with his daughter. Singh has never known any other village but De Buff. Now 62 years old, he is a cane farmer. He prepares and plants a ten-acre farm all by himself, but during crop time he has workers who help him.
His day starts with taking care of the farm animals, milking them and so forth before he heads into the farm, where he sprays, ploughs, throws manure or weeds the grass depending on the time of year. Like most of De Buff’s residents, Singh has a kitchen garden as well as fruit trees. According to him he has cherry, coconut, mango and cashew trees, the produce of which he says is mainly for home. However, with the few cashew trees, when the fruit is in season, he sells it wholesale.
Back in the days he said, “Life was rough. Growing up here was rough. White man days was rough. One body couldn’t ah work to maintain the house.” His father worked as a labourer at the Bookers Estate (now Wales Sugar Estate) and his mother weeded. While his parents struggled to make ends meet for their 11 children and themselves, Singh’s eldest sister, although still in her teens, took care of them at home. On their farm from the late 1950s to the early 1960s, they planted cassava; now he plants sugar cane. “The sugar price fall last year. All we want is them raise the sugar price back. The work force in the sugar industry fall [too],” he said.
Many persons have left the farms to do various kinds of work because of the low payment.
And although it was rough back in the 1950s, leaving the windows open while you slept was something you could have done unlike today. “Nowadays we got to safeguard we place [from persons outside of the village],” Singh said. He added, “The people in De Buff okay. Yo don’t get problem wid nobody hey. It nice and quiet.”
Just as he finished speaking, his brother came in. While he didn’t want to give his name, he said, “The 2005 flood kill a lot of fruit trees. We used to be the bread basket for Guyana. We had bad management in the country. Officials give persons money to purchase plants and many persons ill-spend it; some drink it out. What they should have done is have a plant nursery set up right over here on the West Bank and reimburse farmers with plants not money; at least seventy percent of what was lost.” He also wishes that they could have a “crusher run road” since the dust blows around too much, and sometimes even into their houses. However, he says living there is really nice since he enjoys the quiet atmosphere. “Here,” he says, “everyone interacts with each other.”
A little further down almost opposite a deteriorated bridge lives Deokie Ruplall known as Shantie, a cosmetologist and caregiver who takes care of an elderly person a few villages away. Ruplall was born in De Buff and has remained here since. She lives with her husband and three children: Twain, Adeen and a lively little Jeenna. “We had fun growing up here,” she said. “This place existed for a long time. My grandparents were the first [of her family] to move here. After school we used to come home and help our grandmother on the farm. At that time, my mother [a single parent] had to work [as a domestic help]. I had a brother, a sister and a cousin and every day we walked a mile to school in the morning, back home at lunch and then back to school when lunch was finished and walk it back home after school. Kawall [School] has up to form four but I had to come out in form two and had to go to work just like my sister,” she said. She first worked as a domestic help and then at the Wilson Garment Factory. The sisters worked to help their mother. Their brother went on to finish school and is a teacher today.
They planted cassava, plantain, mango and cashew. “The cassava was mainly for home use. In those days flour was banned and so if we had a little flour, we used to mix it with the cassava and make cassava roti,” she added. “Growing up then take a discipline. If we wanted more food, we couldn’t get and we couldn’t say anything. If you did anything bad back then, whoever see you beat you then they tell your parents who give you another beating.”
Ruplall, who once took courses in New Amsterdam, Berbice has been a trained cosmetologist for the past 12 years. “I have a lot of customers here. I get a lot of work here. I work [as a caregiver] in the mornings and after lunch I work at home [as a cosmetologist].”
“Here everybody celebrates holidays together no matter their religion. Especially Phagwah. During the holidays we share sweetmeats. De Buff has mainly Indian people but it has people from all kind of religions living here. Persons have to go outside of the village to worship. The Hindus go to the Mandir over the road. This is a simple community. We live like family here. If you’re poor person and you have a wake; persons would buy biscuits and other things you need. In this neighbourhood, whatever you have in your backyards or farms, you share. If you have cows, then you share the milk,” she said.
“What we need though, is a good road and a better water facility. The water doesn’t smell good and has rust. Long ago we never had to buy water but today we do.”
Shivanandail Kishandyal better known as Shankar who was heading into the backdam. Kishandyal moved with his parents and other siblings from Enterprise on the East Coast Demerara. They came here because of the rioting in 1966 after their rice farm was taken away. He recalls coming to a place overrun by bushes and a mud dam. The public road he said was a “red brick road”. His father worked at Bookers as a labourer while he and his brothers worked on private farms. Kishandyal said he’s been working since the age of 15. “Back then when it rain and the road was bad we used boats.”
A neighbour said big buses once traversed the roads. “They took the frames of lorries and used wood on the side, plain sheets covered the wood overhead and the seats were made of wood that were bolted on,” he said describing the buses.
Kishandyal works along with a government programme in the Neighbourhood Democratic Council helping to keep the environment clean. Apart from that, he’s also a farmer. He plants pear, cherry, coconut and ground provision and rears cattle.
He and his neighbour agree that the hospitality in De Buff is incomparable and they’d never leave to go live anywhere else.
