The Vincy Way – Dr Spring’s Growing Up In Vincy and Vincy Life Style – A Collection of Poems

Two books written by Dr Nicholette Spring are among books written by Vincentians over the past two years. Growing Up in SVG is written in prose and the other, A Collection of Poems-Vincy Life Style. Growing Up in Vincy is dedicated to the late Chalis Porter whom she considered her friend and confidante. Her story about growing up focuses on villages in the North where she was born and grew up. The villages are Dickson, O’Brien Valley, and Mangrove Village. Although there might have been a few things unique about those villages and her experiences, her story is indeed a Vincentian story, indeed Vincy to the bone.

It is written in what, after Barbadian Kamu Brathwaite, I call nation language. Her life and that of her playmates was one without access to cell phones, tablets, and television. Even electricity was limited. The transistor radio held the sway and there was a single radio station. Her mission was to leave a trail of the life they lived as children growing up. With today’s rapid technological development children will find that life difficult to imagine but as she says, “the book will give an idea of our activities which we who have experienced them can look back and smile of the sweet memories.”

There are forty subjects, with sub-headings, ranging from the houses in which they lived, to the animals, sea fishing, Old Year Night’s traditions, Christian activities, games children played, Jumbie talk and touching her own area the Rabacca Dry River and the Rum Factory. She writes about wooden buses, the names they carried and the names of the owners. Under the subject Houses, remembering that the book is about the lives lived by the people, she includes Chores, scrubbing the floor, caring for animals, collecting firewood, and milking goats and cows. Some, if not most of these will be foreign to today’s children. If you were to ask today’s child, “From where you get milk?”, the likely answer will be the Supermarket. Names of villages are mentioned, with village characters, including village butchers and hunters.

I like her approach, where forty subjects are spread over one hundred and nineteen pages. The book is easy to read, humorous in parts, and could well be used for Social Science classes where teachers expand on the different areas, or ask the students to get the information from their parents who would have been a part of that generation on which the book is focused. Children of today will be fascinated with the games that were being played, particularly on moonlight nights, about Jumbies, foods that were eaten, and traditions surrounding babies and the dead. Nicknames, of course, are present for as she stated, almost everyone had a nickname- Any wrong pronouncement became a nickname; if you were tall, you would likely be called “Tall Boy”. There were many other ways by which persons earned themselves a nickname.

A Collection of Poems-Vincy LifeStyle

This is a collection of twenty-six poems, a “book of random poems on the lifestyle of Vincentians, “based on random thoughts that rose to my mind at different times of the day and night. I simply put pen to paper when this happened, and here we are with a book of poems.”

Some poems celebrate villages in the area where she was born and grew up. For Kingstown, she touches on the Fish Market, Court House and Cart Men moving to and fro. She salutes life over the River( OTR), Owia Salt Pond, the food- including madungo bakes, and the fun to be enjoyed from a visit. Minivans could not be left out- the music; being jammed up on the seats, the language “You better hold on going round a corner/ Or Lawd have mercy, You turn Over! Then there is the Commess Man “Ello, every village has one, Yes! Yes! They Vex, Anything you do they Vex.”

Vincentians like to argue over everything, “Looks”, “Who is Right or Wrong”. “Yet we like to argue just for spite … Well don’t talk about politics,… Man, this is where we get some licks.”

In a blurb at the back of the book Dr Springer is described as passionate, proactive, outspoken and supports her community. She is strong on her political views. She captures the atmosphere when the election bell is rung- the promises and give-aways; “rough cuss and fight” “When results is plenty noise/ while some sitting with their tails coil …”

Her political position she makes clear. She salutes the NDP: “For seventeen years they governed the land / In the interest of all Vincentians … Agriculture was high priority, which enabled a striving economy.

She even becomes an Advocate with her poem “Time to Go”.

“The ULP is in office far too long, And so is this sad song
Our aim is to free the country,
Of the corrupt and expired ULP . . .
SVG belongs to all arwe
And not to a single party
A government that is unaccountable
Must be given out and shown where to go”.

It is not often that we find authors clearly stating their political positions. For her, It is time for the ULP to go. “If this election is to be won, every man Jack, Jill, or Child Must do the right thing and reconcile.”

These two books are easy to read, are humorous and capture the lifestyles of Vincentian people at a particular time in the country’s development. Parents should have fun reading them with their children and with the book’s help, explaining for them the lives they used to live. I salute Nicholette Spring’s efforts.

• Dr Adrian Fraser is a social commentator and historian