Walking Old Bridgetown with Dr. Karl Watson
Wednesday, August 9, 2018
I won the prize! A Kind of Right to be Idle: Old Doll, Matriarch of Newton Plantation, is a small potent book written by Karl Watson, our historian/tour guide, in 2000 when he was still a professor of History at the University of the West Indies, Cave Hill in St. Michael, Barbados. He told us at the beginning of our walking tour that the person who answered (or best attempted to answer) the most questions would win a prize. He made the announcement at the end of the afternoon, as we celebrated the day with the traditional post-walking tour Banks (Barbados' own beer) at The City Bar near the Parliament Building.
Karl Watson is a white Barbadian, something of a scholar prodigy in his youth, published his doctoral these in 1979, and has (over the course of his 70+ years) contributed so significantly to the historiography, archaeology and public history of Barbados that people on the street call out his name in greeting when he passes. With each greeting, I saw that there was a great deal of respect for Watson, as someone who has given to the community. They knew him, and he was received as one who knew them.
Dr. Watson, for now and in spite of his own personal trials and tribulations, remains in our transatlantic world the beneficiary of his skin color. And that benefit is conferred upon him by whites and blacks and mixed race* people alike. He knows this, as I believe was illustrated by his discussion of the notion of Irish slaves, white slaves in the new world, during a lecture at the Barbados Archives last Saturday, August 4.
In an interesting conclusion to his talk about Barbados and the Carolinas: A Colony within a Colony, he showed a photograph of a very elderly white woman who had plainly had a hard working life. He wanted to clarify that there had not been any Irish or white slaves in the new world, and this woman's photograph became the backdrop to this portion of his presentation. The old woman, Dr Watson said, was an aunt of the father of Afro Barbardian pop singer, Rihanna. Rihanna's father is mixed, his father was white Barbadian. Her mother is Afro Guyanese; her parents divorced when she was 15.
In terms of their legal laboring life in the transatlantic world, they were indentured not enslaved; there was a time limit to their servitude, they could buy property, the law often shielded them from punishments suffered by blacks for the same crime. Most importantly, however, their children were born free. The legality of the language is important, just is as the specificity of the historiographical language, because it often made the difference between progress and death, bondage and opportunity. The living and working conditions of indentured whites (poor whites and even the "less-than-10-acre" farmers) may have been similar, often as cruel and deadly, and certainly for women, as predatory; it was a hard and horrible world for anyone poor, made worse by class and race hierarchies. Nonetheless, the lives of poor whites and their history with indentured servitude must also be brought to the fore because it is a part of the make-up of the transatlantic laboring world.
The tour began with architecture which is only interesting when peopled and so we got a snapshot of who envisioned, designed, built, occupied, abandoned and tore down, or reclaimed and re-imagined some of Bridgetown's most historic buildings. We walked main and minor streets and with each turn, we got a little deeper into the history, but also into the present.
Peter Harrison, architect of four formerly prominent buildings in Bridgetown's civic life, was a proponent of the Palladian style. According to an article in Encylopedia Brittanica online, "Palladianism bespeaks rationality in its clarity, order, and symmetry, while it also pays homage to antiquity in its use of classical forms and decorative motifs." Columns, pediments, etc. Watson was pleased to have been part of the recovery of architectural history--that Harrison had designed four buildings in Barbados as opposed to the two as commonly believed. From fine examples of style to stories of the people that gave life the structures we traveled from commercial centers to meager dwellings, from houses of worship to houses of law, from graveyards to huckster stalls.
Huckstering featured strongly in the book, The Lonely Londoners, a recent film called the Queen of Katwe, and daily life in Segou and Bamako in Mali, in Bridgetown, and in Richmond where people, including immigrants, struggling to find adequate work frequent flea markets to resell whatever they can--phone cards, umbrellas, baseball caps, children's clothing, toys, blenders, candy bars...
We visited a vendor's stall on Suttle Street where, with permission of the vendor, Dr. Watson conducted a short course on products traditionally grown or made, and sold in Barbados: bay rum (kind of an all purpose skin conditioner, like aftershave), cassari (a food preservative and key flavor ingredient in a stewed meat dish called Pepper Pot), a bottle with a yellow liquid the name and purpose of which I missed, and small bags of what looked like tiny kindling called bois bande (bwah banday), a homeopathic treatment for erectile dysfunction also known as Bajan Viagra. There were a few awkward questions about just exactly how to administer it and then EVERYONE bought a bag! 🤣 The vendor looked at me and said, "You know that's for the fellas, right?" Dr. Watson quickly moved on to the cinnamon sticks grown somewhere in the Caribbean, not Barbados.
I wanted to hear everything he had to say. I wanted to hear every supplement or reminder that Moitt interjected. I wanted Tia's questions and recommendations. And I loved hearing every answer or attempted answer each of us gave when he asked a question. "Now think," he said, something that Moitt also says often. I want and usually do take everyone at face value when I first meet them. If, after longer association, that face value is not shredded by nonsense or cruelty. The great learning joy of this program has been that none of our lecturers has been interested in talking to a wall of mouths that regurgitate what they've just presented. We are beginning to understand that our feelings about the history are valid responses to the history, that we should unpack them, connect them to the arguments of others and begin to see ourselves as participant scholars with unique views on what we are confronted by. I'm learning that, anyway.
--------
When I finally began to travel, inside and out of the United States, I realized that in each place I wanted to understand it from within. I began to assess the houses and neighborhoods to determine where I would fit in, and how I might make my living there, at which stores would I buy my groceries, clothes, office supplies? Who would come to be my friends? Did I want to get involved in the community or stay detached and remain an observer so that I could move on easily.
I wanted to imagine being 8 years old, running the streets of Bridgetown, like my grandmother ran the streets (all two of them) of Oak Addition in Goose Creek, Texas in 1927. I remember the 7 year old me running around Canal Street in New York City in 1968 or a 5 year old me in East Los Angeles barefoot on the sidewalk, the red stain of Mercurochrome on my stubbed toe... seeing the world as a series of encounters, the only fears were of the unknown, and the known was sure, secure, reliable. What if these Bridgetown streets had been my childhood streets? What secrets would I know? Would I have yearned to get away or fiercely defend what had always been?
When I was a teenager I learned to ride the bus around town. Los Angeles was 400 square miles then, and we lived in the central western part, my grandmother lived several miles south not far from South Central, my grandparents lived the west in a beach town, visiting any one of them was a 3-45 minute drive. So when I was old enough to catch the bus, I did. I learned that city so well and felt free. I learned how to be invisible on those buses, something you can only do when you're being very observant.
(1) https://s7hauhe.wordpress.com/2011/06/08/english-neo-palladian-and-georgian/, accessed Aug. 11, 2018
(2) Moitt
I won the prize! A Kind of Right to be Idle: Old Doll, Matriarch of Newton Plantation, is a small potent book written by Karl Watson, our historian/tour guide, in 2000 when he was still a professor of History at the University of the West Indies, Cave Hill in St. Michael, Barbados. He told us at the beginning of our walking tour that the person who answered (or best attempted to answer) the most questions would win a prize. He made the announcement at the end of the afternoon, as we celebrated the day with the traditional post-walking tour Banks (Barbados' own beer) at The City Bar near the Parliament Building.
Karl Watson is a white Barbadian, something of a scholar prodigy in his youth, published his doctoral these in 1979, and has (over the course of his 70+ years) contributed so significantly to the historiography, archaeology and public history of Barbados that people on the street call out his name in greeting when he passes. With each greeting, I saw that there was a great deal of respect for Watson, as someone who has given to the community. They knew him, and he was received as one who knew them.
Dr. Watson, for now and in spite of his own personal trials and tribulations, remains in our transatlantic world the beneficiary of his skin color. And that benefit is conferred upon him by whites and blacks and mixed race* people alike. He knows this, as I believe was illustrated by his discussion of the notion of Irish slaves, white slaves in the new world, during a lecture at the Barbados Archives last Saturday, August 4.
In an interesting conclusion to his talk about Barbados and the Carolinas: A Colony within a Colony, he showed a photograph of a very elderly white woman who had plainly had a hard working life. He wanted to clarify that there had not been any Irish or white slaves in the new world, and this woman's photograph became the backdrop to this portion of his presentation. The old woman, Dr Watson said, was an aunt of the father of Afro Barbardian pop singer, Rihanna. Rihanna's father is mixed, his father was white Barbadian. Her mother is Afro Guyanese; her parents divorced when she was 15.
In terms of their legal laboring life in the transatlantic world, they were indentured not enslaved; there was a time limit to their servitude, they could buy property, the law often shielded them from punishments suffered by blacks for the same crime. Most importantly, however, their children were born free. The legality of the language is important, just is as the specificity of the historiographical language, because it often made the difference between progress and death, bondage and opportunity. The living and working conditions of indentured whites (poor whites and even the "less-than-10-acre" farmers) may have been similar, often as cruel and deadly, and certainly for women, as predatory; it was a hard and horrible world for anyone poor, made worse by class and race hierarchies. Nonetheless, the lives of poor whites and their history with indentured servitude must also be brought to the fore because it is a part of the make-up of the transatlantic laboring world.
The tour began with architecture which is only interesting when peopled and so we got a snapshot of who envisioned, designed, built, occupied, abandoned and tore down, or reclaimed and re-imagined some of Bridgetown's most historic buildings. We walked main and minor streets and with each turn, we got a little deeper into the history, but also into the present.
 |
| "FRONT VIEW OF THE TOWN GAOL AND COURTHOUSE BRIDGETOWN BARBADOS" |
Peter Harrison, architect of four formerly prominent buildings in Bridgetown's civic life, was a proponent of the Palladian style. According to an article in Encylopedia Brittanica online, "Palladianism bespeaks rationality in its clarity, order, and symmetry, while it also pays homage to antiquity in its use of classical forms and decorative motifs." Columns, pediments, etc. Watson was pleased to have been part of the recovery of architectural history--that Harrison had designed four buildings in Barbados as opposed to the two as commonly believed. From fine examples of style to stories of the people that gave life the structures we traveled from commercial centers to meager dwellings, from houses of worship to houses of law, from graveyards to huckster stalls.
Huckstering featured strongly in the book, The Lonely Londoners, a recent film called the Queen of Katwe, and daily life in Segou and Bamako in Mali, in Bridgetown, and in Richmond where people, including immigrants, struggling to find adequate work frequent flea markets to resell whatever they can--phone cards, umbrellas, baseball caps, children's clothing, toys, blenders, candy bars...
We visited a vendor's stall on Suttle Street where, with permission of the vendor, Dr. Watson conducted a short course on products traditionally grown or made, and sold in Barbados: bay rum (kind of an all purpose skin conditioner, like aftershave), cassari (a food preservative and key flavor ingredient in a stewed meat dish called Pepper Pot), a bottle with a yellow liquid the name and purpose of which I missed, and small bags of what looked like tiny kindling called bois bande (bwah banday), a homeopathic treatment for erectile dysfunction also known as Bajan Viagra. There were a few awkward questions about just exactly how to administer it and then EVERYONE bought a bag! 🤣 The vendor looked at me and said, "You know that's for the fellas, right?" Dr. Watson quickly moved on to the cinnamon sticks grown somewhere in the Caribbean, not Barbados.
I wanted to hear everything he had to say. I wanted to hear every supplement or reminder that Moitt interjected. I wanted Tia's questions and recommendations. And I loved hearing every answer or attempted answer each of us gave when he asked a question. "Now think," he said, something that Moitt also says often. I want and usually do take everyone at face value when I first meet them. If, after longer association, that face value is not shredded by nonsense or cruelty. The great learning joy of this program has been that none of our lecturers has been interested in talking to a wall of mouths that regurgitate what they've just presented. We are beginning to understand that our feelings about the history are valid responses to the history, that we should unpack them, connect them to the arguments of others and begin to see ourselves as participant scholars with unique views on what we are confronted by. I'm learning that, anyway.
--------
When I finally began to travel, inside and out of the United States, I realized that in each place I wanted to understand it from within. I began to assess the houses and neighborhoods to determine where I would fit in, and how I might make my living there, at which stores would I buy my groceries, clothes, office supplies? Who would come to be my friends? Did I want to get involved in the community or stay detached and remain an observer so that I could move on easily.
I wanted to imagine being 8 years old, running the streets of Bridgetown, like my grandmother ran the streets (all two of them) of Oak Addition in Goose Creek, Texas in 1927. I remember the 7 year old me running around Canal Street in New York City in 1968 or a 5 year old me in East Los Angeles barefoot on the sidewalk, the red stain of Mercurochrome on my stubbed toe... seeing the world as a series of encounters, the only fears were of the unknown, and the known was sure, secure, reliable. What if these Bridgetown streets had been my childhood streets? What secrets would I know? Would I have yearned to get away or fiercely defend what had always been?
When I was a teenager I learned to ride the bus around town. Los Angeles was 400 square miles then, and we lived in the central western part, my grandmother lived several miles south not far from South Central, my grandparents lived the west in a beach town, visiting any one of them was a 3-45 minute drive. So when I was old enough to catch the bus, I did. I learned that city so well and felt free. I learned how to be invisible on those buses, something you can only do when you're being very observant.
(1) https://s7hauhe.wordpress.com/2011/06/08/english-neo-palladian-and-georgian/, accessed Aug. 11, 2018
(2) Moitt
