CHARLES KONG SOO
Built in 1885, the Mud House Museum in Avocat gives visitors an insight into the past of how early settlers lived in the area and a part of East Indian history.
The Mud House Museum can also be called a teaching museum as it hosts students from primary to tertiary level, who come to study and learn about the artifacts and mud-walled facility. Wildlife photographer Tarran Maharaj has his exhibitions of flora and fauna on display at the museum.
The Mud House was refurbished and opened on Indian Arrival Day by Indian High Commissioner Biswadip Dey on May 21, 2018.
While November 6 is a public holiday in celebration of the festival of Divali, members of the Mud House Trust held a commemoration at the museum, at Siparia Old Road in Avocat, on October 27.
Curator Rajwantee Bullock, recounting her life growing up in the village, said the impact of the oil industry—with the opening of Apex in Fyzabad—took away the youth from agriculture on one hand, but it also provided a way out of poverty through better pay and education.
"My mother, Jagbaye and father, Ramkissoon Chatoor had eight children, seven girls and one boy.
"When we had to buy books, we had to sell a cow because so many of us needed books and it was a common practice among families here. Even though it's an agricultural area with rice in the Oropouche lagoon, coconut, cocoa, coffee, it did not have sugar cane, but there was a lot of cattle rearing which provided milk and ghee which were sold and yoghurt was for domestic purposes.
"When the oil company Apex in Fyzabad opened its oilfields all the young children, including my father at age 16, all migrated to the oilfields."
She said while her grandfather ran the cocoa estate, her father could earn 50 cents a week as a messenger boy in the oilfields as opposed to the long process of growing, harvesting, and drying produce in the cocoa estate.
Bullock said her father worked his way up to become a skilled craftsman and one of the finest carpenters and joiners.
The former Siparia Regional Corporation councillor said pieces of her father's furniture were still around today in people's homes testament to the high standard and training they received in the oilfield industry.
Bullock, a former teacher, said while the threat of the oil did take away the youth from the land, it created a kind of enlightenment.
She said the one boy in the family went to Texaco to work in the oil field, but her father ensured that the seven girls had education, tertiary, university to Masters. He ensured this by selling cow's milk which provided for their education.
Bullock said at that time it was traditional in many East Indian homes to "find a young boy and marry off your daughter", but not her father.
Bullock, the T&T representative of the Commonwealth observer group at Guyana's 2015 general election, said people like her father, as children of indentured labourers, had wisdom beyond their years and were visionaries.
Bullock said her father's generation was coming out of a system where they were psychologically threatening their own development, having gone to the oilfields seeing expatriates working for $25,000 to $30,000 a month while they were working for $250 a week.
The disparity in wages made them feel they had to surmount this barrier; he knew that education was the way and his sisters and brothers had the same mindset.
Bullock said the development in T&T was parallel with what was happening in the oilfields, secondary schools were opening up, Dr Eric Williams was coming into Government and it was the Canadian missionaries and Presbyterian schools that contributed to the education and upliftment of the children who went on to become doctors , lawyers, teachers, and public servants.
She said that was what motivated her uncle Dr Ramcoomair Chatoor to leave Trinidad when he was 17 years old to go to the US and study medicine.
Upon his return to T&T, with the support of his wife, Prof Irene Chatoor and Bullock they kept the vision of the museum alive, which was completed by Taitree, Ramcoomair's grandmother, in 1885.