An­ge­lo Bisses­sars­ingh

To­ba­go is unique among the for­mer British West In­di­an colonies in that much of its West African her­itage sur­vived the oblit­er­at­ing ef­fects of slav­ery and ex­ist­ed in vi­brant tra­di­tion long in­to the present day. This is per­haps so since un­like its neigh­bour, Trinidad, To­ba­go has had lit­tle cul­tur­al in­flu­ence oth­er than the British plan­toc­ra­cy, which was on­ly in­ter­rupt­ed for a short time in the late 18th and ear­ly 19th cen­turies when the is­land was, for a time, seized and ad­min­is­tered by a French mil­i­tary pres­ence.Al­so dif­fer­ing from Trinidad is the eth­nic com­po­si­tion of the pop­u­la­tion which re­mained al­most unan­i­mous­ly Afro-West In­di­an, with no ge­net­ic mix­ing from Asians and on­ly very few off­spring of the li­aisons be­tween white men and their coloured mis­tress­es.

More­over, af­ter Eman­ci­pa­tion in 1834, con­sid­er­able eco­nom­ic sway was held by share­crop­pers or metay­ers on whom the few re­main­ing white planters re­lied for pro­duc­tion in the sug­ar in­dus­try. These metay­ers were in­de­pen­dent peo­ple who formed their own so­ci­ety. These con­di­tions com­bined to cre­ate an en­vi­ron­ment which saw the West African iden­ti­ty sur­viv­ing slav­ery with star­tling pu­ri­ty.In the slav­ery era, the area of the present day vil­lage of Gold­en Lane was a sug­ar plan­ta­tion owned by a kind­ly white man who was known to all and sundry as Grand­fa­ther Pe­ter (or Un­cle Pe­ter, ac­cord­ing to some ver­sions of the sto­ry). His at­ti­tude to­wards his slaves must have been be­nign at least since a good rep­u­ta­tion of Grand­fa­ther Pe­ter has sur­vived.

His two favourite slaves were a cou­ple named Tom and Sarah, but the lat­ter was some­thing spe­cial. Pow­ers of witch­craft were at­trib­uted to Sarah, who was thus an in­flu­en­tial per­son­age in the plan­ta­tion so­ci­ety.

Leg­end has it that Sarah at­tempt­ed to fly back to Africa (pos­si­bly af­ter the death of Tom) and climbed a large silk cot­ton tree on the plan­ta­tion to make her launch. It was to be a fa­tal de­ci­sion, how­ev­er, since her re­put­ed pow­er of flight and necro­man­cy had been lost since she vi­o­lat­ed a time­worn dic­tum of witch­craft and ate food with salt. Sarah per­haps was not aware of the loss of her pow­er and fell from the branch­es of the tree and died. She was buried next to Tom in the plan­ta­tion ceme­tery which still ex­ists.Sarah's last rest­ing place be­came a spot of some rev­er­ence and al­leged­ly of­fer­ings were left on it as part of obeah prac­tices. Near the for­mer es­tate (now a small vil­lage), stood the same silk cot­ton tree from which Sarah had fall­en, ac­cord­ing to the leg­end.For many years this im­pos­ing gi­ant was marked with a rude sign which read: "This silk cot­ton tree was con­sid­ered sa­cred by the African slaves who be­lieved the spir­its of their an­ces­tors lived in its branch­es. Obeah men from all parts of the is­land came here to per­form black mag­ic rit­u­als, the most fa­mous be­ing Bob­by Quashie of Cul­lo­den. This tree is the largest of its kind on the is­land and is well known for its many leg­ends, span­ning over 150 years."

In this ceme­tery there are per­haps the on­ly marked graves for slaves known in the Less­er An­tilles. Fif­teen graves were present, in­clud­ing a sep­a­rate and more im­pos­ing tomb ded­i­cat­ed to Grand­fa­ther Pe­ter.Sad­ly the place has fall­en in­to ne­glect, to the point where the mon­u­ments are now threat­ened even though for decades it has been high­light­ed in the gaudy and mis­lead­ing tourist brochures which pro­mote To­ba­go abroad.With the pas­sage of time peo­ple erect­ed homes in the ceme­tery and de­stroyed some of the tombs. Oth­ers were plas­tered with con­crete in a well-mean­ing but dam­ag­ing at­tempt to fresh­en them up, thus ob­scur­ing the fire­bricks which had been used in their con­struc­tion. These fire­bricks were im­port­ed in the 18th and 19th cen­turies as bal­last in the holds of sug­ar ships from Eng­land. More­over, the res­i­dents in the ceme­tery use the tombs as places to store their dis­jec­ta mem­bra and thus what is a cul­tur­al­ly and his­tor­i­cal­ly sig­nif­i­cant her­itage site is now se­vere­ly en­dan­gered.

My friend Seema Mootoo lived in To­ba­go for a short time and ven­tured in­to the ceme­tery at Gold­en Lane to find the Witch's Grave. Find it she did, but it was piled high with used tyres and dirty laun­dry, as her pho­to at­tests. The earn­ing po­ten­tial of the site is very well recog­nised, how­ev­er, by lo­cals–who de­mand a fee for view­ing the graves. It is in­deed re­gret­table that a her­itage site with so much his­to­ry is be­ing al­lowed to fall in­to obliv­ion with­out a con­cert­ed ef­fort at preser­va­tion.