The Beginning

The history of my family goes back to India.  No one knows for sure from where in India we originated.  My maternal grandfather (whom we called Nana) indicated that his family originated in Kasmir.  However there has also been speculation that the Hindi spoken by that branch of the family indicates that we came from somewhere in the Utter Pradesh region in India. 

The Caribbean islands were populated by the Carib and Arawak tribes when the Europeans arrived. The tribes were shortly decimated by slavery, disease and war brought on by the newcomers. The Europeans, who settled there, quickly took over and established plantations for growing cane, tobacco, cocoa etc. The labor pool utilized were slaves from Africa (after all the aboriginal peoples were annihilated). This enabled the planters to thrive until slavery was abolished in the British Empire in the middle of the 19^th century. The freed Africans, tired of working in the plantations, moved to the city and left the planters without a labor force. Trinidad at that time was a British colony. Concurrently, India was also a British colony. Therefore the powers that be decided to glean their laborers from the significant pool of people living in India. The Indians were offered Indentured Servitude contacts….barely discernable from slavery. They would be provided passage to Trinidad via ship and when they reached Trinidad they would be housed in barracks on the plantations and work the cane fields. The barracks were a series of railroad rooms occupied by entire families. It’s difficult to describe how claustrophobic the barrack environment was. To give you some idea of their size, when my grandfather purchased an estate in the 40’s he turned the barracks on the property to a pen for animals, primarily pigs. The contract was for a term of five years and the laborers earned approximately 25 cents per day depending on how much cane they could cut in a day. At the end of their contract they were given the option of passage back to India or they were allowed to trade their passage for a small amount of land. My ancestors chose to stay (however, there is no evidence that they ever received any land).

The process of immigration from India to Trinidad seems fraught with confusion; either by choice (people fleeing from family or the law) or chaos (not knowing the language and getting on the wrong ship), families were split up and traveled on different ships not knowing which was bound for Jamaica, Guyana or Trinidad. Therefore, our family in Trinidad seems to be matriarchal on my maternal side as only the women landed in Trinidad, sans husbands. I have a deeper understanding of my mother’s side of the family (the Ramserrans) based on conversations with my mother’s father (Nana).

Nana’s mother (our great grandmother) kept cows and she would have to wake before dawn to milk the cows and walk miles (in the dark) to deliver the milk (to the mayor of the village) so that he could have milk with his morning tea.  She did this every morning (no days off).  The mayor demanded a monthly statement (even though he could count the days of the month) before he paid her and since she couldn’t read or write Nana started to write out the statements.  Nana signed the statements ‘Daniel Ramserran’.  When he received the statement the mayor asked who Daniel Ramserran was…Nana’s mother said she had a son named Ramserran but she didn’t know who Daniel was.  The mayor said that her son must be Christian with a name like Daniel.  That’s how she found out that Nana had converted to Presbyterianism, and she was none too happy!  Apparently only blacks were Christian back then.  So she went home and yelled at Nana and asked if he was becoming a ‘creole’. In Trinidad it was in your best interests to convert to a Christian faith and adopt a Christian name if you wanted some measure of success.  Missionaries came waving bibles and saw to it that as many heathens as possible were converted.  Their aid came with a high price tag.  In exchange for medicine and education many Indians had to give up their religion and with it their heritage and culture.  It was a struggle for the first generations from India to give up their identity and yet they knew that unless they embraced a new religion and culture their success on the island was limited so Ramserran became Daniel. When Nana was in his 90’s I went back to Trinidad to visit him. I asked, “Nana since you were raised with both Hinduism and Presbyterianism, what religion do you really consider yourself?”  His answer to me was “Don’t all rivers run to the sea?”

Nana had formal education up to a point.  When he was growing up he was schooled in the British education system in Trinidad.  This system commanded that male children wear pants to school, regardless of their cultural or economic background.  Therefore Nana’s family was forced to purchase a pair of pants for school.  This was no small feat as funds for this was non-existent.  He wore the same pair of “Charlie Pants” as he called them to school every day and periodically would wash them and place them by the fireside to dry.  Unfortunately, one day he placed them too close to the fire and they burned.  That, sadly, put an end to his formal education as he could no longer adhere to the dress code, however, at that point a neighbor offered to teach him so he gained his literacy.  His early career ran the gamut from chip-chip gang member (children who do odd jobs in the fields) to Bull Cart driver, to sugar cane field laborer.  He was married very young, twice.  In those days the children’s marriages were arranged at a very young age, when the families came to an agreement.  The families would hold the ceremony but the children were not expected to live together until they were adults.  In Nana’s case his family quarreled with the family of his first bride so they married him a second time to someone else.  He did not meet his wife again until he was an adult, about 20 or so and saw her at a social event.  It was then that they decided to set up a home together.  They worked the cane fields together and in all had eleven children, nine of which survived to adulthood.  One died as a baby and another died as a toddler, the deaths were not diagnosed, but by the symptoms described it may have been a fever or influenza.  There were so many reasons why people died in that era, most of which have been eradicated now.  My great grandfather died of what Nana described as ‘bellywork’  which I took to mean dysentery. 

The indentured servants traveled in the belly of the ship in steerage, in cramped, difficult conditions. My maternal grandmother (whom we called Nani) was born, on the ship, on the six month voyage from India to Trinidad. I don’t know much about her childhood but, as adults, after they established their household, she and my grandfather worked as laborers in the sugar cane fields in Trinidad. Nana told me once that they were required to cut “a task” of cane which would take all day, and be paid .25c, only if they finished. Most days he could finish his task then go help Nani so they would earn .50c daily. They saved these pennies and started a small dry goods store in their town and from the proceeds of this store were able to save enough to buy their own (365 acre) sugar cane estate, named Mayvale. The shop did so well (possibly due to Black Market business during WWII) that bureaucrats came to investigate one year, but upon seeing the run down shack of a store, resolved that it was probably a mistake and left my grandparents alone. Subsequently my grandmother was left to run the shop during the day while my grandfather worked on the estate. In the last conversation I had with Nana before he died I asked him many questions about his life. I guess at the time I foresaw that, as infrequent as my visits to Trinidad were, it was probably the last time that I would be seeing him alive. He described to me how he and my Nani ran the shop without her being able to read or write. Most of their sales were done on account. Customers would come in and charge their groceries to their account until they were paid. Moreover, at any given day and time there were customers coming into the shop purchasing items for cash, on account, or paying off all or part of their balance. Nana said that Nani would mind the shop all day and when he came home at night, they would sit down, and he would record the day’s events. Since Nani was not permitted to attend school and was illiterate she would memorize all the daily transactions and recount them so Nana could record them. They must have been a formidable couple.