Village Focus: Bath Settlement – Lots of eschallot and churches

Jun 07, 2009 News

On the briefest of visits to Bath Settlement, West Coast Berbice, two things you are sure to see are lots of eschallot and lots of churches.
The cultivation of eschallot is a major economic activity and the places of worship include one Mandir, one Masjid, and several Christian churches, some in identifiable buildings and many under houses.
“Eschallot made me what I am,” said Mr Mulchand Ramdeo, a successful businessman with a well-painted two-storeyed home.

Mr Jagdeo Sanpat, 87, who lived at the inland Bath Estate in the 1930s. “Here now was pure bush then.”

“The eschallot bring all this,” he said pointing to his handsome home in School Street.
Bath Settlement is a sprawling thriving community situated about 59 miles east of Georgetown, and is the largest and most densely populated village on West Coast Berbice.
This village had its origin not along the Highway where it currently is, but in the lands aback of the village, four miles inland, around the now defunct Bath Estate, which had been in operation since the mid 1800s.
Jagdeo Sanpat, 87, who lived there in the 1930s said: “Some of us used to live in cottages and some in logies. That time, all along this roadway, all that you see now as Bath Settlement, was pure bush.”
Sanpat worked at the Bath Estate as a butler to the European Estate Manager, Deputy Estate Manager and Overseers.
“That was in the Davson days, the days when Bath Estate was owned by Davson’s Company.”
“It was a very big village back there and the name of the school in there was the St. Nicholas Anglican Primary School,” he said.
The village, some say, began to grow at its current location in the late 1950s, when Management began giving the workers lands out on the road.
Many of the people in this village continued to work with the sugar industry after the exodus to the roadside, and after the Bath Estate closed down in the early 1970s.
The Friday afternoon market at Bath Settlement, near to the pay office is a weekly event. It is the place where sugar workers who draw their wages can get bargains on clothing, jewellery, fresh fruits and vegetables and other food stuffs.

Mrs Janie Dhanraj, a veteran educator and lifelong resident.:”It is a very quiet and peaceful village.”

In crop, that is when the cane is being harvested and milled, the market is a very busy and lively place, but out of crop when there is little or no activity in the industry, it is not that bright.
One out of crop, the long out of crop, runs from February to August; the short out of crop extends from December to January.
During the out of crop periods, the Estate offers Time Work employment to its workers.
This work comprises routine maintenance on the estate, such as weeding of fields, cleaning of drains and rat catching.
This work is most times, however, limited to two or three days a week and that is when most workers resort to other activities such as fishing, carpentry, rice cultivation and eschallot and other cash crop cultivation. Some undertake retail businesses to upkeep their families.
Many have found these other activities so rewarding that they have become full time farmers and businessmen, many of them successfully so, judging from the many beautiful homes and other trappings of wealth, which are obvious in various parts of the village.
There are also many Public Servants such as teachers and nurses, who serve the community and other parts of West Berbice .
Out of crop periods are very challenging times for some families.

Mr Mulchand Ramdeo: “Eschallot put me on my feet”.

Two large business places are Double R Hardware Store and Katcha, both of which supply building and construction materials to customers throughout West Coast and West Bank Berbice.
There is no nightclub in the village, but friends would congregate on the roadsides and lime up to about 20:00 hours and/or take a “few toops”, glasses of rum, before going to bed.
Others less socially inclined stay at home and watch TV or movies and as in such rural agriculture communities, retire early to bed to rise early the next day.
Mrs Janie Dhanraj, another lifelong resident, has confirmed that the majority of the people at Bath Settlement are peaceful and churchgoing.
“Some people drink and get drunk and so on, but most of the time they go their way peacefully without interfering with others. People go to the masjid and the mandirs and the churches; established churches and bottom house churches too.
“The village is very quiet and peaceful, hardly any crime.”