In "Potaro Dreams" (2015), presented as the first installment of his
memoirs, Guyanese author Jan Carew describes what it felt like growing
up in the colony of British Guiana. The 1920s would seem to be a
particularly fertile period for Guianese authors. The village of Agricola
where Carew started life was also the birthplace of Roy Heath (b. 1926)
who wrote with great affection about his boy to manhood years in
"Shadows Round The Moon" (1990)
Anyone who lived in that swath of landscape from Eccles to Diamond
̶ back in the time of the old cane fields, the narrow public road running
cross country ̶ might readily recall days of near-idyllic boyhood;
making Demerara as important as the county of Berbice which is often
hailed as the "spiritual" birthplace of several established writers; and,
you could add, beginner politics.
Roy Heath's memoirs were written _________________________
during the firm, retiring years of
the author's life. Carew appears to POTARO DREAMS
to have put off writing his for the by
longest while. Finally ̶ at age 87,
and urged on by "friends, colleagues Jan Carew
and fans" ̶ he turned his attention
to its construction. Hansib Publications Limited
United Kingdom, 2014
132 pgs.
________________________
He'd planned to write two or three volumes; but (it seems, with writer
energies flagging, and the risk of memory evaporations) he expressed
concern he might not be able to finish "this opus". Five years later he
died.
In the opening chapters readers might recognize the latticework of
relationships that secured Carew's life in several homes, and nurtured his
boyhood "dreams".
You meet his parents and his sisters, Grandfather Fitzroy Carew (b.
1869); Aunt Enny, Aunt Harriet, Dr. Francis, the District Medical Officer;
Nurse Myah, Cousin Maria, the family chronicler "who read Charles
Dickens' novels to me"; and Edmond Rohlehr, a "visiting uncle whose
ghost", when he died, "cried out in the wind".
The names of family members, neighbours and first friends seem
embedded in the minds of many Guianese growing up in the colonial
1920s. You get the impression there were always so many well-
intentioned relatives, and so much unavoidable comings and goings, the
child had little choice then but to live with the many stern hands raised
for the task of shared parenting.
Carew mentions the names of his next-door neighbours, those articulate
members of (what might one day be referred to as) a great generation
of Guianese achievers: the Luckoos [sic], "a clan of East Indian lawyers";
Edgar Mittelholzer, "an eccentric writer and painter". What readers
might find more engaging is the account of his educational (high school)
beginnings in the county of Berbice that helped forge his character.
The school he attended, Berbice High School (BHS), functioned like an
academy for the privileged, for "the scions of a multi-racial middle-
class", he explains. It was patterned "after elitist English private
schools", and administered by trained local teachers (among them Jerry
Niles, Ranji Chandisingh Sr., James Rodway); and the occasional
graduate of Oxford and Cambridge on a teaching stint in the colonies.
The "scions" of the Courentyne peasantry in attendance felt uncomfort-
table and unwanted. (Their parent hardships would be covered in
fiction by the aforementioned "eccentric writer and painter" Edgar
Mittelholzer.) But already within the confines of the 1920s British
syllabus and exams, the forms of dress and authority, a process of
"independent" thinking had begun.
Carew singles out Yisu Das, "a Gujarat and a third-generation Guianese"
who taught classes in "The History of the British Empire", but encouraged
his students to seek out alternative versions of conquest and suffering.
He would read to students Spanish versions of the same historical event.
Consequently Carew felt inspired once to present an essay on
Bartholomew de las Casas as a mid-term class assignment.
And there was Teacher James Rodway who introduced to his class dozens
of prints of Renaissance paintings, as well as the works of the Dutch
masters (Rembrandt, Brueghel, Rubens). "It made me see the landscapes
around me through different eyes," Carew writes. "By recreating images
of their reality they had enabled me to construct images of my own
with greater assurance."
Though not 'top of his class' Carew attributes the grand sweep of his
literary-academic life to those probing high school days when his
teachers opened the mind's capacity to engage faraway ideas, and
taught him the responsibilities of intellectual freedom.
≈ ≈
In drafting his memoir Carew appears to switch narrator roles,
using one hand (the professor) to write, then the other (the famed
novelist). "Potaro Dreams" comes across as an assemblage of anecdotes
and vignettes, with historical commentary and asides interspersed to
add weight to the personal stories.
There might also be in the book a trace of (elite) school elevated
mapping, starting with the author's assumption that the (casual or the
young millennium) Guyanese reader, who usually struggles through
each day's challenge to "read", would summon the effort to stay with
every pulsing minute of his nostalgias, or with people they'd never heard
of.
It is entirely possible, though, that to be overly impressed with the
achievements of the village boy who had travelled was acceptable form
in 1920s Guiana.
Carew recalls, for instance, that in those days one man "reputed to be
the most highly educated Black man in British Guiana" had a résumé that
hinted at a remarkable accretion of credits based on his wanderings
around the world. That man was his Uncle John, who from Guianese
beginnings became "an artist… a classical scholar…graduated from
Heidelberg…ordained in Germany … sent to Nicaragua as a Moravian
missionary …[then] transferred to serve as pastor, principal and
Superintendent of Moravian churches and schools [back in Guiana]."
"Potaro Dreams" will be appreciated by Carew's colleagues and followers
in higher departments; but readers in Guyana and the Caribbean might
walk away more likely curious and "informed", though possibly thinking:
this is a good though not a compelling, vital account.
Others might find the book too slender to stand on its own, offering too
little (about the 1920s) that has not been addressed with greater
warmth of feeling and reference in Roy Heath's memoirs ("Shadows",
1990).
Much of the biographical material in "Potaro Dreams" ̶ and this is
pointed out in the book's Foreword ̶ has been subsumed in Carew's
fiction (notably the fabulous stuff of "The Wild Coast", "Black Midas").
If the intention now is to present a "prism" through which readers can
review the body of Carew's life work, it's debatable whether "Potaro
Dreams" sharpens the focus, or generates new reader interest in early
20th century Guiana.
This volume draws to a close in 1939. (At this point no sign yet of a
youthful desire to "change the world".) We learn that Carew and his
friends, once inductees in the BHS Cadet Corps, are preparing to join up
and serve in the British Armed Forces.
Assuming the second volume gets published, Guyanese readers ̶ and
they include the culture house keepers for whom the colonial past has
become a harbour bustling with fearful faith remainders ̶ could
anticipate more names, places and events; more snapshots of the
seemingly unsinkable memory episodes that occupy the pages of "Potaro
Dreams".
̶ Wyck Williams
FARJOURNEY CARIBBEAN 