Smells, sounds, yards of Laventille

Culture Matters

Old-time Christmas

Dara E Healy

Christmas on the hill

Christmas in my heart

Christmas on the hill

Is where I feel at home

– Christmas on the Hill – Johnny Gonsalves and Friends, featuring Nigel Ferreira

HAVE YOU ever heard about a pig bucket, razors on kite tails or a store called Little Goose? All of these are part of the Christmas memories of Avery Ammon growing up in Laventille. Avery is a senior member of the Desperadoes Steel Orchestra and an egungun (ancestral) spiritual elder. For Avery, Christmas was filled with games, food and house-to-house visits by musicians, family and friends. He laments that crime has affected this sense of freedom in his community, making the experience of Christmas today very different from his childhood.

Laventille. To describe it as a complex space is to barely touch the surface of its legacy. Those who live there pronounce it "la-van-tee." It is possible the name was inspired by the Spanish for window, la ventana, given the spectacular views that can be seen from the Desperadoes panyard and higher up the hill. Perhaps the word came from the French for wind, le vent, in reference to the strong winds that often flow through the hills before reaching any other part of the city.

Whatever the meaning, Laventille is a place of innovation and resistance, of entrepreneurship and history. Crucially, it a space of hard work, deeply held religious beliefs, and family.

“I grew up on Laventille Road. There was a bakery in our yard. We had four different families, plus Miss Doris the landlady. Weeks before Christmas, people would come to bake their cake. They could rent space in the oven.” The community always had a supply of fresh hops bread, butter bread, plait bread and other traditional breads. In the evening, once the oven was hot, the nuts man would come and bake nuts.

Amidst this wonderland of smells, Avery’s mother would inevitably deliver a reality check. “At Christmas we had to polish the floor; she wanted the floor shining. I would go with her to a store called Little Goose on Prince Street. We would shop for things to decorate the house.”

Now, the pig bucket. Avery remembers there was a man who reared pigs; people would keep a bucket for banana skins and other items to feed them. “The arrangement on the Hill was everyone who contributed to feeding the pigs would get something. My mother would look forward to her piece of pork. We used to bake at home in the yard on a pitch-oil stove and a galvanise or tin oven.”

The Christmas tree was from a black sage branch. His mother would put it in a Klim tin and then stick cotton all over. The children decorated it, and his mother would put presents under the tree. By Christmas Eve night, the small apartment was perfect.

Breakfast on Christmas Day was chocolate tea, salt bread and pork. For lunch, baked chicken, potato salad and other dishes were complimented by Cydrax or Peardrax, from which everybody would get just a taste. However, there was plenty ginger beer and sorrel. Avery’s mother also made ponche de crème, rum punch and local sweets. Serenaders went from house to house with bottle and spoon, iron and, of course, pan. Children would get gifts like a little black and white camera or a caps gun.

Boxing Day was for visiting family and friends. “We used to go over by aunty on Boxing Day and play "stick em up" or cowboys and Indians under her steps.” Kite-flying was another important Christmas ritual. Quarry Street was the place where kites made from copybook pages or brown paper were part of an intense and serious rivalry. To gain an advantage, children would pick up razors in the Dry River. “You would break the razor in the crease of your door and put little pieces on your kite tail. So, when you flying against somebody, you could drag and cut their kite.”

Avery remembers that children pitched marbles by their neighbours. You could walk through someone’s yard, “say good morning or good evening and pass.” It was normal and safe for parents to send children to take food for another family. Perhaps that should be our wish this year – to return the community spirit of the yard to Christmas. It is, after all, one of the main lessons of the season.

Blessings and peace to all.

Dara E Healy is a performance artist and founder of the Indigenous Creative Arts Network – ICAN