HOW GREEN IS MY VALLEY

One of my earliest recollections is sitting on my father’s shoulders with my tiny hands clasped round his forehead and a little sailor hat on my head. It was a moonlight night and he was taking me round Dangerous Corner heading for home in Morne Coco Road. Our house was a very large wooden structure standing up on high legs. On the left side was an enormous grapefruit estate and opposite was a cocoa plantation that seemed to stretch for miles and miles. That was forbidden territory for my grandmother had warned me that it was inhabited by blood sucking soucouyants and any little boy who ventured there would be sucked to death and end up a bag of dry bones.

Not very far from our home was a river as clear as crystal with a pool where we splashed and splattered all day long. I remembered my big brother riding his bicycle and using for a light at night a white handkerchief filled with hundreds of candle flies. Another brother used to catch bats under a bridge with his school cap. And I could never forget the white fleecy mists crowning the beautiful evergreen hills after the benediction of the rain. Yes, precious memories how they linger! Dangerous Corner no longer exists. The grapefruit estate is now Alyce Glen. The river was Crystal Stream — now a paved dry river and the cocoa estate is now partly occupied by the Carnival band “Poison.” The Diego Martin Regional Corporation now stands on the site which was my home!

Some 30 years later, I returned to my valley to live with my wife Nesta and my son Richard, in the new Diamond Vale Housing Project. The same year 1962, I went to England on a British Council scholarship to study drama at the Central School of Speech and Drama, Embassy Theatre, Swiss Cottage, London. We had our second son William in 1964. I taught at Diego Martin Primary School for one term and was posted to the St James Government Secondary School from where I was seconded on several occasions to the Division of Culture as acting drama officer. In my one term at Diego Martin Primary School, I produced a concert at St John’s Hall. One of my plays Zingay was the highlight of the evening. The parish priest, Fr Pinard told me, he was sorry I had to leave because I had done so much for the school in the short time I was there.

The next year I handled the drama while the Carmelite nuns took care of the music for the musical play Mary, Mary with the school girls at the convent. My theatre company, the Strolling Players has staged several performances throughout, the Diego Martin region. We Crucify Him, my local passion play, was staged twice at St John’s RC Church and St Michael’s Anglican Church on Diamond Boulevard. Also at the Church of the Nativity Crystal Stream, St Finbar’s RC Church in Goodwood Gardens, St Anthony RC Church in Petit Valley, Our Lady Of Lourdes in Maraval, St Peters RC Church in Carenage, Christ Circle for Better Living in La Puerta, The Anglican Church of The Resurrection in Carenage and the island prison of Carrera.

The Strolling Players have also performed many of my 67 plays including some with Beulah at the Four Roads Community Centre, St John’s Hall, Petit Valley Boys’ RC School, Chaguaramas Gymnasium, Bon Sejour Community Centre and the Paramin RC School. Now on the walls of my living room taking pride of place is a plaque which reads “Diego Martin Regional Corporation — presented to Freddie Kissoon in recognition of your contribution to Arts — November 1996.” And from my porch, I can still see the white fleecy mists crowning the beautiful evergreen hills after the benediction of the rain. That reminds me of a Hawaiian proverb which goes, “When the heavens weep, the earth shall live.”