Lacatan, Gros Michel, silk fig, plantain, yellow breadfruit and white breadfruit. These names fall from the lips of villagers of Los Attajos as easy as talk of the weather.
In this village overlooking the misty hills and valleys of the Central Range, it's a common sight to see villagers walking around in "tall tops" (garden rubber boots). If you can't find the others, it's because they are on their estates behind walls of vegetation which look impenetrable. Cocoa, fruit and food crop farming provide the main source of sustenance for the 200 or so people in this tiny village on the Brasso Tamana Road.
Most of the villagers are descendants of Venezuelans who migrated to T&T decades ago.
Dead centre
Los Attajos, villagers claim, is almost in the centre of the island. From Flannagin Town, you turn right and go uphill along the uninhabited Telemaque Road, until you come upon the village on a plateau. It's the location of Los Attajos that led to it being chosen as the site of the 101-foot Doplar weather radar tower, which can pick up weather signals across the Caribbean. Last Tuesday, the haunting call of a lone "pol pol" bird pierced the silence around the tower, built on a high, remote part of the area. Los Attajos means the shortcut, cocoa farmer, Lucian "Charlo" Awong, says.
"From here, Tamana is only eight miles away." However, the road which once linked these former cocoa communities has long been impassable.
Dismally low
There was a mixture of hope and disbelief in Los Attajos about the Government's new interest in agriculture, now that the price of natural gas, T&T's main foreign exchange-earner, is dismally low and expected to remain so for some time. Charlo was excited about the recent paving of McCarthy Road, an agricultural access road that has been impassable for vehicles for decades. His four-acre cocoa estate, which he inherited from his grandmother, Maltina Awong, is on this road. He was hopeful, although labour remains a major problem for him and other Los Attajos farmers. The Guisseppi family, unable to source labour for their large cocoa estate, is utilising a portion for a lumber business they have opened in the village. Charlo's house is located on his estate, next to his grandmother's old house, which has a cocoa house as its roof.
The wooden house, worn with ?age and uninhabited now, stood in a small clearing among flowers, its crumbling walls filled with poignant memories for Charlo, 53. "The men used to go out in the fields and work, and the women would stay at home and see about the cocoa drying in the cocoa house. "When the sun came out, they would push open the roof," he recalled. Charlo remembers his grandmother's family being almost self-sufficient. "We grew our own rice and made oil from coconut and starch for clothes. A member of the Agricultural Society and Tabaquite Cocoa Farmers Association, Charlo said a lot of former cocoa farmers who had abandoned their estates, because of the road, were now thinking about planting again. "Before we got the road, me and my brother, Gerald, used to tote the produce from the field, load it on a bison cart and take it out to the main road." Charlo said the Agricultural Development Bank (ADB) sent out letters recently to farmers, offering them loans at six per cent interest, with easy payment plans. "Before, the interest was like the banks, 13 and 14 per cent." Charlo said he needed some new cocoa plants.
Not so optimistic
Food crop farmer, Michael Chandree, was not so optimistic. Chandree cultivates yam, plantain, pumpkin and other crops on seven acres in John William Trace, an access road which was also paved recently. His father, Emmanuel Chandree, 74, plants eight acres of cocoa. "My father has 11 children, and I am the only one doing gardening," Michael said. "I depend fully on agriculture, but the Government incentives are not available to the small farmer. "I have no security of tenure for my land, and I can't get an ADB loan without a deed." Chandree said after World War 11, state land was rented at $3 an acre to his grandfather, Daniel Chandree. "For years, I have been trying to get security of tenure, to no avail. "The Government only making people feel things happening, but it's only politics. "The grass roots farmers not getting assistance from them."