Granville

Things of old, things of new, endings, and beginnings, history and future, the correlation of time past to time present. Where would we be, would the road not travelled be mapped?  Do we know our history, or where we really came from?

Travel with me as I go south along the winding roads through many towns each with a vibrancy of their own.  From San Fernando through (some of the villages that I know) Oropouche, Ottaheiti, Dow Village, Aripero, Rousillac, La Brea, Sobo, Vessigny, The Rubber, Vance River, Guapo Stretch, Cochran, Gonzalves, Point Fortin, Fanny Village, Cap-de-Ville, Chatham, Curumandel, Granville.

My mother was born in Cedros, it is the south western most area of the island.  Her village is called Fullerton.  Granville is a village on the way to Cedros.  We went down to Cedros and on our way back up decided to detour to Granville beach.

These Cedros villages are fishing villages, with livestock farming and coconut harvesting following a close second for means of earning a living.  A quiet life, a simple life, a peaceful life.  I always enjoy my time there.  The family is loving and giving, always with some good country cooking to be consumed.  Yum yum!

At the beach we walked the shore and saw ‘chip chip’ and quickly got our buckets and sticks out the vehicle on a chip chip adventure. 

Chip chip is a small shellfish found along the tideline of Trinidadian beaches. In 1973, Shiva Naipaul, the brother of renowned author Sir V. S. Naipaul (Paul Theroux, 1998), published the book The Chip-Chip Gatherers. The quote comes from the inside cover of the dust jacket. In the book, he used chip-chip gathering as a metaphor for the futility of life. Chip-chips are tiny Donax clams (donaca) that live in the sand along the tide line and used to be eaten throughout the Caribbean and southeastern United States. They are a delight to watch, as they leave the sand with each passing wave and then burrow furiously back into the sand as the wave ebbs, repeating this action with every wave.  Gathering chip chip is a tiring task because they are small each clam holding less than a gram of meat and you must move swift with the rising tide to be able to collect them between each wave.

I found that this beach was fed by many small tributaries.  It is a very long expanse of sand, extending for miles from end to end.  From this beach you can see the northern drilling field of our marine oil company Trinmar a division of Petrotrin.  From what I remember, this northern field also was home to most of the compressor platforms.  I am saying what I remember as my father was head of the production department when he worked there and I myself worked for the company four years prior to me migrating to the USA.

The water at Granville was warm and a bit murky from the drilling and marine oil affairs taking place some 100 miles away.  The sky was overcast and the atmosphere breezy.  My brother and I walked up the beach and turned back just shy of the tip for fear of my camera getting wet with what looked like a fast approaching shower.

There were many buses and maxi taxis showing up at the beach facilities, with food and drinks in tow.  Seems like time to leave, because I do not like crowds.

Here are a few snaps showing the beach, the rigs, the chip chip, the tributaries, the vibe!

I hope that you enjoy.


© 2013, Odette M. Lawrence and NorDean Canvas. All rights reserved. The use and/or duplication of this material without the express and written permission of this blog’s author and/or owner are unauthorized and strictly prohibited.