VETERAN politician and community activist Godfrey Lee-Sing shares his insights into the struggles and joys of rural life in Trinidad in far-flung Grand Chemin, Moruga, in a reader-friendly personal memoir, My Invitation to Moruga.
Less than 100 pages long, including a dozen pages of photos of family members, personal mementos and local landmarks, the book is not intimidating, but can be read in a relaxed weekend.
It provides a series of snapshots of stages of Lee-Sing’s life in Moruga, a town probably retaining the flavours of life once prevalent in villages across TT.
[caption id="attachment_1043501" align="alignnone" width="768"] Godfrey Lee-Sing speaks at the launch of his book My Invitation to Moruga. -[/caption]
It can contribute with other books to building a jigsaw-puzzle-like picture lifestyles, routines, life patterns, activities, values and interactions that helped shape us as a people in all our multicultural glory.
It should be read by any of us wishing to understand this society – tourist, schoolchild, journalist, politician, author.
The book is small, so it touches briefly on a range of aspects of living in Moruga. Hopefully it will encourage other individuals to tell their life experiences in written form, to preserve them for the present and posterity.
The first chapter, My Early Years, might evoke in the reader recollections of VS Naipaul’s Miguel Street and Sam Selvon’s A Brighter Sun.
Although Lee-Sing has not sought to write a novel to compete with Naipaul’s engaging Titus Hoyte or Selvon’s Tiger, his account of family life in Moruga helps document the story of us, and could inspire short stories, say centred on the life of a fictitious Chinese shopkeeper in rural Trinidad.
What is perhaps most striking about chapter one was how hardworking his parents were, even against the privations of rural life such as poor water supply and roads spelt out later in the book.
Lee Wah John, Lee-Sing’s paternal grandfather, left China in 1911 in the wake of the Chinese Revolution, worked under harsh conditions to build the Canadian Pacific Railway, returned to Guangdong in China, went to work on sugar estates in Cuba, returned to China, and then settled in Trinidad.
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“Prospects and opportunities on the island were favourable compared to the hardships created by the revolution of 1911,” the book relates.
“Grand Chemin was home to a Chinese community, one connected by kinship and friendship, whose members had established businesses like shops and bakeries.”
They could welcome a new migrant and help him settle in and adjust to his new life.
Lee Wah John hired a villager, Mrs Coward, to teach his family English, the key to assimilation for a migrant to TT.
Lee-Sing’s maternal grandfather, John Akin Thong, also came from Guandong, worked in Canada and in Cuba, and ended up in Trinidad, where he married an East Indian woman and moved to Grand Chemin.
Lee Wah John’s children included Alexander, who married J
