Postby xtech » May 3rd, 2019, 9:29 am
GUAYA GREEN
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“CAMP LIFE” IN GUAYAGUAYARE AND FOREST RESERVE FOR A YOUNG BOY IN THE 1940s and 1950s ...
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When I was a young boy growing up, our family once lived in the Guayaguayare area of Trinidad, close to the south coast of the island, in the heavily forested “Bush” (Mature Amazonian Tropical Rainforest), for four years - 1956-1959.
The house in which we lived was in the foothills of the Trinity Hills ... three quite small dormant volcanic mountains, the highest being 997 ft, and after which Trinidad was named … Christopher Columbus, allegedly the first European to visit Trinidad, having done us this “honour”.
Some of us, as preteens, had frequently climbed all three of these small mountains. In a clearing, at the base of their foothills, was a small dam, in which lived a colony of Alligators, some up to about ten feet long. Me and my friends (Richard Holley, Alan Morrison and others) hunted the smaller ones with our pellet guns; stunning, capturing, and killing them prior to getting them stuffed by an old taxidermist in Claxton Bay. The man was always drunk and took many months to complete a job, but even then taxidermists were a rare breed in Trinidad. For every three alligators we gave him, he would retain two and return a free stuffed one, which we would sell for pocket money ... budding capitalists!
Another good occasional pastime in "Guaya" was going up the Pilot River, in a pirogue, a small fishing boat, which can be anywhere from 12 to 35 ft long, and of a design unique to Trinidad. We would be there with Ian Ogilvie, his sons Richard and David, and Ian’s twelve gauge shot gun, hunting King Tarpon, in the brackish water where they come into at high tide to breed. They roll in the water like Porpoises and, just by blowing off a Tarpon’s head, you could be rewarded with over 90 lbs of tough fish meat ... but very tasty and especially good stewed or curried on a low heat.
Guayaguayare, by definition, is not just the small coastal fishing village with that name, but an extensive “Forest Reserve” area too, which accounts for a substantial 16% of Trinidad's landmass that few, even in Trinidad itself, are aware of.
Actually the Guayaguayare reserve is made up of five main sub-reserves … Cat’s Hill, Mayaro, Ortoire Windbelt, Trinity Hills and Moruga reserves. In the south, it runs from Point Galeota to Moruga. In the East, from Point Galeota to Pierreville (Mayaro village). In the North, from Pierreville, via Rio Claro, to Princes Town. In the West, from Princes Town to Moruga. These boundaries are not always dead straight lines, but a rough indicator of boundary delimitations. This sprawling protected area, called Guayaguayare, contains portions of three different electoral constituencies in the southeast quadrant of Trinidad.
No logging, farming, hunting or squatting is permitted in this legally protected area, although, these days and, even then, in the 1940/50's, a poorly enforced regulation. In the 1950's, apart from about 12 staff houses in the TLL Trinidad Leaseholds Limited) oil camp ... where our family lived, there were two small villages in the Guayaguayare reserve ... Abyssinia and Goudron.
Goudron village (Probably derived from “Gudrun”, an early German’s wife, or the French word for “tar”) was a very private and barely accessible place. Located plumb in the midst of the Guayaguayare rainforest, about midway between Galeota and Moruga, just past the Trinity Hills, and about two or three miles inland from Trinidad's south coast, it is one of the most significant anachronisms etched in my childhood memory and I can still visualize it very vividly.
In a small clearing, surrounded by typical enormous trees, there were about eight (mud-walled) huts, with coconut tree branch (frond) roofs and one or two adjacent very smoky fires, always seemingly smoldering, probably making charcoal from dry forest wood, for cooking purposes.
All inhabitants were of medium brown complexion, with children of various ages who were all naked; a few women, a few topless with wraps around their waists; and men dressed in well-worn shorts. No shoes on anybody’s feet. Most villagers had long matted hair, which appeared in some cases to have mud caked into it. The maximum number of villagers ever seen by us, at any one time, was about eight.
Richard and I were never armed, nor knowingly appeared threatening on our visits, but the children always ran away on seeing us; the women were usually expressionless, just quietly staring at us, presumably in curiosity. There were never more than four or five men observed at any one time, but they always seemed to be glaring menacingly at us and, as young invasive strangers, we felt nervous, so we never stayed, usually just staring in wonderment, for more than a few minutes. No weapons were ever seen among the villagers there. I think they used traps to catch their meat, if in fact they were not vegetarian.
Richard and I visited this village, on our bicycles, as far as the road went, then on foot by trail, through the dense bush, for a few hundred yards, passing a small but very active, mud volcano in the middle of the forest, which was continually belching stifling natural gas. We went there two or three times between 1956-57.
With assistance from my father initially, I would make birdcages, with two upper traps enclosed. We used coco-yay, stalks from coconut leaves (later using wire), and narrow wood strips held together using glue made from laglee (tree resin).
I used to trap, sell and trade "cage birds" from Guayaguayare ... all were classified as Tropical Canaries by European ornithologists and all were unique and native to the vast Orinoco and Amazon River basins as well as the Mature Tropical Rainforests of deep-south Trinidad ... the Guayaguayare and Forest Reserve protected areas.
Incidentally, Trinidad's Northern Range is covered with young Virgin Rainforest, with much smaller trees and less undergrowth, but with some varieties of the fauna found in the Deep South Mature Rainforest, in much lesser quantities.
Among the birds we trapped were Picoplats, Nuns, Semps, Soucriers, Robins, Silver Beaks, Bullfinches and Grassies. Yellow, white and black Semps and Soucriers are fruit birds and therefore expensive to feed. The others are insect and seedeaters. The females of most species differ in colour, with the males being much more flamboyantly coloured and, as is usual in the animal kingdom, the males are normally slightly larger.
Female Tropical Canaries do not roll (warble), but only chirp passively. Some of the warblers in Trinidad are quite amazing ... especially the Picoplat, Nun, Silver Beak and Bullfinch, which one should hear in action. Absolutely no northern hemispherical bird can loudly and melodiously roll the octaves for many continuous minutes like a “Pico" can, especially when it rains ... genetically natural, repetitive musically-pleasing musical movements, as well as very occasional random improvisations, and especially when aroused by a nearby calling female, in the right prevailing weather … rain. Note that amongst the above birds, the Soucrier and Grassy are non-warblers. The rest are.
We also kept a pet Parrot in Guayaguayare, Kiki, who had an extensive, but somewhat risqué, vocabulary. Unfortunately, parrots in captivity must have one wing clipped to prevent escape by flight. One must be very careful with clipping, because a cut, too close to a feather root, can be excruciatingly painful to a bird and, even possibly, kill it.
Kiki was an intelligent bird. I toilet trained her, to travel around on my shoulder without messing and, if you know parrots, you know that they “crap” very frequently, not only after and during feeding, but when nervously excited too. When I took Kiki into the forest and she heard other parrots of her specie, of which there were very many, calling, she would really “freak out” and tremble, but never try to fly away.
I had raised Kiki as a hatchling, only a few days old, pink and featherless, continually squawking for bread and milk and soft fruit, her diet for a few months. I kept her in my bedroom, in a shoebox, next to my bed then, as she needed nourishment every two or three hours. Hunters had shot her nesting mother. What a true and loyal companion Kiki turned out to be.
We would eat Mountain Doves that we very occasionally killed with slingshots, one Mountain Dove having the edible equivalent of a chicken drumstick.
We never shot at, or overly harassed, but hung out in the Bush with Red Howler and Gray Squirrel Monkeys, Tiger Cats (South American Ocelots) and the occasional Deer ... Never too close to the cats and deer, who shun human proximity, but within visual and hearing communication distance.
We would sometimes tease the Red Howlers by pelting stones at them, but they don’t scare easily and can be quite aggressive when aroused, so we would take off when they started coming at us. The monkeys would make a noisy racket … that’s why they are called Howlers … and seemed to enjoy these games we played too.
I am told that Deer and the Cats are rarely, if ever, encountered nowadays in the Bush in south Trinidad ... Deer having been practically hunted out for their food value and Tiger Cats, I think, terrorized out of existence by the sights and sounds of mankind’s machines, part of his “Glorious Civilization”.
As well as myself, my two sisters, Alison and Christine, were brought up in an area simply named "Forest Reserve" (which is all it really is – a forest reserve) and which, like Guayaguayare, is a protected southern Mature Tropical Rainforest reserve area for all flora and fauna therein ... very approximately, loosely situated between Fyzabad, Point Fortin, Barrackpore, Palo Seco and Los Irois.
I was born in Forest Reserve, like sister Christine was, and lived there from 1944, first for nine years (age 0-9) and then for 2 years (age 14-15), the ‘gap‘ being spent in Guayaguayare. Alison was born during a brief family stay in San Fernando in 1947. Christine’s birth at New Camp, Forest Reserve, was in 1952.
My father, the youngest of his siblings, had been born in Dominica, which is very mountainous and completely covered with virgin Rainforest. He was physically unrestricted and restrained by his parents, in his boyhood days, in his continuous adventures, exploring and learning about the expansive Dominican forest. In retrospect, I think he wanted to give his children the same “roaming freedom” he had enjoyed as a youth, so no restrictions were placed on our significant time spent in the south Trinidad “Bush”, normally for hours on end ... returning home for meals being the only requisite. This, for all of his children, from age four or five up to fifteen.
Some of my parent’s contemporaries on the oilfields, in the 1940’s and 50’s felt that they were too liberal, giving us, their three children, excessive free rein. But other families also gave maximum freedom to their children and these kindred spirits became our closest friends, lasting up to the present, even though most of us are radically geographically separated now, some as afar as Australia and New Zealand.
In the residential Camps, houses were scattered throughout parts of the tall dense dark green forest. It was very hilly and most houses were relatively isolated, in some cases a few hundred metres (or more) apart and often not even within sight of each other, due to the omnipresent dense forest.
The houses were mostly two storied and wooden, raised on stilts, which were usually discarded ten inch diameter oilfield “drill pipe”. Some of the more senior staff had ground level single storey wooden bungalows. And others had brick bungalows. Regardless of the type of accommodation, the large trees and underbrush of the Rainforest prevailed and grew right up to the house, the flora and fauna being “right on our doorstep”, just a few yards away in most cases.
In spite of the prevailing bans, I used to hunt, along with my friends, with (.177 sometimes .22 calibre) pellet rifles, sling shots, knives and cutlasses (machetes) and sometimes ate our small game, but if significant in quantity, and not eaten by us, we would attempt to give away for that purpose.
Many types of edible prey existed in the Rainforests of Guayaguayare and Forest Reserve, among these ... Iguana, Manicou (Opossum), Gojay (small grey Manicou), Mongoose, Squirrel, Agouti, Lappe, Quenck (a large, tusked and very aggressive wild boar), Morocoy, Armadillo, Tattoo (similar to the Armadillo), and Alligator. Most are good eating.
Agouti is simply a relatively clean large rat, which does not scavenge, and is said to be very tasty. Down the middle of an Alligator's tail is a delicious and tender sliver of white meat, very nice curried, which I ate once at an Indian “country wedding”. But one would never kill an Alligator simply for its food value. Manicou is a scavenger (of rotten fruit) and opinions vary on its suitability for human consumption. Small Manicou (Gojay) is cleaner and delicious.
I never killed, but ate, Tattoo. They have an unusual and unique bone structure, and are the tastiest "Wild Meat", in spite of having to pick the meat out of the strange and unique bones, almost like small chip-chip shells. And, of course, Iguana is a prize and easy to catch too, with bare hands, most of the time … no need for a gun and, surprisingly, they are still very common in Trinidad. One of the small Grenadine islands, between Grenada and St Vincent (I believe Union Island), I’ve heard it said, has an abundance of Iguanas and, reputedly, even rearing them, on a small scale. But maybe that was in long past days.
We also had to look out for and often killed many kinds of snakes ... Macajuel (aka Boa ... a 10 footer once), Mapapire, Zanana, Brown Coral and Banded (red, yellow and black) Coral, less than a foot long and, reputedly, the most deadly animal on Earth, killing victims within a few minutes of a strike ... Ironically, this deadly venom is extracted from the Banded Coral, diluted, treated chemically, by some “well-guarded” secret formulae, and used medicinally in very small doses, by physicians of British Royalty and the very wealthy.
All of the foregoing reptiles are venomous except the Macajuel, which is a powerful constrictor. Emperor Valley Zoo in Trinidad has a couple of very large Macajuel specimens, which get fed weekly, or less frequently, with dead mammals ... stray dogs, cats and other zoo animals.
A friend's father was a part time (weekend) hunter and once got a message from a farmer who had a serious problem. His cow had been found dead, with no marks of violence and its calf was missing. After grabbing his cutlass and shotgun, when he got to the location he was also puzzled about the nature of the cow's death and began looking for the calf in the surrounding "Bush". He came across an 18' Macajuel, jaws self-unhinged and in the process of very slowly swallowing the calf headfirst. Just its hind legs were protruding from the serpent's mouth. After decapitating the snake, they struggled and pulled the calf out of its belly. To their total amazement, they saw that there was no flesh or skin on the forelegs and head ... all eaten away in just a few hours by the strong acidic digestive fluids in its gut. But they got more than twenty dollars for the skin!
That was 1949 ... and there was as yet no worldwide ban on snakeskin paraphernalia like shoes, belts, wallets, women's handbags etc. Some poorer hunters would make a complete living off killing the (then) abundant Macajuels for their prized skin ... So much for the protection of Trinidad's precious and diverse Flora and Fauna and their natural Rainforest reserve habitat.
Among the many families whose young members, our friends, travelled through “The Green” of Forest Reserve or Guayaguayare, in the 1940’s and 50’s, I especially remember the following unordered surnames, amongst them ...
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Rochford, Rooks, Arrindell, May, Brees, Darwent, Wooldridge, Gransaull, Steel, Withstandley, Slack, Ogilvie, Pollonais, Rostant, Mendes, Blue, Otway, D’Abadie, Wood, Olver, Packer, De Verteuil, Watt, Walden, Morrison, Gammon, Gatt, Milne, Gray, Gregory, Govia, Rodrigues, Holley, Da Silva, Hadden, Llanos, Crooks, Wilson, Welch, Ross, Meaden, Piccard, Whitney, Burdge, Schultz, Charles, Chetwin-Chatwynd, Knaggs, Boos, Highgate, Reid, Wayne, Alkins, Longuet, Carrington, Webb.
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John Stedman Archer